Abstract

More often than not, when people write about the relationship of literature and writing, they either argue about the place of literature in composition classes (as Barbara and Francis Lide do in Literature in the Composition Class) or discuss, in the spirit of writing-across-thecurriculum, how to use journals, response assignments, and critical essays to teach literature (an approach Joseph Comprone takes in Integrating the Acts of Reading and about Literature). My purpose in this essay is different from either of those. I hope to suggest a number of the values-for student understanding and appreciation of literature, and for the effective teaching of literature and writing-that can come from having students work at their own creative writing in undergraduate literature classes. For some years, Twentieth Century and Fiction Writing alternated in my teaching load. One course features works in which literary technique is quite important and often very challenging for students, and the other course helped students develop some mastery of literary technique. By thinking about how to make both courses work well, I discovered that many of the activities and exercises of the fiction writing class helped literature students to understand key concepts of technique and to appreciate the subtlety and craft of the works they read. For those unfamiliar with typical exercises of fiction-writing classes, let me offer a brief list of activities that carry over into literature classes: