what is literature's biggest threat?

[cacian]

and is there such a thing?

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Let me answer your question:
The biggest literature's threat is the disloyalty writer's side and the prejudice from society on the another side.

[maxphisher]

Right now, at least from the response I am seeing from my friends in England, the biggest threat is Michael Gove:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/gove-austen-orwell-dickens-die-out

[mortalterror]

The biggest threat is public apathy, and the shift away from literature being taught in classrooms. After that, you have the competition of other media for the audience's attention. On the plus side, you have hundreds of millions of people moving into the middle class with increased resources, education, and leisure to study literature, and the internet facilitating the unprecedented spread of foreign literary traditions globally.

[MorpheusSandman]

As long as people have language there will be no threat to literature. Other mediums may compete for popularity, they may draw more would-be writers away from writing to something else, they may turn more would-be writers away because unlike with, say, acting in film, you probably aren't going to get rich doing it; but none of this can possibly stop everyone from writing and taking writing seriously.

[JBI]

The biggest threat is public apathy, and the shift away from literature being taught in classrooms. After that, you have the competition of other media for the audience's attention. On the plus side, you have hundreds of millions of people moving into the middle class with increased resources, education, and leisure to study literature, and the internet facilitating the unprecedented spread of foreign literary traditions globally.

Perhaps, unless you just translate other media into other forms of text. In that case, there is no threat - as people stop reading books they start watching more TV. The 19th century serial novel is today's miniseries. Yesterday's poem is tomorrow's folk song. That literature originated in oral forms is irrelevant to these "oh save the books" people, when in reality it is not about how you get your entertainment or information, but rather, what you get.

So, if we take any number of trash pulp books, and compare them to any number of trashy sitcoms - or take any trash magazine and compare it with Entertainment Tonight or any number of talk shows - we generally can see that the result, the content, and generally the audience is the same, or of the same mindset.

That people move from one medium to another is a natural phenomenon. We do not write like Shakespeare today, but that does not diminish from Shakespeare. In ancient times, the amount of money required to write anything was more costly than many movies today. The cost of a new copy of Tom Jones would have been months and months of wages for the lower class. The textual value then must be calculated. Rather than try to see the shift stopping, we should rather encourage other media developments.


As for foreign literary traditions, well, the west made the big mistake of killing off Latin, which would have, if not having happened, made the entire continent of Europe able to really communicate, allow anybody to engage with a tradition, and remove the need for interpretation and translation. You can thank Dante I guess for replacing one unspoken language in Italy with another one (though now they force people to learn it, at the time of Italy's formation, the vast majority of people could not speak the language, only the few educated individuals familiar with it, and some people's native to Tuscany and the area). If instead of killing Latin, they merely incorporated new words for things, and switched the spoken vernacular in a given area with a new spoken standard, the continent would have maintained a stronger network, and remained more cohesive. Then today, it would facilitate the unity with the rest of the world - imagine Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand all under one linguistic system.

Now, as for traditional reading's biggest threat? lack of value. This weird idea that somehow many of what we consider classic books enjoyed wide popularity is ridiculous. How many people actually read the works of John Donne 150 years ago? How many read Elizabethan drama? not as many as people pretend.

The truth is mass reading of any given book, outside of the Bible and maybe some of the classics, is a new phenomenon. Generally speaking there are probably a lot more ballads that had significant reception in the oral community then there were popular songs that came from the poetic tradition of the elite in the cities. We ignore all of this, and act as if reading is somehow a lost tradition, when traditionally most of us probably would not be able to read, let alone afford a book.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

As we are translators we put in our mind some of significant rules:
1- To whom you translate i.e. the readership ( illiterate, ordinary, educated, specialist)
2- Age
3- type of the text
4- method and procedures
For literature we depend on the semantic method rather than communicative method i.e. to be more faithful for the written targeted text.
For writing:
1- I think the first thing is the understandable language of authors.
2- Readers of nowadays prefer the short text because they haven't additional wast of time.
3- Fame and reputation : For this point readers would prefer the most knowable writer.
4- As I mentioned above the variant of educational level must be take into consideration.

[cacian]

technology perhaps?

[mal4mac]

Right now, at least from the response I am seeing from my friends in England, the biggest threat is Michael Gove...

This is correct! Gove's plans will drive many 14-16 year olds away from the study of literature.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jul/15/michael-gove-gcse-changes-english-literature

[cacian]

Let me answer your question:
The biggest literature's threat is the disloyalty writer's side and the prejudice from society on the another side.

how do you mean? disloyalty?

[dara.cv]

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the thought crossed my mind that technology could easily control access to and quality of (JBI's point well put) available literature. I purchased my Kindle around 2 years ago and because of the convenience of purchasing, portability, and indefinite storage I donated almost all, but my most cherished books, to the library. I started reading a banned book called "the Handmaid's Tale" and thought what if the government wanted to re-implement a ban on this book. What if technology was its only available outlet to the public such on the internet or e-readers. It would be easy to permanently flash erase all the literature, unless people had printed out full texts. We are far from that being a true potential threat, but im thinking way in the future, when print is all together obsolete. It would be so easy. this idea is somewhat frightening to me, so Ive continued to purchase paperbacks here and there, of the classics I didnt get to enjoy when i was young. maybe my daughter will realize the importance and potency of these stories (she finds them boring currently) and will keep them protected through the years.

[cacian]

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the thought crossed my mind that technology could easily control access to and quality of (JBI's point well put) available literature. I purchased my Kindle around 2 years ago and because of the convenience of purchasing, portability, and indefinite storage I donated almost all, but my most cherished books, to the library. I started reading a banned book called "the Handmaid's Tale" and thought what if the government wanted to re-implement a ban on this book. What if technology was its only available outlet to the public such on the internet or e-readers. It would be easy to permanently flash erase all the literature, unless people had printed out full texts. We are far from that being a true potential threat, but im thinking way in the future, when print is all together obsolete. It would be so easy. this idea is somewhat frightening to me, so Ive continued to purchase paperbacks here and there, of the classics I didnt get to enjoy when i was young. maybe my daughter will realize the importance and potency of these stories (she finds them boring currently) and will keep them protected through the years.

hi dara do you know anything about why the 'Handmaid's Tale' would be banned? I thought there was movie about it not long ago?

[luhsun]

A biggish meteor, sending all of us into extinction- that should get rid of literature ;-)

[cacian]

A biggish meteor, sending all of us into extinction- that should get rid of literature ;-)

biggish? do you mean sizeable?

[luhsun]

I thought biggish will make the pronouncement sound an itty-bitty childish. I am sorry i did not succeed in carrying out my nefarious tai-chi. Sizeable is so boring :P

[Hal]

and is there such a thing?


well, the Literary Canon's biggest threat comes from within. From those in academia that want to insert inferior works in to the Canon for political reasons.

[MorpheusSandman]

And who's to say what works of inferior? Other academics protecting their own canon for political reasons? I wouldn't be quick to assume you can really divorce politics from such things.

[Hal]

And who's to say what works of inferior? Other academics protecting their own canon for political reasons? I wouldn't be quick to assume you can really divorce politics from such things.

Maybe inferior is not the right word. I would say outside of the western tradition. And I agree that there is a problem of authority.Who decides? Well certainly much of it is decided by each generation of literary scholars. But much of it is self evident. Shakespeare, Milton, and Cervantes put themselves into the Canon. And everything and everyone follows them in some way. The Canon is definitely under threat by Marxists, feminists , and critical race theorists who think it is too European and too male. White European males do dominate the Canon, but so what? Race and gender should not matter. Just the aesthetic qualities of a work.

[mal4mac]

Maybe inferior is not the right word. I would say outside of the western tradition. And I agree that there is a problem of authority.Who decides? Well certainly much of it is decided by each generation of literary scholars. But much of it is self evident. Shakespeare, Milton, and Cervantes put themselves into the Canon. And everything and everyone follows them in some way.

I think *all* literary scholars have to be taken into account, not just the current generation. For instance over three generations Dickens was in, then out, then in again. So if you read Dickens in the "out" generation, should you have stopped reading him because some trendy, academic, literary critics said he wasn't "in"? I think the canonicity of a work should be, and is, defined by all the readers of that work since its publication. Literary scholars, along with serious authors and journalists, are likely to have the biggest say of what makes it into the canon, but common readers are also significant.



The Canon is definitely under threat by Marxists, feminists , and critical race theorists who think it is too European and too male. White European males do dominate the Canon, but so what? Race and gender should not matter. Just the aesthetic qualities of a work.


I agree with you, as do many others. But I still think Michael Gove, and politicians of a similar stamp, are the biggest threat. He is the one who is threatening to suspend the teaching of English literature in UK schools, the one who will stop new readers encountering Charles Dickens and George Eliot. The Marxists, feminists, and critical race theorists don't have much impact on the school syllabus or the "common reader". It's illiterate politicians who are the big risk, those who don't think reading novels is important at all. Many UK Politicians seem to be only concerned about getting people to a level where they can read "the Sun", or fill in forms, hence the move to make "English Language" compulsory, but not "English Literature".

[MorpheusSandman]

Shakespeare, Milton, and Cervantes put themselves into the Canon... Race and gender should not matter. Just the aesthetic qualities of a work.The aesthetic qualities of works are judged by critics of a certain race and gender whom hold certain ideologies fostered, mostly unconsciously, by their places in their cultures carved out by that race and gender. Just because white, (mostly) heterosexual males were the dominant force within literature and academia, don't assume this means that they were judging aesthetics that weren't in large part defined by their perspectives as white, heterosexual males. They usually don't realize it themselves as they have been allowed to consider their place in society "the norm," which is one of the reasons they perceive feminists, homosexuals, and racial minorities a threat to that perceived normality, and often don't even recognize that their aesthetic ideals have been formed by cultural/social ideologies they've never bothered to question.

[Varenne Rodin]

I say apathy. Humans are increasingly tending toward instant gratification. Attention spans are shorter. Books require patience.

[maxphisher]

Actually, I think that the most common argument in academe is that the time has come for works outside of Western Europe to be included in the canon. For centuries, the canon has been focused on Western European white literature. Your argument makes it sound like female, non-white, and "foreign" literature was excluded because it didn't measure up. It has historically been excluded because it was ignored. I would, however, be curious to know what inferior works you think are being inserted unfairly.



well, the Literary Canon's biggest threat comes from within. From those in academia that want to insert inferior works in to the Canon for political reasons.

[JBI]

Actually, I think that the most common argument in academe is that the time has come for works outside of Western Europe to be included in the canon. For centuries, the canon has been focused on Western European white literature. Your argument makes it sound like female, non-white, and "foreign" literature was excluded because it didn't measure up. It has historically been excluded because it was ignored. I would, however, be curious to know what inferior works you think are being inserted unfairly.
What a fallacy. The canon that western Europeans read is focused on Western Europeans. The same way that the canon that male's used to read was focused primarily on male authors. This is not something new.

Now, Western Europeans make up a rather small readership internationally. Something like the Confucian Canon, and then the Chinese Tang Poetic Canon afterward are on the school curriculum of the world's most populated country, and are far more read here then the many unknown western authors (the Bible included) that Chinese people are not exposed to. Simply put Romance of the 3 Kingdoms is far more popular than almost any book internationally.

This idea that there is a white Canon that white people came up with is as simple as the idea that there is a Chinese Canon Chinese literature came up with, and a Japanese Canon, and low and behold - A Sanskrit Canon, an Arabic Canon, etc. We actually have many canons for most of the countries that have long traditions of literary writing. Some cultures, like North American Natives do not have a major written canon, as literacy played a different functional role in society. However in those places Oral canons still exist, unless they were wiped out by settlers.

The idea of a bigoted Canon of academia is so biased and twisted that it's hard to listen to. Outside of the American academy, who studies Chinese literature in the US? Arabic literature? Persian literature? hell, even south American literature? It seems that the majority of readers of these alternative canons happen to be not the public, but the academy itself. They are the ones who go out and learn the languages, who translate the books, who research, and who study. Other people may out of curiosity one day pick up a translation from Columbia University Press that runs small printruns, but for the majority of people, it is the white book that dominates the US, or whatever else Oprah can think of.

Seriously, it's depressing to hear all these "White dead male" complainers around, when ultimately The American government, as well as individual donations and foreign subsidies, are what keep world literature alive. The only other countries that seem to be practicing a broad range of world literature are England, France, and Germany, the old world "dead white male" countries. Occasionally you will find research from other European countries, or even internationally in some Arab countries, but if you were to take a look at the state of international reading in the world today, you would find that the majority of research, funding, and scholarship - the majority of attempts to understand what the world has to offer - seem to come from the US, which is one of the more international countries anyway. Notice I did not include Canada here because in terms of research, we have only a few universities that can compete worldwide in the humanities. Though if you were to look, all of those for the humanities have a clear international picture, modeled on the same system as an Ivy League university from the US, and most likely educationally linked.

As for the canon itself, well, I read a nice article the other day of historical Chinese translations. Other than the Buddhist texts that came into China over 1400 years ago (the last significant trip for them was Tripitaka as later fictionally described in Journey to the West), there seems to be zero in terms of translation or foreign literature in the country until Yan Fu. Sure there is the odd loanword that they got from the people who they conquered or who conquered them - but even the Buddhist texts of the Tibetans that got a major audience in the courts of Beijing had almost no influence elsewhere in the country. Japanese literature? nothing. Korean literature? Nothing. Now if we want to talk about dead Chinese male authors (and even geographically this is more or less limited to the inside of the country - in the beginning to the Zhongyuan area, later to the south east, then back north, then finally almost exclusively to the south east - then we can talk about it. After all, in terms of classic poetry, there are only two female poets who were canonized alongside their misogynist husbands and sons, and of those one's career rests primarily on a poem believed by most to be fake. Sure the western scholar may dig up some unknown women's poetry from an archive or a text, but for the most part, this is a Chinese rich dead male canon - more so than any other country's canon by far.

This is not to rip on Chinese literature, merely to illustrate how this myth would be better turned on others instead of the so called dead white male bashers.

Likewise I would like to ask another question. For all those that criticize dead white male canons, how many people actually read outside texts? how many of you have actually picked up a work from India or the Middle East or any other number of places?

[Hal]

Actually, I think that the most common argument in academe is that the time has come for works outside of Western Europe to be included in the canon. For centuries, the canon has been focused on Western European white literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chinua Achebe, V.S Naipul, Derek Walcott, Jorge Luis Borges, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neal Hurston. I could keep going. It's just not true that the Canon is exclusively "white".



Your argument makes it sound like female, non-white, and "foreign" literature was excluded because it didn't measure up. It has historically been excluded because it was ignored. I would, however, be curious to know what inferior works you think are being inserted unfairly.

I'm sure a lot is ignored. And I'm not in academia so I'm not privy to arguments that take place about what should be considered canonical or not. Moby Dick was ignored for almost 50 years.

But, I just look at the reading lists on some courses at university and it's pretty shocking what is included and what is excluded. I mean, why should I spend any time at all reading Foucalt and all his pseudo-science nonsense, when I could be reading Milton or Shakespeare or Wordsworth? And God help you if you happen to be in a course taught by a radical feminist or gender queer theorist because you won't be reading the Canon or anything that should be in the Canon. I took a Women's Literature course expecting to read Chopin, O'Connor, Morrison, Rossetti etc but instead it was all radical feminist stuff. One of the books on the syllabus was actually titled "C*nt".

[mal4mac]

The aesthetic qualities of works are judged by critics of a certain race and gender whom hold certain ideologies fostered, mostly unconsciously, by their places in their cultures carved out by that race and gender.

Derek Walcott and Germaine Greer have both supported Shakespeare as central to the canon. Surely our best critics and writers have insight into their racial and gender bias? I'm guessing you think you have, so why wouldn't you allow that the gatekeepers of the canon can empathise with others? If they can't, we might as well all give up and watch football.

[JBI]

Derek Walcott and Germaine Greer have both supported Shakespeare as central to the canon. Surely our best critics and writers have insight into their racial and gender bias? I'm guessing you think you have, so why wouldn't you allow that the gatekeepers of the canon can empathise with others? If they can't, we might as well all give up and watch football.

Well, take that as an example - the gatekeepers of the sporting world see no problem hiring African American athletes, or any athletes for that matter based on their skillset at a game with a specific set of rules. In that sense, literature is very much the same. What do you expect from a Western culture that has had very little interaction with the world before 1600? And to add to that, a society whose language did not have many literate speakers of different cultures until much later? We can suggest, for instance, That they should not ignore African American literature today, but to suggest Homer is a beacon of racism because he is white and Greek makes no logical sense.

So, when we lower that, we come to the Canon of the past 200 years really, and more like 150 years, and for the most part we are talking about the US. Tell me, how many good authors can anybody name from the states from before then? Sorry to seem unenlightened, by why exactly does the white male canon have to account for demographic discrepancies and linguistic barriers - in the States for a long while it was illegal to teach literacy to slaves. Do we expect then for there to be a long list of literature by former slaves? Our expectations are ridiculous, and it seems too fashionable to push away, yet in all honesty, it is really the American white man who has been the so called collector of world culture.

When railroads entered China, they were met with hostility as "foreign" as much as anything "foreign". that was discredited on the grounds of its origin. Yet I would wager in every railway train there was a wagon serving tea in Chinoiserie porcelain. The same way all around the world people are eating traditionally Native American foods, and listening to African American influenced music. You think the rest of the world actually notices this, or gives credit? The Chinese speaking world decidedly dismisses anything non native as "foreign" - they call suits Western clothes, and don't realize that the corn, Potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers that feed the entire population are more or less American foods. They will claim the famous Sichuan spicy food as their cultural heritage, without realizing they weren't growing chilies in Sichuan until 150 years ago, and even then such chilies were ornaments, not consumables. For all the pride of the world, people do not realize how dependent on the new world they are, and instead spend too much time attacking a bunch of white men who really had no choice being white. English literature was dominated by Scandinavians and Francophones until the Renaissance - what do people expect? You are dealing with a tradition that was relatively isolated, and in fact, you get very little "white"ism from the traditional Greek or Hebrew sources. In truth, the idea of white is isolated to the traditions of slavery and literature, which then becomes about 300 years of American history for the most part, as well as West Indian and other areas (Canada at the time had a rather minimal slave population until abolished in the 1830s). The British in India did everything to absorb the cultural history, as Indian literature transformed European thought the way Oriental spices would transform European cuisine.

Seriously, there is no culture more multicultural than the so called "dead white male" culture that everyone criticizes. People should look at other examples.

[mal4mac]

The only other countries that seem to be practicing a broad range of world literature are England, France, and Germany, the old world "dead white male" countries.

What about India? There's a lot of interest in "dead white male" material, even though they have a wonderful tradition of their own. For instance, there's a Dickens society in Calcutta, attended mostly by native Indians, and a famous Shakespeare touring company formed by Felicity Kendal's father that tours Indian villages.



As for the canon itself, well, I read a nice article the other day of historical Chinese translations. Other than the Buddhist texts that came into China over 1400 years ago (the last significant trip for them was Tripitaka as later fictionally described in Journey to the West), there seems to be zero in terms of translation or foreign literature in the country until Yan Fu.


Was Yan Fu's translation of Thomas Huxley's "Evolution and Ethics" (1897) the first translation of a book from English to Chinese?

"Shakespeare occupies an interesting position in China, where major foreign writers such as Dickens, Conan Doyle, Balzac, Stendhal and the Russians were translated in the early 20th century and soon became household names. Many Chinese, including political leaders, take pride in being well-read. By contrast, how many English people, let alone political leaders, could name China's foremost 18th-century novelist, or the great poets of the 8th century?"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/28/china-shakespeare-wen-jiabao-visit

[cacian]

well, the Literary Canon's biggest threat comes from within. From those in academia that want to insert inferior works in to the Canon for political reasons.

inferior work? no such thing just bigoted ideas. to think one's work is inferior or superior to another is a threat in itself. the wider the mind the better literature for it.
interesting no one mentioned that the biggest threat to literature is language itself. imagine one's language being taken away from you and replaced with another. in North Africa the Arabic language was stripped off taken away from the mother tongue and replaced with French. it lasted as long as it lasted but by the time the Arabic language was back on track the Arabic north African literature had suffered enormously there was hardly any work to be had.
I'd say that is the biggest threat. I would imagine it very threatening to think English would be stripped off to be replaced by French. that is one possibility not to be sniffed out. I would be on the look out for it myself not that it is not happening already. you just have to look around.

[Pierre Menard]

Oh JBI! I just wanna marry your posts in this thread! Pretty much summed up everything I find frustrating about the "straight-white-male" arguments. At the end of the day, it's simply a historical reality that minorities were predominantly uneducated throughout history. Unfortunately, that's just the way it was. The issue I have with people who complain about the 'straight-white-male-canon' (aside from the fact that there is actually a number of excellent minority writers in there that are in there based on their aesthetic quality) is that it isn't actually an argument. Okay, so the canon is made of predominantly white-males (in a European tradition, whodathunkit?)…so what? What's your point? So the aesthetics we value (which is so unbelievably varied anyway) were re-inforced by straight-white-males who also happened to be the most educated at the time…cool…I mean, if they'd like to point out what is wrong with those aesthetics, then go ahead. Or if you'd like to raise up and defend and try to bring to life some minority writers, then sure, go ahead…but use aesthetics of some form to justify why it deserves to be noted, not just the fact that they happen to be a minority (which I believe was Hal's original point).

At the end of the day what we have is largely a European canon (with many different areas of influence), and the Chinese have a Chinese canon, and the Japanese have a Japanese and so on.

Hal's original point was that we should focus on works of great artistic worth, rather than try to prop up lesser writers for political reasons. That is a perfectly fair and reasonable point.

[JBI]

What about India? There's a lot of interest in "dead white male" material, even though they have a wonderful tradition of their own. For instance, there's a Dickens society in Calcutta, attended mostly by native Indians, and a famous Shakespeare touring company formed by Felicity Kendal's father that tours Indian villages.



Was Yan Fu's translation of Thomas Huxley's "Evolution and Ethics" (1897) the first translation of a book from English to Chinese?

"Shakespeare occupies an interesting position in China, where major foreign writers such as Dickens, Conan Doyle, Balzac, Stendhal and the Russians were translated in the early 20th century and soon became household names. Many Chinese, including political leaders, take pride in being well-read. By contrast, how many English people, let alone political leaders, could name China's foremost 18th-century novelist, or the great poets of the 8th century?"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/28/china-shakespeare-wen-jiabao-visit

I'm not sure which would be the first, as I am not an expert on the subject, but translations from the Chinese began actually quite a bit earlier. Also, translations of the bible had a longer history. Generally, we can say that there was an army of mostly religious figures who went to China to learn, study, and of course, convert the population. Many became significantly more Chinese in outlook. In contrast, there were not, until modern times, any real serious attempts by the Chinese themselves. Their version of going abroad was to take over places in south East asia, or to conquer what is now Xin Jiang province (literally new territory).

For the most part, China has always been revered in Western discourse, up until the Macartny's supposed refusal to kowtow. There was somewhat a degree of worship of Chinese culture, especially once tea started coming in (first to Holland). The general idea was the best stuff seemed to come from China. In contrast, the Chinese always have regarded themselves as the center of the world, and the rest of the world as periphery. There is a national ideology right now which is along the lines of "we are going to reclaim our place" as the foremost amongst everybody. Any idea of sharing, equality, or universality is lost on this culture, which requires people to bow down in order to give them a hard-on. Ideologically speaking, the emperor is "the sun of heaven" - a quasi religious function akin to a sort of divine right of kings, but entrenched more deeply.

The reason why in the 1870s or so Chinese intellectuals began looking to England was because they realized that they were actually behind - they came to the conclusion that they could "borrow" these ideas and use them to their own advantage. That's why Yan Fu seems to have translated mostly political tracts, because he had only their use in mind, for his little Emperor on the thrown to continue his position as centre of the world. Later during the 20th century, there was a bit of a swing toward importing, when people realized that there actually was some value to non-Chinese ideas. They realized artistically, they had no equivalent for the realist novel. Almost all their ideology was from a good 2000 years earlier, and generally they had done little philosophical development in a good 200 years. The idea that intellectually they were stagnant was rampant, and so, they looked to an outside model to reshape themselves - hence the mass of translation, the change of dress codes, the linguistic reforms (removing dialects and purely literary language, the equivalent of European Latin), they started educating females, and generally went against the bad habits of footbinding, drug addiction, feudalism and polygamy. All this was actually only cemented by Mao in 1949, who ironically was the person to transform China into a "civilized" sort of place by western terms. We forget these things and only see him as a villain, when the culture was so corrupt from the inside out that it's almost hard to imagine.


Now, where was the West when all this was going on? Well, firstly, translations from the Chinese were quite popular throughout the 19th century, which is the only time real study in the Western sense really kicked off (including scientific study, philology, and basically anything outside of the classical sense of education). Mahler wrote a symphony with Chinese Tang poetry, for instance, and the vast bulk of the Chinese canon was translated. The French had done much more far sooner, and by the 20th century virtually everything was translated, in terms of classics (Confucian classics). We still turn to France as the foreground for Daoist and Chinese philosophical research, keep in mind. Also, we may note that the majority of major novelists from China from the 1920s-1950 seem to have been translated at that time, while they were fresh, which shows the attitude given their literature, and demonstrates that their importation of English literature was contemporary with England's importing of Chinese literature.


