French Literature During the Enlightenment
French Literature During the Enlightenment
French Literature during the Enlightenment
As in other parts of Europe, the Enlightenment in France had been preceded by the publication of a number of works that were critical of the Roman Catholic Church, traditional Christianity, and received wisdom in general. Although the French court had come to be affected powerfully by a renewed sense of piety in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, these years had also seen the publication of a number of works that were to be widely read in the eighteenth century, and to form the basis for the Enlightenment's attempts to establish an "Age of Reason." Newton's ideas of a world held together by the opposing forces of gravity and John Locke's teachings concerning the necessity of liberty in civil societies came to be almost as important in eighteenth-century France as they were in England and America. Yet France also produced its own scientists and political theorists in this period, intellectuals that challenged the wisdom of past ages. Among these, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) and Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) were two of the most important thinkers of the years around 1700, and their ideas formed one of the foundations of the Enlightenment in France as it gathered strength in the years following Louis XIV's death in 1715. Fontenelle was a scientist and a productive author who tried to make the implications of the latest scientific experiments available to a more general readership. He published widely on all kinds of topics, from the Classics to political theory and science, eventually winning a place for himself among the immortals of the French Academy. His most influential work, A Plurality of Worlds (1688), promoted the notion of the Copernican heliocentric or sun-centered universe. Although Copernicus had advanced this notion as early as 1543, and Galileo had elaborated upon his theory in the early seventeenth century, the Catholic Church's condemnation of the notion of a sun-centered universe had helped to dampen its rise to prominence, even among intellectuals in France in the later seventeenth century. Much of Fontenelle's scientific theorizing in the Plurality of Worlds was clearly wrong, and was soon disproven by the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia in 1689. Yet Fontenelle wrote vigorously and convincingly for the Copernican theory, and helped as a result to establish its acceptance in the country's intellectual society. Pierre Bayle, by contrast, singled out the entire edifice of Roman Catholicism for his most vigorous attacks. A Protestant, he was forced to emigrate from France as a result of Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had previously granted a degree of toleration to France's Protestant population. Bayle helped to establish the tradition of French writers publishing in exile that was to play an important role in the eighteenth century. His and his successors' works were often printed in London, Amsterdam, or in Switzerland before being smuggled into France, where they were avidly read by French intellectuals. In his works Bayle attacked the fanaticism of the traditional Catholic Church, but he was at the same time critical of the developing rationalistic strains of thought found in many European thinkers. His works were important, especially his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), because they celebrated toleration and championed a society of pluralistic views. His vision was not realized in late seventeenth-or early eighteenth-century France, although the thinkers of the Enlightenment were to champion many of the same causes that Bayle had.
The concerns that Bayle and Fontenelle had expressed soon were taken up by many others, including the Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), the first great thinker the French Enlightenment produced. Montesquieu entrusted his business interests to his wife, who was an astute manager, so that he could devote himself to study, writing, and his position in the Parlement of Bordeaux, an important court and administrative institution. In 1721, Montesquieu's first great work, The Persian Letters, appeared and soon prompted considerable debate. It was styled as a series of letters written between two Persian travelers during a visit to France. It mocked French civilization and customs by holding them up to the lens of supposed outsiders. In these letters Montesquieu ranged far and wide, and no one in France seems to have escaped the penetrating gaze of his considerable intelligence. The work attacked the absolutist system of government set up by Louis XIV, the Catholic Church, and all the country's social classes. In its allegorical portrait of a race of Troglodytes, it set forth a cogent discussion of Thomas Hobbes' seventeenth-century notion of the state of nature. Fueled by his success in prompting intellectual ferment, Montesquieu soon left his provincial home in Bordeaux and made his way to Paris, where he circulated in high court circles. In these years in Paris, he came into contact with several English aristocrats, and from his discussions with them, he, like other Enlightenment figures, came to admire the flexibility and greater freedom of England's political system. Eventually, he traveled to England to witness firsthand the country's government at work. In the years following his return to France, Montesquieu began his great classic, The Spirit of the Laws, a work that was largely complete by 1743, but not published until 1748, when he had deliberated over his arguments for a number of years and considerably refined them. In its final printed form it was almost 1,100 pages long. The originality of Montesquieu's vision as a political theorist can be seen in the ways in which he takes up subjects that were common among political writers at the time. Instead of insisting, as past theorists had, that governments should be divided for purposes of examination into aristocracies, monarchies, and democracies, Montesquieu instead treated the spirit that he believed produced each kind of political system. Republics, he argued, arose from a spirit of human virtue; monarchies from a spirit of honor; while despotisms were the product of fear. A second feature of the work proved to be of major importance in the later political history of France and the United States: Montesquieu's notion of the separation of powers. He argued that it was not enough for a government merely to separate functions, but that the legislative, judicial, and administrative duties in a state should be confided to completely separate groups that acted autonomously of each other. In this way his political theory anticipated the political innovations of the U.S. Constitution and the French Revolution. Although Montesquieu shied away from controversy, the implications of his work were widely recognized and attacked at the time. In the Sorbonne, Paris' distinguished university, they were condemned, and the French clergy widely attacked his conclusions as well. In 1751, his Spirit of the Laws was placed on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books.
The greatest author of the French Enlightenment was François-Marie Arouet (1694–1774), who was always known by his pen name Voltaire. He began his career as a secretary before turning to writing, although troubles soon plagued his career. For his early plays, tragedies in the tradition of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, he was pronounced the great successor to seventeenth-century classicism. But when he fell afoul of members of the court, he was banished for a time from France. In these years he lived in London and came to admire the greater liberty of English life. When he returned to France, he published his reminiscences of his time among the English as The Philosophical Letters (1734), a work filled with keen insights and irony about the differences between French and English societies. In religious matters, Voltaire always professed to be a deist, that is, a follower of the naturalistic religion that had been popular in England among some intellectuals at the end of the seventeenth century. His criticisms of French life, manners, and religion eventually made his life in Paris uncomfortable and, turning his back on France, he traveled for a time to Prussia, where he was offered a position in the court of Frederick II. There intrigues followed him, and eventually he left Germany, only to be captured and imprisoned for a time by Frederick's forces before regaining his liberty. The remainder of his life he spent in Switzerland and at a château he owned on the French border at Ferney. Controversies continued even there, although Voltaire established a salon wherever he went that frequently was sought out by the best minds of Europe at the time. He was also an avid correspondent who kept in touch with many other Enlightenment figures. Besides his plays, Voltaire's greatest literary achievement was his short fictional satire, Candide (1759), a work that viciously attacked the philosophical optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, an early German Enlightenment thinker. Leibniz had taught that nature showed a gradual evolution and improvement towards the most perfect forms. Voltaire, by contrast, argued that such complacency was a fundamentally wrong-headed attitude toward the world. Life presented everyone with sheer random events as well as inexplicable evils that every human being should strive to correct. The characters in his Candide start with an essentially optimistic view of the world, a view from which they are soon disenchanted by the stunning series of tribulations they experience. The work presented Voltaire's alternative to Leibniz's philosophical optimism. In it, he argued that human society could be changed for the better, but only if, as in the work's conclusion, everyone tended to "cultivating their garden."
Diderot and the EncyclopÉdie.
Voltaire's fame spread far and wide throughout eighteenth-century Europe, in large part because of his popular plays but also because of his voluminous correspondence and his literary works. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) did not enjoy such an exalted reputation among France's Enlightenment philosophers and authors, but he came nevertheless to exert a significant influence over literary and artistic tastes in the country in the second half of the eighteenth century, primarily through his role as editor of the Encyclopédie. Diderot's publisher had intended this project to be merely a translation of the Cyclopaedia written by Ephraim Chambers and published in England in 1728. In his capacity as editor, though, Diderot soon vastly expanded the work, and together with his co-editor, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783), the pair made the publication into a major organ for promoting the ideals of the Enlightenment. The radical character of some of its articles, which were solicited from like-minded figures, soon led the government to censor parts of the publication. Despite such efforts and the work's 25-year production schedule, the Encyclopédie was eventually completed, a significant work that helped to establish many of the new teachings about art, literature, and politics among its broad, cultivated readership in France and Europe.
