No particular order

Looking at the recent issues of Footpath and recollecting the discussions with the Seminar participants I think that one of the new challenges for us is teaching drama and poetry. Reading a drama piece is a challenge, as a play is something that is supposed to be watched rather than read as novel. Thus, traditional approaches and tasks often do not work. There have been attempts, and often successful, to address the issues of teaching drama through actual staging, or, especially, through dramatic reading in class. Yes, this approach has its downsides as not all of us are ready to spend the precious time on a bit of fun (and acting, however serious it is, it still about fun), or the students are not the acting type, or the text is too complex. Some might argue that, besides, this approach does not work with ‘regular’ novels in our project or that our students have very limited theatre experience. This might be the case in some situations but are not dialogues between Robyn Penrose and Vic Wilcox in Nice Work full of drama? Or those between Martin Clay and Laura Churt in Headlong ? Surely, you cannot reduce a good novel to a humorous dialogue but it is a good starting point for discussing the tone, the way the novel works and so on. But what about poetry one might ask? Teaching poetry is a task dreaded by many of us and utterly enjoyed by the few. Still, we all are curious about poetry which is often puzzling and not too easy to grasp. In this respect it quite similar to drama, as, misquoting Hector from Alan Bennet’s The History Boys ‘poetry is not meant to be understood, it is meant to be enjoyed’. Paradoxically, individual poems, however complex they may be, very rarely come in the size of 500 page novels, so daunting for students. These, of course are general considerations which may well not work everywhere but it is worth trying.

Another point I thought worthwhile is the problem of hobbyhorse books. With almost thirty books in the project, it is fairly difficult to cover all of them even in the context of a large department, let alone a fairly small one, so we have to pick the books we deem fit for our students. But how relevant are our choices in the long run? If you are teaching students whose command of the language is not as good as you wish or you are pressed for time and will simply not be able to read, let alone discuss a fairly large novel within reasonable time, there is a temptation to pick smaller, more straightforward novels, and progress from, say, About a Boy, to Magpie, then to A Taxi-Driver’s Daughter and then to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. The list is almost arbitrary and does not suggest that these novels mentioned are bad or simplistic. They are not. However, narrowing oneself to a particular type of novel we risk giving our students a rather distorted image of English literature, which comes in a variety of forms. We have to admit that some novels are more challenging both in term of language and narrative than the other ones, but is there a way to develop in the students the appreciation of a more complex novel if you give them simpler ones. The same is true of themes. Very few of us expected that Elizabeth is Missing would work with the students, but strangely enough, it was a major success which resulted in amazing contributions for the commentary. At the same time, it is always a pleasure to see our colleagues sharing their ideas about the authors that are in the project, or about other novels or poetry by the project authors. This is a very good sign, as it shows that a vast majority of us are ready to explore beyond the project and share with the students.

Having said this, I have to mention that this year we have a very interesting selection of titles and authors that our contributors have chosen. To my personal delight there was a contribution from Polina Kolosova on Grace Notes , a novel of significant depth which, alas, is covered not often enough. In the ‘theoretical’ section we have a profound contribution from Irina Popova on unreliable narrators which has a twofold effect as it both further develops a topic, brought about in the previous issues of Footpath and shows that you can dig out quite a lot in a seeming straightforward novel. Another aspect of this issue is contributions on Sebastian Faulks and Daivid Lanchester, which give very interesting insights into these authors and are really good from the teaching perspective. We cannot but mention Yulia Khokhlova’s contribution on Burke’s Black Watch and an answer to the review on The Noise of Time from Footpath- 11 by Natalia Beloshitskaya. The former introduces the readers to an author not widely known in Russia and shows how we can we look at trauma and uncomfortable memories on the page. The latter is remarkable in the sense that it embodies the spirit of discussion so much loved by us all.

Speaking of discussion, I have to mention a new section, called ‘Debate and Controversy’. We have often hoped for contributions which refer to ideas discussed in previous issues of Footpath . It seems difficult to keep such debates going from year to year. Readers and potential writers perhaps forget what they read nine months ago. Our disappointment changed to real pleasure this year when, by contrast, we received articles and letters which referred in a spirit of scholarly disagreement and passionate affection to previous discussions. We have opened this new section, ‘Debate and Controversy’ for such articles, and we hope that the Section will continue to flourish in future years.