Now, as for the contemporary scene, I would wager that outside of Jane Austen, and Romeo and Juliet, Chinese people cannot name English works. Some have not even heard of the Bible. You guys think that just because a translation exists that it is read? You guys give people too much credit.

We have everything pretty much in English too now, but the actual number of readers is staggeringly low. It's the same in China. You don't give Americans enough credit.

[MorpheusSandman]

Derek Walcott and Germaine Greer have both supported Shakespeare as central to the canon. Surely our best critics and writers have insight into their racial and gender bias? What's bothering me in this thread is the anti-historical stance many people are making, and the clear selection bias. The "some minorities support the canon" or "some minorities are part of the canon" is not unlike the some "some minorities are wealthy" statements that are usually used to argue racism or sexism doesn't still exist. One has to look at the statistics in these cases, and while statistics are easier to find regarding social matters than literary canons and aesthetics, I think it would take a willfully blind person to look at the western canon, the history of how it formed, and comments like "radical queer or feminist theorists," and not hear echoes of fundamental Republicans who think that all minorities are threats to their social and cultural superiority.

Of course, the point has never really been that various authors in the canon are not genuinely great, don't genuinely deserve to be there. As has been often said, Shakespeare wrote about such an immense and diverse swath of humanity that I think it would be hard for any lover of literature to say he is undeserving of his canonical status. Shakespeare wrote about (not intentionally, but merely by depicting in his writing as many aspects of humanity as possible) racism, sexism, anti-semitism, post-colonialism, and various cultural issues that are as relevant today as ever. Things like Othello, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and Merchant of Venice are still socially/culturally relevant, so nobody should be surprised that modern "radical theorists" think Shakespeare is deserving of his canonization.

I don't know why you think our "best critics" would be aware of their gender and social biases. When you look at the writings of pre-20th century critics, and even most 20th century critics, not to mention the works/authors they're criticizing, they write very much as if they are part of a singular, coherent culture that shares its various values and assumptions. If you read, say, Pope's Essay on Man, there's a lot about assuming that his time's social/cultural institutions are inherently "right," being natural, and very little questioning of gender roles or racism. Even when there are disagreements, they are usually formal, over aesthetic matters; there is very little recognition of the different social experiences and, therefor, the different perspectives on art. For centuries, the vast majority of art was the voice of the ruling classes and little more.

Modernism was really the first Western movement that alerted us to the fragmentation of experience and perspective, and part of that fragmentation came, at least in part, from the heightened awareness of these various social institutions. Yet M wasn't quite "there" in allowing these alternative voices to share canonical or cultural dominance. It wasn't until the rise of feminism, post-colonialism, civil rights, etc. that we started to hear a lot of these "alternative" voices loud and clear, that the artists they held up as representative of their voices began to etch a place in the canon. Would Emily Dickinson or Jane Austen have such a prominent place in the canon without Modernism and Feminism? The former first started questioning the aesthetic assumptions of literary culture, the latter the sexual assumptions of society. Did Austen and Dickinson have supporters before Modernism and feminism? Yes. Were they integral parts of the canon? No. Many of the minority authors that are now part of the canon are so BECAUSE OF feminism, queer theory, post-colonialism, etc.

I guess one could say that it's both positive and negative that many don't realize the latter fact. Positive in the sense that many now read these authors and appreciate/love them even if they are oblivious to the various social revolutions that have elevated them there, which shows that these authors, however much of a "voice" they are for these movements, can also be universal; but it's negative in the respect that people don't appreciate the social revolutions that had to take place for these authors to achieve that place and are, likely, oblivious of the continuing problems of racism, sexism, etc. in society. So, in a way, the reshaping of the canon due to these social/cultural movements has already taken place to some degree, and I think we're better off for it.

[maxphisher]

Your first response is the point that I was arguing. Notice that you have pointed out only twentieth-century authors. The problem with the Western canon is that it did not necessarily consider authors outside of the Western world until scholars and authors called into question their absence. Even then, many were included because they were part of a Western colony. The value of their work was gauged primarily on its relationship with Western European male literature. That is only one thing that critical fields, such as feminist studies, postcolonial studies, gender theory, queer theory, African American theory, etc. look at and seek to expose.

In regard to canonicity itself, I would argue that questions about the validity of the canon are more so the result of Marxist theory. Most often, the focus is on power structures and inequalities. The canon, which is again, primarily Western, depicts a very clear hierarchy of power which has historically placed women, minorities, homosexuals, the colonized, etc. in a position of less importance and respect. The canon has been questioned not because it creates an illusion of power based on skill (ie. this book is better than that book), but rather because it creates an illusion of power based on Western values and identity. As a result, much of Walcott's "Omeros" deals with these questions of canonicity and history. Walcott appropriates Shakespeare, Homer, and Joyce because he can. They are his to use and to enjoy; they are his "contemporaries."

[MorpheusSandman]

At the end of the day, it's simply a historical reality that minorities were predominantly uneducated throughout history. Unfortunately, that's just the way it was.And "that's the way it was" due to the dominant social classes looking to maintain their dominance; and they were no less desirous to maintain that dominance even after minorities did start receiving an education.


AtThe issue I have with people who complain about the 'straight-white-male-canon'... is that it isn't actually an argument. Okay, so the canon is made of predominantly white-males…so what? What's your point? So the aesthetics we value... were re-inforced by straight-white-males who also happened to be the most educated at the time… if they'd like to point out what is wrong with those aesthetics, then go ahead. Or if you'd like to raise up and defend and try to bring to life some minority writers, then sure, go ahead…but use aesthetics of some form to justify why it deserves to be noted, not just the fact that they happen to be a minority.The "argument" is to make people aware of why/how the canon has formed as it has. As with racism and sexism, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to realize that it's a problem to begin with. People are victims of their subjectivity and biases such as hasty generalizations in which their brain universalizes from their limited experiences. Minority voices often have difficulty being heard and taken seriously because the ruling majority have had entirely different experiences; which allows them to dismiss those voices for any number of rationalizations. Why do you think there was (and still is, really) such resistance to feminism and civil rights?

The assumption you're making is that there's something "wrong" or "right" with any aesthetic. Aesthetic are like morals in how relative and, ultimately, subjective they are. Aesthetics is not like science in which we build models that are tested against reality; aesthetics are the means by which we say that certain art appeals to us, and it's absolutely impossible that what appeals to us is uninfluenced by our places within society and culture. One person loves Joyce's wordplay; another hates it. How do you possibly declare with any universal authority which of these aesthetic positions is "right?" What's more, can you really say that either position is uninfluenced by the hypothetical person's social and cultural position?

I don't think many minority authors are promoted solely because they're minority; rather, they're promoted because other minorities find them to be a representative voice for their perspective, for the issues that concern them. This process of emerging cultures choosing their representative voices has actually been, historically, one of the primary roles of literature and poetry. Most new nations, once they have a literature, instantly start looking for representative voices. Think of the search for the "Great American Novel." Using your argument, why are we looking for the great "American" novel? Shouldn't we just judge all novels based on some non-national aesthetic? Then again, what is a non-national, non-racial, non-gendered, non-social, non-cultural aesthetic? Where does it exist? What would it look like?

The majority, because they do not have to define themselves by any otherness (being the majority), are often blinded to how minorities HAVE been defined by how their lives, perspectives, and experiences are different than those of the majority. Then, whenever minorities find literature that reflects these issues, the majority, because they are (often) ignorant of those issues, are equally unsympathetic. They complain that this literature does not abide by their own aesthetic values, while not realizing how those values have been formed and reinforced in a culture/society different than that being represented.


At the end of the day what we have is largely a European canon (with many different areas of influence), and the Chinese have a Chinese canon, and the Japanese have a Japanese and so on.

Hal's original point was that we should focus on works of great artistic worth, rather than try to prop up lesser writers for political reasons. That is a perfectly fair and reasonable point.When people say "the canon" I assume they're talking about the Western, European/American canon. It's a trivial point that other nations and languages have their own canon. I don't think most are complaining that there isn't more literature from other languages that are a part of the Western canon; the complaint is that a great deal of literature in our own language is being ignored because of socio-cultural structures and ignorant assumptions based on those structures.

Again, there is no inherent "artistic worth." "Nothing's good or bad, but thinking makes it so," to quote one very perceptive European white male. This relativism makes conservatives (whether political or aesthetic) uncomfortable, but no amount of mass subjective agreement can make the subjective objective, especially when this mass agreement is fostered by racist, sexist, heteronormative structures that often go unquestioned and ignored by those in power. So, no, it's not a perfectly fair point, it's a philosophically, socially, culturally, politically ignorant one.

[stlukesguild]

Come on, Morpheus... this is just one tired and rather dated holier than thou politically correct rant.

It's a trivial point that other nations and languages have their own canon.

No... that's not a trivial point, but rather one that simply seems to elude you. As JBI suggested the push for inclusion of more minority writers in "the canon" is just as biased as the "old school" Western Canon itself... rooted in academics (predominantly American) pushing for the inclusion of their own little clique... while ignoring the rest of the world:

I don't think most are complaining that there isn't more literature from other languages that are a part of the Western canon; the complaint is that a great deal of literature in our own language is being ignored because of socio-cultural structures and ignorant assumptions based on those structures.

In other words... it is more important that we open up the canon... the Western Canon or the American Canon... to African American, Native American, Jewish American, Female American, Gay Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc... and that will make us more enlightened... that is morally/ethically superior to opening up the canon to the brilliant writers from Persia, Japan, China, South America, etc...?

Honestly, what idiot doesn't know that every culture promotes its own? The notion that the dominant powers of Western or American culture haven't done enough to promote "other voices" suggests that other cultures have done a better job of this and assumes that it is somehow the responsibility of one culture to promote the achievements of others. Is this a realistic expectation at all?

[MorpheusSandman]

Well, take that as an example - the gatekeepers of the sporting world see no problem hiring African American athletes, or any athletes for that matter based on their skillset at a game with a specific set of rules. In that sense, literature is very much the same.The analogy often made between sports and art--one which I've never heard made except by aesthetic conservatives, FWIW--is abysmal when used in this context. The relevant comparisons between sports and art often highlight the opposite of what those like you intend for it to highlight.

Firstly, the rules of sports (and games) are inherently arbitrary. To use my profession as an example, there's no objective reason why an Ace is higher than a King, or why it can serve as either the highest or lowest card in the deck. Yet, it's equally obvious that these rules allow the game to be played to begin with, so they are "necessary" for that purpose. The equivalent in art is not between all artists playing the same game by which various "skills" can be assessed based on the rules/objectives of that game; but rather between some artists playing one game with one set of rules, and others playing other games with other sets of rules.

The problem, then, is that you have certain conservatives insisting that not only is their game the ONLY game, but their game's rules are somehow universal, objective, and that all other games are invalid. What's more, these people are in the majority and are often exerting great, even overwhelming, influence on what games everyone can play by establishing their rules within the institutions where games are learned.

So the struggle of minority writers is not really to dismantle the dominant game that exists, but rather to be allowed to validate their own games, to draw audiences and athletes to their game, and to point out to audiences why the dominant rules of the dominant game are NOT some objective, absolute thing that has to be as it is, but was rather formed arbitrarily, influenced by various forces that are very different than the things that influenced their games' rules.

Listen, JBI, I can appreciate what you say about the multi-culturalness of the Western canon, but you have to realize that much of that is the result of the efforts made by those cultures to fight for validity and the right to have their own voice. Nobody is wanting us to find African American authors from the times of slavery, nobody is wanting us to find tons of great female authors from the times before women were allowed public education; I think very few are even wanting to eject most of the "dead white males," or create a canon where the ratio of inclusion is equal to how many sub-cultures there are (ie, one female for every male, one black for every white, etc.); all I see is that minorities are wanting the canon to validate by inclusion the voices they say represent them.

As for the latter, I think a great many, if not most, straight white males are fine with that inclusion. As I said in an earlier post, I don't think most of us care that certain canonized authors are there in large part because of these socio-cultural movements, which shows that such minorities CAN appeal to those outside their minority. However, I don't think that it's fair to say that these minority voices HAS to appeal to the majority to be validated; if we are to say that, then we should equally say that those in the canon that represent the majority should appeal to all minorities, and they don't. However, I think it's a very positive thing that minorities have brought these issues to light. Hopefully, we can get to a point where everyone within the majority will be sympathetic to the experiences, views, and voices of others who don't speak for them.


Your first response is the point that I was arguing... Who are you replying to, max?

[maxphisher]

St. Lukes, I think there is a huge misconception that the goal is to insert material into the canon. For the most part, that is simply not true. Logical critics aren't arguing that we need to place "minority" literature into the canon; for the most part, the argument is centered around the reasons that the Western canon has existed they way it has thus far. Arguments that focus on separate geographical canons (ie. China has always had its own canon. Middle Eastern literature has always historically canonized its own literature. etc.) are only further problematized when we consider the fact that for centuries, many of these areas were under control of Western powers. There are huge gaps in autonomous "foreign" histories that are defined by Western control, and many of the critical fields that some are complaining about argue that this clouds the idea of China as simply "China," Africa as "Africa," etc. So many of these regions ceased to be autonomous geographic regions with individual nationalist identities when they were taken over by Western powers. This not only created a rupture in these identities, but it built a foundation for Western inclusion. Foreign "nations" became part of the Western world when they were forced into it; however, they remained excluded through social hierarchies.

That said, so much of post-Marxist critical theory focuses more so on awareness of foreign literature in the Western world and a move towards a true World Literature. I can remember just 8 - 10 years ago when there were three options taught in American public schools: American Literature, British Literature, and World Literature (ie. everything else). The current trend is to reverse those classifications and neutralize the first two to a certain degree. This is not being accomplished by forcing works into the canon but by questioning the myopic view of the canon and attempting to introduce other literature into consideration. Unfortunately, this complicates the concept of a canon because historically, in the Western world, we tend to view things in a very isolationist fashion. There is "us," and then there are "them." You might immediately think of Said's "Other" because that is the type of concept that contemporary theory tries to overcome. Awareness seems to be what everyone in this thread agrees upon, yet the hangup apparently lies in the question of deconstructing the systems of power that have established the previous lack of awareness.

Sorry, it just occurred to me that I didn't quote because it would make the post too long. I was replying to Hal's reply to my original question.

[MorpheusSandman]

Come on, Morpheus... this is just one tired and rather dated holier than thou politically correct rant.And this is just a tired and rather dated attempt to dismiss the validity of such rants.


No... that's not a trivial point, but rather one that simply seems to elude you. As JBI suggested the push for inclusion of more minority writers in "the canon" is just as biased as the "old school" Western Canon itself... rooted in academics (predominantly American) pushing for the inclusion of their own little clique... while ignoring the rest of the world:The question is not one of bias, as everyone is biased due to the inescapability of subjectivity, but rather the attempts at validation/invalidation of perspectives, of subjective experiences, that do or don't conform to those of the majority and ruling classes. Criticizing minorities for promoting their own "little clique" is as offensively ignorant as accusing any civil rights activist for not focusing on every single civil rights issue. If someone is "ranting" about marriage equality for gays, that they are biased because they're gay, that they are ignoring other important social issues, is not a reason to dismiss them.

No one can take up the cause of every minority, of every social issue, but everyone can certainly learn that our aesthetic preferences, just like our legal and moral institutions, are always based on things that are not universal and objective; and that, very frequently, these assumptions end up silencing and hurting minorities solely to maintain the status quo that benefits those in power.


In other words... it is more important that we open up the canon... the Western Canon or the American Canon... to African American, Native American, Jewish American, Female American, Gay Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc... and that will make us more enlightened... that is morally/ethically superior to opening up the canon to the brilliant writers from Persia, Japan, China, South America, etc...?"Important" in what sense? I think it's more important in that opening up the canon to other writers within our own culture may very well affect how we see, think, and feel about our own social structures and their affects on minorities within our culture. Could worldwide literature do that? Perhaps to some extent, but it's not like if we read a Japanese writer writing about the gender issues within modern Japan we can do anything to affect social/political policy in Japan. On the other hand, expose a young, white, straight American male to the literature of an old, black, gay, American female and perhaps that encounter makes that male more open and accepting to people and experiences outside his own.


Honestly, what idiot doesn't know that every culture promotes its own? The notion that the dominant powers of Western or American culture haven't done enough to promote "other voices" suggests that other cultures have done a better job of this and assumes that it is somehow the responsibility of one culture to promote the achievements of others. Is this a realistic expectation at all?I think most within the majority don't recognize their own culture promoting itself, reinforcing its various sexist, racist, etc. assumptions, when they see it. Too many accept it as "the norm," as the way things are supposed to be. Should not art strive towards shaking people out of such complacency so that they become aware of such underlying structures? I think even the best "dead white male" literature does this in other ways. Artists have often been defined by their talents in "seeing behind the veils" of reality, society, culture, of revealing and noticing things that most people are oblivious to. Shakespeare and Chaucer were phenomenal at this.

Everything after your first question strikes me as similar to the "civil rights movements have done enough, and we've done it better than everyone else!" Nobody is denying that these forces have been incredibly influential, have changed our society and culture in demonstrably and dramatically better ways; but to say that it's "done better" than (even all) others, or that it's "done enough," seems like a congratulatory and dismissive pat on the back that is equally looking to close its eyes to the problems that still exist. Do I think it's a "realistic" expectation that they should? No; it very much goes against our biological programming. Yet, if it's not a "realistic" expectation it is an ennobling idealistic one.

It's things like this that make me appreciate the late films of Stanley Kubrick, and I don't think he could've found a more appropriate title to a film depicting this socio-cultural ignorance than "Eyes Wide Shut."

[TheFifthElement]

Are women a 'minority' now? Must have missed that, somehow. Obviously the white male 'canon' is completely representative of the tiny proportion of literate females that exist in white western society.

Of course historically women were denied literacy but from 20th century, what's the excuse?

And what defines a 'minority'? Is an African American who has only ever lived in America any less 'American' than an Italian American or Irish American? What about a British person of Pakistani or Indian origin, several generations British? Isn't promoting their work still 'promoting their own' in national terms. What's not 'American' about an American born white homosexual? Accepting the cultural value of their work surely is still a society 'promoting their own' unless, of course, what's being said that those types of people don't represent the 'cultural values' of that society in which case surely you're back to Mal4mac & Morpheus's point that there's a cultural hegemony which is at play, which brings it back to the white male dominance creating a non-objective definition of 'excellence' which is based on a mono-focused and rightfully challenged bias.

[Delta40]

Do you think the canon is telling writers they must conform in certain ways otherwise they will have no chance of entry?

[stlukesguild]

The equivalent in art is not between all artists playing the same game by which various "skills" can be assessed based on the rules/objectives of that game; but rather between some artists playing one game with one set of rules, and others playing other games with other sets of rules.

But this can be true of artists within a single culture or tradition over the course of history... or even at the same time. To use my profession as an example, Giotto, Rembrandt, and Matisse were not all "playing" by the same rules... nor can they be measured/judged by the same set of criteria/standards. The same is true of two very different contemporaries... for example, Mark Rothko and Andrew Wyeth.

The problem, then, is that you have certain conservatives insisting that not only is their game the ONLY game, but their game's rules are somehow universal, objective, and that all other games are invalid. What's more, these people are in the majority and are often exerting great, even overwhelming, influence on what games everyone can play by establishing their rules within the institutions where games are learned.

OK... that may be deemed problematic... but how often are not only the academics as well as the subsequent generations of artists an art lovers (because the "canon" is not something defined wholly by your academics and professors) stuck within this conservative mindset

So the struggle of minority writers is not really to dismantle the dominant game that exists, but rather to be allowed to validate their own games, to draw audiences and athletes to their game, and to point out to audiences why the dominant rules of the dominant game are NOT some objective, absolute thing that has to be as it is, but was rather formed arbitrarily, influenced by various forces that are very different than the things that influenced their games' rules.

Again... when is this not the reality? Didn't the early American writers have to struggle to establish themselves... to gain recognition within the larger "Western Canon"? Rather than engage in this game of bemoaning a hypothetical closing of the Western/American Canon to Western/Minority voices, why not put forth actual names of the minority voices you believe are every bit as deserving as the names of non-minority writers who have entered into the contemporary canon (a rather absurd idea in itself) but have been unfairly ignored.

Listen, JBI, I can appreciate what you say about the multi-culturalness of the Western canon, but you have to realize that much of that is the result of the efforts made by those cultures to fight for validity and the right to have their own voice. Nobody is wanting us to find African American authors from the times of slavery, nobody is wanting us to find tons of great female authors from the times before women were allowed public education; I think very few are even wanting to eject most of the "dead white males," or create a canon where the ratio of inclusion is equal to how many sub-cultures there are (ie, one female for every male, one black for every white, etc.); all I see is that minorities are wanting the canon to validate by inclusion the voices they say represent them.

Again, who are the deserving minorities that you feel have been locked out of the "canon"? Looking at my own book shelves have have more than a few writers who qualify as "minorities": female, homosexual, racial or ethnic minorities to the dominant culture in which they worked, etc... as well a a vast collection of works by non-Anglo-American writers. Quite honestly, I don't see the goals of the arts as being an attempt at social engineering. I read for pleasure.

As for the latter, I think a great many, if not most, straight white males are fine with that inclusion. As I said in an earlier post, I don't think most of us care that certain canonized authors are there in large part because of these socio-cultural movements, which shows that such minorities CAN appeal to those outside their minority. However, I don't think that it's fair to say that these minority voices HAS to appeal to the majority to be validated; if we are to say that, then we should equally say that those in the canon that represent the majority should appeal to all minorities, and they don't. However, I think it's a very positive thing that minorities have brought these issues to light. Hopefully, we can get to a point where everyone within the majority will be sympathetic to the experiences, views, and voices of others who don't speak for them.

One would hope that those who love reading... and the arts... are already open to or sympathetic to other voices while recognizing that not all art is for everyone. I'm still not overly fond of James Joyce, but I don't feel the need to question his canonical status. At the same time, there are works of art that I can appreciate without needing to assume that they deserve some place in the canon of "great art".

[stlukesguild]

I can remember... when there were three options taught in American public schools: American Literature, British Literature, and World Literature (ie. everything else). The current trend is to reverse those classifications and neutralize the first two to a certain degree. This is not being accomplished by forcing works into the canon but by questioning the myopic view of the canon and attempting to introduce other literature into consideration. Unfortunately, this complicates the concept of a canon because historically, in the Western world, we tend to view things in a very isolationist fashion. There is "us," and then there are "them."

You seem to suggest that this "myopic" or "isolationist" view is unique to America and Britian and the "West". JBI has argued that all literary cultures or traditions are and have been rather closed off to outside influences... and that America, Britain, and Western Europe are probably far more open to a multicultural view of the arts than most other cultures. Certainly, we as a culture could do more to promoted a multicultural view of the arts... but quite honestly, my book shelves are stocked with far fewer books by British and American writers than by writers of other cultures/nationalities. I question just how readers in India, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, japan, China, much of Africa or South America might be to the voices of "others". I also question whether or not we should even be the least bit surprised that every nation/culture promotes its own achievements far more than those of others. Is it the responsibility of British/American writers/academics to translate the literatures of other cultures?

[Ecurb]

One would hope that those who love reading... and the arts... are already open to or sympathetic to other voices while recognizing that not all art is for everyone. I'm still not overly fond of James Joyce, but I don't feel the need to question his canonical status. At the same time, there are works of art that I can appreciate without needing to assume that they deserve some place in the canon of "great art".

I hope that I’m not “overly” fond of anyone -- writer, artist, autocrat or friend. I (for one) aspire to the correct level of fondness. I also think we should agree not to “need” to question anyone’s canonical status, or “need” to assume that they (he? she?) deserve some place in the canon of great art. Such neediness seems one step removed from psychopathy, as if the needy individual were likely to rend his garments or tear out his hair if the canon isn’t altered to suit his whims. Question canonical inclusion or exclusion as you will – but, please, don’t “need” to ask those questions.

[JBI]

Oh come on. nobody reads those mediocre female authors they dug up for the Norton. Lets be honest - everybody skips them, as they should since they are boring. Generally from the romantic era you will find those female poets were actually well received in their own time, but fell to obscurity with time, as their works just didn't quite do it for most people. Now if we dig them up for the sake of their gender. we are merely playing the stupid game of judging the author not the work, which is in of itself a bias.

Now, the US is pretty much the most screwed up country when it comes to canonical works, but lets be honest. The canon as a group of texts does not start at 1800, but rather around 1000 BCE. so for almost 3000 years, we generally had only "western" voices (many women their too), yet as soon as African American literacy took off in the states, you seem to have had campaigns to encourage inclusion. Lets be real, before 1850 there was nothing noteworthy of American literature, by the standards of the canon, let alone African American literature.

The texts people are pushing are near contemporary, which in and of themselves do not belong in a canon yet, as they have not been around long enough. Digging out some slave narratives from the past does not justify anything, as such material is historically relevant, but lacks aesthetic quality. If we measure art based on historical importance, then we would only be reading letters, and not poems.