The French Novel.
While political philosophy and works of social and literary criticism attracted some of the finest minds of the French Enlightenment, the period was also a great one in the development of the novel. An important genre of roman de moeurs or "moralistic novels" developed throughout the period. In this regard, the works of Alain René Lesage (1667–1747) were widely influential. After producing several works that were influenced by Spanish novel traditions, Lesage began to publish his Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane) in 1715. When the final installment was completed in 1735, it was a work unlike any other written to that time in French. The story followed its hero, Gil Blas, through a series of positions as a valet. Unlike the picaresque novels of Spain, the story is less tragic and brooding. It tells of Blas' adventures, crimes, and amours, before recounting his marriage and retirement from a life of exploits. More tragic, but no less popular was Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (History of the Knight des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut), the best known of the novels of the Abbé Prévost (1697–1763). It tells the story of a nobleman who falls in love with a courtesan. As a result, he falls into a seamy life to support his passion. In this widely read novel, realism combines with the taste for romance. The result produces a work that stood far above most of the novels written at the time. The tale follows the couple's fateful romance to its final destination, colonial Louisiana, where Manon dies. The overwrought but realistic description of her death was irresistible fare for operatic and ballet composers, as it was for eighteenth-century readers. Several composers relied on the story in the nineteenth century for operas and ballets. In contrast to Prévost's hard-edged realism, the novelist and playwright Pierre Marivaux (1688–1763) preferred plots that allowed him ample room to explore human psychology and his characters' thoughts. His two most accomplished works in this strain were The Life of Marianne, published between 1731 and 1741, and The Fortunate Peasant, published between 1734 and 1735. In both works Marivaux showed that he was a master of analyzing feelings and their effects on the human character. His works are now seen as anticipating the popular "novels of sentiment" that became common in both England and France in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Rising Literary Quality.
Despite its great popularity, novels were considered slightly disreputable forms of literature in France—that is, until some of the country's greatest authors began to write them. Although they had long been consumed in France's elite society, fiction generally was associated in the elite mind with the lower classes and country folk. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thousands of cheap fictions were sold in France's villages through colporteurs, itinerant peddlers who carried with them everything from bows to buttons to escapist fiction. The figures of the colporteurs, immortalized in François Boucher's eighteenth-century painting The Galant Colporteur, had helped to create a whiff of disreputability for the novel in French high society, even though the evidence suggests that many in high society read these texts. But the traditional concerns of French classicism, with its efforts to create a national literature that was immortal and timeless, continued to discourage efforts to see the novel as a literary form that might rise to the status of high art. In the later eighteenth century, though, this situation changed rather quickly. In the articles he wrote for the Encyclopédie, for example, Denis Diderot celebrated realistic bourgeois fiction as a vehicle for inculcating moral values, and he pointed to the English novelist Samuel Richardson's Clarissa as an appropriate source for authors to emulate. Diderot eventually tried his hand at writing such an "elevated" novel, but the resulting product, Jacques, the Fatalist, did not appear in print until 1796. A generation earlier, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), perhaps the greatest political and social theorist of the Enlightenment, had already taken up Diderot's call for a morally uplifting fiction. He was the first French philosopher to embrace the novel form as a serious vehicle for treating moral and philosophical issues. But he would not be the last. Until modern times, the novel in France has retained a centrality in philosophical discussions that it lacks in many other cultures. The great twentieth-century philosophers, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, continued to write novels, as their Enlightenment and nineteenth-century forebears had. Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise (1762) stands at the beginning of this trend. Today, it hardly appears as a great work of art. It is long, overly sentimental, and often dry, but eighteenth-century readers loved it all the same. They seemed to have found in the work a precise description of a world they recognized, combined with a moral commentary they thought was appealing. Rousseau himself seems to have labored over Julie, working on the novel for about five years before its publication. The subject he chose was modeled after the medieval romance between Abelard and Heloise, an event that ended tragically with Abelard's castration and
AN END TO MISERY
introduction: The Abbé Prévost, a clergyman, was also one of France's most successful eighteenth-century novelists. His Manon Lescaut (1731), a sentimental and over-wrought piece of fiction, was widely popular in its day. It tells the story of a young aristocrat who takes up with a courtesan, to disastrous effect. Both he and his lover are eventually destroyed by their passion, although her death on the Louisiana frontier is certainly the grimmer punishment. In the following passage, Prévost plays upon his readers' desire for sentiment. The work's influence on other arts was longstanding, perhaps because of this death scene, which was widely depicted in several nineteenth-century operas and plays.
We had thus tranquilly passed the night. I had fondly imagined that my beloved mistress was in a profound sleep, and I hardly dared to breathe lest I should disturb her. As day broke, I observed that her hands were cold and trembling; I pressed them to my bosom in the hope of restoring animation. This movement roused her attention, and making an effort to grasp my hand, she said, in a feeble voice, that she thought her last moments had arrived.
I, at first, took this for a passing weakness, or the ordinary language of distress; and I answered with the usual consolations that love prompted. But her incessant sighs, her silence, and inattention to my enquiries, the convulsed grasp of her hands, in which she retained mine, soon convinced me that the crowning end of all my miseries was approaching.
Do not now expect me to attempt a description of my feelings, or to repeat her dying expressions. I lost her—I received the purest assurances of her love even at the very instant that her spirit fled. I have not nerve to say more upon this fatal and disastrous event.
My spirit was not destined to accompany Manon's. Doubtless, Heaven did not as yet consider me sufficiently punished, and therefore ordained that I should continue to drag on a languid and joyless existence. I willingly renounced every hope of leading a happy one.
I remained for twenty-four hours without taking my lips from the still beauteous countenance and hands of my adored Manon. My intention was to await my own death in that position; but at the beginning of the second day, I reflected that, after I was gone, she must of necessity become the prey of wild beasts. I then determined to bury her, and wait my own doom upon her grave. I was already, indeed, so near my end from the combined effect of long fasting and grief, that it was with the greatest difficulty I could support myself standing. I was obliged to have recourse to the liquors which I had brought with me, and these restored sufficient strength to enable me to set about my last sad office. From the sandy nature of the soil there was little trouble in opening the ground. I broke my sword and used it for the purpose; but my bare hands were of greater service. I dug a deep grave, and there deposited the idol of my heart, after having wrapt around her my clothes to prevent the sand from touching her. I kissed her ten thousand times with all the ardour of the most glowing love, before I laid her in this melancholy bed. I sat for some time upon the bank intently gazing on her, and could not command fortitude enough to close the grave over her. At length, feeling that my strength was giving way, and apprehensive of its being entirely exhausted before the completion of my task, I committed to the earth all that it had ever contained most perfect and peerless. I then lay myself with my face down upon the grave, and closing my eyes with the determination never again to open them, I invoked the mercy of Heaven, and ardently prayed for death.
source: Abbé Prévost, History of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux (Paris and New York: Société des Beaux Arts, 1915): 186–187.
both lovers' entrance into convents. In Rousseau's updated retelling of the story, Julie instead dies, but before she does, she composes a letter to her lover that asks him to accept her death and their unresolved passion. The novel thus set up an interesting interplay between erotic attachment, sexual desire, and its ultimate renunciation in death. The effect of this ending galvanized Rousseau's reputation as a novelist of the highest merit, particularly among his female readers. In this work, Rousseau had intended to accomplish for the French novel what Samuel Richardson had done for the English genre through his Clarissa. In the wake of his Julie, Rousseau was barraged with letters from his fans, particularly his female fans, a testimony to the way in which he modulated his storytelling to the sentiments of his time.
Later Eighteenth-Century Novels.
