What is the meaning of the term 'didactic' ?

Correct — B, (b) Teaching a moral lesson.

‘Didactic’ means instructive, or intended to teach — and in its usual literary application, intended to teach a moral lesson. A didactic poem, play or story is one written to improve the reader as well as to entertain him: the fable that ends in a maxim, the parable that carries a rule of conduct, the verse tale written to show what happens to the idle or the proud. The keyed option, teaching a moral lesson, is that sense stated exactly.

The word comes from the Greek ‘didaskein’, to teach, through ‘didaktikos’, skilled at teaching, and the root is still visible in its modern relatives. It has two settled uses in English. The first is neutral and descriptive: didactic writing is writing whose purpose is instruction. The second is critical: to call a novel or a speaker didactic is often to complain that the instruction is too obvious, that the work moralises instead of leaving the reader to judge. Both senses rest on the same core, and both are about teaching.

What distinguishes the word from its neighbours is the purpose it names, not the effect it produces. Writing that happens to inform is not thereby didactic; writing that stirs feeling is not didactic either. The moment a text is designed to instruct — and, in the ordinary literary sense, to instruct about how one ought to behave — the word applies. That is why three of the four options here, each of which names an effect on the audience, cannot answer it.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Intended to be inspirational — ‘Intended to be inspirational’ is close enough to be worth separating carefully. Inspirational writing aims at feeling: it lifts, encourages, moves somebody to effort or to hope. Didactic writing aims at understanding and conduct: it sets out a lesson and expects the reader to take it. The two often travel together — a fable can inspire as well as instruct — but they are not the same claim, and a word means what it claims, not what often accompanies it. There is also a difference in tone that a reader can feel. ‘Inspirational’ is nearly always approving; ‘didactic’, in modern use, is at best neutral and frequently a mild complaint, because it suggests that the teaching has been laid on too thickly. An option that carries warm approval is unlikely to be the paraphrase of a word that critics use as a reproach.
• (c)Received as comical — ‘Received as comical’ has no relation to the word at all, and it is included as the fourth option that the format needs. Two things about it are still worth naming. First, it describes how an audience takes something, whereas ‘didactic’ describes what the author set out to do; that difference between reception and intention is the axis on which this whole option list turns, and only the keyed option is about intention. Second, ‘didactic’ carries the opposite association: work that lectures its audience is usually earnest to a fault, and the standard criticism of didactic writing is that it is heavy, not that it is funny. A candidate who has no memory of the word at all can still put this option aside on the ground that it belongs to the vocabulary of the audience’s reaction.
• (d)Sharing an informative experience — ‘Sharing an informative experience’ is the near miss and repays the time. Information and instruction are not the same. A timetable, a weather report and a census table are informative and teach nobody anything about how to live; a fable that mentions almost no facts is didactic to its core. The option also softens the word in two other ways. ‘Sharing’ suggests an exchange between equals, while the didactic writer takes the position of a teacher addressing a learner. And ‘experience’ points to something the writer has undergone, which makes the sentence a description of memoir or anecdote rather than of instruction. Strip those away and what is left — conveying information — is still not the definition, because it omits the moral purpose that the word carries in its ordinary literary use.

‘Didactic’ belongs to a small group of adjectives that describe the purpose of a piece of writing rather than its subject or its quality. A text may be didactic (meant to instruct, especially in conduct), polemical (meant to attack a position), satirical (meant to ridicule folly or vice), elegiac (meant to lament), or expository (meant simply to explain). Recruitment papers set these against one another because they can all be applied to the same passage by a careless reader.

The form the didactic impulse takes in literature is worth knowing. Fables in which animals act out human faults and the tale ends with an explicit maxim are the purest examples, and the tradition is ancient and worldwide — the Panchatantra in India, the fables that go under Aesop’s name in Greek. Proverb literature, conduct books, cautionary tales and much verse written for children are didactic in the same sense.

The critical use of the word is a later development and is heard more often today. To say a novel is didactic is usually to say that it preaches: the reader is told what to think instead of being shown a situation and left to judge. Holding both uses together is the mark of understanding the word — one names a purpose, the other complains that the purpose is showing.

Key facts

• ‘Didactic’ means instructive, or intended to teach or demonstrate — especially with regard to morality.
• It has a second, critical sense: excessively moralising, of a work that preaches rather than shows.
• It comes from the Greek ‘didaskein’, to teach, through ‘didaktikos’, skilled in teaching.
• Fables, parables and cautionary tales are the standard didactic forms, the Panchatantra and the Aesopic fables being the classic collections.
• The word describes the author’s purpose, not the audience’s reaction — which is what separates it from inspirational, entertaining or merely informative writing.

Common traps

• Choosing an option about the effect on the audience. ‘Didactic’ names what the writer set out to do.
• Confusing instruction with information. Didactic writing teaches a lesson; informative writing conveys facts.
• Reading the word as approving. In modern use it often carries the complaint that the teaching is laid on too thickly.
• Expecting a definition to mention teaching methods or classrooms; the literary sense is about the moral purpose of a text.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A collection of short animal stories, each ending with an explicit maxim about honesty and prudence, is best described as

  • (a)a satirical work
  • (b)a didactic work
  • (c)an elegiac work
  • (d)a polemical work

  Answer(b) a didactic work — the stories exist to teach a lesson in conduct, and the explicit maxim at the end is the mark of the form. Satire ridicules folly or vice, an elegy laments the dead, and a polemic attacks an opposing position, none of which describes a collection of moral fables.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  ‘The novel is spoilt by its didactic tone.’ The sentence complains that the novel

  • (a)is difficult to follow
  • (b)preaches to the reader instead of letting the story speak
  • (c)contains too many facts and figures
  • (d)was written for children

  Answer(b) preaches to the reader instead of letting the story speak — used critically, ‘didactic’ says the instruction is too obvious. Option (a) describes obscurity, option (c) describes a different fault, and option (d) confuses the audience of a book with the manner in which it is written.