Seriously, you give too much credit to academics of the American 70s. Even in the academy their influence is dying out (the major institutions are actually rebounding to an intense conservatism). There were no African Americans in the time of Chaucer, and it was rare to find a literate man in French, let alone English. Shakespeare's time? Well, women were not allowed on the stage, so it is logical that they would not be involved in the communities that led to the construction of Shakespeare. Shakespeare grew up on the stage, and hence was able to create his works - women could not, and therefore did not. We can historically cry about it, but lets be realistic, that doesn't change the fact, and revisionist literary history is a sad joke of an excuse, and has had little actual influence in the way we read. Japan, for instance, has a great deal of female writers, yet if you read them carefully you would note the intensely assigned gender roles in their society, the intensely gendered language they use, and the intense misogyny inherent in many later author's works. That doesn't change the fact that their canon has a great traditional female presence, and that they have had several female emperors, yet it does illustrate the point that inclusion of females in a canon serves no political purpose, and cannot be said to either elevate women's social standing, nor demonstrate a feminist train of thought. The text themselves, ultimately, must be read, and then people will find that rather than these feminist manifestos they are looking at, most female writers merely knockoff their more successful, more educated male contemporaries.

As I pointed out earlier, this is an incredibly American fixation, as the US has a large minority problem. Yet even so, there are quite a few African Americans who were absorbed into the canon without question based purely on their literary output. IT is insulting to those artists to group them in the African American leagues of literature, and compartmentalize their work as an alternative, and non-mainstream, which is the effect of emphasizing their "blackness" in writing. The same may be said for women's writing.

If you want to look for a threat to readers interest, you will note that for the majority of readers, the biggest threat are these no name boring minority authors that nobody ever enjoyed reading. You add a dozen female voices to the Romantic canon, but in the end in verse it comes down to 6, regardless of how you wish to approach it. The rest are either minor poets, or distraction from the more serious work of the male contemporaries. Call it sexist or whatever, but it is a reality.

IF you wish to prove me wrong, I urge you to try to read exclusively female authors from the Elizabethan times. You will find yourself quickly bored, and put off reading.


Seriously, the canon originally meant classical works (Hebrew, Latin and by a stretch, Greek) - English literature as a field of study is a new phenomenon, and American literature even newer. IF we want to talk of Canon, the earliest we can really talk with semi-authority is pre-world-war-2, as everything else is still up in the air from there. Generally, when you seriously read literature, you focus on English as a whole, which means you devote your time mainly to historical periods without racial minorities (Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Shakespeare, Milton, 18th century English, then Romantic England, Victorian England, and finally American literature, then Modernism). you cannot talk of a canon past that period, as the canon implies there being a sort of cult around those books. The idea of "changing" the canon goes against the definition of canon. The works are "Canonized" by the tradition that deems them worthy. You can go into an archive and dig out a book by a female author from the 17th century, but the canon ultimately did not deem her worthy enough for inclusion.

Now, if you want to argue contemporary readers should look for mixed race authors from the past 50 years, I would not hesitate to point out that the logic of that argument ignores the realization that one can drown in the sea of international literature available in translation these days. If you want to be culturally inclusive why stop at African Americans? Why not read African literature, or Lithuanian literature, or any other such stuff you've probably never heard of. To suggest that somehow African American literature is "canonworthy" when an international author is not is the same bias you are playing against.


Seriously, this dated theory comes out of the Cold War, and hasn't really been accepted in the academy for about 10 years. Put it back in the trash can, as it does more harm than good. There is no need to feel a white guilt because you read Shakespeare. I am Jewish and Shakespeare would appear to have been antisemitic, yet I still enjoy his works, as I do Wagner. If you asked me to read his contemporary Jewish poet of the 17th century I would probably throw a fit - it just wouldn't work.

[JCamilo]

Do you think the canon is telling writers they must conform in certain ways otherwise they will have no chance of entry?

The Canon has no power whatsoever. It does not even exist for real, has no center, no rules, does not belong to anyone to define anything or be closed or open or even we can control what is in there. It is more a form that we perceive several cultural movements in different cultures and societies, that form a list. The arabic canon is a consequence, the western canon a consequence, etc.

African literature is getting on western canon? It nothing but the result of the increasing interest of western countries on african culture. The bubble bursts, things happen and now african literature is part of western (and why not it would be). That it entered by the Achebe flag is no different from Latin American being discovered by "Magic realism", which made they see the literature here just from weirdness aspects. (And who said Borges is not white? :D).

The canon is so irrelevant. If there is a culture with academic obssession on it and to protect it, then it is a culture in intellectual decadency.

[Pierre Menard]

The analogy often made between sports and art--one which I've never heard made except by aesthetic conservatives, FWIW--is abysmal when used in this context. The relevant comparisons between sports and art often highlight the opposite of what those like you intend for it to highlight.

Firstly, the rules of sports (and games) are inherently arbitrary. To use my profession as an example, there's no objective reason why an Ace is higher than a King, or why it can serve as either the highest or lowest card in the deck. Yet, it's equally obvious that these rules allow the game to be played to begin with, so they are "necessary" for that purpose. The equivalent in art is not between all artists playing the same game by which various "skills" can be assessed based on the rules/objectives of that game; but rather between some artists playing one game with one set of rules, and others playing other games with other sets of rules.

The problem, then, is that you have certain conservatives insisting that not only is their game the ONLY game, but their game's rules are somehow universal, objective, and that all other games are invalid. What's more, these people are in the majority and are often exerting great, even overwhelming, influence on what games everyone can play by establishing their rules within the institutions where games are learned.

So the struggle of minority writers is not really to dismantle the dominant game that exists, but rather to be allowed to validate their own games, to draw audiences and athletes to their game, and to point out to audiences why the dominant rules of the dominant game are NOT some objective, absolute thing that has to be as it is, but was rather formed arbitrarily, influenced by various forces that are very different than the things that influenced their games' rules.

But there isn't one 'game' that is being put forth as the correct one. What would it be? I mean, Modernism is vastly different to Romanticism, which is different to Victorian literature, which is different to Renaissance literature, which is different to so on. Italian literature is different to English literature (especially in regards to poetry) which is different to French literature. What game is it that we're trying to claim exactly? And what does it entail? What rules and games of other minority voices are vying for attention and notice? What do those games entail, outside of the fact that they are 'voices' of that minority? What artistry do they use that can be appreciated? Ultimately this was the original point…not that we are resistant to outside forms or voices, but resistant to the idea of including authors that may just not be very good. Now yes, you say there may be other criteria which isn't the classic European and that's great…i just want to know what it is exactly? Is there an African-American (I think it's kinda weird to try to separate this as a different form of literature, anyway ) form of poetry that I'm unaware of that captures the circular movement of a Villanelle as well as the Villanelle does? Or is there a different type of 'game' that captures the more conversational nature of a Sestina, as well as a Sestina? I mean, we are pretty much just echoing the argument between Rita Dove and one of your favourite poetry critics, Helen Vendler. Dove produced an anthology of poetry a few years back that designed itself around being more inclusive of outside voices; Vendler took issue with the anthology because she believed that a large number of the poems simply weren't that good and used a couple of examples to show why. Surely there is something more worthwhile aesthetically to these minority voices then simply the fact that they are 'representative' of said minority voice. Outside of that fact, what is it that we're missing aesthetically? What game is so different to the classic tradition that we need or should try to learn about? I would love to, if there was. If there was some literary tradition that can open me up to a new world of aesthetics that is as effective as the aesthetics we judge other authors by, then sign me up.

On a side-note…I've always found it utterly strange this idea that, because I'm a white male, I automatically must sympathise and empathise with the experiences of the other white-male's in the canon or that they speak for my experiences. It's a bit absurd isn't it? My experiences are so vastly different to that of White European living in 14th century Italy, and their experiences are vastly different to an American man living in post-WW2 America, and their experiences are so different to that of Goethe, whose experience is hugely different to that of Chaucer and so on so forth. Yes, I expect that the response will be that the link here is that the white-males were still the dominant culture…but human experience is so much more deep and varied than that. Trying to simplify it in such a way seems shallow.

[stlukesguild]

The question is not one of bias, as everyone is biased due to the inescapability of subjectivity, but rather the attempts at validation/invalidation of perspectives, of subjective experiences, that do or don't conform to those of the majority and ruling classes.

Again, you are virtually following the party line of the old "culture of complaint". Obviously every those in control in every culture/nationality push forth or promote that which they feel speaks well of their culture. What I am saying... and what JBI has suggested to a good extent... is that Western/Anglo-American culture has put forth a fair effort to explore and appreciate the achievements of others... especially over the last 50-75 years.

Criticizing minorities for promoting their own "little clique" is as offensively ignorant as accusing any civil rights activist for not focusing on every single civil rights issue. If someone is "ranting" about marriage equality for gays, that they are biased because they're gay, that they are ignoring other important social issues, is not a reason to dismiss them.

Little "cliques" or the Balkanization of the arts is what we get when we push an agenda based upon some vague notion that other voices (who? be specific?) are being shut out of the dialog.

No one can take up the cause of every minority, of every social issue, but everyone can certainly learn that our aesthetic preferences, just like our legal and moral institutions, are always based on things that are not universal and objective; and that, very frequently, these assumptions end up silencing and hurting minorities solely to maintain the status quo that benefits those in power.

And do you honestly believe that simply opening up the "canon" somehow rectifies issues of racism, sexism, etc...? How has that played out? The African-American contribution to American music is huge... and almost anyone would acknowledge this. Has that resulted in lessening racism and poverty among the African-American community? I'd like to believe that Art has the power to promote a greater empathy and understanding among people... but I suspect that you are giving Art too much credit.

"Important" in what sense? I think it's more important in that opening up the canon to other writers within our own culture may very well affect how we see, think, and feel about our own social structures and their affects on minorities within our culture.

But is that true? Is the Asian-American community more "important" than Asia itself? Is the Arab and Islamic-American community of more importance to the nation than our relations with the Middle-East/Islamic world?

Could worldwide literature do that? Perhaps to some extent, but it's not like if we read a Japanese writer writing about the gender issues within modern Japan we can do anything to affect social/political policy in Japan. On the other hand, expose a young, white, straight American male to the literature of an old, black, gay, American female and perhaps that encounter makes that male more open and accepting to people and experiences outside his own.

I'm sorry, but I almost spit out my coffee laughing at such nonsense. Perhaps such a belief might be expected from a 16-year old... but really! You do indeed give Art far too much credit. Our white suburban kids might go about listening to hip-hop and dressing in hip-hop fashion... but has this resulted in an erasure of racism? Has it led to an end to an inordinate poverty rate in the African-American/Hispanic/Native-American communities? Has it decreased the high percentage of African-Americans incarcerated in the US?

As for Gay writers... Verlaine, Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Oscar Wilde, Sir Francis Bacon, Catullus, Walter Pater, Constantine P. Cavafy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca, Michelangelo, Allen Ginsberg, Yukio Mishima, Virginia Woolf, Proust, Tennessee Williams, etc... None of these have been afforded their proper due?

I think most within the majority don't recognize their own culture promoting itself, reinforcing its various sexist, racist, etc. assumptions, when they see it. Too many accept it as "the norm," as the way things are supposed to be. Should not art strive towards shaking people out of such complacency so that they become aware of such underlying structures?

I bristle at any suggestion as to what the role of art "should" be... especially at the notion that art "should" promote a certain political/social view. This assumes that artists are somehow more enlightened than the rest of the populace... and that they all follow the same party line. Art "should" support the powers that be and the dominant institutions just as much as it "should" fight against these. For every artist of genius that you name who fought against this or that aspect of the dominant powers, there were just as many who were every bit supportive of these same institutions.

[JCamilo]

Pierre, being white is just one of variables found in the canon. It is perfectly normal for you to sympathize with white culture, specially if you can have such group. But the thing is you are white, gay, commie, drugged, atheist? Plus, the problem is that the background of the writer may have no say on his canonization. Take Stlukes Gay list: how many of those authors actually have a "gay" literature and not a literature aimed to the public that he aimed.

[Sir Thomas Urqu]

I'm sorry, but I almost spit out my coffee laughing at such nonsense. Perhaps such a belief might be expected from a 16-year old... but really! You do indeed give Art far too much credit. Our white suburban kids might go about listening to hip-hop and dressing in hip-hop fashion... but has this resulted in an erasure of racism? Has it led to an end to an inordinate poverty rate in the African-American/Hispanic/Native-American communities? Has it decreased the high percentage of African-Americans incarcerated in the US?

I'm sorry, I've been lurking for awhile and I'm relatively new—this is actually my first post; but out of all the fallacious things having been said in on this forum, this is one that contains such a blatant lack of veracity, I couldn't help but respond. I have my own opinion on the subject of politicizing art, and it's individual from every opinion in this thread.

However, your assertion that exposure to other cultures isn't capable of lowering racial views and racial barriers (you actually fallaciously decided to relate this all to the poverty statistics—which have declined since the civil rights movement which allowed close relations between races) is inaccurate. One would think it would be common sense that exposure to another culture's views makes them less likely to misunderstand eachother; therefore, creating respect. "It's easy for an Englishman to call and Indian a savage when they've never actually bothered to speak to them." That's really all I can say...I can't believe you actually tried to make this point? You must of known it was fallacious.:confused:

[MorpheusSandman]

But this can be true of artists within a single culture or tradition over the course of history... or even at the same time.I did mention that in one post where I said that, in those cases, the different "games" are largely matters of formalistic preferences, but are still, in general, presenting works via the same (in one respect, at least) perspective.

Let's use romanticism as an example. Wordsworth and Byron were almost diametrically opposed in their temperaments, their poetics, their philosophies, their modes, etc. Byron, especially, did more than any romantic to maintain the satiric tradition of Pope, and spent much energy satirizing the lake poets. Wordsworth, of course, pioneered the philosophical, conversation poem, where an encounter with nature awoke in him various ideas. These are two very different authors in terms of most everything, except for the fact that they were quite incapable of writing from the perspective of others quite outside their social stations, of "giving voices to the voiceless" in the now cliched phrase. Both Byron and Wordsworth were still privileged in the sense that they weren't oppressed, silenced, or made to feel different, alien, and "other" by voicing their own experiences.

So, yes, while we can't judge Byron and Wordsworth by the exact same standards, it's still much easier for the majority to accept both because both are still presenting views/experiences that are not completely alien to that majority. Byron may have written about the "exotic," but he did so as an outsider just as his audience would've been; Wordsworth may have written about the "personal," but he did so in ways that universalized themes relevant to that majority. Neither Wordsworth or Byron could've written the novels of Jane Austen, and Jane Austen probably would've have the reputation she does without the escalating influence of feminism, as Austen was satirizing the same patriarchal social structure that feminists were railing against.


OK... that may be deemed problematic... but how often are not only the academics as well as the subsequent generations of artists an art lovers (because the "canon" is not something defined wholly by your academics and professors) stuck within this conservative mindsetI think they're stuck with that mindset until, well, they change their minds, usually by having enough people shout that their minds need changing.


Again... when is this not the reality? Didn't the early American writers have to struggle to establish themselves... to gain recognition within the larger "Western Canon"?Absolutely! As I said earlier, one of the first thing every emerging culture does is seek out representative "voices," and those cultures can be everything from new nations to new philosophies to new politics to recently literate minorities. Using America as an example, though, you had authors like Whitman that faced great opposition in his usage of free verse. That free verse was embraced by a culture who was looking for a new means to identify with their new nation. Now, I'm not sure of the history of Whitman's reputation in Europe, but let's assume that Europe never did embrace free verse; would this necessarily invalidate Whitman because so many were insisting on their traditional ideals of poetics? What's more, are such objections really more valid than having a culture (national, minority, or otherwise) say "this voice represents us in our experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc."?


Rather than engage in this game of bemoaning a hypothetical closing of the Western/American Canon to Western/Minority voices, why not put forth actual names of the minority voices you believe are every bit as deserving as the names of non-minority writers who have entered into the contemporary canon (a rather absurd idea in itself) but have been unfairly ignored.Being a heterosexual white male myself with perhaps predictable heterosexual white male aesthetic tastes, I don't feel that's really my place to speak for these minorities. What's more, in all honesty, I don't read them all that much. Perhaps that sounds hypocritical, but unlike JBI I will not say that "I/nobody reads such authors because they suck/are inferior," rather I would recognize the nature behind my own preferences and how they have been formed by my own social experience. I love, say, Wallace Stevens as he speaks to my interest in philosophy (especially the Stevensian concern of art and perception VS reality) and love for linguistic complexity and playfulness. Yet, if I ask myself why I love these things, it's probably because I have never been subjected to racism or sexism. If I've been an outsider it was because of my intellect (geekiness) rather than my social positioning.

So even if I, like everyone, look for authors that represent my experience, I do not take my standards created by my preferences based on my experiences as anything universal, as a means to dismiss authors who others say speak for them. What's more, as someone who is not ignorant about these issues, I don't feel I need to read those authors to have my "eyes opened" to these other perspectives. My fighting for why they deserve legitimizing is enough.


Quite honestly, I don't see the goals of the arts as being an attempt at social engineering. I read for pleasure.Yes, but you can afford to read for pleasure because you are spoiled for having your choice of authors who can speak to your experiences and perspective. Maybe not the most personal ones, but those that are rather common for your social positioning. Imagine yourself as a minority who has been denied such voices for so long, or, at least, have not been given nearly as broad, diverse, and detailed a voice. Reading (and art) tends to become a pastime, a pleasure, when one is quite comfortable within their society, so it acts as a kind of bourgeoise escapism. Yet art can (and has, historically) been used for much more vital purposes.

Imagine being a black man who's just been stopped by the cops for no reason, harassed, perhaps even arrested, molested, humiliated, or assaulted. Sure, you could try to file charges, to go through the system, but racism is still systemic, even if it is not as overt as it once was. Now, as this person, who has been violated for no reason beyond the color of your skin, who has no means to get justice, you turn to poetry, to literature, to express yourself. This expression gains the support of a great many people who empathize, and start stating that "yes, this represents our own experiences, thoughts, feelings, frustrations.." but then you are rejected because you aren't conforming to whatever the dominant aesthetic is at the time, or because you aren't expressing things that the majority sympathize/empathize with.

There is nothing "fair" about such a situation; and while civil rights have helped to alleviate these problems somewhat, they have not "solved" them, no more than feminism or post-colonialism have solved these social problems. Until these problems are solved, literature and the arts will continued to be used by people who are seeking to do more than entertain, to impress us with their linguistic wizardry and complex philosophical thoughts and density. Once more, I'm not even suggesting that the latter (linguistic wordplay and...) should be denigrated, excised from the canon, devalued, etc., merely that we should not judge those other works via those standards.


One would hope that those who love reading... and the arts... are already open to or sympathetic to other voices while recognizing that not all art is for everyone. One WOULD hope that, but I don't think that's the way it is. Afterall, can you name any black authors writing about racism, or minorities writing about post-colonialism, that you think are as great as, say Dante or Blake? I'm fairly sure you'll say no, but why is this? In the end, can you not boil it down to the fact that the qualities in Blake or Dante appeal to your more, and that this appeal relies, in large part, to your own social positioning and what that means both in terms of the experiences you've had and haven't had?

[JCamilo]

I'm sorry, I've been lurking for awhile and I'm relatively new—this is actually my first post; but out of all the fallacious things having been said in on this forum, this is one that contains such a blatant lack of veracity, I couldn't help but respond. I have my own opinion on the subject of politicizing art, and it's individual from every opinion in this thread.

However, your assertion that exposure to other cultures isn't capable of lowering racial views and racial barriers (you actually fallaciously decided to relate this all to the poverty statistics—which have declined since the civil rights movement which allowed close relations between races) is inaccurate. One would think it would be common sense that exposure to another culture's views makes them less likely to misunderstand eachother; therefore, creating respect. "It's easy for an Englishman to call and Indian a savage when they've never actually bothered to speak to them." That's really all I can say...I can't believe you actually tried to make this point? You must of known it was fallacious.:confused:

Yes, hence, when europe absorved jewish culture thru the biblical texts, this ended with the antisemitism.

I think you are confuding Stlukes point, that is just the exposition or consumism of a cultural product will not erase bias and prejudice, but if you have a bigger progress, which includes cultural exchanges, you may have it. But not just reading a book from another culture, otherwise all anti-islamic feelings would have ended with 1001 nights.

[MorpheusSandman]

But there isn't one 'game' that is being put forth as the correct one. What would it be?See my above reply to Luke where I think I answer this question. I realize there are different "games" within the "dead white male" canon, but these games can still be largely grouped together based on what they exclude. As I mentioned to Luke, no male could've written the novels of Jane Austen. It was very much because of her social positioning that she had the insight she did into her society, and there's a reason those insights have resonated so strongly with feminists, as they saw much of their own plight reflected in those novels. There are probably just as many examples available for other minority voices. To toss off a completely different example, I can't imagine a white male from a non-colonialized culture writing Walcott's Omeros.

Now, you may say that both Austen and Walcott have gained footing within the canon (Walcott less so only because of his being contemporary), and you're right, but what has to be pointed out is the various struggles that allowed for this. Feminism had (and still has in some places) severe opposition at its inception, and if you take away feminism and its fought-for hold in academia, does Austen become the canonical author that she has? I have my doubts.


Ultimately this was the original point…not that we are resistant to outside forms or voices, but resistant to the idea of including authors that may just not be very good.Again, this "not be(ing) very good" implies that there is a standard and criterion that is objective, universal, that isn't mediated by one's social positioning. The concern is that those in the majority, in the position of power, will dismiss minority voices because they "aren't good," where "not good" can be translated as "doesn't conform to our aesthetic standards and/or beliefs, interests, etc."

As I elucidated to Lukes, I don't feel it's my place to speak for minority aesthetics as I am not one, but nor do I feel the need to pass judgment on their aesthetics because they don't accord with mine, in large part because I'm aware of where my own come from.


I mean, we are pretty much just echoing the argument between Rita Dove and one of your favourite poetry critics, Helen Vendler.Yeah, I'm very aware of the dispute and I've gone back and forth on both sides. Honestly, I find it difficult to fault either. Dove had ever right to include those minority voices or, indeed, include any voices she felt were deserving; but Vendler's job was to critique the anthology and she was honest. I also think Vendler made some good points about how it's impossible for so many voices to ever survive in any canon. In a way, I think behind the dispute was one of the defining symptoms of Modernism and PostM, that of having so many jostling voices and no "center" by which to anchor anything. It's nice for Dove to include so many minority voices, but how valuable are they taken out of context, all jammed together and juxtaposed? In a way, that was the "psychological dilemma" of Modernism's fragmentation on display for all to see. We're less close to finding a "solution" now as ever; but, in the meantime, suggesting some voices aren't deserving doesn't seem like a good course.


Outside of that fact, what is it that we're missing aesthetically? What game is so different to the classic tradition that we need or should try to learn about? I would love to, if there was. If there was some literary tradition that can open me up to a new world of aesthetics that is as effective as the aesthetics we judge other authors by, then sign me up.Consider that even many of the "games" of the now-canonical authors were so radically different, aesthetically, that we're still learning about them: Dickinson, Whitman, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and, more recently, Ashbery. I don't think we've completely "learned" the games of any of these authors. Indeed, even the mighty Vendler seems ill-equipped to decipher Ashbery and much of Dickinson (though she's unraveled Stevens arguably better than any critic).

I don't believe that every minority voice will create a "game" as lasting as the above, but the above are proof that it can take a while (Blake is proof that it can take centuries). So, the simple answer is that "I don't know," and perhaps nobody knows yet; it's too soon. I think there's still too much bickering about whether such voices deserve hearing at all, and perhaps those fighting for them to be heard need that validation before they can get around to fully parsing what the rules of their games are.

FWIW, this is equally true of the great writers of our century that played the classic games. I've been reading a lot on James Merrill and read an especially enlightening essay today on Merrill's postmodernism, which is not a term you associate with an author working in traditional forms. Yet, the essay argued (convincingly, IMO), that numerous contextual elements allowed Merrill to transfigure the roles of such forms, to change the rules they were traditionally associated with. So it's not even a matter of having "brand new games," (authors like Yeats, Heaney, early Rich, et al. were also writing as oppressed voices but using elements from "old games") that deserve understanding.


On a side-note…I've always found it utterly strange this idea that, because I'm a white male, I automatically must sympathise and empathise with the experiences of the other white-male's in the canon or that they speak for my experiences... Yes, I expect that the response will be that the link here is that the white-males were still the dominant culture…but human experience is so much more deep and varied than that. Trying to simplify it in such a way seems shallow.I addressed this in my above post to Luke too, but, essentially, I don't disagree about the variety of experiences/perspectives within any culture, including the dominant ones. Using Byron and Wordsworth as examples, I showed how two extremely different temperaments were allowed to flourish at the same time; but, again, part of the privilege of being the dominant culture is allowing for the coexistent of such differences as they're not really questioning the structures that allowed for that dominance. Austen does that; Wordsworth and Byron, whatever their great differences, did not.

