Getting Entangled in Literary Concepts: Short Stories for Icelandic Secondary School and their Paratexts

Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson, University of Iceland, School of Education

Modern short stories have played a key role in literature education in Icelandic upper secondary schools for the past half century or so. During this time, several anthologies of short stories intended for teachers and students in upper secondary schools have been published. These anthologies have undoubtedly contributed to the shaping of the Icelandic literary canon, but they are also connected to the history of literary theory and criticism in Icelandic culture and education. This lecture will examine the paratexts (such as prefaces, epilogues, annotations, author portraits and student assignments) of these antologies of short stories and explore the literary concepts that are presented, both those specifically related to short stories and those associated with literary theory and criticism in general.

The analysis will be based on an examination of the paratexts of six anthologies of short stories published between 1979 and 2020, along with the accompanying teaching guidelines. Additional data underpinning the research includes interviews with teachers and students conducted in connection with a study on the teaching of Icelandic in primary and secondary schools in 2018, as well as recent interviews with teachers conducted in the last year.

The aim of the presentation is twofold: firstly, to investigate whether the use of terminology and analytical methods in the teaching materials align with general developments in Icelandic and international literary criticism and pedagogy during the specified period; secondly, to inquire into the role of the literary theoretical approach apparent in the teaching materials on the teaching of literature as manifested in interviews with teachers.

Preliminary results show that the paratexts of these anthologies, in particular those that are aimed at students, such as assignments with individual stories, have stagnated and have not adapted to the trends of literatary criticism as they have evolved from the 1970's to the present day.