Marxism and a Literary Education

This autobiographical essay explores the significance that Marxist literary theory has had for me as an English educator. Marxist literary theorists have produced increasingly refined understandings of the formal complexities of literary works, but the reach of such criticism has been limited because they have failed to conceive it as part of a larger educational project that is in turn integral to a larger struggle to create a truly democratic society. They have been preoccupied with the epistemological and ontological status of the literary text vis-à-vis history, without engaging with the question of how people engage with literary texts within schools and other social settings. The essay shifts the focus of attention from the status of the literary work in relation to history to an understanding of how people read and appropriate literary texts for their own purposes, including the way students engage with the texts set for study in schools.