The Role of Student’S Pre-Knowledge When Studying Postmodern Poetry

Judit Kubinger-Pillmann 
(Centre for Teacher Education, Institute of Education, Faculty of Modern Philology and Social Sciences,
University of Pannonia, Hungary)

Abstract: The topic of this paper is on the border between the pedagogy and the science of literature. Nowadays it would be very important to take the pre-knowledge of students into account while teaching postmodern literature. In the author’s opinion, with the respect of pre-knowledge of students, the process of interpretation of lyric poetry would be more effective. This paper is trying to explain this using poems of contemporary poets who paraphrase poems of other poets from previous centuries. Why do I think it is important to respect the pre-knowledge of students when interpreting postmodern lyric poetry? Because in this way, the incomprehensibility of postmodern literature could be stopped. The job of literature teachers is to build the proper intertextual background and to help the students interpret the postmodern poetry in the right way.

Key words: pre-knowledge, consideration of pre-knowledge, “incomprehensibility” of postmodern literature, teaching of postmodern poetry, unconcern of students for postmodern literature