Abstract

The following pages deal with literature and its relationship to education. Three writers (Maxine Greene, Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth) are incorporated because of their extensive works which explore how literature is a unique and important companion to our lives. A polyfocal analysis ensues, inspired by Joseph Schwab's vision of the eclectic, which attempts to build a foundation for comparison as I show how literature serves as not only a companion to our lives, but also embodies, in its very structure and form, a potential value that is applicable to our development of a curriculum sensitive to contributing vantage points. Literature becomes an example of how a polyfocal analysis acknowledges the power of the imagination in our educational process. Literature becomes, in this sense, a companion to our subject matter in a similar sense as it is a companion to our lives, as we reflect and deliberate between perspectives.

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