Review: The Time Machine and the Domaine by Richard W. Bevis (Alton: Friesen Press, 2022)

Abstract

The challenges of teaching English to late adolescents are considerable and far-reaching. Worn pedagogy, endless tests and limited funding for books often results in students quitting reading fiction altogether. Their underdeveloped vocabulary and poor writing skills remain. Yet we are also given the opportunity to inspire students to love literature and its insights. Our own keenness helps as does eliciting ideas from seasoned colleagues. Reading educational theorists and literary critics is rewarding, but theorists are often more philosophical than pragmatic and teaching guides often lack a social context. Books about English that are both rigorous and useful are rare. However, there's a new one just out and it's terrific. It's Richard W. Bevis' The Time Machine and the Domaine; the Origins and Function of imaginative Literature. It sounds ‘heavy,’ but it’s not. In nimble and erudite prose. Bevis considers the questions that all English teachers face when standing before new students. “Why do we have literature and how do we use it?” and how does a writer present aspects of life's experience such that reading may become “a world or great adventure?” His analysis not only offers new views of the social functions of literature, it also reveals some surprisingly unique ways to present its structure and meaning.