Two other novelists produced works in the later eighteenth century that stirred similar emotions, and which continued to experiment with ways of presenting moral and intellectual dilemmas to their readers. In 1782, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' Les liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) caused an excitement similar to Rousseau's Julie. The work has stood the test of time better than the earlier philosopher's fiction, and it remains an extraordinary piece of literature today. In fashioning his story Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803) was also influenced by Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, a tale of a corrupt aristocrat who brutally rapes the heroine when she refuses to submit to his will. By contrast, the central story line of Les liaisons dangereuses involves, not a rape, but the gradual, entirely calculated seduction of a virtuous woman, who proves unable to resist the protestations of love of the anti-hero, Valmont. In the end it is the wicked Valmont who is consumed by his deceit, although the transforming experience of love that he undergoes with his heroine redeems him, so that even in his death he is restored to a state of moral goodness. But before this sublime transformation occurs, the work's complex plot twists reveal love among the "high and mighty" as nothing more than a cynical game, untouched by true passion, a diversionary amusement shaped by the desire for possessions and reputation. Choderlos de Laclos' brutal and contemptuous portrait of the dissolution of French high society remains unparalleled for its descriptions of aristocratic decadence. Its publication seven years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, when mounting criticism of France's idle aristocrats was steadily rising, helps to explain the sensation it caused, but the work transcends the problems of its own era and is one of the great Western depictions of hypocrisy and trickery. Evil of a different kind is also to be found in the works of the last great French novelist of the eighteenth century, the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814). His descriptions of sexual pleasure mingled with pain, particularly in his Justine, helped coin the word "sadism." The work is a "black novel," recounting the lives of two sisters, Justine and Juliette, the first virtuous, the second wicked. The religious Justine sees good in everyone, but is taken in by a libertine who gains her trust before subjecting her to his perversions. Like Rousseau's Julie and Choderlos de Laclos' Les liaisons dangereuses, the story line is also shaped by a reading of Richardson's Clarissa and the many "novels of sentiment" popular in late eighteenth-century Europe. The themes that Sade developed here—sexual desire, misplaced trust, and depraved wickedness—had frequently been treated in many other works, but certainly not with the degree of candor or overt sexuality as in Sade's fictions. The perversions he related in Justine as well as in many of the other writings he undertook while imprisoned for his own sexual deviations were, in large part, drawn from his own repertory of experiences.
J. P. Bertaud, Choderlos de Laclos (Paris: Fayard, 2003).
P. V. Conroy, Jean Jacques Rousseau (London: Twayne, 1998).
H. Mason, Voltaire: Optimism Demolished (New York: Twayne, 1992).
A. Niderst, Fontenelle (Paris: Plon, 1991).
S. Werner, The Comic Philosophes: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Sade (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, 2002).
R. Whelan, The Anatomy of Superstition: A Study of the Historical Theory and Practice of Pierre Bayle (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1989).


Class activity: local frontier narratives
Before students begin reading the novel, teachers can engage students’ prior knowledge by leading a discussion about the way stories have been told in Australia about the frontier or first contact. Ask students about the stories of first contact in their local area or provide them with some of these accounts. As a class, brainstorm the common elements of these frontier narratives and consider whether there is a common narrative or formal representation that has been established in Australian history. Part of this discussion should be about the language or discourse used in the telling of these narratives. The words ‘frontier’ and ‘contact’ are particularly important to this discussion.
Class genre study: comparing representations of history
As a class, view and compare some of the more recent television representations of Australian history, for example, Banished or The Secret River versus First Australians or First Contact. Consider the differences between the way history is represented in these different productions and the way it affects the audience. This would be helpful preparation for the class debate later in this resource.
For a more genre focused study of this novel it would be helpful to also explore the historical novel’s recent history in Australian literature. Looking at some of the debates surrounding Kate Grenville’s The Secret River would provide interesting contextual information about the reception of archival work and the ownership of ancestoral stories in telling an Australian history. It could also be helpful to look at the publishing history of historical fiction in the post-bicentenial and post-Mabo moment.
Individual investigation: the historical novel
The historical novel is an extremely popular form with both contemporary writers and readers. Students should write a summary of their experience of this form and what they feel to be its appeal.
Author’s note: locating the narrative
Kim Scott’s note at the end of the novel clearly locates the narrative in a specific historical and geographical context. Spend some time understanding the location of King George Sound and the southern coast of Western Australia, as well as some of the historical sources that this representation of the ‘friendly frontier’ draws upon and a brief history of the whaling traditions in this region.
Class wiki/blog: Noongar culture
Create an online space that all students have access to. One area of this space should be dedicated to developing a degree of understanding about the Noongar people – their history, cultural traditions (lore, beliefs, social structures), connections to place, their stories and language. Allocate students to be the moderators of each of these categories and allow research time to create the repository of information. Teachers might wish to have students present this information to the class as an oral task, but it could also be used as a class resource. Some helpful information can be located through the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council.
(ACELR053) (ACELR054) (ACELR055) (ACELR056)
Personal response on reading the text
Individual task: the indigenous voice
The construction of voice in this novel is important to the telling of the story. As they read the novel, students should make notes about their response to the voice. The story is told from the perspective of Bobby and other indigenous characters, but the point of view employed is third person. There are moments of great closeness between the narrator and Bobby and moments where there is a greater distance. This is quite unusual in Australian literature where the indigenous voice is often silent or in some way removed from the centre of the novel. At the end of reading, students should write a summary of the importance of the voice used in the novel and use one particular instance from the novel as an example of their observations.
Creative visual task: place
As the novel unfolds we learn more details about the locations and the environment where the story takes place, but we find the descriptions are often so closely embedded within this place that it can be hard to establish a clear image. From European traditions we are trained to understand landscape in terms of wide, establishing views and sweeping panoramas of a location. This is not the case in Scott’s writing; the descriptions of place are close to the land itself, a ground or water level experience. Students should create a collage of images or a Pinterest page where they collect a range of images in line with the descriptions of place in the novel: specific plants and animals of this location, precise locations, types of rock and subterranean structures. This more detailed but almost fragmented visual construction will help students to adjust to the different experience of description of setting and place, but also appreciate the closeness of connection to place.
Group discussion: expectations of genre and Australian history
That Deadman Dance plays with a disruption to our expectations of frontier narratives and most versions of Australia’s colonial history. Asking students to discuss their expectations about this form of narrative before, during and after reading the novel will provide interesting and helpful points for their study. Students should outline their expectations about plot, characterisation and setting in the table below and at the completion of reading, hold a class discussion where each student reflects on the way their expectations influenced their reading and reaction to the text at particular points of the novel.
|Before Part I|
|Before Part II|
|Before Part III|
|Before Part IV|
|Reflections on the impact of our expectations|
Outline of key elements of the text
That Deadman Dance is a story of prehistory, historical flashpoints and future, but it does not adhere to a traditional narrative trajectory or chronology to tell the story. It is a story told through recollection, a ‘yarn’ of experience and a tale embedded in a place and its people. This is not a reading experience that students might be familiar with so working firstly to make sense of this story telling will be critical to their response to the text – a timeline activity for this is listed in the next task.
Individual and group task: shifting narratives
Bobby’s story, and the story of the settlement, are not told in a linear or chronological narrative. Instead the story shifts between time periods, between different moments of the past, so that locating a ‘present’ is often difficult for the reader. Students should try to establish a timeline of the narrative as they read. This could be initially based around the timeframe indicated by the sections of the novel (1826–1844), but students may also choose to locate certain moments outside of this period. Once reading is complete, and each student has their timeline in place, students might display their timelines for the class to consider and then form groups of four. In this group they should ask each other questions regarding their views of time allocation and discuss the effect of this narrative structure.
Class activity: prologue
Consider the origins and the important function of a prologue in the process of storytelling. Compare other texts that students might have read or seen that have a prologue. Some common examples might be Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Rings (each of the film adaptations has a separate prologue also), Star Wars, The Canterbury Tales. (A selection of these could be read or film versions shown.)
Ask each student to write their definitions of what a prologue is and what is its function.
One definition to share after this might be:
The primary function of a prologue is to let the readers/audience be aware of the earlier part of the story and enable them to relate it to the main story. This literary device is also a means to present characters and establish their roles.