[MorpheusSandman]

Do you think the canon is telling writers they must conform in certain ways otherwise they will have no chance of entry?I think this formulation is a bit too simplistic. EG, Alexander Pope is part of the canon, but I defy any poet to get into the canon by writing nothing but heroic couplets. I do, however, think that, because the majority of the Western canon reflects variations on one perspective, a perspective that, like any, is limited in its range of experience, there can be the illusion of limitation of what perspectives are acceptable. Again, this has changed somewhat; I think most poetry anthologies would include, eg, Langston Hughes' Theme for English B, (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html) which eloquently expresses some of the very issues being discussed here. If anything, I think poems like that need inclusion in canons if only because they point towards new avenues opened for exploration. Writing about one's place in society as defined by race, sex, orientation, etc. is fairly new compared to, say, the philosophical landscape poem, or the pastoral poem, etc. They may very well inspire young, black poets to say that "yes, poetry can accommodate my perspective and experiences" and choose to deepen the roots of this new tradition with their own, even more personal/unique experiences.

[MorpheusSandman]

Are women a 'minority' now? Not in numbers, but, historically, they have been treated as second-class citizens as other minorities are. Minorities refer as much to representative voices in power than sheer numbers. EG, working classes often outnumber the rich, but the working class are often in the minority when it comes to representative voices with any political or cultural sway and influence.


Of course historically women were denied literacy but from 20th century, what's the excuse?The excuse for what?


Accepting the cultural value of their work surely is still a society 'promoting their own' unless, of course, what's being said that those types of people don't represent the 'cultural values' of that society in which case surely you're back to Mal4mac & Morpheus's point that there's a cultural hegemony which is at play, which brings it back to the white male dominance creating a non-objective definition of 'excellence' which is based on a mono-focused and rightfully challenged bias.FWIW, it's not necessarily about nationalism, but rather about every perspective being validated within a larger culture, like that of English literature. For too long English lit was defined almost exclusively by white males who were allowed this privilege because they were part of the group in power. Those not in power, the minorities, were denied voices in society and, when given voices, were frequently denied entrance into the canon because they weren't representing the perspectives of those in power. The vibe I get from JBI and Luke is one of "we gave them voices, we've even given a few of them canonical status, what more do you want?" which assumes that all perspectives within these minority culture have been adequately represented, or that we can continue to critique them based on the old rules of the old games, to go back to JBI's sports analogy.

[stlukesguild]

Being a heterosexual white male myself with perhaps predictable heterosexual white male aesthetic tastes, I don't feel that's really my place to speak for these minorities. What's more, in all honesty, I don't read them all that much. Perhaps that sounds hypocritical, but unlike JBI I will not say that "I/nobody reads such authors because they suck/are inferior..."

But then you are speaking wholly hypothetically. Without a knowledge of the hypothetical African American writers of great merit who have been denied their rightful place in the canon you cannot say whether they exist or not. I doubt anyone would be naive enough to suggest that all cultures/nationalities have produced an equal amount (based upon population) of artistic works of great merit in every form and genre. The Austro-Germans far surpass the whole rest of Europe in the realm of classical music. The Italians and French produced far more paintings of genius than the English, Russians, Poles, Spanish, Norwegians, and most of the rest of Europe and the US combined. You won't say that these "minor" female writers of the Elizabethan age suck, unlike JBI... because you haven't read their work and can't make such a judgment (although knowing JBI, he actually has read their works), but you are willing to suggest that there are all these writers who have been undeservedly excluded from the canon... in spite of not having bread them?

I love Wallace Stevens as he speaks to my interest in philosophy (especially the Stevensian concern of art and perception VS reality) and love for linguistic complexity and playfulness. Yet, if I ask myself why I love these things, it's probably because I have never been subjected to racism or sexism. If I've been an outsider it was because of my intellect (geekiness) rather than my social positioning.

Isn't this rather patronizing? You can enjoy wordplay and other "trifles" where an African American or Hispanic reader wouldn't as he or she would only be interested in literature confronting issues of racism, etc...?

So even if I, like everyone, look for authors that represent my experience... Yes, but you can afford to read for pleasure because you are spoiled for having your choice of authors who can speak to your experiences and perspective.

This seems a rather limited view of why one reads. Personally, I don't read in order to reinforce my own beliefs, values, standards, biases, or prejudices. I have read writers that I almost wholly disagree with (Plato). I have read any number of writers from cultures, nationalities, political/social views, classes etc... that are vastly removed from my own. Reading affords one the ability to live multiple lives. If reading has a moral/utilitarian "value" it most certainly might be that it allows the reader to entertain the thinking of individuals far removed from oneself... but to what extent that this plays out in real life, I am not at all that convinced.

Imagine being a black man who's just been stopped by the cops for no reason, harassed, perhaps even arrested, molested, humiliated, or assaulted. Sure, you could try to file charges, to go through the system, but racism is still systemic, even if it is not as overt as it once was. Now, as this person, who has been violated for no reason beyond the color of your skin, who has no means to get justice, you turn to poetry, to literature, to express yourself. This expression gains the support of a great many people who empathize, and start stating that "yes, this represents our own experiences, thoughts, feelings, frustrations.." but then you are rejected because you aren't conforming to whatever the dominant aesthetic is at the time, or because you aren't expressing things that the majority sympathize/empathize with.

Again, you are speaking wholly hypothetically. You are assuming that the primary motive of art is autobiographical and that the black writer would almost certainly need to write about the black experience in such a manner that no one else could possibly empathize or appreciate... yet somehow I can appreciate Jane Austen, Firdowsi, Ono No Komachi, Oscar Wilde, Wang Wei, etc... in spite of the fact that their experiences were most certainly far from my own.

One WOULD hope that, but I don't think that's the way it is. After all, can you name any black authors writing about racism, or minorities writing about post-colonialism, that you think are as great as, say Dante or Blake?

Are there any African-American writers as great as Dante or Blake? How many writers of any culture, nationality, or race might be said to rival Blake... let alone Dante? For how long have Black Americans been afforded the proper education... let alone the access to publication? Maybe 50 years? Maybe less? Can we really speak of any writer of any nationality, culture, language, or race as being "canonical" let alone rivaling Dante within this same time frame?

So even if I, like everyone, look for authors that represent my experience, I do not take my standards created by my preferences based on my experiences as anything universal, as a means to dismiss authors who others say speak for them. What's more, as someone who is not ignorant about these issues, I don't feel I need to read those authors to have my "eyes opened" to these other perspectives. My fighting for why they deserve legitimizing is enough.

Again, this entire argument comes off as holier-than-thou. You proudly champion the fact you are fighting for the legitimization of "other voices". And what does that achieve. Five days a week I get up and go to work teaching children from age 4-14 in the inner-city... students who are predominately poor and Black. I suspect that I have seen more of the issues confronting the poor African-American community than most... certainly far more than I might have gleaned from a university course on diversity and "other voices". But certainly carry on with your crusade in defense of those writers you haven't felt the need to read.

[MorpheusSandman]

What I am saying... and what JBI has suggested to a good extent... is that Western/Anglo-American culture has put forth a fair effort to explore and appreciate the achievements of others... especially over the last 50-75 years.And that's not a point that I've disagreed with, however, you both seem to be insisting that this "effort" is over with or that it hasn't, and still doesn't, face opposition. Again, it's identical to those people that thinks civil rights ended racism, or feminism ended sexism. It didn't. There's still more work to be done. The most obvious effects of the disease has been eliminated, but it's still dormant.


And do you honestly believe that simply opening up the "canon" somehow rectifies issues of racism, sexism, etc...? How has that played out? The African-American contribution to American music is huge... and almost anyone would acknowledge this. Has that resulted in lessening racism and poverty among the African-American community? I'd like to believe that Art has the power to promote a greater empathy and understanding among people... but I suspect that you are giving Art too much credit.Errr, well, you said yourself that the Western/Anglo-American culture has done a great deal to promote other voices in the last 50-75 years. Given that this is true, do you find it merely coincidental that the effects of racism, sexism, and homophobia have lessened dramatically in that time frame? Now, you may fairly argue about art's role and level of influence in this cultural shift, but there's no denying it's been an influence. Look at the popularity of shows like Will & Grace, which probably did a great deal to convince many conservatives that gays weren't these evil, Satanic creatures out to destroy all of their cherished traditions. However, even with that influence, there are still, undoubtedly, many conservatives that DO feel like that.

Obviously, opening the canon will not "rectify" these issues, but I think it can be one part that can potentially have a significant impact. While I may not believe in the "revolutionary" power of art ala William Blake, I equally disbelief Auden's "poetry makes nothing happen" (if, in fact, Auden believed that this maxim extended to all the arts). Art may can't fix society, but neither do I feel it's completely useless and only good for apolitical, hedonistic escapism.


But is that true? Is the Asian-American community more "important" than Asia itself? Is the Arab and Islamic-American community of more importance to the nation than our relations with the Middle-East/Islamic world?Again, importance in context. Obviously Asian-Americans aren't more important in the abstract than all of Asia itself; but given that other Americans can more easily affect the lives of Asian-American than the lives of Asians within Asia, it may be more important for Americans to be exposed to the experience of the Asian-American. A good, real world example of this would've been the abysmal treatment of Asian-Americans in America during WW2, a situation which is not dissimilar to Muslim-Americans today.


I'm sorry, but I almost spit out my coffee laughing at such nonsense. Perhaps such a belief might be expected from a 16-year old... but really! You do indeed give Art far too much credit.There are plenty of studies out there that show that kids who are exposed to other cultures are much less likely to hold racist views as adults. Though these studies were more about kids who grew up in multi-cultural neighborhoods as opposed to those who grew up in neighborhoods populated by others of their own culture, I have to believe that art could be an affective substitute. I could use examples from my own life where art has opened me up to other experiences and views, made me more sympathetic to those I'd never really thought about. Awareness is really the first step towards sympathy and acceptance.

Obviously, I'm not saying give every white, straight male a book expressing the views of a black, gay female and you'll end racism, homophobia, and sexism, but could you lessen it? Again, you using examples like white suburban kids embracing hip-hop to support your position seems ironic at a time when racism has demonstrably lessened than in the past when there was decidedly less cross-cultural acceptance of the artistic traditions.

Of your list of gay authors, how many wrote explicitly about their gay experiences and, of those that did, how many made it a major theme? Gay authors are different than authors writing about being gay, just as female authors are different than authors writing about being female. Austen wrote about being a female within her social confines; George Eliot, by contrast, was much broader in her subject matter. That fact doesn't make either inherently better than the other.


I bristle at any suggestion as to what the role of art "should" be... especially at the notion that art "should" promote a certain political/social view. I didn't mean to limit my implication to the political. Are you aware of the Russian Formalists who felt that all great literature had at its center what they called "defamiliarization" (IIRC)? I'm going off a somewhat vague memory of my reading their theories, but, from what I recall, it was concerned about how most great literature asked us to see reality in new ways, to consider things we haven't considered, even down to pondering the significances behind the most common, banal, everyday objects. This defamiliarization doesn't have to be political; Stevens is massively defamiliarizing, so were most of the modernists. However, I think these other voices can be assimilated into the idea of defamiliarization and its value, in asking us to question assumptions, to see behind the veils of our subjective experiences, to other realities happening. I think it would be difficult to name many artists who weren't defamiliarizing in some significant ways (though often what was so unfamiliar about them is lost in time and their eventual cultural assimilation).

[MorpheusSandman]

But then you are speaking wholly hypothetically. Without a knowledge of the hypothetical African American writers of great merit who have been denied their rightful place in the canon you cannot say whether they exist or not... You won't say that these "minor" female writers of the Elizabethan age suck, unlike JBI... because you haven't read their work and can't make such a judgment (although knowing JBI, he actually has read their works)...Listen, my concern is not the specifics of what minorities are or are not deserving of canonization, but rather of the underlying assumptions of "desert" and "greatness" concerning canonization. Look at the way you've phrased this: JBI can say these "minor" Elizabethan female writers suck because JBI's read them; so all that's needed is for a white, male, bibliophiliac to read such authors and then summarily announce that they suck? What/Who gave him the authority to do that? Upon what grounds is he making this pronouncements? What criterion are being assumed and applied? What makes you think that JBI is not just applying a standard which has, unconsciously, been influenced by the very social institutions that many minority voices are questioning? These are the questions that I'm trying to address, because if you don't address these issues first, the issue of who deserves canonization becomes little more than a "uh-huh -- nuh-uh" back and forth.


Isn't this rather patronizing? You can enjoy wordplay and other "trifles" where an African American or Hispanic reader wouldn't as he or she would only be interested in literature confronting issues of racism, etc...?I find it rather ironic that you could write this immediately after I posted a link to L. Hughes' "Theme for English B" where he says:

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that minorities can't like Stevens' philosophizing or wordplay, or that they would only be interested in issues of racism. However, I think it would be silly to deny that humans, in general, like to see issues they're concerned about depicted in art; and, to a large degree, the issues they're concerned with are influenced by their social positions.


This seems a rather limited view of why one reads. Personally, I don't read in order to reinforce my own beliefs, values, standards, biases, or prejudices... If reading has a moral/utilitarian "value" it most certainly might be that it allows the reader to entertain the thinking of individuals far removed from oneself... but to what extent that this plays out in real life, I am not at all that convinced.Again, I don't want you to mistakenly think I'm generalizing to the universal. Obviously there are many reasons for reading and probably very few read EXCLUSIVELY to see their own beliefs, values...etc. reinforced (that would limit one's reading indeed!). However, I do think it's easier not to read to reinforce one's beliefs when one is spoiled for literature that does reinforce those things, when you DO have representative voices. When you're a minority that doesn't have those representatives, or has them in fewer numbers, and who has to struggle to get those representatives heard when found, then perhaps it makes one more inclined to read for that reason.

I, like you, am open to reading just about anything, but I also realize that my absolute favorite literature (and art, in general) usually ends up being that in which I find some aspect of myself reflected. EG, do you not think your love for Blake and Dante might be that they did as much as any authors to ennoble poetry and the role of the poet itself? I, myself, find Blake's idealized views of the poet quite sympathetic, even somewhat intoxicating. As much as I love art I WANT to believe that Blake is right, even while the rational side of me says he probably isn't.

As for latter part of your post, I myself am unsure as to how significant art's role is in this socio-cultural process, but I do believe it has SOME level of influence, even if it may be impossible to gauge how much.


Again, you are speaking wholly hypothetically. You are assuming that the primary motive of art is autobiographical and that the black writer would almost certainly need to write about the black experience in such a manner that no one else could possibly empathize or appreciate... yet somehow I can appreciate Jane Austen, Firdowsi, Ono No Komachi, Oscar Wilde, Wang Wei, etc... in spite of the fact that their experiences were most certainly far from my own.Well, no, my example was neither assuming that autobiography is the primary motive of art (I've frequently written quite against that idea on the Poetry board), nor am I suggesting that nobody else could empathize with such a black experience. What I am suggesting is not that far-fetched, that such an experience and its method of expression could very well clash with the aesthetic standards of the time held by the majority and that this clash can result in the very conflict we're now taking part in.

I have no doubt that you (and most readers) sympathize, even love, various writers writing from very different perspectives, but this still isn't addressing the underlying issue of canon formation and power structures within the aesthetics of the culture. It's not even hypothetical that Austen's canonization was due, in large part, to feminism, which, again, faced and still faces opposition. Do you think you would love Austen as much if you were reading her in her own time, or would you not be doing then as now and upholding the aesthetic standards of the majority of the time and saying how Austen didn't conform to them, at least not enough to be deserving of canonization (again, I am aware that Austen has always had her admirers, but admirers and canonization are two very different thing)?


Are there any African-American writers as great as Dante or Blake?Well, there you are again using a word like "great" without even bothering to define the standards upon which you judge greatness, much less showing how this standard is universal and uninfluenced by the assumptions and norms of the dominant culture.


You proudly champion the fact you are fighting for the legitimization of "other voices". And what does that achieve. Five days a week I get up and go to work teaching children from age 4-14 in the inner-city... students who are predominately poor and Black. I suspect that I have seen more of the issues confronting the poor African-American community than most... certainly far more than I might have gleaned from a university course on diversity and "other voices". But certainly carry on with your crusade in defense of those writers you haven't felt the need to read.Well, this has turned a bit personal and a bit off-topic. What would really be "holier-than-thou" would be arguing over who has done more to help minorities as if it was a contest. I applaud you for dedicating your time to teaching impoverished minorities, as that's undeniably a noble endeavor. However, I do very much think that enlightening people to these issues is equally a noble endeavor. Again, go watch Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The lesson of that film (though I hate to say "lessons" as there isn't a more subtle and un-overtly-didactic filmmaker than Kubrick) is how evil exists and hides within the social systems we are unconsciously, unknowingly, blindly a part of (when I say "we" I'm not talking about "you" and "me" personally). Look up things like white privilege and rape culture. In large part, such things flourish because of ignorance, and it's that ignorance that, at the core, I'm fighting against. Canonization is merely one very small aspect of that; but this IS a literature board, after all.

To use a very different example of the latter, look at the immense economic inequality in the US and how that inequality between those at the very top and those even those of the vanishing middle-class has massively enlarged within the past 30-or-so years. This disparity is not by accident, it's not just some natural result of having a free-market, it's very much been engineered by those with money in power influencing policy that directly influenced, if not practically effected, that disparity. Yet... how many people do you think are aware of this? According to this video, (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQPKKQnijnsM) most people aren't even aware of the immensity of the disparity, much less what the cause is!

Given how common this "eyes wide shut" syndrome is with even the issue of wealth, I have to believe it's equally prevalent everywhere else, including aesthetics and canons.

[HSPS]

The assumption you're making is that there's something "wrong" or "right" with any aesthetic. Aesthetic are like morals in how relative and, ultimately, subjective they are. Aesthetics is not like science in which we build models that are tested against reality; aesthetics are the means by which we say that certain art appeals to us, and it's absolutely impossible that what appeals to us is uninfluenced by our places within society and culture. One person loves Joyce's wordplay; another hates it. How do you possibly declare with any universal authority which of these aesthetic positions is "right?"

Again, there is no inherent "artistic worth." "Nothing's good or bad, but thinking makes it so," to quote one very perceptive European white male.

I will not discuss the cultural issues pertaining to the Canon. I will say, however, that the idea that the value of art is absolutely subjective is a rickety one. Opinion works when deciding between two great poets like, say, Whitman and Tennyson (I'm devoted to Tennyson), but if you seriously argue that one of my in-class free verse poems that I wrote when I was 17 is better than "Lilacs" or In Memoriam because the value of art is purely a matter of opinion, you won't make many friends. At some point common sense must free any intelligent person from the haze of "fairness." (Yes, I know I sound a lot like Harold Bloom.) All humans deserve equal rights, but being considered, and treated as, a good artist is not, and never should be, a right.

[JBI]

Pierre, being white is just one of variables found in the canon. It is perfectly normal for you to sympathize with white culture, specially if you can have such group. But the thing is you are white, gay, commie, drugged, atheist? Plus, the problem is that the background of the writer may have no say on his canonization. Take Stlukes Gay list: how many of those authors actually have a "gay" literature and not a literature aimed to the public that he aimed.

I didn't know some of those were gay until reading that, I mean, Bacon, or do you mean the painter? Some wrote considerably "gay" aspects into their literature, yet as sexual historians have argued, you cannot even call Plato gay without realizing that homosexuality is as much a cultural construct as anything else. Surely Plato and his contemporaries would not have thought their sexual practices "gay" or "minority". Such discussions have been argued to death, and have no real bearing on most artist's work, whereas some artists use personal experience as understood through their gay experience, others may not.

[MorpheusSandman]

...the idea that the value of art is absolutely subjective is a rickety one. Opinion works when deciding between two great poets... but if you seriously argue that one of my in-class free verse poems that I wrote when I was 17 is better than "Lilacs" or In Memoriam... you won't make many friends. At some point common sense must free any intelligent person from the haze of "fairness."If the 20th century has taught us anything from every perspective possible (science, math, social studies) it's that "common sense" is not a trustworthy guide. Human intuitions have been proven too wrong, too fallible, too many times to keep relying on, especially in the wake of cognitive sciences, of learning how many biases our brains our afflicted with. If anything, it's the archaic notions of common sense that isn't just rickety, but is rotting like a bridge over a chasm. Again, this post of yours assumes some kind of inherent greatness in certain poets and poems, divorcing said greatness from being a product of how subjective minds relate to those poems/poets.

To assume that greatness is inherent in an object, literature or otherwise, is nothing but ET Jaynes' mind projection fallacy, (http://lesswrong.com/lw/oi/mind_projection_fallacy/) of assuming that "beauty" is an inherent part of the woman, rather than how a male subjective mind interprets the woman. What you can say is that an object has certain qualities; some of those qualities appeal to us and some don't; we label those qualities "good" or "bad," and later "great" in our minds; and, unconsciously or consciously, socially, communally, or individually, create standards out of them. Over time, our mind completely leaps over the latter processes and fools itself into thinking that this end-point, this subjective concept of "goodness" or "greatness" is inherent in the work itself, not as part of a neural process, (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nq/feel_the_meaning/) and, not just a neural process, but a neural process that is influenced in tremendous part by others within our society and culture.

As I said on another forum in another thread about the subjectivity of morality, it's very easy for a theist to argue objective morality when he picks samples that has complete, mass, subjective agreement amongst those he's talking to. It's easy to, eg, state that the Nazis were objectively evil, regardless of whether Nazis thought they were or not, when you're speaking to a society that almost universally feels the Nazis were evil. This is a perfect example of appealing to our human intuitions, of attempting to cover up, obscure, the subjective neural processes that has lead to this value/moral judgment. As uncomfortable as it makes people feel, "evil" can never be an inherent aspect of anyone, Nazi/Hitler or not, any more than "greatness" can never be an inherent aspect of any artist or work. We may convince ourselves that this is so, but this is pure delusion. It's probably a delusion that helps our brains function better, that helps strengthen us as a society (evolution cares less about our brains processing reality correctly than it does processing it in a way that's fast, scalable, and aids in survival and reproduction), but it is a delusion nonetheless.

A great many don't even know the process exists; some know it exists, but have little idea as to the mechanisms that lead to their (and others') conclusions; some knows it exists but uses the natural bias for others to obscure it to their advantage. Whatever the case, every time someone bandies about the term "great" or names of works/artists in the canon they should really have this complete process in the back of their mind. It's that process I've been questioning in this thread.

[cacian]

the issue here is the word 'canon'. let's take it out of literature because I do not think it is needed. what is needed a combination of many things/styles/differences/ variations. canon only stigmatise some work at the expense of others. it creates tension which is negative for international or national literature as a whole.

[JBI]

Morpheus, you are mistaking representation in literature and the function of literature. There are very few feelings that are not universal. The same way an African American can read the slave narrative and the exodus from the Bible and feel inspired, I very well could read a Chinese poem about loneliness and feel an affinity with the poet. To suggest a particular experience (racism + poverty + violence) can be used to represent a shared set of feelings unique to a specific race of people merely reinforces the same racism you are working against. You have marginalized by assuming that Alice Walker may speak to these people you have Christened "African Americans" and not something like William Shakespeare, or Homer. Who are you to make such a judgement call? Are you not merely reinforcing racism?

This isn't to say I agree with any such argument - ultimately the African American public will decide what it is they wish to read, and judging by the mass amount of literature, the majority of the authors we consider representative still have put the Bible as the core text, and have not shied away from using "white" sources. Tony Morrison herself said specifically she is highly indebted to Faulkner, Rita Dove herself is highly engaged in Western Poetics. You have those weird choices like Obama's Inaugural Poet (what's her name, Alexander or something?), yet even the audience at the time seemed to not receive her god awful poem well. Now go ahead and tell an American that they should praise that poem because their skin color is darker than a white guy, and you are merely being a bigot.

As for African American contributions to the arts - the range is vast, and quite apparent. I cannot think of a "white" American music trend, given that the majority of American music seems to be rooted in African American traditions. Gospel, R&B, Blues, Jazz, Swing, Rock, Rap, Funk, soul etc. all seem to be rooted in African American music, and all judged on their own merits, seem to be exemplary examples of art at its best, when done well. Are we to dismiss this musicians because they do not adhere to a political idea of a Black man? Of course not. Likewise, when I put Duke Ellington on, should I not do so because I am white, and therefore only can engage with European music? Of course not.

Now, that's just one form - take a look at almost every Central and Latin American country, and you will notice these minority countries all have distinct art of their own. Taking the English ones as an example - West Indian cuisine is both diverse and delicious, West Indian music has had a profound influence world wide, as has native culture. Clothing wise, the influence is also apparent, and we even have demonstrated clear influence on the arts as a whole. For me, coming from Canada, I can name a few novelists who I have enjoyed who come from such a background (West Indian, or Caribbean depending on your world of choice), and when I am at home I regularly frequent both cultural events and restaurants with menus influenced by these origins (at one point I was eating Jamaican Ox Tail twice a week). Music wise, who does not listen to works influenced from these places? Be it dancehall, ska, reggae or any other form. That of course is just one small Area, and look at how incorporated and pronounced its influence is on American and Canadian culture.

