Clio's kerstening. Pedagogische literatuurkritiek van Plato tot Luther

Abstract

Storytelling no longer occupies a central position in school education. The question of why this element has largely disappeared in standard school education has led us to an historical inquiry into the history of European institutional education. We found that this was the first time this question had been posed in this way, and that was part of the motivation for this study. Stories inspire children and engage them in the subject matter. In our time, when the need for meaningful ties between fragments of knowledge is so great, the search for the position of stories in education is vital. In current scientific educational literature, references to literary education and literary criticism are rare. References to the history of educational practice concerning literature and the humanities are so scarce that we decided to examine the commentaries on that practice, which are available. Great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Erasmus, Vives, Luther, Comenius and Rousseau dedicated themselves to the subject. Narrowing our focus, we formulated our research question as follows: “What is the tenor of educationally oriented commentaries on form, content, and use of stories in school education from Plato to Luther?” Our chief investigation, concerned with the educational literary critics from Plato to Luther, has led us to the following results: 1. the current opinion that the authority of Plato and Aristotle dominated educational literary criticism in the past should be adjusted to reflect the influence of Christian criticism, 2. Christian criticism remains undervalued today, 3. Christian criticism has subordinated profane literature in education, at least in the era of our research; thus in this period secular literature has lost its significance as a means of propaedeutic general education, 4. the literary role model occupies a core position in both pre-Christian and Christian commentaries. Church fathers like Basil the Great and Jerome expressed fundamental objections against literary education. According to specialists, Augustine’s criticism differed from that of the before mentioned by his total rejection of poetry and narrative in education. Augustine believed that there were useful and useless aspects of traditional stories in education. The useful part consists of the grammar rules that can be derived from them and the factual knowledge they contain, which can be used in understanding bible texts. The rest of the narrative is useless. Within the context of antiquity’s educational culture of critical close reading sessions and a thorough study of factual data, Augustine’s propositions, which stress objections against narrative on other grounds as well, influenced many future theorists to believe that narrative, the bible excluded, is both useless and dangerous in education. In summary, there are two categories of educational literary criticism: the non-Christian category, called “propaedeutic,” and the Christian category called “catechetical.” The first category is a kind of literary criticism based on classical Greek paideia. It is aimed at a general, propaedeutic education, for the most part positively directed towards the literary model text, applying beauty and awe as pedagogic tools, and self critical in literary respect. The second category is connected to the preparation of baptism, and as such based on Christian dogmatism and propaganda, mainly directed towards biblical education. The commentaries of the latter category exhibit only,– and mostly in a negative sense – criticism on non-biblical model texts.