Reading or re-reading the “Prologue” to That Deadman Dance, students should locate the common elements of the form and establish a purpose/s for its inclusion.
This is a story of an emerging community and there are many characters who weave in and out of the narrative. Students should create a symbolic diagram/map of the colony and, using the list of characters below, place them in particular camps (literally – Indigenous, Whaler, Settler, Sealer, Barracks, etc.), or move between these camps, or to another space (a spiritual presence or away from the settlement). This would be a useful resource for students to create and refer to throughout their study. Important characters to include are:
Bobby Menak Manit Wunyeran
Wooral Binyan Dr Cross Geordie ‘Kongk’ Chaine
Mrs Chaine Christine Christopher Killam
Skelly Governor Spender Mrs Spender Hugh
Jak Tar Jeffrey James
Students could use their smartphone or another digital tool to record the changes to the diagram/map as the narrative develops, or record the movements/routes of particular characters around this coastal site.
Class wiki/online space
Unlike many Australian novels and plays that operate as narratives of nation, the treatment of themes in That Deadman Dance is extremely subtle. However, they are also extremely powerful. Some of these themes are: Exchange (commercial, cultural and personal); Relationships; Language; Connection; Communication; Cultural processes; Spirituality; Loss; and Community.
Students may need assistance in locating themes and considering the novel’s presentation of and perspective on these ideas. For this reason, providing students with an online space that identifies themes within the novel could be useful, and rather than requiring students to identify them, they can instead record their encounters with these themes and how they understand the novel to be treating them.
Teachers should create a wiki or online document using individual themes as headings (e.g. Exchange, Relationships, Language, Connection, Communication, Cultural Processes, Spirituality, Loss, Community) and students can add to the collection of ideas under each theme. Organising students contributions into categories such as related characters, critical scenes, significant quotes and important symbols/motifs might also assist.
Individual task: close reading
Teachers should select one of the passages below for this task.
- ‘Returning on a Rope’ pp. 9–11
- from ‘Chaine’ pp. 17–19 (passage beginning, “The sun dropped below…” to “…holding him in its gaze.”)
Students should present a response or reading of one of the passages. The instruction to students might simply be to respond to the passage, or it might be in the form of a prompt or question such as:
- Explain the significance of place in the following passage.
- How does the passage construct ideas about people?
- Describe the effect of point of view in the following passage.
- How is the reader positioned by the text?
Individual task: oral response
In the style of a press interview, students should respond to the following question. The response should be no longer than 30 seconds in length and be submitted as a voice recording. This is an opportunity for students to practise their selection of supporting evidence as well as their refinement of ideas.
Kim Scott’s novel That Deadman Dance presents a different story of the Australian frontier narrative than we often read. The representation of Bobby’s world in the ‘Prologue’ of the novel depicts an intimacy between Wirlomin locals and white settlers. This intimacy is demonstrated through language and connected stories. While the closing of the novel shows an altered relationship, what is your response to this initial intimacy?
The writer’s craft
Scott’s writing style is considered distinctive. That Deadman Dance gained much attention and praise as an Australian novel at the time of its publication, including winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Both Scott’s reputation and the response to the novel can mainly be attributed to the poetic style of the writing and the way that traditional and Indigenous constructions of form are blended for particular effect.
Order and placement of events
As described earlier in this resource, the structure of That Deadman Dance is not linear. Its order is disrupted, as is our reading of the story. Ask students to cite other examples of this narrative structure from their own reading and viewing and consider the effect that the choice often has on the audience.
Students should experiment with this device by creating a small autobiographical passage. It might be a moment of reflection where the narrator goes back to explain the story so that the location and further action will make sense or have significance. It might be a moment of revelation that has only been achieved by piecing together information from the past. This passage should be no more than two pages. After this experimentation, consider the order of Scott’s story and as a class discuss the effect and possible reasons for this disruption.
Class investigation: time and Indigenous storytelling
Go to the Wirlomen story site and listen to the various stories that appear online. Consider the way time is treated in this cultural form; it is not necessarily linear or seen as significant to meaning or didactic messages. As a class discuss how this might play a part in the storytelling style of That Deadman Dance.
Approach to characterisation
As has also been explained earlier in this resource, the personal history of Bobby frames the entire narrative. It is his story and the way it is intertwined with the new settlement that create this larger story of contact. Aside from his individual experiences, it is his interaction with other characters that enables Scott to embed the reader within this story. It is not just what the groups represent that enlightens the reader about history, it is how they are portrayed.
Choosing their favourite character from the novel, students should select four scenes in which something is revealed about them and locate them in their copies of the novel. Looking at how the language brings the character to life, students should note the different ways that similes, metaphors and descriptive language are used. It is the construction of each figure and how this positions us to respond to the character that needs to be noted.
Here are four significant quotes about Bobby.
‘Such a closed-in life made Bobby ill, and for a long time he saw the trees and sky only through the frame of a window or doorway…The paper of his lessons was old skin beneath his fingers.’ (p. 26)
‘Bobby looked into future graves, and into some people’s hearts and minds, went into the hollows within them, into the very sounds they made. All his friends and their goodness kept him alive. And he never learned fear, because he was not just one self. He was bigger than that, he was all of them.’ (pp. 127-8)
‘The smell of earth in the ochre and oil, his increasing sense of the fine and delicate paths of blood and nerves and the many fine sinews connecting him to this place, this perpetual moment.’ (p. 334)
‘We will sign a paper with them about how we might live. There will be no more gaol. We show our talent and good grace, and Wooral and them no longer need use fire and spears and fight them and their guns.’ (p. 390)
(ACELR058) (ACELR059) (ACELR060)
Use of parallels and contrasts
Group activity – relationships and character pairs
Relationships and community are critical themes in That Deadman Dance and this is largely communicated through character pairs in the novel. Below are five different pairings that are crucial to our understanding of power, culture, exchange and language.
Divide the class into five groups, one for each character pairing. Ask them to locate the most powerful scene involving this pairing and explain what the pairing enables us to understand through the similarities or differences represented.
- Cross and Wunyeran
- Menak and Manit
- Bobby and Chaine
- Jeffrey and James
- Christopher and Christine
- (Other pairs can be added)
Narrative point of view
We know that this story is told through a third person narrator that is ambiguous, omniscient and shifting, but mostly the narrator rests close to Bobby.
Guide the class through a discussion of the significance of this fluid use of point of view in the following passages.
“We thought making friends was the best thing, and never knew that when we took your flour and sugar and tea and blankets that we’d lose everything of ours. We learned your words and songs and stories, and never knew you didn’t want to hear ours.” (p. 106)
“Wooral was in the pilot boat now, heading for where the ship rested, its wings folded and tied. But it is a ship, not a bird, Menak, reminded himself again.” (p. 14)
“Bobby sang, and it happened just as in the song: the boats left the shore and home receded, but the singer was on the boat, not on the shore like in the old songs, not on a hill and watching others leave, not scanning the seascape for a first or last sight of whale spout or tilting sail. Singing, Bobby thought of the marks he’d made when he was on lookout: his pen on paper, his chalk on slate, his roze a wail and the like, but there was no getting those marks into song, though sometimes he wrote letters in the sand, to show whaling men he knew their schooling and way of being civilised, too.” (p. 317)
In addition, consider writing from different narratorial positions. How would this text affect us if it was written from:
- Bobby’s first person position,
- Chaine’s first person position,
- Cross’ first person position,
- a more distant third person position?
Language and style
One of the distinctive elements of Scott’s work is his choice of language. His stories are often described as ‘yarning’ and the language used in this novel connects his work in a culture and place – that of the Wirlomen people.
The first word of this novel is significant – “Kaya”. Discuss the power of this word in relation to Australian history and linguistic traditions, then read the following passage.
‘Nitja wadjela. Your friends? the old woman said, no longer so friendly and playful. Tjanak! Devils! Smile to your face but turn around and he is your enemy. These people chase us from our own country. They kill our animals and if we eat one of their sheep . . . they shoot us. Baalap ngalak waadam! The very smell of them kills us.’ (p. 24)
Students should consider how the use of both English and Wirlomen language affects the reader and how the reader is positioned to respond to such language use.
