didactic adj : instructive (especially excessively) [syn: didactical]

English

from Greek didaktikos, skillful in teaching, from didaktos, taught, from didaskein, didak-, to teach, educate

Pronunciation

• dī-dăkˈtĭk

Noun

1. A treatise on teaching or education.

Adjective

1. Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality. (I.e., didactic poetry)
2. Excessively moralizing.
3. Regarding medicine, teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and clinical application.

Translations

instructive or...

• French: didactique
• Italian: didattico

Derived terms

• didact
• didactical
• didactically
• didacticism

distinguish didactic method Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. Didactic art should not primarily "entertain" or pursue the subjective goals of the artist.

An example may be found in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (published 1711), which offers a range of criticism and advice.

The term "didactic" also refers to texts (and by extension, media, such as film or television) that are overburdened with instructive, factual, and/or otherwise "educational" information, sometimes to the detriment of a reader's (or viewer's) enjoyment. The opposite of "didactic" is "non-didactic." If a writer is more concerned with artistic qualities and techniques than with conveying a message, then that piece of work is considered to be non-didactic, even if it is instructive/educational.

Some have suggested that nearly all of the best poetry is didactic. Contrarily, Edgar Allan Poe called didacticism the worst of "heresies" in his essay The Poetic Principle (before 1850).

Other examples of didactic literature include:

• Works and Days, by Hesiod (700 BCE)
• De Rerum Natura, by Lucretius Carus (1st century BCE)
• Georgics, by Virgil (29 BCE)
• The Jataka Tales (Buddhistic literature, 5th century)
• Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (1678)
• The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (anonymous, 1765)
• The Adventures of Nicholas Experience, by Ignacy Krasicki (1776)
• Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1813)
• The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (1957)
• Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder (1991)
• Tracts, by Tomas Stitny (?)

Didactic plays teach the audience through the use of a moral or a theme.

A good example of didactism in music is the chant Ut queant laxis, which was used by Guido of Arezzo to teach solfege syllables.

See also

• Art for art's sake

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