Now back to function, what should art actually do? Does it influence people? well of course, but when you try to put that down on paper it is very difficult to pin down. Or could we say does it move people, well of course, but that is more or less non race related. Now, do we say that art changes the world? well, some arts maybe do - Columbus writing to the Spanish court certainly did to an extent, but we don't exactly call that a "literary" piece of work now do we?

This idea that we are going to fix African American poverty in American cities by somehow reading African American authors is ridiculous. If anything, you are probably going to reinforce the stereotypes that allow white people to be prejudiced in the first place. When you place a criteria based on cultural identity, you more or less essentialize those qualities. It's the same way that rappers seem to be using the same motifs as in the 90s, yet many of their backgrounds are not the same. The market has become accustomed to a commercial identity of rapper as x, and is unable to give the massive sales to anybody who does not fit the stereotype. If we take Alice Walker as an example, where do we go from there? Do we all emulate her experience, and write her novel? Where is the growth.

When we compartamentalize as such, we limit our understanding from the production sense. Westerns as a genre sell, so everyone starts filming westerns, then super hero movies in our time sell, so now everyone is pushing this genre, and we have X-Men 15 coming out this year. If we say that the inner city experience, with drugs, violence, and gangs sells as art, we have these exploitation films that come out all the time as well. And when we make this a curriculum, we merely reinforce the underlying stereotype or background that creates this art, rather than suggest an alternative, or allow for growth.

The function of literature is that of exploration, not of determination. Good art explores, whether it be developing what is there, or moving things into the unexplored. When we genre and codify and marginalize authors based on supposed shared identity, we merely force artists to either fit the grid for exposure, or limit themselves to fit a diagram to have their place. You tell a Black author that she is Black, so she has to write about such themes, and then be published in the Black anthology, to be studied in the class studying Black literature (made up of mostly white people probably), and then she can be canonized in the "inclusive" affirmative action canon of multicultural literature, but even then, when does the author return your kind remarks with, why can't I join the white anthology as an equal? The reason is, because we have called all those people white (Aristotle was Egyptian, not European by the way), and you don't fit their racist grid.


This argument has been going on to long, ultimately in English we have so much good art from people of every strata of society, that such efforts to "include" on a classical list are futile. As with the classical list of authors from before 1850, nothing has changed much in the past 50 years, and nothing will, because they don't have any Black authors to exclude really, and there weren't any white women allowed on the stage at that time. The culture determines the tradition, and revisionism does not actually work - you can reexamine an archive, but you cannot write over it. The legacy of the white man's literature will always be the "white man's literature" since it comes from a society where literature and literary communities were restricted to white men. People need to realize this before they can start looking at other traditions. The Hebrew biblical tradition was restricted to people in a specific area at a specific time - you are not going to find Chinese authors in the Biblical canon, and it is impossible to add them, given that they were not in the area at the time. For the most part, the European tradition of literature was restricted to Europeans, and then further restricted to those both with the ability, and the time/desire to write. That meant for most of its history, clergymen and aristocrats, with actually many women thrown in. As female leisure increased in certain social classes, newish genres such as the novel found a new audience, rich women. And so begins the long history of women writing for women in Europe. The same could be said of the Tale of Genji in Japan, which was a woman writing for court women. This does not take away from the worth of the text, but demonstrates that the capacity and the audience are the determiners of the textual composition in terms of genre.

It's the same way that there is this myth of both an "Asian American" whatever that means, and then a "Asian American literature" which is somehow rooted in "Asia". As far as I know, many "Asian American" authors are writing with mostly western source work, are illiterate in "Asian" languages, and some have not even set foot in "Asia". Genetically speaking some are what has been called "half Asian" but even such terms make no sense when Asia is a diverse, ever changing place, with numerous traditions of its own. In terms of the "Asian" character of their work, well, for many modern poets, who seem rooted in American poetry, I am far more Asian then them in an artistic sense, given that I actually research and engage both with contemporary and ancient Chinese sources daily, and I most likely speak Chinese better than most Chinese American authors. My "Asian" experience could be said to be more profound, and likewise, my knowledge of said traditions more vast. Yet every year these fools for marketing purposes or for "representation" will put out their own little anthologies of Asian American literature, and start their own courses on the subject. But lets be honest, what is the real worth of such compartmentalization?

[JCamilo]

I didn't know some of those were gay until reading that, I mean, Bacon, or do you mean the painter? Some wrote considerably "gay" aspects into their literature, yet as sexual historians have argued, you cannot even call Plato gay without realizing that homosexuality is as much a cultural construct as anything else. Surely Plato and his contemporaries would not have thought their sexual practices "gay" or "minority". Such discussions have been argued to death, and have no real bearing on most artist's work, whereas some artists use personal experience as understood through their gay experience, others may not.

Well, Stlukes did the list, not me. He may know the details better. And that is my point, the diversity of the books in the canon, that you admire cannonical books without being tagged of anything. Some are very gay, some are very feminists, some are very catholic, some very islamic, etc. But you have enough of the possible combinations to make anyone happy, because the canon nature is of course open to contamination, diversity and all. And not a white dead academic project (How so, Red Hiding Hood is not in the cannon because a french snob or two german teachers liked it. When they found it, the tale was canonized already by the oral sources.).

The canon is not the objective, a consequence, a product of bias, but not a single bias. Ultimatelly that is what the more specific literature (african-american, queer, feminist) will have to face. Their vallue beyond the limited scope of their area and that is how a work end canonized. Not an effort of a critic and neither a crtic will be able to remove anything from the canon. It is spurious, if Voltaire was unable to remove Shakespeare and Dante, how JBI will do any damage? How pro and contra academics - as you point out, the discussion just reinforce the barriers will do anything?

How many were asking if in South America , back in 1930-40 had anyone worth?

[MorpheusSandman]

JBI, there is much in your post I agree and disagree with much, and much of both I've covered in previous posts where I directly addressed many of the issues you raised, so I'll skip the points I agree with, discuss those I disagree with, and link to earlier posts on points I've addressed.


Morpheus, you are mistaking representation in literature and the function of literature. There are very few feelings that are not universal...To suggest a particular experience (racism + poverty + violence) can be used to represent a shared set of feelings unique to a specific race of people merely reinforces the same racism you are working against. You have marginalized by assuming that Alice Walker may speak to these people you have Christened "African Americans" and not something like William Shakespeare, or Homer. Who are you to make such a judgement call? Are you not merely reinforcing racism?I do not believe representation in literature is the SOLE function of literature, but I think it is one significant one. While feelings may be universal, experiences are not, and feelings based on those experiences create even more variations. The vast majority of men will never know what it's like to be raped; no white man will ever know what it's like to face the kind of casual racism that almost every racial minority faces; and while men can (and have) write about rape, and while white men can write about racism, it is dubious to assume that they can do this convincingly from the perspective of the victims. Can you really imagine any white musical artists making music like that of Public Enemy in the 80s?

I wrote about Shakespeare's near universal appeal here, second paragraph: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77197-what-is-literature-s-biggest-threat/page3

I wrote about the ability for minorities to like pretty much anything the majority likes here, second paragraph: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77197-what-is-literature-s-biggest-threat&p=1244899&viewfull=1#post1244899

You're right that it would be racist to say either that blacks couldn't appreciate a white author like Shakespeare, or that a black author had to write about their experience of being black and nothing else, but that's not what I've been arguing.


You have those weird choices like Obama's Inaugural Poet (what's her name, Alexander or something?), yet even the audience at the time seemed to not receive her god awful poem well. Now go ahead and tell an American that they should praise that poem because their skin color is darker than a white guy, and you are merely being a bigot.I would be a bigot if, indeed, I was saying that. But let's say that instead of (almost) everyone hating the poem, you had a large percentage of blacks that loved it and a large percentage of whites that hated it; who, then, is to decide whether it's really good or not? If many black people were saying that "this poem represents our feeling and perspective," (even if other blacks disagreed), what right and authority would others have to declare that the poem was REALLY bad, despite all of these other voices saying they liked it? As I said here in the third paragraph, it's very easy to use examples like that where there is, indeed, mass agreement; I'm arguing about those cases where there is no such agreement, and where the disagreement is largely split along racial and gender lines: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77197-what-is-literature-s-biggest-threat&p=1244941&viewfull=1#post1244941


As for African American contributions to the arts - the range is vast, and quite apparent. I cannot think of a "white" American music trend, given that the majority of American music seems to be rooted in African American traditions. Gospel, R&B, Blues, Jazz, Swing, Rock, Rap, Funk, soul etc. all seem to be rooted in African American music, and all judged on their own merits, seem to be exemplary examples of art at its best, when done well.And are you so ahistorical to think that jazz and blues musicians didn't face their share of systemic racism? Do you not know that a great many people who hated Elvis in the 50s did so on the basis that he was playing "n***er music" (this is what my mom said her mom actually called it)? Is it coincidental that the same generation raised in the age of Elvis and the R&B invasion into pop music were the same generation that were fighting for civil rights from the mid-50s onward? Now, here's a good example of correlation doesn't prove causation, but could such things have been influencing factors? I wouldn't rule it out. Again, you're drawing from things that are acceptable NOW, ignoring the struggle that it took, usually against racist ideologies, to get such things accepted by mainstream, white America, and further suggesting that such struggles still don't happen.


This idea that we are going to fix African American poverty in American cities by somehow reading African American authors is ridiculous. Good thing I've never stated that idea and stated that overtly here, after Luke's 4th quote: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77197-what-is-literature-s-biggest-threat&p=1244895&viewfull=1#post1244895


If anything, you are probably going to reinforce the stereotypes that allow white people to be prejudiced in the first place. When you place a criteria based on cultural identity, you more or less essentialize those qualities. It's the same way that rappers seem to be using the same motifs as in the 90s, yet many of their backgrounds are not the same. The market has become accustomed to a commercial identity of rapper as x, and is unable to give the massive sales to anybody who does not fit the stereotype...This is a potential problem, but refer to my post above about racism in adults being less when they're exposed to other cultures as children. If they can't be raised in multi-racial/cultural neighborhoods, I have to think art representing other races/cultures would be the best substitute. However, as to this problem, this is not unlike the controversy now concerning the Miami Dolphins football team ( here's one article on the story (http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/jonathan-martin-richie-incognito-honorary-black-not-racist-miami-dolphins-teammates-bullying-110613)). One thing that came out was that many of the black players on the team didn't consider Jonathan Martin, a bi-racial man, to be "black" because he was highly educated, where as the white Richie Incognito was "more black" than Martin. Stephen A. Smith on First Take gave a very good account of the problem with this on an ep. I can't find, but I did find this clip that gets into it a bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38dlYHwem_w&t=2m20s I want to be clear: I think you raise a very good, very pertinent point about the potential problem of the insistence on minority writing conforming to a certain limited expression and the cultural stereotypes this could create, not just amongst white readers, but even readers of the same minority group. I think it would be equally distasteful for, say, a group of feminists to invalidate a female poet working in classic forms and writing about non-social subjects because she isn't supporting their political literary agenda. Elizabeth Bishop is one such poet who often received such criticism, and I think we should be thankful that her reputation was "rescued" by such opposition.


When we compartamentalize as such, we limit our understanding from the production sense. Westerns as a genre sell, so everyone starts filming westerns, then super hero movies in our time sell, so now everyone is pushing this genre, and we have X-Men 15 coming out this year. If we say that the inner city experience, with drugs, violence, and gangs sells as art, we have these exploitation films that come out all the time as well. And when we make this a curriculum, we merely reinforce the underlying stereotype or background that creates this art, rather than suggest an alternative, or allow for growth.I certainly agree that anything, any perspective, can become commodified. However, I don't think I would take it as far as you about the curriculum. Most curriculums would either use such work as a perspective on history, or would use it as an example of whatever modern political, philosophical, et al. issue is being addressed. I would agree that if it is used and taught in a matter that suggests all writings of all minorities should be like that, or in a matter that suggests that there is no possibility for betterment and change, then it would be wrong; but, insofar as such problems exist, as I've said elsewhere, we need voices that are representing those things as awareness is the first step towards sympathy and even actions taken to solving such problems.


...but even then, when does the author return your kind remarks with, why can't I join the white anthology as an equal?Well, the problem there would be in the assumption in the assumption that equality exists to begin with, or that a "white" anthology is more significant/important/etc. than a "black" anthology to begin with. One of the symptoms of racism, sexism, etc. is that the dominant race, even when they finally do allow a degree of power and voice to minorities, almost immediately demand that they conform to the standards of the societies and cultures they've created and dominated, and we're back to the "game" analogy of earlier.


...As with the classical list of authors from before 1850, nothing has changed much in the past 50 years, and nothing will, because they don't have any Black authors to exclude really, and there weren't any white women allowed on the stage at that time. The culture determines the tradition, and revisionism does not actually work - you can reexamine an archive, but you cannot write over it. The legacy of the white man's literature will always be the "white man's literature" since it comes from a society where literature and literary communities were restricted to white men. People need to realize this before they can start looking at other traditions.I'm essentially in agreement here, and I stated so here, 5th paragraph: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77197-what-is-literature-s-biggest-threat&p=1244830&viewfull=1#post1244830

[HSPS]

If the 20th century has taught us anything from every perspective possible (science, math, social studies) it's that "common sense" is not a trustworthy guide. Human intuitions have been proven too wrong, too fallible, too many times to keep relying on, especially in the wake of cognitive sciences, of learning how many biases our brains our afflicted with. If anything, it's the archaic notions of common sense that isn't just rickety, but is rotting like a bridge over a chasm. Again, this post of yours assumes some kind of inherent greatness in certain poets and poems, divorcing said greatness from being a product of how subjective minds relate to those poems/poets.

To assume that greatness is inherent in an object, literature or otherwise, is nothing but ET Jaynes' mind projection fallacy, of assuming that "beauty" is an inherent part of the woman, rather than how a male subjective mind interprets the woman. What you can say is that an object has certain qualities; some of those qualities appeal to us and some don't; we label those qualities "good" or "bad," and later "great" in our minds; and, unconsciously or consciously, socially, communally, or individually, create standards out of them. Over time, our mind completely leaps over the latter processes and fools itself into thinking that this end-point, this subjective concept of "goodness" or "greatness" is inherent in the work itself, not as part of a neural process, and, not just a neural process, but a neural process that is influenced in tremendous part by others within our society and culture.

Regarding the natural sciences, intuition has often been refined by proper evidence--and not just in the 20th century. That doesn't mean, though, that intuition shouldn't have a place in our affairs. It is sometimes wrong, and it is sometimes right. It is intuitive that the Earth is flat if you don't do any measurements and only look at it from the ground. But it is also intuitive that different species of animals are different from one another; there's no need to study their genes to figure that out, we just need to look at them.

I should have elaborated in my last post on what I think makes an artist great. I can't provide an objective metric, because pure objectivity in the human mind is is not possible, and the pursuit of it is senseless. As has been proven by optics, there are many things we can't see. For example, we can't know what anything objectively looks like, because we can only see some light.

The basis of art is universal humanity. My belief is that posterity is the best judge of what deserves to survive and what doesn't. This is because fewer people will gravitate toward art that doesn't deal with the fundamental issues of the human mind and heart, but rather more specific issues like, say, politics, because such "art" is inherently constrained. Not everybody can relate to liberal ideals, but many more of us can relate to a character's or a poet's emotional anguish. So why do we read the Sonnets if not to ponder or reduce that anguish? Sure, we may be somewhat interested in Shakespeare's sexuality or who exactly the Dark Lady was, but such things are secondary. Shakespeare has survived, and has been translated into many different languages, because his grief grieve on universal bones. (This is based on William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech. For some reason I wasn't able to post a link, so know that I'm not plagiarizing.)

Shakespeare was a better poet than I because he was a keener observer of humanity, and he had a way of conveying human issues that resonated with more people. Shakespeare's writing was beautiful, and while we may not be able to clearly define artistic beauty, we know it is there. Otherwise, all art would have died long ago. It is also evident that beauty transcends style, as many people put Whitman's formless poetry in the same league as Shakespeare's formal poetry.

Bias probably played a part in deciding what literature we consider to be important today. There were probably some female writers who were ignored simply because they weren't taken seriously. However, there are many female writers whom we do consider to be great: Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Mary Shelley, etc. (If you take a look through Bloom's list in the The Western Canon, you'll find many more female writers than his opponents let on.) That's not to mention the fact that there were probably a number of male writers who have also mostly died out. Why? I would argue that it was because their work wasn't "human" enough. Anyway, I'm getting into territory I don't want to be in.

NOTE: This is a response to your whole post, but I didn't think it was necessary to include all of it.

[JBI]

Isn't it Wittgenstein when a student inquired of people using their observation to determine the world was flat, didn't he somehow retort "but what does a round world look like?" Certainly our perceptions of things are rooted in the limitations of our understanding, the same way the earth moving around the sun looks to the observer as the sun circling the earth. You will find that common sense has no answer here, and only education does.

[JCamilo]

There is more imprecision than subjectivity on what makes a good art. It is not maths, if was, it is like something that is more or less 1000 to 1000000 where we find Ballad of Suicide by Chesterton and The Divine Comedy, but we do not find JBI famous "Poem against Vota". We will justify as our perpection allows, but in the end, the only kind of certainty that Homer did something good is his persistency. That is why attacking the canon is funny and misleading (kind of a ideology). A critic only is relevant when it is also canonized in a literary form.

[JBI]

There is more imprecision than subjectivity on what makes a good art. It is not maths, if was, it is like something that is more or less 1000 to 1000000 where we find Ballad of Suicide by Chesterton and The Divine Comedy, but we do not find JBI famous "Poem against Vota". We will justify as our perpection allows, but in the end, the only kind of certainty that Homer did something good is his persistency. That is why attacking the canon is funny and misleading (kind of a ideology). A critic only is relevant when it is also canonized in a literary form.

Well even for the most canonical of western critics - how many people actually enjoy the lives of the poets who nobody reads anymore? We generally go for the famous ones, and ignore the fashionable ones.

This idea that contemporary literature is a canonical enterprise is ridiculous. Attacks on the canon are limited to pre-world-war-2, being that things after then are too new to be critically judged currently into "canonical terms. Likewise, after 1950, a large element of foreign and international literature redefined a sort of tradition in the local sense. We cannot speak of "Western" literature being written today in the same sense as we could talk about a community of monks in the 13th century.

So when we look for the "minority" voice in the pre-1950s canon, occasionally we dig up some interesting stuff. The classic example is Zora Neale Hurston. But even so, we could do the same with white authors as well. Recently (within the last 10 years) many Canadian academics dug up modernist manuscripts from Canada that were ignored because Canadian publishers were not as open minded as American ones. Before then Canadian literary history went from Realism to Post-Modernism. But even with such a discovery, there seems little purpose of reading these works outside a sort of historicism. The public rejected them the first time around, and nobody reads canadian canonical works, why would people like to read obscure unpublished ones?

To add names to a canon after all, is to rewrite literary history - we have a pretty general idea of what the "traditional" Western canon is. The Chinese canon has been rigidly in place for everything pre-1200 for the past 800 odd years (which is where all the classics are drawn from), and the novels and later authors have remained rather consistent. The nature of Japanese imperial commissioning and anthologies has assured a rather structured Canon of everything until perhaps the Edo period, but even then the lines are clearly drawn. The Hebrew language canon is also rigid, with the major texts, Tulmud and the Torah being finalized centuries upon centuries ago. We are not about to start rewriting these traditions by saying "why include king David, but where is the Queen of Sheba's psalm cycle". Such argument seems ridiculous.

Now, as for commercialization, education is a commercial game, especially in the US where tuition is murder. If you open a class on modern novels, you need to teach novels that people like. IF you open a class on African American literature, you need to sell books to the students that they want to read, and by extension, classes need to be interesting. There needs to be a packaging, as readers do not just pick up a bunch of unrelated works one after another. With this order and business requirement comes a need for people to differentiate what they know from the rest. So you get your "African American" studies or literature specialist, who looks primarily for "African American" experience, and compartmentalizes all this nicely into a syllabus. They most likely will have a dozen critical authors grouped into a boring anthology focusing on first "What is African American Literature" - part one of the book. Second "reading the African American text" part two of the book, and then finally "African American literature now, challenges and redefinitions" part three of the text, which will have a few post-modern scholars of course arguing that there is no such thing as African American literature. We will have a nice syllabus as such, with critics and half a dozen authors, and maybe a dozen or so poems, and then teach a bunch of white 20 year olds why black authors are black.

This is how literature from the 70s through the 90s and even today was taught, and is taught. To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant of the actual nature of the academy. There will be also a course on Post-Colonialism, a course on "Asian American literature" maybe, a course on "Gay literature", "women's literature", and any other minority that somebody can put a flag over and claim as their reason for getting a tenure track position at a university.

Now, what goes on after that? well, people realize a few things - that this fashion does not justify itself, and as theory departments (mostly rooted in the West coast) begin to go in decline, a new movement of particularly historical critics begin to write literature as a historical discussion, focusing of course on the most historically relevant authors, and thereby glossing over the disjointed patchwork of "rediscovered" no names that got forced into the Norton in the 80s and 90s. They find that people want to read Shakespeare in the traditional way, and that Spenser's 4th book of the Faerie Queene is generally regarded as the worst, and does not warrant all the extra focus it got in the 90s from post-colonial theorists trying to find the Anti-Irish and colonial sentiment in Spenser's work. The traditional modes of research have resurfaced, as expected, and generally now the population has reverted back to its general idea of a canon.

The primal canon, that is, the books only academics study (classics through the middle Ages, and on to the Romantic era) have not been phased, as Chaucer was never particularly popular outside of the academy anyway, regardless of his canonical stature.

In terms of popularity and the canon, the best selling books are not by males, by generally by Females for females, or at least written with a female audience in mind. Jane Austen sells more than Walter Scott, keep in mind, and of modern novelists, many successful ones are female, especially writing novels. The money in fiction rests in mostly a female readership, as it has since the 19th century.

I think it is endemic of American culture that they have an advocacy group for almost every single possible minority thinkable. It's as if nobody is satisfied being American unless they are a Wasp, and even those people will be quick to advocate their regional voice in the midst of "what goes on in Washington against us". The same way when I read up on almost any movie on any subject, there is always somebody crying that it contains something offensive. Such discourse ultimately has very little importance to the academy, where studies of Chaucer should not include "post-colonial" negotiations of gender or some other nonsense.

But what do you expect from a culture like the US who rooted their theoretical understandings of books not in their own cultural understandings of their history, but in a weird French pseudo-philosophical bunch of critics from the 50s through 70s, who, for the most part, did not read American literature, and were doing what continental philosophers do best - over-thinking. When you have a theoretical diagram, and then try to either modify it, or prove it, you miss the basic point that the diagram is essentially unimportant. You take a concept of the canon, and then you start attacking it, until eventually you realize that it never was a tangible set of texts to begin with, and merely was a set of works that authors, artists, scholars, and readers generally thought worth preserving in their art, by either engagement (allusion, borrowing, copying etc.) or critical commentary. Most people don't even know how the publishing industry works, or has worked, so they think that there was some systematic "Penguin books" written down 500 years ago, when in actuality, the availability of most texts was rather limited until recent times. It's that scholars crowded around a specific archive (or library) kept coming back to the same books that determined the canonical stature of such historical authors.

[JCamilo]

Well, I do not think the Canon is made of what the academics read. Take the Bible, Koran, Aesop’s fables, etc. All canonical and all read widely. I do not think you even need actual reading to be part of canon, a “second-level”reading maybe enough, such as what is done with Homer, King Artur circle, etc.

To me, what you describe of American Academics, would seem magic realism. I feel most serious studies do not have the canon as an end, even if you can say that naturally every discipline ends attracted to a core of works which we may call canon.

I guess the heritage of English political correctness, the need of democratic representation, the need to build a complete new tradition “free” of the old world may cause this pressure on the ‘canonicalism” which generate a pro-canon sort of movement (both unnecessary of course, unless as a commercial genre) more often than not and that American cultural power may have caused some influence around the world, but what is the point. In the end of the day, you will have those classical works – in any culture – which historical importance is enough that they are rooted on the culture. You will have the works that are read now. The works that studied more as a historical document than for the reading merit. And some classics which – for some reason or another – still read even with the old dated form (such as Shakespeare or Oedipus King). Be by general public, academics, mass media voices, other artists. And if you wake and list – it is an endless list anyways – you will claim a canon. But listing it made very little for those works.

Of course, I think the history of literature is an open game. Harder to come by, but we had latter works rediscovered which demanded a re-writing of the story (and of course, the studies promptly found ties that were unseen before justifying the influence of that lost work on the posterior literature). Of course, it is harder and of course, older traditions are more frozen. But that is different from contemporaneous perception. How would Americans would guess the kind of influence Poe would have outside America and that kind of influence would grant him more generous memory now than Longfellow?

I would say you can find those interesting works yet that the “canon” does not outline today, it depends on the range of your study. Harder if we try – as you picked before, Japanese, Chinese, Arabian literature, because those are not really a ‘minor’ voice of the western canon, but strong voices on their own with their own classical building. So, yes, if someone discovers Kawabata or Soseki, they are not discovering smothered works, but rather an entire tradition. In America and Canada, it is probably harder, as “underground’ and “Marginal” are commercial groups, but in other cultures they are most likely easier to be found. But that is less about the actual canon, more about the commercial genres and a mass media society style.

