This Literary World of the Pied Piper utilizes multiple reading/writing theories:

Textual Intervention by Rob Pope, isbn 0-415-05437-0
Structuralism and Linguistics (see Jonathan Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss)
Formalisms (see V. Propp)
Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Post-Modernism (see Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes)
Reader Response (see Kenneth Burke)

Textual Intervention is the most prominant feature of the Pied Piper Literary World. When a group of university and community college students were asked to research materials for the Literary World, many chose to write a creative piece based upon the researched materials, fictionalizing the real world into the Pied Piper literary world. This literary environment has become, in effect, an anthology of student writing. The student writing reflects the student's understanding of the basic story plot structure. Most of the creative pieces included in this literary world are spin offs and extensions of the basic Pied Piper story. The imaginary world of what might have happened and how it might have happened is a strong component of the fiction created by the college students.

The object of the Pied Piper Literary World is to practice Deconstruction Methods of Inquiry. Briefly, Deconstruction Theory looks at all the possible meanings of the author's intentions by investigating all the possible meanigs of key words and/or phrases. Deconstruction also examines all the possibilities of what the author is NOT saying, in order to come to a better understanding of what the author IS trying to communicate. Because of the variety of meanings that can be attached to any given word, the author's intentions may not always be clear to the reader. Or the reader may take away a different meaning from the text due to interpretation of language.

For the Pied Piper, the reader can read the story as a literal story or surface treatment. Or the reader can attach allegory significance to the story with the imbedded motifs such as Calvary Mountain (which indicates a Christian theme).

Pied Piper of Hamelin Town Myth or Truth?

In the Virtual Worlds project (http://www.literaryworlds.og) we are creating immersive, interactive, and engaging virtual reality environments to support reading literature and more deeply involve students with the language, characters, and settings of literary works. In the free on-line spaces we are making, students can explore and interact in virtual literary environments, role playing and interrelating as characters, extending and altering character conduct in purposeful ways, exploring on-line museums and cultural materials, analyzing the impact of setting, language, and dialogue on behavior and events all directly related to the specific works they are assigned to read in their secondary or university English classes. Some of the projects are also aimed at the K-12 classroom experience, such as the Pied Piper literary world.

These virtual worlds are based on a model developed in the last two years by English Department doctoral researchers and faculty working with Professor Allen Webb at Western Michigan University. The first prototype was designed around the novel Brave New World (Rozema, 2003). In these virtual reality spaces, students are able to engage with literary works from the inside out, to enter into and more deeply understand specific cultural and historical contexts as they explore in their own imaginative voice the dilemmas, controversies, and issues that face literary characters. These worlds take an important step toward enacting the values of immersive reading (Murray, 1997; Wilhelm, 1997). By using the relatively simple, free, open-source software EnCore 4 (http://lingua.utdallas.edu/encore), patterned on Lambda MOO, we make it possible for schools and students to have easy access to the virtual world environments and for teachers to design and build their own spaces.

For this literary world, the truth or myth of The Pied Piper of Hamelin Town will be the subject of discussion. The Pied Piper story is a surprising complex and historically rich fairy tale that lends itself to student exploration in a virtual world. The fun part about this story is most people know just one small segment of the legend. Discovering historical contexts and alternative aspects of the tale within a virtual world makes the learning process holistic, deconstructive and informative. In this virtual world there are a series of investigative choices that can lead students on a literary expedition in search of the truth as represented in historical fact and related in the fiction.

The purpose of the online literary investigation is to form a closer understanding of the literature under study, the conditions under which the literature was formed, the reception of the literature by the intended audience and the meaning of the literature for todays audience. Additionally, other reading/writing activities can stem from the role playing environment of the literary world into dramatic performance, recitation of poetry, creative writing and non-fiction writing/reporting.

The Pied Piper Story has three possible avenues. The story most people are familiar with is the story of the Piper who comes to town to rid it of a rat problem. When the Mayor refuses to pay for the services rendered, the Piper spirits the children away to a mountain cave, where the children and Piper are swallowed up never to be seen again.

Scholars have discovered two other possible story endings to the disappearance of 130 children. Perhaps they went on a children's crusade, or maybe the families migrated to Eastern Europe.

Another possiblity is if the Piper took the children to "Calvary Mountain" then it's plausible that they died of an epidemic, and the Piper story is an allegory for the children going to Christ (Calvary Mountain).

In reader response and deconstruction methods, students can investigate the loss of the children and the impact this might have had on the families left behind. There are multiple versions of the story available, and adaptations to cinema and music to be explored.

Depending upon the curriculum outcome desired, the Pied Piper Literary World can be a creative writing project. It can be an investigative reporting project. It can be a reading project. It can be a research project that involves history, geography, economics and culture. The many layers of the story afford multiple avenues for the student to explore cross-curriculum issues such as the connection between geography and trade practices.

Teachers who develop lesson plans around the Pied Piper literary world are welcome to submit those tried lesson plans to be incorporated into the University room of the literary world for others to share. These can be submitted electronically via email attachments to linda.dick@wmich.edu. Put Pied Piper in the subject line.

Comments and suggestions for ways to improve the Pied Piper Literary World are welcome.

Enjoy your visit.