Music and Literature (Guanhui)

Web-links:

http://www.corndancer.com/tunes/tunes_lp019/lp06_litterm.html

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/using-music-to-connect-literature/

When I was in Junior College, a literature teacher taught us about seasonal poetry through Vivaldi's Four Seasons. She implored us to close our eyes and to use our imagination. It gave us a deeper impression of poetry through the sheer lyrical properties of music. 

Music is powerful. Our body reacts to the rhythm, the tonality, and the lyrics. Music aids in memory too. We remember our favourite songs more than the poems that we read. To this end, I have sourced for two sites that provide a pedagogical framework to incorporate music in literature lessons. 

In the first site, Heather Baxter-Ewing provides a lesson template for teaching literary devices through songs. She provides a sample lesson plan, including songs like "Umbrella". I think there are two benefits to this approach: firstly, the songs are easily found on sites such as youtube (where the teacher will have access to a wide repository of songs); secondly, the songs help the students to associate the device with a context-rich song. Consider the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette. The lyrics are rich with meaning and examples of irony. The first stanza of the song goes:

                                                                     An old man turned ninety-eight

                                                   He won the lottery and died the next day

                                                       It's a black fly in your Chardonnay

It's a death row pardon two minutes too late

And isn't it ironic... don't you think

Besides testing for an understanding of literary devices, the students will be able to see how the literary device functions in the song - whether it's a soliloquy or a narrative. 

While Baxter-Ewing designed the lesson as primarily a means of getting students to learn about a specific literary device through songs, we may proceed to make the lesson advanced by playing only one song and getting the students to identify as many literary devices (or we can limit the number) from the song. This exercise serves a useful purpose, in that, students will realise that literary devices are found in many texts. It helps to contextualise literature in a real-world context, giving them a much-needed impetus to study literary devices in the classroom. 

In the second site, Michele Dunway recounts her pedagogical approach to teaching literature, by linking music to connect literary texts to the real world. While her approach is exploratory and almost adhoc in execution, this exercise has value. The advantage to this approach is that students are encouraged to go beyond the classroom and the prescribed text. For instance, Dunway says:

There are many ways music can be tied into the teaching of literature. As one of their optional projects for "To Kill a Mockingbird," my students can create 10-song CDs that represent 10 scenes in the novel and then create liner notes that explain why they chose the songs.

In our school setting, the teacher can limit the songs to perhaps 3 key songs. The students can get to present their song choices (they would have to link the song choice to the key text's features). This exercise serves two purposes: firstly, students will have to study the text in detail, mining it for thematic concerns, literary features, etc.; secondly, in searching for songs, students will be encouraged to connect subtexts with the main text. This association exercise aids students to commit to memory the text. 

In conclusion, music is a powerful pedagogical tool. It speaks to a generation of students who may be more interested in music than in a book. The teacher who can connect both together, coherently and meaningfully, will win an eager audience.