In the end, I find funny such fuss about the canon. It is not under threat, it is not like Paulo Coelho bad effect on Brazilian literature will make Machado de Assis less influential. At worst, he will just add another tentacle to the squid. If Ahebe only had the post-colonialism attack on Conrad, he would be forgotten. It is like Harold Bloom canonical defense will be forgotten, in the end he does not add anything memorable on those works, he does not add anything new to the works he defended. He does not even scratch the crazy European critics you mention, simple as put, because Derrida and Barthez were more original and better writers than him, they are just resisting to his attacks.
In the end you are right, the dead white man mantra is not changing anything at all.

[WICKES]

Shakespeare's writing was beautiful, and while we may not be able to clearly define artistic beauty, we know it is there. Otherwise, all art would have died long ago.

It is strange how rarely beauty is mentioned when people discuss literature. I spent 4 years in seminar rooms and only on two occasions do I remember a student or lecturer describe a passage of writing as beautiful (once when studying Macbeth and once when studying a passage from Virginia Woolf). I once heard a man who runs art history courses in London say that he felt like grabbing some of his smug, hip little 'post-modern' students, giving them a shake and yelling "this Vermeer painting is beautiful, do you understand...BEAUTIFUL. The works of the trendy young British artists you so admire are not."

[MorpheusSandman]

Regarding the natural sciences, intuition has often been refined by proper evidence--and not just in the 20th century. That doesn't mean, though, that intuition shouldn't have a place in our affairs. It is sometimes wrong, and it is sometimes right. It is intuitive that the Earth is flat if you don't do any measurements and only look at it from the ground. But it is also intuitive that different species of animals are different from one another; there's no need to study their genes to figure that out, we just need to look at them.I would certainly agree that intuition has its place and valid uses. Artistic creativity and receptivity is a perfect example of where intuition thrives, or even in sports where you have to make split decisions. However, when investigating how the external world works, or even trying to validate truths that we feel, intuition has proved much too faulty to be relied on.

You, eg, appealed to "common sense" to argue that subjectivity is only valid in qualitative evaluations of art when it comes to "great poets," but not great poets/poems and bad poets/poems. This is a situation where common sense, intuitions, are deceptive as it assumes that greatness/badness are inherent features of the things being discussed, and not things inherent in the relationship of how subjects are interacting with objects; and that's just blatantly false. It is our intuitions that hide this subjective component and delude people into thinking that their standards, even if (especially if) they're communally/culturally shared, are more truthful, factual, external, objective, or valid than others. That thinking is at the core of EVERY discussion/debate on "canon."


The basis of art is universal humanity. My belief is that posterity is the best judge of what deserves to survive and what doesn't.The concept of a "universal humanity" is something that's been blown to bits since the dawn of Modernism. Most writers before that often assumed they were writing for a "universal humanity" based on their extremely limited cultural sphere. With the increased globalization and, especially, the rise of multi-cultural, immigrant nations like the US, the Moderns began to realize the extremely fractured, subjective nature of the human experience. This was expressed in many ways, but perhaps most famously through polyvocal works like The Waste Land, The Cantos, and The Sound and the Fury. All of these works put on display this fractured subjectivity. The Moderns, though, saw the situation as a psychological crisis in need of a cure, and they found/proposed various means of making whole "what had been rent." Postmodernism was, in large part, the assault on these attempts at mending. PM pushed this fractured subjectivity to its utmost limits in an attempt to prove that nothing could make coherent wholes out of such contradictory variety.

So in order to propose that "the basis of art is universal humanity" you first have to show that there IS some universal humanity, that much of what we perceive as universal isn't merely appealing mostly to the dominant classes, ideologies, politics, etc. You give the example of Shakespeare, and I've mentioned him many times myself, but I feel the reason for Shakespeare's near universality is his ability to put on display not a universal humanity, but all of humanity in its multitudinous aspects. Throughout his works you can find plays that deal with racism, colonialism, sexism, philosophy, psychology, etc., but is any one expression "universal," or does Shakespeare only achieve universality by being able to include so much of humanity in its varied aspects throughout his entire oeuvre? I think your quoted Faulkner comment on Shakespeare being able to "convey human issue that resonated with more people" is a concise statement of what I'm arguing. However, I don't think Shakespeare ever condensed the human issue down to a single play, poem, expression, etc. He only achieved this mass resonance via 38 plays and 150+ poems.

I also think Faulkner's comment is one of the few truly objective measures we could propose for greatness. Rather than privileging or validating any single system, standard, criterion, etc. from any culture that seeks out what art succeeds or fails on their standards, we need to give validation to all of them and see how many any given work or artist is able to "resonate" with. Maybe Wallace Stevens resonates with formalists, but Adrienne Rich with feminists; maybe feminists hate Stevens and formalists hate Rich; why should we validate or privilege the opinion of either group, of either standard, to declare which poet is best? Being fair, I don't think we can. On the other hand, find a poet that appeals equally to both, like, maybe, say, Dickinson, and maybe we can say Dickinson is indeed "better" because she resonates with more people, on more standards.

Of course, however ideal and fair the above system is, the simple fact is that that's not what we currently have. Yes, feminists and minorities have managed to get a number of authors that appeal to them into the canon, but there is still the sense that they were only "allowed" to do this because these authors ALSO resonated with those in power who were "keepers of the old canon" (hopefully that doesn't sound too conspiratorial). Why is it not right for feminists or minorities to say "wait a minute, why do you get to dismiss these authors who only appeal to us but not to you, when so many canonical authors only appeal to you and not to us?" So there is still THAT kind of imbalance, and it precisely mirrors the cultural situation. Sure, the most overt aspects of sexism and racism have been eliminated from our society, but we are still living in the shadow of the society that both produced, and women and minorities are still expected, in large part, to play by the same rules of a game they never had a fair part in deciding on. Too many gloss over this fact in favor of merely seeing the progress made, or merely seeing the concessions the ruling classes made, which reminds me of the joke Louis CK told on Leno (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=derzWWYf3-w#t=02m25s) about slavery.

[HSPS]

The concept of a "universal humanity" is something that's been blown to bits since the dawn of Modernism. Most writers before that often assumed they were writing for a "universal humanity" based on their extremely limited cultural sphere. With the increased globalization and, especially, the rise of multi-cultural, immigrant nations like the US, the Moderns began to realize the extremely fractured, subjective nature of the human experience.

Of course there are some differences in the human experience across cultures, but only at less fundamental levels. I'm discussing the fundamentals of the human experience: love, sadness, compassion, courage, pride, hate, anger, appreciation of beauty, etc. All of those things transcend culture, and all of those things must be present in art if it is to survive. Are you saying that some cultures don't experience love? That there are cultures where there are only a few people who look up in awe at the stars? I didn't express this well enough, so I don't blame you; I often write willy-nilly on the internet.


So in order to propose that "the basis of art is universal humanity" you first have to show that there IS some universal humanity, that much of what we perceive as universal isn't merely appealing mostly to the dominant classes, ideologies, politics, etc. You give the example of Shakespeare, and I've mentioned him many times myself, but I feel the reason for Shakespeare's near universality is his ability to put on display not a universal humanity, but all of humanity in its multitudinous aspects. Throughout his works you can find plays that deal with racism, colonialism, sexism, philosophy, psychology, etc., but is any one expression "universal," or does Shakespeare only achieve universality by being able to include so much of humanity in its varied aspects throughout his entire oeuvre? I think your quoted Faulkner comment on Shakespeare being able to "convey human issue that resonated with more people" is a concise statement of what I'm arguing. However, I don't think Shakespeare ever condensed the human issue down to a single play, poem, expression, etc. He only achieved this mass resonance via 38 plays and 150+ poems.

Actually, the boldfaced was one of my ideas, and not one of Faulkner's :D. (For the sake of clarity, I said that Shakespeare conveyed human issues in a way that resonated with more people. The two statements have different meanings.) I would highly recommend reading the full Nobel Prize speech. He outlines what he thinks is important in art, and I share the same views.

I never said, nor did I imply, that Shakespeare had one defining miracle-play. One surely must read most of his work to get the full experience. Still, what are present in Shakespeare's work are the fundamental constituents of the human experience that I mentioned above, and those are why Shakespeare survived, and why his work resonates with so many people, not because he appealed to politics; those things are transitory, and are therefore secondary, but basic humanity is not. Most people keep on going back to certain art because it appeals to them on a human level, not a political or cultural one. Look at music, and namely music without lyrics; it is free of ideas--pure, some might say. Do we listen to the Goldberg Variations to ponder Bach's Christianity--an act that would be nonsensical--or do we listen to them to cheer ourselves up when we're sad?


I also think Faulkner's comment is one of the few truly objective measures we could propose for greatness. Rather than privileging or validating any single system, standard, criterion, etc. from any culture that seeks out what art succeeds or fails on their standards, we need to give validation to all of them and see how many any given work or artist is able to "resonate" with. Maybe Wallace Stevens resonates with formalists, but Adrienne Rich with feminists; maybe feminists hate Stevens and formalists hate Rich; why should we validate or privilege the opinion of either group, of either standard, to declare which poet is best? Being fair, I don't think we can. On the other hand, find a poet that appeals equally to both, like, maybe, say, Dickinson, and maybe we can say Dickinson is indeed "better" because she resonates with more people, on more standards.

If a person will appreciate a poet more or less purely because of ideas such as Feminism or Formalism, then his approach is perverse. Again, I'm saying that the best art will appeal to everybody (in the loose sense of the word). If an artist can only appeal to one group, that artist has failed.


Of course, however ideal and fair the above system is, the simple fact is that that's not what we currently have. Yes, feminists and minorities have managed to get a number of authors that appeal to them into the canon, but there is still the sense that they were only "allowed" to do this because these authors ALSO resonated with those in power who were "keepers of the old canon" (hopefully that doesn't sound too conspiratorial). Why is it not right for feminists or minorities to say "wait a minute, why do you get to dismiss these authors who only appeal to us but not to you, when so many canonical authors only appeal to you and not to us?" So there is still THAT kind of imbalance, and it precisely mirrors the cultural situation. Sure, the most overt aspects of sexism and racism have been eliminated from our society, but we are still living in the shadow of the society that both produced, and women and minorities are still expected, in large part, to play by the same rules of a game they never had a fair part in deciding on. Too many gloss over this fact in favor of merely seeing the progress made, or merely seeing the concessions the ruling classes made, which reminds me of the joke Louis CK told on Leno[/url] about slavery.

My primary point of discussion is not the Canon, it is why certain art survives. The Canon is different, and I don't want to discuss it. Any human--black, white, gay straight, male, female, etc.--can find value in Shakespeare, Whitman, Dickinson, Tennyson, Faulkner, Melville etc., because of the humanity of their work--that is, humanity in the most fundamental sense.


Why is it not right for feminists or minorities to say "wait a minute, why do you get to dismiss these authors who only appeal to us but not to you, when so many canonical authors only appeal to you and not to us?"

Which authors don't appeal to them? If they were to say that, for example, one of the authors that I mentioned doesn't appeal to them at all, that they can't see their value, then one would have to ask: Are you being completely honest? Did you really give him/her a chance?


Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me to whom thou gav'st it else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. - William Shakespeare

Who can't relate to that?

[HSPS]

It is strange how rarely beauty is mentioned when people discuss literature. I spent 4 years in seminar rooms and only on two occasions do I remember a student or lecturer describe a passage of writing as beautiful (once when studying Macbeth and once when studying a passage from Virginia Woolf). I once heard a man who runs art history courses in London say that he felt like grabbing some of his smug, hip little 'post-modern' students, giving them a shake and yelling "this Vermeer painting is beautiful, do you understand...BEAUTIFUL. The works of the trendy young British artists you so admire are not."

Far too much importance is placed on ideas. If you do not find art beautiful, then why spend time on it? It is the euphoric feeling I get when I read the beautiful use of language, the beautifully realistic and genuinely human characters and how they interact, the conflicts they face that I can relate to, etc., that keeps me hooked, not the ideas that a writer feeds me.

[stlukesguild]

It is strange how rarely beauty is mentioned when people discuss literature. I spent 4 years in seminar rooms and only on two occasions do I remember a student or lecturer describe a passage of writing as beautiful (once when studying Macbeth and once when studying a passage from Virginia Woolf). I once heard a man who runs art history courses in London say that he felt like grabbing some of his smug, hip little 'post-modern' students, giving them a shake and yelling "this Vermeer painting is beautiful, do you understand...BEAUTIFUL. The works of the trendy young British artists you so admire are not."

:hurray:

Far too much importance is placed on ideas. If you do not find art beautiful, then why spend time on it?

I am currently reading Étienne Gilson's The Arts of the Beautiful in which the author explores the importance of "beauty" in art... and argues that art should not be mistaken with philosophy... knowledge... or ideas. There are several other books I have read recently that call into question the fact that the very concept of "beauty" has been seen as problematic among Modernist... and more often Post-Modernist theorists and critics.

The art critic, Robert Hughes, offered a rather in-depth critique of Post-WWII American Art education and its emphasis upon ideas over those things that cannot so easily be put into words: images, color harmonies, harmonies of sound, the turn of a phrase... BEAUTY.

As Marcel Duchamp, the poster-child of idea-based art... Conceptual Art... proclaimed, "I am interested in ideas, not in visual products." He also infamously declared that he did not wish to be "dumb, like a painter." Of course much of his philosophy may have been the result of the fact that Duchamp recognized that he was a mediocre painter, at best. In spite of Duchamp's presumed intellect... with which he bedazzled any number of wealthy American heiresses... he never grasped the idea that the whole process of painting... of any work of art... involved endless decisions... endless thinking... and that the value in a work of art lies in the experience... not in the analysis... the definition... the assignation of a "meaning" once one has completed the work.

Here I'll offer up two of my favorite quotes... the first by William Gass, and the latter by Walter Pater:

"I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values -- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences, or speaking for your race -- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's truth nor a god's goodness will win you beauty's prize."

-William Gass

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us,–for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life... While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all "condamnes", as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve–les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion–that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.

-Walter Pater, from the Conclusion to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Of course returning to your Art History professor and Vermeer, I find myself also thinking of a quote by John Ciardi, the great Dante translator:

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2804/4169879252_ebc6817aab_z.jpg

[JCamilo]

Picasso certainly was conviced that he a lot of better ideas about the girls than looking :D

[mona amon]

It is strange how rarely beauty is mentioned when people discuss literature. I spent 4 years in seminar rooms and only on two occasions do I remember a student or lecturer describe a passage of writing as beautiful (once when studying Macbeth and once when studying a passage from Virginia Woolf). I once heard a man who runs art history courses in London say that he felt like grabbing some of his smug, hip little 'post-modern' students, giving them a shake and yelling "this Vermeer painting is beautiful, do you understand...BEAUTIFUL. The works of the trendy young British artists you so admire are not."

Basically very true, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we are once again back to the problem of subjectivity. For instance Francis Bacon's Big Sue painting - is it beautiful or not? I liked it as soon as I saw it and before I started thinking about it, so it pleased me at a purely aesthetic level before I started finding it interesting on an ideological level. I'm sure it is generally considered a beautiful painting although the woman it depicts is not, but I'm also sure there will be people who find the painting itself ugly.

[Methexis]

Apathy.


As we speak, the Belgian government is making plans to revise not only most of primary and secondary school programs, but also some university programs. In essence, they are demanding a shift away from the Bildung-model, towards a results-based operation, focused on the 'needs' of society: hands-on knowledge, specific expertise, field experience, multi-linguistic capabilities. The department under which I've studied, 'Taal- en Letterkunde' (loosely translated as Linguistics and Literature Studies) will merge with the translator's department (formerly a professional bachelor degree), and literature studies will continue to exist but play a minor role (i.e. they'll be integrated in a first-year course, taking you rapidly through the history of literature, compared to the courses we now have on philosophy?). Eventually, there'll be no literature-based studies left, no trained experts to teach students the value of literature (which will be a tough enough challenge to do with students brought up with nothing but facts). Already I have to explain to friends and family why I chose to study literature, and not medicine, or economics, try to explain to them why I think literature still has (and always will have) a place in society. And it's hard, the things literature can teach you or contribute aren't skills or knowledge that will instantly boom your career, it's a bridge to other cultures, into the mind of others, a wealth of knowledge and perspectives, expands your vocabulary, and most importantly, teaches you empathy, something the world is in dire need of.

[luhsun]

i disagree, methexis. Society needs more technicians, doctors, economists, engineers and those with skills. Literature will also have a place when these skilled workers have time and leisure.
Society cannot afford to maintain too many superspecialised writers and readers of literature. The english language will be less beautiful without keats, but if all medical students abandon their profession, we will all die from rampant tuberculosis.

[hannah_arendt]

i disagree, methexis. Society needs more technicians, doctors, economists, engineers and those with skills. Literature will also have a place when these skilled workers have time and leisure.
Society cannot afford to maintain too many superspecialised writers and readers of literature. The english language will be less beautiful without keats, but if all medical students abandon their profession, we will all die from rampant tuberculosis.

I absolutely agree. Culture has always been a sophisticated, non first- need thing. First of all only rich countries can afford educating so many artists. The economy has to be based on something.

[JBI]

Basically very true, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we are once again back to the problem of subjectivity. For instance Francis Bacon's Big Sue painting - is it beautiful or not? I liked it as soon as I saw it and before I started thinking about it, so it pleased me at a purely aesthetic level before I started finding it interesting on an ideological level. I'm sure it is generally considered a beautiful painting although the woman it depicts is not, but I'm also sure there will be people who find the painting itself ugly.

many posters are ignoring the comparison of what ideas "are". In a sense, Beauty is an historical discourse that matures from natural models toward standard tastes - yet something like Duchamp's fountain is a urinal. There is nothing beautiful about it at all. There is no sense of the art as anything other than its concept of itself as art - a vision of concept based on an idea, rather than a piece of work based on capturing something artificial in the recording of a subject. So the beauty of a portrait is not contained in its concept of itself as a portrait - arguably, a portrait functions to capture something of the artist in the subject that arguably communicates. If we say instead of a portrait of George w. Bush in the White house, instead we should put an amputated Iraqi child's finger in a glass box, we are communicating an idea, and in a sense it is a conceptual portrait, but in terms of beauty, I doubt there is anybody who would find it beautiful, and most people would rather think of it only based on its concept.

So the whole idea of such artwork ultimately thinks more than it captures anything in terms of beauty or aesthetic engagement in the sensual understanding of the term.

Still, some fields are ultimately removed from such major problems. Take porcelain as an artform, and pottery in general - the form is ultimately incredibly difficult to reduce to anything but aesthetic discussions of interpretation and enjoyment. Sure, a vase is ultimately a female form so they say, as is a pot supposedly, and such things have a political background, yet you cannot discuss these things as the work's inherent political opinion.

The same can be said for much of literature if we get rid of the name of the author. Sure, people try, but ultimately much of literature is carving words without discussing political opinions. Or rather, political argumentation, or bigotry or whatever the historical scholar terms things are not actually present.

The 1960s movement of literature was to really conceptualize everything in political terms, so you get notions that language itself is misogynist. You get notions that basically every text is political, and has an underlying structure working against some group or another. And, to prove such theory, one must find the answers. The best way is to find those select works that fit the diagram - reading Spenser's 4th book from the Faerie Queene for instance, because it has "colonial" overtones, or reading the British Empire in virtually everything. Such ideas have a value, but only as a footnote really, in comparison to the central ideas of the text itself.

So we shift away from thinking of how the work conveys itself, and looking at it from an aesthetic composition sense (rhetoric, language (diction), form, development, engagement, etc.) toward thinking of it as "how can I pull an abstract political notion out of it."

So Soseki's Kokoro for instance has been read as an allegory for his own colonial involvement in continental Asia, or As You Like It is read as a weird transgender study of sexuality (man playing woman playing man), that is interpreted as a discussion of gender - which it isn't.

My general feeling is these political readers don't actually know how to read properly from a rhetorical perspective, and therefore look for political messages which are more easily discussed.

A good case study from my own field is the influence of Edward Said. I personally come at the very, very end of what we call traditional East Asian Studies as an area study - most of the professors from the Closed China era are either retiring or retired (or perhaps already dead). Those guys, who built the foundation are now regarded as "Orientalists" by the general application of Said's concepts to all area studies, and then dismissed as either bigoted or "essentialist" or "Othering" or any other fancy term you can come up with. Their work becomes looked down upon by their students, and dismissed as limited from their author's biased colonial perspective, and distancing of himself toward an imaginary "Area" caught in some sort of stasis. The idea is that these guys are somehow exacting a power game over their subject area and controlling them in a hegemonic fashion, or something.

In general, this has led to much a dismissal of "orientalist" work - be it translations from Chinese or other language, or paintings or depictions of the "Orient" because they are bigoted. We have taken them off the wall, and essentially disowned them, like the practitioners of the research on the field. Yet when you look at the actual works themselves, something like Aladdin for instance, you see something completely different.

We can say that Aladdin does not reflect a realistic "Arabia" and therefore is orientalist - but for the child's mind, the world of Aladdin is loaded with aesthetic flavor - the same way the 1001 Nights is a magical book, despite its fantastical elements. It's a lot easier to dismiss the work as "bigoted" and try to cut it apart, but to discuss why it actually works and appeals is another thing outside of a political discussion, and quite frankly, we would be far more impoverished without it.

The same with China - our Chinoiserie and American Chinese food are cultural heritage items in that they represent a fusion and an interpretation that has aesthetic value. Modern scholars have also tried to rehabilitate as barbaric practices as footbinding as somehow "cultural" and "heritage" representing a fascination of western people as portraying the footbinding Chinese as "primitive" when they were merely enjoying a cultural tradition - such arguments have been made to death, and then they go about criticizing everyone who has ever said anything bad about those mutilated feet - because the women themselves regarded their disgusting feet as a thing of pride. The whole thing has become a farce of sorts, that is almost horrific when one considers the actuality of the events.

We should focus not on the background of the work as much as the work's aesthetic quality, for the specific reason that the esteem of the work rests not on its political background but on its reception as aesthetically important. Shakespeare, had he not been aesthetically stimulating would not warrant the attention of political readings - with that established, we realize that political reading, of the branding sort, is designed specifically to be iconoclastic, or rather works within the ideology of the aesthetic to try to carve its own niche for the sake of having something to talk about.

Authors too have picked up on it and decidedly, consciously are writing from a conceptual position. So we can say Shakespeare most likely did not consider transgender sexuality when he wrote a heterosexual comedy with a cross-dressing actor, the same way any number of Opera composers did not think of "cross dressing" when they penned a Britches role. yet today we have a deliberate attempt to preach to the choir of concept, which is a cultural disease.

[Delta40]

It is strange how rarely beauty is mentioned when people discuss literature. I spent 4 years in seminar rooms and only on two occasions do I remember a student or lecturer describe a passage of writing as beautiful (once when studying Macbeth and once when studying a passage from Virginia Woolf). I once heard a man who runs art history courses in London say that he felt like grabbing some of his smug, hip little 'post-modern' students, giving them a shake and yelling "this Vermeer painting is beautiful, do you understand...BEAUTIFUL. The works of the trendy young British artists you so admire are not."

Is The Girl With a Pearl Earring just as beautiful when done by Van Meegeren?

[mal4mac]

Eventually, there'll be no literature-based studies left, no trained experts to teach students the value of literature (which will be a tough enough challenge to do with students brought up with nothing but facts). Already I have to explain to friends and family why I chose to study literature, and not medicine, or economics, try to explain to them why I think literature still has (and always will have) a place in society. And it's hard, the things literature can teach you or contribute aren't skills or knowledge that will instantly boom your career, it's a bridge to other cultures, into the mind of others, a wealth of knowledge and perspectives, expands your vocabulary, and most importantly, teaches you empathy, something the world is in dire need of.

I agree with your list of things literature can give you but you miss out one thing, which is I think the most important, and something your friends and family can't argue against. That is *pleasure*. You can call it aesthetic pleasure if you want to sound high falutin', but that's what I find most important about literature. Of course, understanding other cultures, empathising, and learning new things *is* a pleasure, at least, if you are encouraged into understanding these things by a great artist. An encyclopaedia can teach you about other cultures, the psychological base of empathy, etc., but the experience is unlikely to be pleasurable, or at least nowhere near as pleasurable as reading War & Peace.

I'm a bit worried about your phrase "teach students the value of literature". It seems "at one remove". That is, I feel, teachers should be "teaching students to value literature", and "leading students into an enjoyment of literature".

[mal4mac]

i disagree, methexis. Society needs more technicians, doctors, economists, engineers and those with skills. Literature will also have a place when these skilled workers have time and leisure.
Society cannot afford to maintain too many superspecialised writers and readers of literature. The english language will be less beautiful without keats, but if all medical students abandon their profession, we will all die from rampant tuberculosis.

