Literature & Pedagogy

Building upon the approach to reading literature pioneered by Dr Bruce Gardiner at the University of Sydney for over four decades, Literature and Pedagogy is devoted to the way that texts, literary texts in particular, seek to instruct us.

Bruce Gardiner has inspired generations of professionals in the field of literary criticism. He stands, if you like, for a scholarly ethos, which is at risk of disappearing. His distinctive academic career, which was almost entirely devoted to teaching, invites us to think about the relationships between literary studies and pedagogy. It also invites us to ask what role a unique pedagogical style plays in the evolution of a discipline. How does intergenerational transmission between teacher and student play out both with and beyond disciplinary boundaries?

This collection explores these questions as a contribution to efforts to resist the neo-liberalisation and neo-conservatism of contemporary academic culture. Contributors draw from inspiring encounters with Bruce Gardiner to reflect upon the reading of pedagogy in literary works, put this method into practice by offering new interpretations of pedagogical mechanisms employed within important literary works and cultural phenomena, and present pieces inspired by Gardiner such as poetry, art, translation and creative non-fiction.

Techniques and methodologies of education are traditionally believed to offer students the keys with which to unlock the secrets of literature and foster its appreciation. Literature and Pedagogy offers a new perspective, showing teachers and students of both education and literature how literary works present their own methods for reflecting critically upon how and why we learn, read and teach.

Anthony Cordingley is is Robinson Fellow at the University of Sydney, on secondment from the Université Paris 8, France, where he is Associate Professor in English and Translation. He teaches across modernist literature, comparative literature, translation studies, and his work has appeared in journals such as Comparative Literature, Modern Philology, PMLA, Twentieth-Century Literature and Translation Studies.

• Introduction: “Follow thy Bruce” by Anthony Cordingley

Part I Bruce Gardiner en acte

• 1 The Antimanager by Nick Riemer
• 2 Revolutionary Tradition by A.J. Carruthers
• 3 They Danced by the Light of the Moon: Edward Lear, Bruce Gardiner, and Learning Ways to Mean by Dr Christopher Richardson
• 4 Navigating, Networking, Nurturing:The Research, Teaching and Leadership of Bruce Gardiner by Adam Gall, Benjamin Miller, Susan E. Thomas
• 5 Human Voices, and a Bruce Gardiner Lecture by Peter Godfrey-Smith
• 6 “My Wretched Dragon Is Perplexed”: Scenes of Submission and Response by Rodney Taveira
• 7 Marks in the Margin: Reading Benjamin Reading Baudelaire by Brett Neilson
• 8 The Windhover in Him by Peter Banki

Part II Imagined Pedagogies: Poetry and Play

• 9 “Triptych” by Toby Fitch
• 10 “Street Library (A–Z)” by Michelle Kelly
• 11 Bruce Gardiner’s Emily Dickinson by Monique Rooney
• 12 Play as Structure by Émile Benveniste, translated by Jack Cox

Part III Bruce Gardiner, Original Teachings

• 13 “To Entertain This Starry Stranger”: Jane Taylor, William Blake, Edward Lear and Mem Fox in Martha Nussbaum’s Classroom by Bruce Gardiner
• 14 Lectures on Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetics in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Bruce Gardiner
• 15 Luce Irigaray’s The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger: Seminar Commentaries by Bruce Gardiner

Part IV The Poetics of Pedagogy

• 16 Lyrebirds by Alexis Harley
• 17 The Queer Optimism of Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” (for Bruce Gardiner) by Kate Lilley
• 18 Teaching Interpretation :The “Genuine Sense” in Bruce Gardiner’s Lectures by Marc Mierowsky
• 19 The Nonsense of Knowledge: A Reading of George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind by Jessica Lim
• 20 Virtue or Villainy? Mrs. Grose in “The Turn of the Screw” and The Haunting of Bly Manor by Liz Shek-Noble
• 21 Djuna Barnes’ Modernity: Addition, Subtraction, Failure, Fantasy by Melissa Hardie

• 22 The Last Man: Literature and Survival by Peter J. Hutchings

• Contributors
• Appendix 1 Bruce Gardiner: Educational and Academic History
• Appendix 2 Bruce Gardiner: Record of Teaching and Supervision, 1981–2021

“Bruce Gardiner is a giant of Australian letters, and an extraordinary teacher. His lectures in the John Woolley Building at the University of Sydney were bracing, revelatory - an encounter with the intellectual sublime. I’m delighted to see this book emerge honouring Dr Gardiner’s legacy - few other Sydney-based scholars have had such a profound influence on so many.” – Luke Harley, Sydney Grammar School

“This volume is an audacious tribute to a singular mind. *Literature & Pedagogy* has been crafted with the same care, discipline and creativity as the figure that inspired it. It brims with everything that characterises Bruce Gardiner’s legacy: experimental reading, radical pedagogy, and the sheer pleasure of the text. Across four parts, the book’s chapters unfurl Gardiner’s teaching ethic and style, his risk-taking approach to reading, and the innovative new criticism he has, in some form, helped to inspire. The impressive range of contributors assembled in this book span the breadth of Australian letters, testament to Gardiner’s impact as a scholar, teacher and colleague. As one of his former students, I know there are few he encountered that he did not transform.” – Eda Gunaydin, University of Wollongong

“This moving collection does Bruce Gardiner the honour not of imitation – after all, as we read throughout, he is inimitable – but of striving to emulate the radiance of his thought, pedagogy, and collegiality. It is joyful, generative, and extravagantly eclectic, each chapter a singular reflection of the galactic twinkle in the Gardinerian eye.” – Robert Payne, The American University of Paris

“As a student, Bruce Gardiner was the most brilliant literature teacher I ever had. Every tutorial, a masterful performance! Gardiner offers textual analysis and readings in all their richness and specificity. His work is exquisitely detailed and revealing.” 

– Dr Kate Pearcy, Programmer and Partnerships Lead, ABC Radio National

“This touching tribute collection provides invaluable insight into the pedagogy and scholarship of a beloved teacher who has left an indelible imprint on the literary critical scene in Sydney, Australia and beyond. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the history of literary criticism in Australia.” 

– Pheng Cheah, University of California at Berkeley

Format: paperback
Size: 254 × 178 mm
328 pages
ISBN: 9781761540011
Publication: 01 Apr 2025