Locate other passages to analyse in this same way, finishing with the passage pp. 390–393. The quote reproduced below is significant to target within that passage.
“In moments, Bobby wore little more than a thin belt made of human hair, with blonde strands woven through it. A mysterious, well-dressed human form hovered on its toes in the corner of the room like a ghost, a silent witness, a hanging man; like all those things at once.
Bobby was singing softly …
There are relatively few specific settings in the entire novel of That Deadman Dance. Where there are buildings, huts or ships, it is often their placement within the natural world that is most significant and this helps us to understand the significance of the locations to the characters of the novel and to ideas of culture, spirit of place and belonging. Allocate groups within the class to locate and read around the following quotes. Consider the construction, significance and effect of the following passages. Share each group’s reading with the class and summarise the novel’s construction of setting through a discussion.
‘Because you need to be inside the sound and the spirit of it, to live here properly. And how can that be, without we people who have been here for all time?’ (p. 394)
‘All day they worked to escape the confinement of scraggly, twisted, pressing scrub. It was as if a great many limbs restrained them, disinterestedly; as if thousands of fingers plucked at their hair and clothing. Tree roots tripped them.’ (p. 49)
‘The trees were women leaning to the water to wash their hair, and when the children stood under their limbs they were among loved ones.’ (p. 204)
‘The tightly bound mallee all around him was like waves of the ocean. Clouds in waves, too, and the moon a ship, itself plummeting.’ (p. 226)
Governor Spender and his wife Ellen think: ‘You might drown in forest, sink and never be seen.’ (p. 174)
‘Beneath his feet the bow tossed foam and water like scattered applause, and the swollen sails were all pride and power.’ (p. 19)
Bobby’s awareness of the white man’s power is poetically described here, as it is later: ‘Chaine, rising up and down on his toes like a buoy bobbing on the ocean swell, watched them.’ (p. 197)
‘The only thing worse than sailors in a ship was whalers in a ship; maggots in a floating abattoir.’ (p. 303)
The depiction of the littoral is critical to the setting in this novel. See the notes about the littoral in the next section, “Significance”.
Symbolism and motif
Complete the table connecting important symbols or motifs with the characters and ideas of the novel.
|Symbol or motif||Explanation of meaning||Connected characters||Important references||Connections to theme/ideas|
As a timed, in-class activity students will be given a copy of the chapter ‘People’s attention scatters like sheep do too’ (pp. 252–255). After reading the passage and annotating the use of narrative devices, students should respond to the following statement with close reference to the passage: explain how the use of narrative devices positions the reader to understand ideas about culture in the passage.
(ACELR058) (ACELR060) (ACELR062)
Ways of reading the text
Contextual reading: post-colonial spaces
Both Scott’s context of production and our own reading contexts are post-colonial spaces and this should be an important consideration for a classroom study. Placing Scott’s work against other writers from different spaces shows the impact of this space on the novel. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness both occupy very different spaces in relation to post-colonial thought. Reading Scott’s work in comparison to either work would make a rigourous and enlightening program.
Reading Scott’s novel within the concept of genius loci is a valid literary position. Providing students with an understanding of this concept, and its importance within particular literary traditions is crucial. While Scott draws heavily on the Indigenous story telling traditions of old stories and yarning, his writing is also infused with European traditions and theoretical understandings.
Some helpful starting points for students are the two quotes below;
‘Definition of GENIUS LOCI
1: the pervading spirit of a place
2: a tutelary deity of a place’
‘… you begin to realize that the important determinant of any culture is after all the spirit of place.’
Durrell, Lawrence. (1969) Spirit of Place (London, Faber), p. 169.
Scott’s novel has received some criticism for its representation, or lack of representation, of women in the narrative. There are many reasons why there are few female characters, and even more reasons for a lack of interaction between Bobby, whom we follow, and many of the female figures in the colony.
Consider the presence in the novel of each character listed below and, as a class, discuss whether the criticism of Scott’s work is valid.
- Mrs Chaine
- Mrs Spender
Another aspect of gender that could be explored through the figure of Bobby is the concept of masculinity. As the narrative spans the lifetime of Bobby, his journey to ‘manhood’ is also represented as a highly constructed process that negotiates indigenous and western cultural expectations.
Scott’s novel is a novel of a specific regional location. This location is defined by indigenous borders and connections to place, as well as the historical narrative that played out in this location. Other works by Kim Scott are also closely connected to this region, as is the writing of other Western Australian writers such as Tim Winton, Dorothy Hewitt, Jon Doust, Lucy Dougan and Amanda Curtin.
As a class compare the ideas, style and representation of place in the “Prologue” from That Deadman Dance and Dorothy Hewett’s poem “The First House” from her collection, Wheatlands.
Australian literary scholar Philip Mead’s chapters “Nation, literature, location” in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (ed. Peter Pierce, Port Melbourne: Cambridge, 2009) and “Connectivity, Community and the Question of Universality: reading Kim Scott’s chronotype and John Kinsella’s Commedia” in Republic of Letters: Literary Communities in Australia (eds. Kirkpatrick, P and Dixon, R., Australia: University of Sydney Press, 2012) are both useful reading for teachers on this topic.
Reading from a World Literature perspective, or a postnational space, can be a liberating experience for students who have always read Australian literature within a national paradigm. Aside from its comments that are specific to an Australian story of settlement, That Deadman Dance connects with ideas that are global, both in terms of literary traditions and universal themes and ideas. There are a number of ways to do this, but here are some that could be accessible for secondary students.
World canonicals – That Deadman Dance and Moby Dick
Scott’s novel draws much from Melville’s literary classic. Aside from the prevalence of whales in both novels there are also connections between characters, natural imagery and geographic locations. Reading the novels together or taking passages from Moby Dick could be an extension activity for students. Comparisons with the biblical story of Jonah could also function in this way.
Cosmopolitan site or figure
The regional location of Albany can be read as a cosmopolitan site with the connections between Noongar culture, the Yankee whalers and sealers, French explorers and whalers, Chinese seamen and settlers and the imperial British marines and settlers. The depiction of the interactions between cultures (mainly based on archival information) is largely that of a harmonious relationship. Look closely at the scene where United States sailors attempt to overthrow the British governor as an exception to this, as well as the closing ‘dance’ by Bobby. In relation to the cosmopolitan elements of this novel, Bobby can be read as a cosmopolitan figure. This characterisation is not in keeping with the traditional depiction of Indigenous figures in literature. Bobby looks out to sea, he travels (as do other Indigenous figures), learns languages easily and converses with the many cultural groups who arrive on the south coast and acts as a mediator between various groups and individuals. While there are moments where he appears naïve, he is generally aware of the politics of trade and exchange and acts throughout as an intermediary for all forms of negotiation. Allocate scenes throughout the novel for students to consider this non-archetypal construction.
The littoral zone is the area of the coastline bound by low and high tide. This zone is literally an area of exchange, where a geographic location becomes connected to other parts of the world through the sea. In That Deadman Dance this littoral zone is a critical location and has an extremely symbolic, liminal significance to the themes of the novel. Other writers from this region also consider issues within the littoral zone, most notably Tim Winton, and reading passages of his work, The Land’s Edge, would be helpful in understanding the significance of the motif to Scott’s novel. Other writers throughout the world also explore the littoral: Melville, Hemingway, Richard Flanagan, Defoe, Proulx or Derek Walcott.
Comparison with other texts
Versions of the text in other modes, media and contexts
Mamang (picture book)
Created as a community language reclamation project, Mamang (Whale) is a traditional story, or an ‘old story retold’ that belongs to the Wirlomin people. The story is immediately recognisable to those who have read That Deadman Dance as the ancestral story of the whale and the young Noongar man, which reappears throughout the novel and is closely connected to Bobby and Menak’s experiences. Visit the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project website to explore the close connections between these texts, and to hear the story read in its original language. This is extremely helpful for students to understand the language used in Scott’s novel and the themes of cultural exchange and language.