We need good literature teachers, who can teach everyone, at least until the age of 16, preferably to 18. As a scientist myself, I would have found it more difficult to approach Shakespeare in my spare time & leisure without learning how wonderful his writings were, in literature class, in my mid-teens. This is why Michael Gove is the worst thing for literature in the UK. If his plans go ahead, many schoolkids, especially those on the science track, will be denied any appreciation of literature, which will not only impoverish their lives, but society itself. Michael Gove is a vile person who is prepared to impoverish the culture in the pursuit of materialist political/economic ends, even though he himself has studied literature at a high level, and praises it. One bright sign is that Dr Tristram Hunt, the shadow Education secretary, appears to have a brain, and knows how to use it, unlike Gove:

"Accusing Gove of introducing “the soft bigotry of low expectations into our education system” (ouch), Hunt asked him why, while Gove had “enjoyed studying the works of Jane Austen and Wilfred Owen” at his Aberdeen alma mater, “is it not okay for kids in Harlow and Blackpool today?”

... Gove’s pushback was ... “Tragically, I was not able to take English GCSE, because I was in Scotland. As a historian, the hon. Gentleman could perhaps do with studying geography.” This was pretty feeble, since Hunt had not actually said Gove had studied GCSE rather than the Scottish equivalent."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-macintyres-sketch-tristram-hunt-throws-the-englit-book-at-michael-gove-8933547.html

[JBI]

You are suggesting somehow that there were these magical teachers in the past, or that in the past there were more students of literature, when literacy to a large scale is a modern phenomenon. 100 years ago, almost nobody would have had the privilege of an education in literature. Grammar, mathematics, and basic needs of survival dominated for the most part the bare education most people would get. by 16 or so most would either be in the field, the factory, or on the battlefield. Where was the time for the discussion of the aesthetics of some obscure 17th century poet?

English as a field of study is new. Before this, for the most part academic study focused on the classics, from a variety of approaches, mostly philosophical, or historical. There is this idea that everyone was reading and writing sonnets too during the Elizabethan times, but the vast majority of people were probably starving to death and trying to make ends meet. For the most part literary education is regulated to the realm of leisure, or that which is not serious, as it always has been.

We talk of the necessity of such an education, when we are ultimately within the first generations of such an education. As far as I am concerned, I would rather see tax money going to teach people foreign languages and applicable skills. The degree in literature for the most part is not worth the paper it is written on.

Now, if we want to encourage people to read things they like, that's fine. But how many people needed a class on movies in high school to like watching films? Likewise how many people needed classes on contemporary music to like listening to music. Why is literature so different?

The answer is much of what we call a canon is inaccessible to the uninitiated - usually because of the distance between text and reader - be it time, place, language, custom, or even the knowledge of the book's existence.

In such a case, I will say that my reading skills, in both English and Chinese are more or less self taught from exploration in books on my own. Much of what I was taught on Chinese literature actually has harmed my understanding of it, rather than helping it.

In contrast, however, I have always needed help at the linguistic aspects of the field - I needed to learn how to discuss poetry with the proper vocabulary, I needed to learn how to speak Chinese, and read classical Chinese. These are all hands on skills that require an education, the same way formal English writing requires a thorough education.

So if you asked me if I wanted high school kids to waste half a semester reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I would answer hell no. If you asked me if I wanted those who were applying to university to be forced to learn how to write a proper essay, I would answer, without hesitation, of course.

As for specialization, I regard myself as not specialized enough. You need generally to focus to get anywhere, and arguably, all major critics are rather focused when they are writing well. Harold Bloom is an example of what happens when a reader loses his specialization, and tries hard to be an "everything" critic - even with his immense knowledge, he still seems to miss on everything, or merely to scratch the surface.

Poetry is by its nature unnecessary. I personally love reading poetry, but it is not the most essential part of the world, and it is not important that everybody reads it. I encourage some people to try it, because they may like it, but when my friends say "I don't like it" I don't really care, nor do I force the issue. After all, reading is incredibly personal.

I live in a country that forces a couple hundred poems down every child's throat, to the point where everyone seems to have them memorized, and can pull them at random. I also noticed that not a single person enjoys these works, nor understands them, and their practical use as either quotation or entertainment is completely lost. This idea that somehow forcing people to learn stuff makes them enjoy it is nonsense.

People need to realize that art is what those with too much time on their hands do to keep away from boredom. It is neither necessary, nor important - it simply exists for its own sake.

[JCamilo]

Is The Girl With a Pearl Earring just as beautiful when done by Van Meegeren?

It is beautiful because it is. Who did it is irrelevant. However, there is the risk of asking the wrong question, What is beauty is different from What is beautiful. Aesthetic deals with the first one mostly. It is not as subjective as it was claimed. What is beautiful is something else, in a grump morning I may get annoyed by Scarlet Johnanson and imagine her slice like a Picasso. Anyways, modernists were outdated by birth, people already knew Beauty was not only the tradional concept, that you could remove mundane things from their context, etc.

[mal4mac]

You are suggesting somehow that there were these magical teachers in the past, or that in the past there were more students of literature, when literacy to a large scale is a modern phenomenon. 100 years ago, almost nobody would have had the privilege of an education in literature. Grammar, mathematics, and basic needs of survival dominated for the most part the bare education most people would get. by 16 or so most would either be in the field, the factory, or on the battlefield. Where was the time for the discussion of the aesthetics of some obscure 17th century poet?


I didn't suggest such a thing, I'm only trying to say that the UK had "good enough" teachers, and a "reasonable" amount of time spent on literature, during the last fifty years or so. This is really a bare minimum, and to go backwards from that, into what Gove is suggesting, is insupportable.



English as a field of study is new. Before this, for the most part academic study focused on the classics, from a variety of approaches, mostly philosophical, or historical. There is this idea that everyone was reading and writing sonnets too during the Elizabethan times, but the vast majority of people were probably starving to death and trying to make ends meet. For the most part literary education is regulated to the realm of leisure, or that which is not serious, as it always has been.


Well, yes, but most people are not starving now. Leisure should be taken seriously.



We talk of the necessity of such an education, when we are ultimately within the first generations of such an education. As far as I am concerned, I would rather see tax money going to teach people foreign languages and applicable skills. The degree in literature for the most part is not worth the paper it is written on.


Are you saying kids should not read great literature in schools? Surely we need *some* literature students; who else will teach literature in schools?


But how many people needed a class on movies in high school to like watching films? Likewise how many people needed classes on contemporary music to like listening to music. Why is literature so different?

Literature is difficult, most pupils will benefit from some help in reading Shakespeare. Most of my reading skills also came from exploration in books on my own, but teachers helped me in my mid-teens, by getting me over some Shakesperean hurdles, or by simply pointing towards some classics I might otherwise have avoided (the enthusiasm of a tough rugby playing type for George Eliot was a good example in itself!)



So if you asked me if I wanted high school kids to waste half a semester reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I would answer hell no. If you asked me if I wanted those who were applying to university to be forced to learn how to write a proper essay, I would answer, without hesitation, of course.


You may be right "To Kill a Mockingbird" (which I've only just read!) is very easy reading, but it's (surely) a great novel to read, as homework, over a half-term holiday, and spend a lesson discussing.




Poetry is by its nature unnecessary. I personally love reading poetry, but it is not the most essential part of the world, and it is not important that everybody reads it. I encourage some people to try it, because they may like it, but when my friends say "I don't like it" I don't really care, nor do I force the issue. After all, reading is incredibly personal.

I live in a country that forces a couple hundred poems down every child's throat, to the point where everyone seems to have them memorized, and can pull them at random. I also noticed that not a single person enjoys these works, nor understands them, and their practical use as either quotation or entertainment is completely lost. This idea that somehow forcing people to learn stuff makes them enjoy it is nonsense.

People need to realize that art is what those with too much time on their hands do to keep away from boredom. It is neither necessary, nor important - it simply exists for its own sake.

Put another way, you are saying, educated people choose to pursue art in their free time, above other things. It may not be necessary, the could play ping pong, but you are saying that they choose art. So how can you say it is not important? If they choose it then it is the most important thing for them. Reading is the best way I know of keeping boredom away (if I get the choice right!) Ergo, to me, literature is the most important thing in the world. If you don't agree with that, why are you translating Chinese literature? If "anything will do" then why not learn how to program, or become a petroleum engineer, that's where the money and job opportunities are.

[luhsun]

JBI- i am speaking as a member of an oversea chinese. The hundreds of poems forced down our throats are definitely not to be enjoyed or appreciated by the masses for aesthetic reasons. I have no proof, but i do think of them as stories of our culture and units of vocabulary. Even the most rustic uncle with rudimentary education will have a gleam in his eye when he rambles about one mountain aint big enough for two tigers.

[Methexis]

i disagree, methexis. Society needs more technicians, doctors, economists, engineers and those with skills. Literature will also have a place when these skilled workers have time and leisure.
Society cannot afford to maintain too many superspecialised writers and readers of literature. The english language will be less beautiful without keats, but if all medical students abandon their profession, we will all die from rampant tuberculosis.

You may disagree, but are you sure what you're disagreeing about? I never once said we need literature teachers more than medical experts etc., an argument that's on the verge of irrelevant as the balance will never, ever, tip the other way anyway. What I said was that there's a place in society for literature, that it can contribute something valuable, and that this goes unrecognized in our current government policy and school model. That being said, what's the point of living life just for the sake of living it? Judging by some of the reactions to this post I'm a bit of a loner in this but I'd rather not live than live in an ugly world (yes, yes, it is already ugly, but admittedly there's some beauty as well, right?). Just a quick reaction to the post underneath, most artists are auto-didactics these days, and art thrives in crisis, not just in prosperity. Something you'd know if you'd read your idol's boyfriend's writings. Furthermore, aren't we, who have time to sit behind our computers and write pseudo-intellectual posts about art, religion, and whatnot, not members of societies that fulfill these primal needs and can afford to expand behind that, to support culture too? Your thoughts please.


I absolutely agree. Culture has always been a sophisticated, non first- need thing. First of all only rich countries can afford educating so many artists. The economy has to be based on something.

[Methexis]

You are suggesting somehow that there were these magical teachers in the past, or that in the past there were more students of literature, when literacy to a large scale is a modern phenomenon. 100 years ago, almost nobody would have had the privilege of an education in literature. Grammar, mathematics, and basic needs of survival dominated for the most part the bare education most people would get. by 16 or so most would either be in the field, the factory, or on the battlefield. Where was the time for the discussion of the aesthetics of some obscure 17th century poet?

English as a field of study is new. Before this, for the most part academic study focused on the classics, from a variety of approaches, mostly philosophical, or historical. There is this idea that everyone was reading and writing sonnets too during the Elizabethan times, but the vast majority of people were probably starving to death and trying to make ends meet. For the most part literary education is regulated to the realm of leisure, or that which is not serious, as it always has been.

We talk of the necessity of such an education, when we are ultimately within the first generations of such an education. As far as I am concerned, I would rather see tax money going to teach people foreign languages and applicable skills. The degree in literature for the most part is not worth the paper it is written on.

Now, if we want to encourage people to read things they like, that's fine. But how many people needed a class on movies in high school to like watching films? Likewise how many people needed classes on contemporary music to like listening to music. Why is literature so different?

The answer is much of what we call a canon is inaccessible to the uninitiated - usually because of the distance between text and reader - be it time, place, language, custom, or even the knowledge of the book's existence.

In such a case, I will say that my reading skills, in both English and Chinese are more or less self taught from exploration in books on my own. Much of what I was taught on Chinese literature actually has harmed my understanding of it, rather than helping it.

In contrast, however, I have always needed help at the linguistic aspects of the field - I needed to learn how to discuss poetry with the proper vocabulary, I needed to learn how to speak Chinese, and read classical Chinese. These are all hands on skills that require an education, the same way formal English writing requires a thorough education.

So if you asked me if I wanted high school kids to waste half a semester reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I would answer hell no. If you asked me if I wanted those who were applying to university to be forced to learn how to write a proper essay, I would answer, without hesitation, of course.

As for specialization, I regard myself as not specialized enough. You need generally to focus to get anywhere, and arguably, all major critics are rather focused when they are writing well. Harold Bloom is an example of what happens when a reader loses his specialization, and tries hard to be an "everything" critic - even with his immense knowledge, he still seems to miss on everything, or merely to scratch the surface.

Poetry is by its nature unnecessary. I personally love reading poetry, but it is not the most essential part of the world, and it is not important that everybody reads it. I encourage some people to try it, because they may like it, but when my friends say "I don't like it" I don't really care, nor do I force the issue. After all, reading is incredibly personal.

I live in a country that forces a couple hundred poems down every child's throat, to the point where everyone seems to have them memorized, and can pull them at random. I also noticed that not a single person enjoys these works, nor understands them, and their practical use as either quotation or entertainment is completely lost. This idea that somehow forcing people to learn stuff makes them enjoy it is nonsense.

People need to realize that art is what those with too much time on their hands do to keep away from boredom. It is neither necessary, nor important - it simply exists for its own sake.

Upon reading your post, I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I'd laugh away some of your rhetorics, turning people's arguments into a grotesque misrepresentation of what they originally said by saying they're implying there used to be magical teachers is sad, obviously. Your second argument simply doesn't really stroke with reality. If there's been any sort of evolution anywhere in Western-Europe and the U.S.A. the past hundred years, it's been one away from Humanities. The people that were privileged enough to be taught in grammar got equally important education in humanity courses. Yes, English as a field of study is relatively new, but not as new as you seem to think it is, studying literature (what this threat is actually about, no one really worries that people won't be learning languages anymore any time soon, let alone stop learning English...), however, is not. Unappetizing as it may be to you, at the same time you describe people starving to death, others spent their lives and own wealth financing and publishing literature studies, as if it was some sort of religious calling, to pretend that to these people it was something done in their leisure time is an odd, unlikely, historically wrong perception. Some harsh words about studying literature then, which I'll kindly ignore.

Then another wild suggestion, that teachers of literature should motivate students to 'read what they like', which, in your words, is ridiculous, as on most other fields of aesthetic enjoyment people seem to find their way to movies and music they like. Whether it concerns music, movies, or literature, teachers should strive to broaden the student's mind and perspective. You're right in assuming most people find their way to movies and music by themselves, but how many get to see film noire, French avant-garde movies, 'outdated' movies that may provide historical perspectives? How many people learn to appreciate classical music by themselves? Bridging the gap between reader and text is not the problem, but the challenge of literature.

Although it's a shame to hear you've had some bad experiences with teachers of literature, that doesn't mean anything in itself. You seem to be drawing solely on your own experiences here, but just as you have learned to appreciate literature on your own, other people will be fine learning a language on their own. Your next suggestion, that reading during your education is wasted time, while at the same time expecting those who apply to university to be able to write an essay without having had any proper literature courses, is naive at best. It is by reading experienced writers that you can improve your own writing skills.

It's a little surprising that you criticize Bloom for being superficial just a paragraph before admitting to be a poetry lover. Some of the most profound and interesting criticism on Wallace Stevens is written by Bloom. By what follows I can only suggest you might benefit from a little education in literature yourself. Discussing literature on a serious level hardly implies you're trying to convince other people to read or like what you've read.

Next you mistake memory training with literature study. Odd, but at this point, characteristic. Your conclusion, that art exists solely for art's sake and should be something people only engage in during their free time, 'to keep away from boredom' is borderline infantile. The idea of art pour l'art is but one of many perspectives on art, there's art that holds a mirror to society, art has always been a (relatively) safe place for opinion, as in the writing of Jonathan Swift (or 20th century black African poets). To say that his writings, provoking British authority, giving the Irish a voice, is 'neither necessary, nor important', that it 'simply exists for its own sake,' shows more superficiality than I've ever experienced in any of the writings by Harold Bloom.

[stlukesguild]

By what follows I can only suggest you might benefit from a little education in literature yourself.

Ooooh! Break out the popcorn. This ought to be good.:cheers2:

[Ecurb]

As to whether Methexis should laugh or cry, I can only warn him, laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

As JBI points out, in American high schools (at least), teachers appear to want to teach students how to write essays. Surely reading essays would teach a budding scholar how to write essays better than reading novels does. It seems ridiculous. Why read novels to learn how to write essays? I'll grant that English class should introduce students to a variety of literary forms, but it seems to me (based on my high school non-education of a couple of decades ago) that biography, history, and personal and expository essays tend to get ignored, while the class reads three or four novels a year. That's probably because English Literature attracts lovers of novels (and poetry) and they want to teach literature they like themselves.

[sandy14]

Bookworms?

"Literature" changes as technology changes. Homer came from an oral tradition, poetry was the dominant form of literature until Daniel Defoe stuck his oar in, and the novel grew in popularity. Interactive e-books may well be a new development. In 300 years time folk may be studying 3-D texts from the early 21st century. Our "literature" did not start out as a written form - in fact the literary bit was an afterthought - and computers may well change our conception of literature.

[luhsun]

Methexis: dean swift started out intending to be a pamphleter, writing to provoke and shame. Young poor children should be sold and hunted as game by the rich, according to swift. He did not intend to write 'literature' -anyway, the way you write and argue by calling people names do not support your assertion that literature teaches empathy, understanding the mind and culture of others who disagree with you etc

[Sir Thomas Urqu]

Bookworms?

"Literature" changes as technology changes. Homer came from an oral tradition, poetry was the dominant form of literature until Daniel Defoe stuck his oar in, and the novel grew in popularity. Interactive e-books may well be a new development. In 300 years time folk may be studying 3-D texts from the early 21st century. Our "literature" did not start out as a written form - in fact the literary bit was an afterthought - and computers may well change our conception of literature.

Literature is the art of writing. That's the definition. Stories and Myths may be oratory but Literature is the result of the written word. "Homer" *wrote down* the Iliad and made it literature; Augustus commissioned Virgil to *write* the Aeneid. These works and works of posterity exist as much in the written form as they ever did. Whether or not they originated that way the written word swallowed them and made them their own they way a eastern emerald elysia takes on chloroplast from it's algal diet: the light we continually shine on them, feed these "works" with—is through their form as literature. Far from an after-thought.


Methexis: anyway, the way you write and argue by calling people names do not support your assertion that literature teaches empathy, understanding the mind and culture of others who disagree with you etc

Near everybody on this forum argues that way, JBI especially.

And if we are talking about literature not being able to teach empathy and understanding, well...according to modern studies the evidence is against you.

[luhsun]

Sir thomas, i am not a student of literature and has no claims to being fair, understanding or having exceptional empathy. Having admitted this, you do not have to substantiate your claims re: modern studies, which i doubt you can. Do, however, if you could, enlighten me on what you meant by modern studies.

[JBI]

Upon reading your post, I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I'd laugh away some of your rhetorics, turning people's arguments into a grotesque misrepresentation of what they originally said by saying they're implying there used to be magical teachers is sad, obviously. Your second argument simply doesn't really stroke with reality. If there's been any sort of evolution anywhere in Western-Europe and the U.S.A. the past hundred years, it's been one away from Humanities. The people that were privileged enough to be taught in grammar got equally important education in humanity courses. Yes, English as a field of study is relatively new, but not as new as you seem to think it is, studying literature (what this threat is actually about, no one really worries that people won't be learning languages anymore any time soon, let alone stop learning English...), however, is not. Unappetizing as it may be to you, at the same time you describe people starving to death, others spent their lives and own wealth financing and publishing literature studies, as if it was some sort of religious calling, to pretend that to these people it was something done in their leisure time is an odd, unlikely, historically wrong perception. Some harsh words about studying literature then, which I'll kindly ignore.

Then another wild suggestion, that teachers of literature should motivate students to 'read what they like', which, in your words, is ridiculous, as on most other fields of aesthetic enjoyment people seem to find their way to movies and music they like. Whether it concerns music, movies, or literature, teachers should strive to broaden the student's mind and perspective. You're right in assuming most people find their way to movies and music by themselves, but how many get to see film noire, French avant-garde movies, 'outdated' movies that may provide historical perspectives? How many people learn to appreciate classical music by themselves? Bridging the gap between reader and text is not the problem, but the challenge of literature.

Although it's a shame to hear you've had some bad experiences with teachers of literature, that doesn't mean anything in itself. You seem to be drawing solely on your own experiences here, but just as you have learned to appreciate literature on your own, other people will be fine learning a language on their own. Your next suggestion, that reading during your education is wasted time, while at the same time expecting those who apply to university to be able to write an essay without having had any proper literature courses, is naive at best. It is by reading experienced writers that you can improve your own writing skills.

It's a little surprising that you criticize Bloom for being superficial just a paragraph before admitting to be a poetry lover. Some of the most profound and interesting criticism on Wallace Stevens is written by Bloom. By what follows I can only suggest you might benefit from a little education in literature yourself. Discussing literature on a serious level hardly implies you're trying to convince other people to read or like what you've read.

Next you mistake memory training with literature study. Odd, but at this point, characteristic. Your conclusion, that art exists solely for art's sake and should be something people only engage in during their free time, 'to keep away from boredom' is borderline infantile. The idea of art pour l'art is but one of many perspectives on art, there's art that holds a mirror to society, art has always been a (relatively) safe place for opinion, as in the writing of Jonathan Swift (or 20th century black African poets). To say that his writings, provoking British authority, giving the Irish a voice, is 'neither necessary, nor important', that it 'simply exists for its own sake,' shows more superficiality than I've ever experienced in any of the writings by Harold Bloom.

Look, I don't know you, so don't take what I am about to write personally, and put everything in a "he is just talking about my post" sort of box, so that you do not get personally offended.

Take it like this. The masses going to university is new - true. In numbers, both representing the proportion of the population, as well as the concrete number of people, humanities departments have been continuously growing for over 100 years - true, indisputable. Now, when you look at that outside your little box in Belgium, or wherever it is you are from, you will see the massive implications.

Take China right now that is developing as a country, and has more and more university students each year. As education in the humanities is cheaper than in the sciences (for a number of practical reasons) - you have an intense overpopulation of semi-educated literature, and humanities students floating around. Had it been 150 years ago, only rich males would have had such an opportunity to study literature, and practical skills would have been dismissed as "for the masses".

In the west we see an increase in demand for people with practical training for the specific purpose that people with practical training will not only get better jobs, with better chances of employment, but will also develop a country's economy by offering something the market actually needs. If there is one thing a market doesn't need, it is more literature students. Now, put that in a developing country perspective, and you will notice the intense application of the problem - a billion people with degrees in the humanities cannot build cities, cannot build machines, and cannot develop an economy - most end up working in low paying service industries, and the cycle of families first children going to university ends with them most likely getting the same low paying job as their mother or father.

Now, in rich little Belgium you can complain all you want about how the humanities are going to a slump, but you will realize quite quickly that humanities are, by necessity, something which is quite new to the masses. 150 years ago, universities would have been both male dominated, as well as restricted to an upper, or middle class. In the US, the old families still dominate these fancy colleges. We live in a world where for the majority of history, the masses were not educated. The idea that everyone could go to university to pursue this stuff is new.

Now, when we have ballooning universities, with more being set up every day, what can we do with the students whose education is not practical - we can say it like this. There are a few practical skills that literature teaches - supposedly critical thinking and writing. Yet such skills can be said of almost any field. Technical writing is something altogether, with both practical application and also a lack of a connection to the study of literature.

IF you were to tell me that they were going to teach you how to critically write essays in your degree, then when I needed a worker who could do so (for instance, a secretary to correspond with people), I would be quick to hire someone. But the truth is, they have no more knowledge than anybody else.

When we go back to high school, we realize, you get a couple of classic works in there - usually 1 or 2 novels, a modern drama, a Shakespeare play, and a handful of poetry plus one or two novels to read at home in Canada, - but you do not get any real results. I will be honest with you, my high school teachers neither succeeded in teaching practical writing, nor succeeded in teaching any love of literature to anybody. The reason is simple - practical writing is not a love or hate thing - it is not exactly an art, since much of it is functionary, rather than aesthetic. Secondly, loving literature is personal, and some people will never do so, and likewise, for the people lined up to go study engineering in 6 months, good luck trying to force them to love a novel they don't want to read.

Now, there will always be the idiots like me who study things in the humanities - the dead end of unemployment is packed to capacity with the type - but of them, how many are actually good at what they do? How many actually will go on in the field? How much of their education is necessary for anything? To learn how to call Shakespeare a sexist is not a good education.

This is not new. Traditionally people look down on people who work, and everyone thinks university is a step out of this "working" world. Likewise, the humanities, a traditionally bourgeois enterprise, carries a bit of prestige, but like other bourgeois enterprises, is particularly useless. You can argue how the sports of polo and golf are somehow useful, but you cannot justify teaching people to play such sports with tax payer money. Poetry is much the same sort of game on a more sophisticated level. You first must learn the rules (not easy) and have the education to play properly, and then it's all about showing off in one way or another. Poetry does not translate into GDP, and poets all more or less have day jobs. Now you want to tell me poetry students shouldn't either.


So we go back to the classroom, and we say what should we learn - as far as I am concerned, you get them a rhetoric reader, a grammar reader, a fat anthology of essays, and a nice slice of longer length nonfiction, and you teach them what works and what doesn't. You can recommend books to them, but I cannot see the practical use of teaching children to read half a dozen poems they don't like, much less memorizing them.

As for my emphasis on memory, you will note that literature is in many ways a game about memory, when you read it on the higher level. You need to catch things in texts that only can be seen through cross reference and memory, and when you read you think "when have I heard this before". and you find where and when. If you don't have the gist of the foundational texts memorized, you are not going to go very far in the field, so yes, it is very much about memory. Some people take it to the extreme, such as in traditional China when the entire confucian canon had to be memorized for civil servants, yet literature is still very much concerned with memory.

