General description of reasearch questions:
It is often thought that Literature, Poetry, the Arts should be reserved to students who are to follow academic studies. Other students -the vast majority, actually- are meant to learn what is supposed to be “useful” for them to be skilled technicians, mechanics, plumbers, etc. Poetry is not in the curricula, as it offers no tools for life.
My experience of teaching to teenagers has shown me exactly the opposite: Literature and Poetry are the most practical tools for life. They may not teach how to turn a screw, but they teach how to turn into a person.
And the combination of L2 and Literature in L2 can offer even more, as it is a double-powered tool which actually empowers the reader enabling him/her to venture safely into self-consciousness.
Through Literature and L2, teenagers can be put in the condition to reach, to see, recognize, express, define their otherwise silent, confused or unknown emotions or competences. Their unconsciuos feelings or unknown skills can be elicited by a neutral means which has no connections or memories involved with their mother tongue.
Emotions are less dangerous in Literature. Violence is there, and Love and Rage and Despair, too: actually, Literature may help teenagers, in particular the less fortunate, or the ones coming from troubled backgrounds, in being able to grow their own identities and include “negative” emotions such as rage and violence without being frightened, or led, by them.
Through Literature, and in particular Literature in L2, teenagers can recognize and look at their unspeakable emotions as in a mirror, but, at the same time, as from a window, a safer frame.
Objectives:
Teaching Literature, and in particular Literature in L2, is thus a way to “conscientization” (Freire), of teaching responsability for the self and the community, eliciting the partecipation and the commitment of teenagers, the future adults of our societies, to the renewal of “our common world” (Arendt).
That can be achieved through Literature, Poetry and the Arts, in particular in L2, as they operate in an indirect way. For example, Poetry can encourage teenagers to become detectives of words and meanings, helping them to become more aware of what is behind, or inside, a word.
Working on language is a rather political issue that can show teenagers how to grow a consciousness not only about what they say, but also about what other people say, suggesting them to try to decode the hidden side of communication in any field – family, school, media, politics, etc. – thus providing them with a critical approach.
Theoretical framework:
It encompasses studies of Literary Criticism, in particular Iser and Frye; studies on the psychology of Emotions (in particular Frijda and Oatley); studies on the importance of Imagination (Greene, Hillman and Arendt); social studies as those of Morin, Bateson and Bauman; studies on the anthropology of Arts as those of Dissanayake and studies on Education (Freire, Arendt, Morin, Gardner, Griffiths, Gobbo, Greene, etc).