Aspects of genre
Historical fiction and Remembering Babylon
The genre of the historical novel has dominated Australian fiction in the post-bicentenial and post-Mabo period. Novels, often based on archival research or historical accounts, function as commentaries about Australia’s past and the way that that past continues to be part of the present and the future. That Deadman Dance is considered by some to be a continuation of this genre’s development, others consider it a disruption to the genre. Compare the first appearance of Indigene Bobby in “The Prologue” to the first appearance of non-Indigene Gemmy in David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon with his critical first line of dialogue in the opening pages, “Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object!”
Other texts using similar approaches or dealing with similar ideas
Last of the Mohicans (novel)
This novel is referred to twice in That Deadman Dance and its exploration of a different colonial experience makes an interesting comparison. Students should be aware of this novel and the significance of the references to it, particularly it’s circulation within the King George Settlement, even if they don’t read or study the novel.
Benang by Kim Scott (novel)
Scott’s other novel is a complex exploration of later stages of settlement and the resulting lives of Indigenous Australians. Its discussion of eugenics and the family histories of people during a particular period of Australian history can be read as a continuation of Bobby’s story. Aside from thematic connections, reading Benang alongside That Deadman Dance provides an extension to the study of Scott’s writing style. Benang is too complex a text for most Year 12 classes but reading some selected passages as comparative examples would be an interesting task.
Jandamarra by Steve Hawke (stage drama)
A project that emerged from the Bunuba people, this play explores the historical story of Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance. Not only is Jandamarra an interesting historical figure for students to explore (and there a number of ways that his story has been told: documentary, picture book, etc.) but he is also an interesting counterpoint to the character of Bobby in That Deadman Dance. This play is a community project that places language at the centre of the writing process. Visit the Jandamarra website to see the interesting study that could be created by studying Jandamarra and That Deadman Dance together. A comparative focus on language, community, culture, form and historical narratives could be easily created.
Translations by Brian Friel (stage drama)
This text is an example of a postcolonial play from Ireland. Although written in a slightly earlier postcolonial context and time to That Deadman Dance, considering this play would assist students to understand the transnational connections between those disenfranchised by British colonialism, and how the stage production context can influence the ideas and views represented within a text. Like Scott, Friel focuses in the importance of language to cultural heritage and identity.
Seamus Heaney’s “Act of Union”, “Digging” and “Relic” (poetry)
A small selection of Heaney’s most well-known poems, these three provide a focused comparision with the Irish experience under British colonial rule, as well as the cultural significance of time, language and land.
No Sugar (stage drama)
Fellow Western Australian and Noongar man, Jack Davis, is a helpful figure to study alongside Kim Scott. Not only are there comparative possibilities in terms of region, Davis’ conceptualisation of British, white Australian and Indigenous relationships also explores the importance of language as a signifier of culture and power. See also the Reading Australia teaching resource on the work.
To the Islands by Randolph Stow (novel)
Stow is an acclaimed novelist and poet whose Western Australian writings can provide helpful comparisons through representations of historical events within fictional texts. This particular novel of Stow’s also represents the Oombulgurri Massacre and the policies of assimilation and missionary institutions, a later story in the settlement process from Scott’s. Stow’s representation of Western Australian landscape would also provide many opportunities in a regional study and his written style would make a strong comparison to Scott’s. This comparative study could also focus on the literary prize culture, with both novels being Miles Franklin Literary Award prizewinners.
The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan (picture book)
This is a powerful allegory which assists the teaching of postcolonial perspectives. Explore allegory as an important literary device and have students attempt their own allegorical telling of a situation as an experiment of how carefully crafted the device must be. It also makes an interesting comparison to Scott’s almost visual and extremely symbolic construction of the deadman dance, and the implied meanings that it carries.
Rich assessment tasks (Receptive)
1. Response: in-class essay
“He has a language for the real story inside him, but it is as if a strong wind whips those words away as soon as they leave his mouth. People say he twists words, but really it is the wind twisting and taking his words away to who knows who will hear them.” (p. 165)
Respond to this quote in the form of an essay.
On completing the study of this novel, students should write an essay in timed conditions that explores some of the main themes of this novel, such as language, culture and power. Provide the students with the quote above one day before the assessment. They may bring 100 words of notes and this quote when writing the essay. Notes may be summary points or quotes, and allow students a reasonable time in which to complete the essay (45 minute to 1 hour). In this time students should be able to write approximately 600–1000 words.
(ACELR062) (ACELR063) (ACELR064)
2. Reading genre: response
Consider these questions.
- Are you more attracted to writing that is driven by ideas about social issues or interior states of mind?
- Do you look to fiction for knowledge about our social, historical and political realities in the present?
- Do you think fiction writing can address moral issues of the past?
Choose one of these questions and record (audio or video) a response that considers how you view reading historical fiction. You might like to refer to some passages from the novel or other texts you have read. This response could be a formal discussion, a personal reflection or simply a series of points or ideas.
Recordings should be submitted for teachers (and possibly other students) to listen to or watch. Evaluation could be based on the clarity of expression, structure of argument points and accuracy of references.
(ACELR063) (ACELR064) (ACELR065)
Synthesise core ideas by:
Reconsidering your response
Students should revisit the predictions they made about That Deadman Dance recorded in the table as they initially read the novel. Considering these earlier thoughts students should write an evaluation of the accuracy of the predictions with detailed references to knowledge about genre, context and style.
Debating: evaluation of the text as representative of Australian culture
Create groups of six students to debate the topic, “Historical fiction can provide an understanding of a nation’s past that history alone cannot.” Three students will argue the affirmative, three students the negative, in accordance with formal debating rules.
Rich assessment tasks (Productive)
1. Create an imaginary text
The vivid characterisation of Bobby is critical to the impact of this novel. Closely consider the prologue of That Deadman Dance and the way the figure of Bobby is built, starting simply with the word “Kaya” through to a complex cultural and historical figure with an intimate connection to “the spirit of place”, all in five pages.
Experiment with Bobby’s voice and write a series of four paragraphs that might fit within this prologue. It might be a further description of his surrounds, an interaction with Cross or Chaine, or a further connection with the whales. They needn’t be sequential but might fit into the prologue at different points. Writing should be approximately 1000 words in total.
(ACELR066) (ACELR067) (ACELR068) (ACELR069)
2. Response: essay
In publicity for the novel the following statement is used repeatedly.
“It is a story for our times.”
Discuss this statement with reference to That Deadman Dance. You might write specifically about the text or about it as an example of its form, the historical novel.
3. Response: tutorial discussion
In the style of a shared discussion between students and teacher, explore the following quote by Kim Scott taken from the Author’s Note at the end of the novel:
“I wanted to build a story from [Noongar] confidence, their inclusiveness and sense of play, and their readiness to appropriate new cultural forms – language and songs, guns and boats – as soon as they became available. Believing themselves manifestations of a spirit of place impossible to conquer, they appreciated reciprocity and the nuances of cross-cultural exchange.”
Students should be given an opportunity to prepare for this discussion and create notes to aid their participation in the discussion. Teachers should consider how much structure the class requires for this discussion to occur.
(ACELR053) (ACELR054) (ACELR062) (ACELR064)


A recent article in The Atlantic (Christakis, 2016) lamented the overemphasis on academics that characterizes much of early childhood education today, noting that the preschool and kindergarten years serve more as gatekeepers than supporters and “welcoming mats” to the elementary school years, particularly for children at risk. Indeed, the first five years of a child’s life are dedicated to the preparation for “kindergarten readiness,” and many teachers today are under pressure to engage in didactic teaching practices aimed at promoting young children’s literacy and math competencies.
Unfortunately, such teaching methods often require young children to sit for long periods of time and reflect the use of highly structured teaching methods, paperwork and worksheets that are not in tune with the developmental needs of young children. Even more concerning is that less developmentally appropriate practices are not only ineffective but also stressful for young children. In fact, studies have shown that children in classrooms characterized by developmentally inappropriate practices show twice the level of stress (and stress-motivated behaviors) than their peers in more developmentally appropriate classrooms (Hart et al., 1998). What do we mean by developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood? For young children, play in the context of warm, supportive teacher-child relationships characterizes an optimal learning environment.
