Twilight and Intertexuality

I am embarrassed to admit that, despite my preconceptions, I did enjoy Twilight, and have even moved on and finished New Moon. The reason I am embarrassed is because I typically enjoy really well written books because I admire good writing and the challenge that it imposes on the reader, and this book is not exactly well written. I've been trying to come to terms with what exactly about it, then, I enjoy enough to make me want to read the rest of the series. The article actually brought to light the reason that I liked it (I think). It's not really well written, but the characterization is well done. "Readers are drawn into this story becasue the characters are intriguing and develop complex relationship as the story progresses" (Bull 113). I think this sums up what I liked abou the book. I fell for Bella and Edward and their tensions and struggles and the complexity of their relationships. It's funny, but the idea of forbidden and difficult love, though a really over-done idea, is still very intriguing and interesting to me.

The article had some interesting ideas for how to teach Twilight in a classroom, since it is a text that would have to be justified to an administration as to it's educational value. I like the idea of digging into the idea of characterization, since it is helpful in learning fiction writing skills. We've talked about intertexuality on several occasions, especially the pairing of modern texts with more "classic" literature. I think since the book alludes to Romeo and Juliet, and Romeo and Juliet is taught in early high school, the use of a venn diagram to talk about similarities and differences between the two could be helpful. I even enjoyed the idea of multimedia and comparing and contrasting the book and the movie, though I'm not sure how much educational value this has. The think alouds would be helpful in making deeper connections.

After checking out the sites on fanfiction, I was a little disappointed. I wouldn't really want to read fan fiction regularly. I'd rather stick with the author and their ideas, since authors know their characters so well. Having said that, I can certainly see the value of fan fiction. The fact that students are so inspired to write extensions or to take the characters and put them in other situations is really encouraging. I think it could really be a useful tool to set students off and running with fan fiction or fan art (is that what it's called?) after reading a story. It would really force them to dig deep into the character and consider the character's motivations when putting them in certain situations.

The article did start out strong, but I found that by the end, I hadn't really discovered a way to justify the teaching of this novel, despite the large fan base among adolescents. I think the only real reason we'd teach it is because students would read it, but I don't really know if there is enough to teach in this novel to students. It really makes me think about the texts we DO teach and why we teach them. I can't justify teaching a novel that I don't think is well written. But I'm curious to hear what everyone else has to say about how this could be taught (or if it should be taught or just left for outside reading). I think it would be valuable to come up with ways to teach it, since kids are enjoying it and reading it (so that they aren't reading it instead of books they are assigned, but rather for class). But after reading the article, I don't think Bull really gave me anything more to work with except for the pairing of this book with a classic.