The Avatars of Literature in Language Study

Abstract

This article documents the changing role that literature has played in foreign language teaching as seen through the articles published in the MLJ between 1916 and 1999. Literature has been used for the aesthetic education of the few (1910s), for the literacy of the many (1920s), for moral and vocational uplift (1930s–1940s), for ideational content (1950s), for humanistic inspiration (1960s–1970s), and for providing an ‘authentic’ experience of the target culture (1980s–1990s). At the present time, although the study and the teaching of literature are virtually absent from the MLJ, ‘literariness’ in language acquisition research is far from dead. By illuminating the pervasive presence of the literary in the teaching of foreign languages over the century, this retrospective may provide support for the current interest in voice, style, and culture in applied linguistics and help this strand of research find its way in the pages of the MLJ.

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