David Elkind once said, “Learning teaches us what is known, play makes it possible for new things to be learned. There are many concepts and skills that can only be learned through play.” Unstructured play, also known as free play, provides so much opportunity for growth. As Horne (2018) explains, play allows young children to acquire and master skills across a variety of developmental domains. Further, children are free to invest their full emotional energy in their exploration and learning when they share predictable, warm relationships with their teachers, and teacher-child relationship quality is related to children’s more advanced play.
What skills are learned through play?
Play builds a variety of skills! Play in all areas of the early childhood classroom (e.g., centers such as the block area or pretend play area) offers opportunities for solitary play as well as play near and in collaboration with others. Such experiences help children build important social skills and mastery motivation (the desire to learn a new skill or master a new competency, for example). Allowing children to make their own choices about play promotes autonomy and mastery. In a world in which children have little power, play allows children to make choices according to their interests and goals. Additionally, play promotes communication and language skills — critical competencies given that it is through communication and language skills that our needs are met and desires are known throughout our lives. Language skills such as holding a conversation, negotiation, vocabulary, and listening skills are supported in play in all areas of the classroom. Moreover, through play, emotional skills — the foundation for so much learning — are also challenged and developed. The following are examples of skill development supported through play:
Blocks and Manipulatives
Building block towers invites opportunities to experiment with cause and effect and practice balance and eye-hand coordination. Building structures involves planning and reasoning, opportunities to notice and sort blocks by shape and size (categorization, seriation, classifying objects, parts and wholes) and provides practice in spatial orientation (e.g., how blocks fit together). Working with puzzles involves experiments with spatial orientation, problem solving, and eye-hand coordination. Explorations with Duplos, chunky Legos and similar materials invite experimentation with planning and problem-solving as well as exposure to sensory experiences. Toys that produce interesting effects, like a jack-in-the-box, promote young children’s more rapid cause and effect learning and application of that knowledge in later play (Hauf & Aschersleben, 2008). Over time, block play and play with manipulatives expose children to mathematical concepts in meaningful ways. For example, observing that two small square blocks equal one rectangular block is math, specifically fractions, at work!
Sensory, Art and Music Experiences
Painting, play dough, water play, sand play and other sensory experiences engage all five senses and provide cause and effect experimentation (e.g., what happens if I use a light stroke versus a heavy stroke; what happens when I keep pouring water into the cup?) Zero to Three (www.zerotothree.org) describes the development of cause and effect understanding as one of the foundational cognitive discoveries in the early childhood years. Like other areas of play, sensory play offers opportunities to explore rich new language as teachers and children notice interesting textures and scents and engage in visual exploration of interesting materials.
Music experiences such as songs and chants promote literacy and language skills and also give young children practice in sequencing and memory skills (i.e., what comes next in this familiar story or repetitive chorus). The development of these types of cognitive skills creates a positive early foundation from which the child can grow; such skills are related to a variety of later school-readiness and academic outcomes.
Pretend Play Experiences
Pretend play promotes perspective-taking and has been linked with the development of children’s self-regulation skills.
For example, as pretend play becomes more advanced, it requires children to modulate their emotions and behaviors in response to others so that the play continues. Self-regulation, the ability to alter our emotions and behaviors in response to internal (e.g., our thoughts) or external (e.g., others’ behaviors) signals play a role throughout life in helping us navigate social relationships, school and work environments. Pretend play also offers opportunities for practicing language skills, and children’s language acquisition is richer in the context of play than in other classroom activities (Cohen & Uhry, 2007). Stanley Greenspan explained that through pretend play children also explore major themes in life, such as what it means to love and be loved. The child cradling and feeding a doll in the pretend play area is not only imitating observed behaviors but also enacting how loving relationships look and feel.
Motor Play Experiences
Learning about our bodies is a fundamental task of early development. Through physical activity, children learn spatial awareness skills (e.g., imagine a toddler learning how to move her body around another child rather than walking into the other child), balance and how to be safe. Opportunities to practice fine and gross motor skills are also associated with children’s acquisition of strength and motor coordination. Moreover, providing interesting and novel materials promotes motor exploration. For example, infants make different types of stepping movements on coarse textures than they do on smooth textures. Motor play also offers opportunities for language exploration and for developing cognitive concepts, such as opposites (in/out of the sandbox; over/under the slide). Additionally, motor skills are related to many other areas of development. For example, the ability to crawl or walk allows a young child to move away from a caregiver or teacher and return, allowing infants and toddlers to practice managing brief separations. Even this type of brief separation and reunion reinforces that infants and toddlers can be effective in finding their “safe base” whenever needed. So, in short, motor skills are related to attachment relationships!
Books provide opportunities for motor and sensory explorations as infants and toddlers explore books with their eyes, hands, and mouths. Books and storytelling invite toddlers and preschoolers to hypothesize what will happen next (e.g., “If you give a mouse a cookie…. What do you think he’ll want next?”) Books and storytelling proving opportunities to practice cognitive skills like sequencing (e.g., the repetitive text of “Caps for Sale” provides practice in sequencing). Young children’s stories addressing affective experiences (joy, sadness, anxiety) provide important openings to talk about the emotional cues, the contexts of emotions, empathy and perspective taking. From manipulating books, children acquire literacy knowledge including understandings of written language, letter and word identification and book knowledge. Sharing books and stories together, as with other forms of play, offer relationship building experiences as children, their peers, and teachers share interests and joy in being together.
Cooperative Mealtime Experiences
Mealtimes also offer developmental opportunities. Meals build a sense of community as children engage in prosocial behaviors such as setting the table, passing bowls of food around the table, talking and being together. Sensory explorations of food textures, scents, sights, and tastes promote sensory development and language skills. Math concepts, such as one to one correspondence, are supported as children place one cup and one plate at each place setting or as a teacher or other children notice: “I had three crackers. I ate one and so I have two crackers left.” Children’s sense of self and autonomy are supported as children serve themselves in family-style dining in the classroom.
What does play look like?
Play offers many developmental benefits when supported and promoted in ways that are sensitive and responsive to children’s cues and interests. Rymanowicz (2015) summarizes many of the key characteristics of high-quality play.
- Self-chosen and self-directed. The beauty of play is that it is based on children’s emerging interests and goals rather than on those of the adults. This is a critical feature of play. For example, studies have shown that child-selected activities predict greater vocabulary skills than do teacher-directed activities (Lippard, Choi & Walter, 2019).
- The process, not the product. It is through the process of play that skills are practiced and acquired regardless of what a final product might be. For example, it is the joy of feeling grass on the feet that promotes sensory development not the end result of walking outside. It is not a completed block structure that promotes skills development; it is the journey of selecting blocks, stacking them, determining what makes the structure balance or topple, and so on that builds competencies. Some play is exploratory with no particular goal in mind outside of experiencing the moment. Other play has a goal determined by the child, and, often such goals are more about the creation process than a particular product (e.g., consider how many times you notice a child’s process and ending outcomes change and morph as the child engages in play).
- Individually constructed. The child or children in play together determine the structure of the play — that is, the organization, pace and boundaries of play. As I explain below, teachers can support and scaffold children’s experiences but their actions should be guided by children’s processes and cues.
- Imaginative, Active, and Fluid. One of the most interesting things to watch in children’s play is that it is not always tied to the rules of the “real world.” In their play, children will escape the bounds of reality and, at other times, they will practice their understanding of the real world as expressed in their play. Play themes morph frequently, and these are examples of creative thinking and problem-solving. Teachers can learn a great deal about how children are feeling and what they are thinking by observing their play.
