In a letter to the English poet A H Clough, a young Matthew Arnold argued that a poem is only successful if it firstly achieves ‘the beautiful’ and secondly ‘gives pleasure’ (February 1849). Arnold’s later work following his time as an English Inspector of Schools posits education invites pleasure through being able to ‘see things as they are’ (Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism 1869, p.15). However, he moves beyond situating pleasure as a goal by arguing the ‘cultured’ individual must rise above what is pleasurable and easy to become a critically refined, educated subject who thinks and acts with moral reason.
In 1924, I A Richards told us ‘The orientation of attention is wrong if we put the pleasure in the forefront’ (Principles of Literary Criticism, p.87). Richards’s contemporary, F R Leavis, was integral to formalising English as the discipline that scrutinises literature in pursuit of perceived truth and knowledge production. His work as the editor of the literary periodical Scrutiny (1932-1953) helped solidify his role as a critical giant and influential literary pedagogue of the twentieth century. It is worth noting that his memorial stone epitaph reads, ‘teacher and critic’, signalling his dual role. His wife, Q D Leavis, was fundamental to Scrutiny and published work of her own in a similarly rigorous but elitist tone. Her largest work, Fiction and the Reading Public (1932), made claims about what makes for good reading in line with the Leavis brand. A review by Sylvia Norman in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art playfully notes that in Q D Leavis’s view there are ‘only five good English fiction writers of the moment, one of whom is dead (Joyce, Woolf, Forester, and Powys)’ (1932, p. 423). Not only does Leavis denounce pleasurable reading, but she sees the popularity of texts outside her narrow frame of approval to signal the social and moral degradation of a readerly public.
Following Arnold, Richards, F R and Q D Leavis sought to differentiate literary reading from leisure by publishing and prescribing critical codebooks for the teaching of what we now call English as a subject. For the early English establishment, the practice of literary studies could not be further from a game. Yet, with all its claims of reason and rigour, it is impossible to ignore the inherently classist, imperialist logics that underpin such views about the necessity of educating society through reading English literature.
Beyond the early twentieth century giants, there is a whole genre dedicated to educational literary reading. Many of these texts begin with the title ‘How to Read’ and frame their audience as general readers or students of literature rather than other critics. Arguably, the original is How to Read a Book (1940) by Mortimer J Adler. Adler’s text experienced what his contemporary William Lyon Phelps described as ‘sudden and enormous popularity’ (The Journal of Higher Education 1940, p.451). How to Read a Book enjoyed a long life, with a second revised edition published in 1972 alongside the help of disgraced quiz-show contestant, Charles Van Doren. Later popular texts in this genre include Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why (2000), How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003) by Thomas C Foster, and most recently, How to Read Literature (2013) by Terry Eagleton. All of these texts argue in some form, that there are particular books that are good for the type of reading they advocate, and those types of reading require active attention and purpose that go beyond pleasure. In his review of Adler’s book, Phelps notes: ‘I think there is one enormous emotion almost omitted – I mean love. Instead of reading as a task, why not read because we love the book, or love its subject, or love its author, or anyhow love reading?’ (p.451). Phelps felt so strongly about the lack of love and pleasure in Adler’s instructions that he titled the review ‘Why Not with Love?’.
In contrast to the series of didactic texts that seem void of pleasure discussed thus far, rests the work of Roland Barthes. Barthes blew up the conservatism of scrutinous, evaluative reading with The Pleasure of the Text (1973). He positions two potential outcomes for the game of reading: pleasure and bliss. While fluid concepts, they are distinct. A ‘text of pleasure’ is a ‘text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading’ (p.14). A pleasure text is more traditional, it fulfils the needs of the reader but does not invite them to challenge themselves. It provides enjoyment but does not persist to reach for anything beyond it. The pleasure text has a limit, and that limit reinforces the perceived limitations of the individual.
A ‘text of bliss’ is a ‘text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom) unsettles the reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language’ (p.14). Even further, ‘bliss may come only with the absolutely new for only the new disturbs’ (p.40), and thus we are pushed beyond our immediate understanding and experience into a new state of being. Bliss explodes questions of value by propelling the reader toward an experience outside of themselves, and this experience is wholly unpredicted. With a blissful text, one may never know what they are to experience when reading. The result is totally open, difference is the only guarantee.
In this essay, I want to address the fact that the educational implications of studying literature are, and have been, uniquely positioned in juxtaposition to the concept of reading for pleasure. While research has shown that reading for pleasure is crucial to literacy and the academic success of children, its role in the teaching of literary studies feels under-explored. The fact that the phrase ‘reading for pleasure’ exists suggests that we often read without the prospect of personal enjoyment. Learning can’t be all fun and games, so what kind of reading should we do when becoming educated? Is a state of bliss achievable in a classroom?
Rather than attempting to answer such questions, I want to playfully consider the relation between the pleasurable reading we do, often in the comfort of domestic or leisure spaces where reading is a distinct type of individual choice, and the largely collaborative approach to reading that is valued in educational settings. I consider educational reading collaborative because it is mediated by a variety of knowledge communities and is often done in the context of a formal educational setting. These settings are usually groups where the teacher and students discuss texts together in a process of synergic meaning making.