It is important to understand that every child develops differently and because of this each child’s play will look differently. It is through play that young children learn about our “symbolic world” and the themes and subjects we experience every day. Child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan created the Floortime approach, which emphasizes the importance of child-led floor time to engage the child in complex play scenarios that build on real world readiness skills. Floortime encourages children to take initiative but also learn to negotiate and tolerate frustration, to engage in longer play episodes as skills are acquired, to communicate interests and needs, and to plan and carry out actions. Greenspan’s model has most often been applied to children with special needs, but the principles of his approach are relevant to children of all developmental abilities. Greenspan’s approach also emphasizes the importance of the symbolic world and recommends identifying and supporting real-life experiences (e.g., encouraging role playing) that are known to the child and are of interest to the child.
How do we support learning in play using a relationships-based approach?
In an early childhood classroom, play should comprise the majority of the day. When children are enacting their own choices, they are fully engaged, which means their focus and attention are in full bloom and the opportunities are endless. Not only does this promote brain development and skill development, but it makes a young one want to come to school, want to learn and want to explore. But how is play best supported by relationships? Relationships promote play in two key ways.
First, from an attachment-based perspective, young children’s experiences reflect a balance between the need for autonomy and exploration and the need for emotional security.
When the needs for emotional security are not met, emotional and physical energy is channeled to security needs at the expense of autonomy and exploration.
So, building close, predictable, warm relationships with young children affords them greater energy to devote toward autonomy and exploration, and that equates to greater learning and more optimal development. For example, research has shown that warm, secure teacher-child relationships promote preschoolers’ self-regulation skills (Cadima, Verschueren, Leal, & Guedes, 2016), and teachers’ responsive interactions with children are linked to children’s cognitive skills (Hamre, Hatfield, Pianta, & Jamil, 2014).
Second, relationships provide the context in which teachers scaffold children’s play in individualized ways. As we observe young children in play, an infant mental health perspective leads us to ponder not only “What about the baby?” but “What about this child?” We ask ourselves, “What is the child thinking, feeling, experiencing in this moment? What does this child want and need in this moment?” From this reflective stance, with the goal of understanding the child’s internal states (e.g., thoughts, feelings, needs, goals), teachers respond with intention to support and scaffold children’s play in ways that are aligned to the child’s interests and goals. By carefully considering what children need from us, teachers communicate respect and appreciation for young children as individuals each with their own unique experiences, interests, and goals.
In short, teacher-child relationships enable the child to feel felt and heard, and, in turn, children are emotionally fueled to learn and grow.
Below are teaching practices that use the relationship to scaffold play and learning.
- Be physically and emotionally present. Teaching is complex, challenging work. Given high rates of teacher stress, it can be difficult to be fully present in the moment with the child. Teachers have the difficult task of managing competing demands for their time, attention and support while also regulating their internal thoughts, emotions, and perceptions of stress. Yet, it is the teacher’s emotional presence and participation with children that promote children’s learning in the most optimal ways.
- Watch and Respond to Cues: As noted by Rymanowicz (2015), teachers participate most sensitively by watching and responding to children’s cues. This allows the child to stay in the lead of play while also helping children to form connections between concepts in play. When teachers allow children to take the lead and wait for invitations to play, children are more likely to feel felt and heard.
- Use Open-Ended Questions and Comments Wisely: Research has shown that teachers’ sensitive (well-timed and not intrusive) open-ended questions promote children’s more complex block building and pretend play skills. Well-placed questions and comments (e.g., observations about children’s activities) promote and extend play.
- Value the Importance of Observation: Sally Provence once wisely advised, “Don’t just do something. Stand there and pay attention!” Sometimes being physically and emotionally present does not always involve direct interaction with the child. Sometimes supporting play means observing and learning about the child’s development from your observations. Being an active observer and learner alongside the child gives teachers important insights into children’s developmental needs and interests. These observations come in handy when planning future learning experiences. Sometimes supporting means interacting and scaffolding sensitively.
- Share the Same Level in Space: Finally, being physically and emotionally present also extends to where and how teachers place themselves in the classroom. Taking time to talk with children at their eye level and using open body position/body language communicates to children that their thoughts, communicative intentions and/or words are valued and desired.
- Respect the child’s discoveries. From our adult perspectives, we know how things are “supposed” to work; we understand the most effective and efficient ways to engage materials. We want to see children succeed. Collectively, this means that teachers may be tempted to show children the “right” way to engage materials or carry out play. Yet it is the creative process, the mistakes, the rethinking and execution of a new plan and “owning” the experiences and discoveries that promote children’s critical thinking, problem solving skills, conceptual development and sense of mastery (Rymanowicz, 2015). Support the child by using well placed open-ended questions to allow deeper investigations to take place. Early childhood teachers are most effective as partners in children’s play rather than as supervisors or leaders of the play.
- Trust the process. Growth and development progresses in each child in unique timetables. A “one size fits all” approach to curricular development and teaching rarely works. Individualizing experiences for children and tailoring our interactions to each child’s temperament, prior experiences, interests and goals is most effective in promoting early development.
- Avoid interruption and be flexible. As a teacher, I’d like to add another important attribute to this section. Play needs to be uninterrupted. Uninterrupted play means allowing a child to be an explorer and learner and being flexible when young children are immersed in play. For example, teachers who allow a child to finish play or come to a natural pausing or stopping point before inviting the child to diapering or toileting communicate respect for the child as an individual. Extending free play time for a few minutes to allow children to complete their play or supporting children who wish to bring a toy with them for self-care routines are other examples of flexibility.
Finally, relationship-based approaches also inform how teachers create the early childhood environment. The environment is thought of as the third teacher and reflects teachers’ perspectives about relationships. Here are some aspects to think about when setting up a learning environment.
- A classroom should be an inviting space that the children see as their own. Spaces for personal belongings, such as a cubby, and spaces for community belongings, such as where the watering can for the class plants is stored, help children know what to expect and to feel welcomed and valued. Other strategies include displaying children’s work throughout the classroom, involving children in care of the classroom, and creating photo books featuring children in the classroom, families, and shared experiences reflect high-quality relationship-based practices. Experts also suggest using the language of community, such as referring to the children in the classroom as “friends” and referring to “our classroom” to build relationships and emotional closeness (which translates into emotional energy for well-being and learning).
- Another important element is the design of the room. Materials should be chosen for a reason rather than to fill shelves. Making materials easily accessible to children builds autonomy. The room should be created to inspire and promote wonder and curiosity.
Play is for a critical component in healthy, early development. When supported and facilitated in effective ways, play has a dramatic impact on cognitive, language, physical and social-emotional development. As early childhood educators we have a huge job on our hands. A job that when done in effective, relationship-based ways contributes to children’s bright futures. I challenge you to imbed play into your curriculum. Allow children the time for uninterrupted, meaningful play and you will see the results! Good luck!
Cadima, J., Verschueren, K., Leal, T. & Guedes, C. (2016). Classroom interactions, dyadic teacher–child relationships, and self–regulation in socially disadvantaged young children. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 44(1), 7-17.
Christakis, E. (2016). The new preschool is crushing kids. The Atlantic, January/February. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/the-new-preschool-is-crushing-kids/419139/.
Cohen, L. & Uhry, J. (2007). Young children’s discourse strategies during block play: A Bakhtinian approach. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 21(3), 302-315.
Hamre, B., Hatfield, B., Pianta, R., & Jamil, F. (2014). Evidence for general and domain‐specific elements of teacher-child interactions: Associations with preschool children’s development. Child development, 85(3), 1257-1274.
Hauf, P. & Aschersleben, G. (2008). Action-effect anticipation in infant action control. Psychological Research, 72(2), 203-210.
Horne, A. (2018). All Work No Play. Bridges Care and Education Center https://www.bridgescareandeducationcenter.com/single-post/2018/11/15/All-Work-and-No-Play?fbclid=IwAR0UrQsUzJt3mGFDqaX32T1-to0tZ5CCJcvrRjcoL56a_wumdMvhsg2M_E4
Rymanowicz, K. (2015, Oct. 19). The power of play — Part 2: Born to play. In Michigan State University — MSU Extension. http://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_power_of_play_part_2_born_to_play