Now, for Harold Bloom or old friend, I don't know what you see in his great contribution to Stevens, but ultimately he was a Romantic critic, of a pretty good stature before he went commercial and wrote books about all sorts of everything, which lack much of his original close reading or critical insight. If you read The Western Canon today, you will find none of those essays actually seem to have any flavor or add anything to the critical discussion. Likewise if you read his works like How to Read and Why, Genius, Shakespeare the invention of the human, Hamlet Poem Unlimited, etc. you will find none actually do anything particularly memorable. He is not good at reading Shakespeare, and these catalogues are more casual than useful. You can argue all you want, but I don't know exactly what you are reading, so I will not guess what sort of great wisdom you possess.


Now, to bring the argument back - many people would suggest it is important for governments to support literature as part of nationbuilding or historical legacy, or some other such term, which I accept to an extent. However, with such ideas one must ask, how much. Should English departments be as big as Chemistry departments? Should the number of Ph. d.s in the humanities be significantly more than the number of new students coming into the field every year. Generally speaking, some is necessary for cultural reasons, but most is unnecessary. Humanities should be shrinking down, as they serve no purpose except to waste 4 years of time to learn what could have been learned at home.

[luhsun]

Society is getting more and more violent, the world unsafe. Of course there so many confounding factors and no one causal factor can be blamed. It is interesting to postulate that while literature may be enjoyed by middle aged bourgeois like me, but some young men, like those in norway or american schools who went berserk mass-shooting previously found answers and solace in literature.

[HSPS]

People need to realize that art is what those with too much time on their hands do to keep away from boredom. It is neither necessary, nor important - it simply exists for its own sake.

It's not necessary, but what is? And I wouldn't go so far as to say it isn't important. Do writers really have nothing to offer? If the the practice of creating and appreciating art has lasted this long, surely it must exist for a reason. If I may be self-indulgent, I'm actually a little offended by that remark, because reading poetry played a crucial role in getting me through a crisis not so long ago. It offered optimism when nothing else did. (Cue the eye rolls.)

[Sir Thomas Urqu]

Sir thomas, i am not a student of literature and has no claims to being fair, understanding or having exceptional empathy. Having admitted this, you do not have to substantiate your claims re: modern studies, which i doubt you can. Do, however, if you could, enlighten me on what you meant by modern studies.

Well, here's the most recent one: Science.


Now, to bring the argument back - many people would suggest it is important for governments to support literature as part of nationbuilding or historical legacy, or some other such term, which I accept to an extent. However, with such ideas one must ask, how much. Should English departments be as big as Chemistry departments? Should the number of Ph. d.s in the humanities be significantly more than the number of new students coming into the field every year. Generally speaking, some is necessary for cultural reasons, but most is unnecessary. Humanities should be shrinking down, as they serve no purpose except to waste 4 years of time to learn what could have been learned at home.

Aren't you studying Chinese Literature? An interesting view you hold if so, but not very reasonable.

No one is saying there should be more Literature majors then Chemistry, and as someone already pointed out there's no need to even think that that is a possible conclusion. Your cynical view on Humanities seems to me completely personal and, frankly, hyperbolic. To claim they serve no purpose is a dead-end with your argument as it makes no sense considering you have not a universal agreement on what does serve a "purpose". Are we counting who saves lives? Who makes more money? Who get us into space faster. So many fields are detrimental in the view of another field; therefore when you start talking about "usefulness" you come off as a self-hating pseudo-philistine. It's not very appealing. People like literature...let them study it and develop from it. It certainly can be attested that they do see a purpose in it as do the people who continually read it and spend their lives on it.

[luhsun]

Sir thomas, i read your quoted study published in science. It is an interesting 'green shoot', to quote the infamous economist bernake, but it is just some experimental conjectures. If you are transported to the phillipines area devastated by haiyan, i am sure you will learn how human think or feel much faster.
These are the fringe benefits of literature.

[stlukesguild]

As JBI points out, in American high schools (at least), teachers appear to want to teach students how to write essays.

Teachers have little or nothing to do with the current directions being taken in school curriculum. These are being driven by education corporations such as Pearson and McGraw Hill who are promoting standardized testing as the end all and be all (for which they just happen to be paid handsomely) or other corporations as well as politicians who are pushing education reform solely for utilitarian purposes, while eliminating much that involves critical thinking.

Surely reading essays would teach a budding scholar how to write essays better than reading novels does.

Is that the primary goal of education... producing scholars... or corporate minions who can produce a standard essay?

It seems ridiculous. Why read novels to learn how to write essays?

Again... is writing essays they end-all be-all of education or teaching literacy? Personally I suspect that JBI or I could write far better essays than a student raised on little more than endless drills of standard essay formats.

I'll grant that English class should introduce students to a variety of literary forms, but it seems to me (based on my high school non-education of a couple of decades ago) that biography, history, and personal and expository essays tend to get ignored, while the class reads three or four novels a year.

3 or 4 novels a year? What was that? Kindergarten? I easily read dozens of required novels in a given year as well as histories, biographies, and expository essays. The current direction leans toward 75% non-fiction with a virtual elimination of poetry... beginning in Kindergarten and First Grade. And then the education gurus cannot fathom why children are showing less interest in reading than ever. In the past it was recognized that it was Dr. Seuss, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Where the Wild Things Are, and tales of vampires and ghosts and cowboys, etc... that initially hooked children on reading.

[JBI]

St. Luke, I see nothing wrong with literary education in the Literature Class, but as it is, English class where I am from is the one class everyone going to university must take, without exception. Now, for an engineering student from China sitting beside me, what did he learn when we were reading Ezra Pound that he would either enjoy or translate into something practical.

I see your point that it should not be about prescriptive notions of curriculum, but ultimately you give someone a curriculum that is functional to meet an end that is desirable - such as language learning, grammar, or writing, - and you can actually translate such things into tangible results.

A good example is me learning Chinese. My first text books had a particularly military feel about them, pumping grammar drills and sentence structure. Then when I went to China, I noticed all the text books here focus on "cultural" interaction nonsense, and ignore the basic systematic art which is grammar.

Now, for my class mates, many still cannot build a proper sentence, though their "gained" some sort of cultural knowledge - they know about Taichi or how long the Great Wall is, or how Chinese medicine is better then Western medicine or some other bunch of unimportant facts - but for me, I build my sentences with the clear grammatical logic that I ingrained in my brain years before, and have not needed to refresh it much - when creating verbal sentences then, I can cough up one at the same rate as any local person, in the same form more or less, without hesitation or translation, and without needing to really think before I open my mouth about grammatical form. The education in a logical and developmental manner articulated a code in my brain that translates into a tangible skill.

Now, for the humanities, sorry for Americans, but the most important thing is probably linguistic skills. In the social sciences and in the sciences - both theoretical and applied - writing skills are also incredibly important. Communication is always necessary, and someone with sloppy or inefficient writing is always going to be at the back of the line.

So for the one course we must all take to keep going, it makes practical sense to teach the one skill that everyone will need, regardless of either their cultural background or their perspective direction in life. Likewise, for those who do not research English literature, but go on to study Japanese or Arabic, or other canons, these foundations in "Western" works seem more the trivial.

So, we basically can all agree that the reason why English education in the Toronto school system is stressed is generally for the simple reason that English is required to do research in universities. The same way now in many provinces in Canada English coursework is required for going to medical school, and admission essays are the norm beside test and academic scores. There is always this stress on practical writing, as well as on functional communication. We need to learn how to communicate, and that is why we study English, or why we should study anyway.

Now, there are many ways to communicate, but in an academic setting, the standard is the non-personal essay. That is, as objective as you can get it, at least in the early stages of one's writing career. Those skills can be taught, perhaps best by constant drills in military fashion - education is not supposed to be fun, nor easy - those who think of it merely as a game lose the notions of the fact that it is about learning things, not enjoying things.

You teach someone rhetoric, writing, research skills, communication, etc. and then regardless of where they go, they will bring these skills with them. That's generally the ideal. As for the publishing and corruption and the government screwing with the system, that is because all politicians and government workers need to see the same thing - results that translate into votes or higher performance scores.

Now, I will address the notion that I am a hypocrite:



No one is saying there should be more Literature majors then Chemistry, and as someone already pointed out there's no need to even think that that is a possible conclusion. Your cynical view on Humanities seems to me completely personal and, frankly, hyperbolic. To claim they serve no purpose is a dead-end with your argument as it makes no sense considering you have not a universal agreement on what does serve a "purpose". Are we counting who saves lives? Who makes more money? Who get us into space faster. So many fields are detrimental in the view of another field; therefore when you start talking about "usefulness" you come off as a self-hating pseudo-philistine. It's not very appealing. People like literature...let them study it and develop from it. It certainly can be attested that they do see a purpose in it as do the people who continually read it and spend their lives on it.

Actually an above poster mentioned specifically the decline of the humanities in Belgium, I was responding to that post - but sure, call me a cynic or whatever.

I personally am a student of the humanities, so you cannot dismiss me so easily. I study Chinese literature, something nobody here really cares about or reads. Likewise, I am quite aware of the little purpose my research actually has, as I also know that studying such things is a dead-end - it is self-satisfying, but not tangible into anything outside the field. Studying English is much the same - it doesn't produce anything outside of its own sense of its own accomplishment. Every single essay I have never published is merely a pile of useless results. Sure I may have learned how to write better, but the actual content is rather useless. The summary of my studies ultimately would come down to what I do publish, or what lectures or comments I give.

Now, when we measure those there is a fairly good measure - quotation and reading. IF a book remains on a shelf and is never read, the book is as good as useless. If nobody listens to one's opinions, then one's opinions are only useful to oneself. In the humanities, it is almost impossible to read everything published in one field as it is being published. More is published on Shakespeare than can be read in 10 lifetimes, and much has never been taken off the shelf.

Now that we have established that aside from a few major critical minds, the vast majority of criticism is superfluous, we can return to the idea of the self, and its benefits from literature. As we know, literature is not new, but people reading is. Most people would have orally received their textual knowledge as late as 200 years ago. Literature, as it was studied and read, was something altogether bourgeois. With the cost of a book as late as 1850 more than 3 month's salary for the working class.

Did one need an education to enjoy such stuff? Well, my grandfather didn't even finish primary school, and his education in literature came from reading the Torah in a synagogue. Did that not make him a moral person, or an intellectual person, or was his mind limited somehow? or did he not understand the world? Others didn't even have the enjoyment of religious education as an education - did they not understand the world? Was there mind somehow inferior?


It's this disgusting occupation of the educated to both suggest their cultural superiority, as well as their intellectual superiority to everyone else that seems to be behind the fuel of literature as it was practiced for the past 1000 years (or in China's case, 2000).

Namely, everyone has art - peasant and king alike. Yet only a select group are entitled to the "high art" namely that which either requires an education (poetry, literacy) or money/exposure (paintings, sculpture, pottery - anything that needs a personal collection or a museum to access) the text itself was also inaccessible for most, as it was too expensive to physically get as well. We see here then, that literature has by necessity been dominated by a specific educated class of people.

Yet to turn around now and say that these people are inherently superior, either morally, or ethically is to suggest their class privilege has entitled not just material superiority, but also a superiority of the intellect - they feel more, they understand more, they are better people. Such rhetoric is disgusting, and is deep rooted in a lot of understandings of education. You have basically put the slave master in a morally superior position over the slave, given by his educational understanding of texts, over the slave's limitation to the field and the stable.

Was Pharaoh culturally superior to Moses then? By such reckoning of the "value" of the arts, by Pharoah's position in his palace, with all his artworks, and primitive forms of literature, music, etc. he was far ahead of the slave Jew who was building such palaces brick by brick.
Forgive me then if I dismiss the idea of "intellectual superiority" or "openness" from reading as a trivial bit of nonsense. Especially when such intangible things lack to recognize firstly what is being read, and secondly, use something subjective and indefinite to define another indefinite thing.

Reading and art have, and seem always will be mainly for entertainment. Not for "broadening the mind" or "making one a better person". We have charity work for that, and the 5 hours spent reading a novel could be instead spent building a house for the poor - you would hypothetically meet more people, and would be doing something that would have an altruistic benefit to society. One cannot use such nonsense to justify a superiority of the individual through interaction with art.

Like a beautiful vase, art works for the specific purpose of its enjoyment within a class of people who have access to it. So for instance, for the American to enjoy, or learn from Chinese literature, first they would need to learn Chinese (not so easy), then learn to read literature in Chinese (again not so easy) and then finally read enough that they begin to learn from it. Now, with a minimum of 4 years really before you get anywhere (and that is with a background in literature already, not starting from scratch) you are looking at a rather mediocre practical gain for very little gain. Learning the language will help with other things, but the literature is superfluous to society until which time you can apply it.

I don't see why people cannot just accept that literature does not make them better than people, and that many great people do not read literature. I have classmates from different walks of life who study other subjects, as I have friends who have never picked up a novel. Does that make them boring, or bad people? Are they less moral, or more narrow in their mentality? What of the people who were born before Dickens? Did they know nothing? Plato had not read Shakespeare, does that make Plato not understand anything - if so then why do we need to read him?

You catch my drift. My understanding is thus - most people who are good at reading, and enjoy it, and wish to study it (3 criteria which are not necessarily inclusive) are few. Usually people have two of the three. Of those who have all three, the majority or more or less self taught. St. Lukes, for instance, studied art, and teaches art professionally - I would take his opinion, however, over a great many Ph. D. students of English literature. Likewise, I did most of my reading in High school and in my first year of university, I have not read much in terms of English lit in the past 3 years - I more or less got 2 good classes that helped me learn to read better out of my degree in English. In Chinese, all my education until beginning graduate work was in the practical, or the nonsense, and none in literature, yet I came out ok, from mostly self study, and hard work. Those who care will do it, whether they study it professionally or not. Now, for those select few, who are all 3 things, usually literary classes in high school and university are without much purpose. I spent much of high school in between substitute teachers, as my teacher in grade 11 and 12 had the same mental breakdown twice (the same woman, same issues, same timing). I got virtually nothing out of the classes, yet came out an ok reader, who even decided he liked it enough to want to study it in university.

Likewise at the same time, I realized within the first day that the education was more or less useless to anybody but myself, and my own Onanist enterprises. So I picked up languages as well as practical skills, which is what everybody should do. Business prospects would look pretty bleak right now with an English degree in nonsense, and quite frankly, I wouldn't hire the great lot of them if I were an employer. Especially with the attitude of such "support groups" as one sees on this thread as an example.

Is literary education important? Well, building libraries is, and teaching people the skills of how to read, maybe - ingraining in them of love of literature is not going to take them anywhere though. Some things need to be learned on one's own, and then discovered by further exploration.

Now, to return back to the poster who called me a philistine - well, good luck supporting such an argument, I don't even need to refute such nonsense. As for whether people should be allowed to study whatever they want - I see no problem with people doing whatever they want on their dollar. Yet when education in Canada is funded pretty much by the tax payer on every level - most people go to public schools, and then all our major universities are public with major funds coming from the government, as is the case with Europe and a part of the US - I do see a problem. When unemployment is costing tax payers money, and employers cannot find skilled labor so we need to import workers, and when all this is being funded by the tax payers themselves - those employers who need skilled labor yet end up funding useless students - then I see it as a personal problem. So quite frankly, anybody is free to read what they want, but if someone tells me that I need to support more readers of modern American fiction, then of course I am going to disagree.

It's simple - society has basic needs, and people have basic needs. Entertainment is one of them, and literature is an entertainment, rooted mostly in fashion, which is a developmental process with a tradition behind it. Researchers of fashion - which is what literary studies generally is - have a purpose, yet amateur students of fashion do not. IF we want to select a bunch of people based on their grades to do such work, then that is fine - cull the flock within the 2nd year of university, or the last year of high school and send the bulk packing. The world needs a few theoreticians and historians, not a billion of them, and we do not need everybody being educated in such fields. If people want to spend their leisure time in pursuit of such things, or if people wish to study such things on their own dollar, then so be it. But for the most part, 90% of students in the humanities aren't worth mentioning, and will learn far more when they graduate with bleak employment prospects.

[Methexis]

Methexis: dean swift started out intending to be a pamphleter, writing to provoke and shame. Young poor children should be sold and hunted as game by the rich, according to swift. He did not intend to write 'literature' -anyway, the way you write and argue by calling people names do not support your assertion that literature teaches empathy, understanding the mind and culture of others who disagree with you etc

First off, I didn't call anyone names, as you call it. Some of his arguments were more offensive than my replies to them. As for Swift, yes he wrote an essay suggesting a solution to Irish starvation as you describe it, but surely you can't have missed the irony of his parody...? As for my supposed lack of empathy, I understand why he disagreed, I just don't agree with it, his opinion is solely based on his own experiences and shows less empathy than I did in my reply.

[luhsun]

The irony and parody was to provoke and shame, so i am really at a lost what you meant by saying i miss the irony. What i said was that swift wrote to fight for social change and he was not eyeing posterity to put him in the dead white men's canon.
I may be from a different culture from you but in an intellectual argument, it may not be cricket to brush hannah off with the remark:your idol boyfriend...

[cacian]

Ok just to bridge the topic back on its head would anyone consider illiteracy a threat to literature. there are people still in this day and age who cannot read and write.

[JBI]

Ok just to bridge the topic back on its head would anyone consider illiteracy a threat to literature. there are people still in this day and age who cannot read and write.

a threat, well no. I know illiterate people, likewise I know many people who don't "get" most literature, especially modern and post-modern stuff.

As for the true illiterate, I had a student who once remarked she has a grandmother who cannot read or write, yet can recite every word to local operas and knows half the canon from her memory. Likewise, I have met people who have much wisdom without much education.

The fact of the matter though, is illiteracy is being threatened, not the other way around. Very few places are showing declines of literacy, as literacy rates go up. A few developed countries that had near universal literacy may show a decline in reading habits, but for the most part illiteracy is being challenged daily.

I live in a country where many, many people cannot speak the standard language to any degree. This makes them unable to understand the TV or the radio. This is another interesting phenomenon.

You could say though a challenge to Canadian literacy in the traditional sense is an expansion of multiculturalism, in that it brings people with different kinds of literacy - such as Chinese, Korean, or Filipino readers to the country. In that sense, I would say it changes literary landscape by a great deal, in that you have multiple traditions at work. In crease in different kinds of literacy would also be a rather new idea, and therefore challenges certain kinds of literature, and that is true. Yet illiteracy as unable to read any language and as a mass phenomenon is dying out rather quickly.

[sandy14]

Literature is the art of writing. That's the definition.

It may well be, but what counts as "written text". But does something written on a computer with hyperlinks and video count as literature? We read more than books these days, and some artefacts that use text do not even come out in print these days. Does this count as "literature"? Is reading a text whilst watching a flash animation count as something else, or should we see the programming tools and the computer as the theatre? Many students don't read texts in the traditional sense, but "watch" them with a commentary.

I'm not going to judge which is inferior or superior (although I have a view that they involve different skills, and different mind sets) but does this count as experiencing literature. Sitting with a book for many is inconceivable, but if I navigate through a poem on the internet that combines words and images, am I experiencing literature?

[JBI]

That's a challenge to the text. My experience has been these sorts of new technological forms of writing have the ability to confuse more than to inspire. I don't particularly feel that the need of so much rapid visual stimulus is necessary or desired in a text as such. Generally the majority of readers like the quietness and slowness of reading I would say, as it is a nice way to relax, whether on a busy vacation or from a busy day of work. I don't know about people here, but I do my pleasure and personal reading mostly after 11 PM - at such time I find I have the calm and silence I need to read.

Still, with the exception of a slim select few authors, most writers in English have neither musical accompaniment, nor Visual form attached to their work. So something like calligraphy, which is an integral part of the text in many cultures, is lost on an English reader. This new media is an interesting way of "modernizing" the visual concept of writing, but from my experience, it fails in the execution.

As for musical functions, such practices have been slowly beaten out of English. So we read Shakespeare now instead of see Shakespeare - which means the work behaves quite differently.

[Sir Thomas Urqu]

Actually an above poster mentioned specifically the decline of the humanities in Belgium, I was responding to that post - but sure, call me a cynic or whatever.

And this relates to their being more literature then chemistry majors, how?

I personally am a student of the humanities, so you cannot dismiss me so easily.
It was precisely that you were that I was interested.

I don't see why people cannot just accept that literature does not make them better than people, and that many great people do not read literature.

I've read Walter Pater quite thoroughly; likewise, I agree with him quite thoroughly. You don't need to convince me that art can exist for it's own sake (an argument you used, which—curiously enough—was used in the late 19th Century to justify the studying of art.)

However, you seem to be arguing the dismissal of studying literature academically on the very grounds you use to justify it's existence. This is where I have a problem.

In Chinese, all my education until beginning graduate work was in the practical, or the nonsense, and none in literature, yet I came out ok, from mostly self study, and hard work. Those who care will do it, whether they study it professionally or not. Now, for those select few, who are all 3 things, usually literary classes in high school and university are without much purpose. I spent much of high school in between substitute teachers, as my teacher in grade 11 and 12 had the same mental breakdown twice (the same woman, same issues, same timing). I got virtually nothing out of the classes, yet came out an ok reader, who even decided he liked it enough to want to study it in university.

Incredibly easy to say when you've already had that college education behind you. People move into those fields so that they don't have to rely on desultory studies. Learning a language or the tools of criticism is much easier when your taking courses on such things. As it would be easier learning Biology (which according to your logic, and in order to be consistent, you'd have to agree that it is mostly self-study as well—or at least take my word for it.)


Now, to return back to the poster who called me a philistine - well, good luck supporting such an argument, I don't even need to refute such nonsense.

Hence, I said you came off as a psuedophilistine. I know you love literature, boo. You're just a bit misguided and prejudice, that's all.

As for whether people should be allowed to study whatever they want - I see no problem with people doing whatever they want on their dollar. Yet when education in Canada is funded pretty much by the tax payer on every level - most people go to public schools, and then all our major universities are public with major funds coming from the government, as is the case with Europe and a part of the US - I do see a problem. When unemployment is costing tax payers money, and employers cannot find skilled labor so we need to import workers, and when all this is being funded by the tax payers themselves - those employers who need skilled labor yet end up funding useless students - then I see it as a personal problem. So quite frankly, anybody is free to read what they want, but if someone tells me that I need to support more readers of modern American fiction, then of course I am going to disagree.


Now you are arguing from ignorance of economy (not to mention this is an arbitrary discussion depending on where you live). Do you know anything about the level of unemployment based on English Lit graduates in America? Whether they even qualify for unemployment? The Classics department is already on a small budget yet they don't cost society anymore than the local building of a small arena (per 2 years actually—I'm a double major in biology and classics and we actually tested this though again it is arbitrary measurement based on where you live).

It's simple - society has basic needs, and people have basic needs. Entertainment is one of them, and literature is an entertainment, rooted mostly in fashion, which is a developmental process with a tradition behind it. Researchers of fashion - which is what literary studies generally is - have a purpose, yet amateur students of fashion do not. IF we want to select a bunch of people based on their grades to do such work, then that is fine - cull the flock within the 2nd year of university, or the last year of high school and send the bulk packing. The world needs a few theoreticians and historians, not a billion of them, and we do not need everybody being educated in such fields. If people want to spend their leisure time in pursuit of such things, or if people wish to study such things on their own dollar, then so be it. But for the most part, 90% of students in the humanities aren't worth mentioning, and will learn far more when they graduate with bleak employment prospects.

Again you make this ridiculous hyperbolic argument that the existence of a humanities department equals literature major overload. And please do not do the made up statistics thing. I'd like to see empirical evidence behind that. Until then I have the testimony of near every major society that still sees it fit to fund humanity departments.

Also can you please, please! cut down your post when responding to me. Most of what you said could have been half the post. Thanks.

[JBI]

Since when was language learning literary studies? The bulk of my class mates were business majors or linguistics majors, not literature students. Even to date, the only time I have actually interacted with literature students of Chinese is in China, and the vast number of us are linked to another discipline - mostly linguistics of various sorts, a few to history, and others to various "historical disciplines" of reading.

Now, as for my classmates in Canada, not 1 in 50 works in the industry right now - meaning in the study of literature. Some ultimately may go into publishing, writing, or journalism, but the vast bulk generally get clumped up with the rest of people.

As for your call for statistics - I currently am unable to get onto the government websites of many countries due to various censorship issues (the American census, which is where I would look is completely blocked).

Still wikipedia cites an example of studies going back to 2003:


After World War II, many millions of US veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. Further expansion of federal education grants and loans have expanded the number of adults in the United States who have attended a college. In 2003, around 53% of the population had some college education with 27.2% having graduated with a Bachelor degree or higher, including 8% who graduated with a graduate degree.[2] As a result there is keen competition among those with degrees in the humanities as many may find themselves unable to find employment outside academia.


A quick google lists numerous articles on the subject which I cannot look at, because almost all major news outlets are blocked here. But what is certain is the numbers are going up in raw numbers, though the percentage is going down as new fads in education seem to be redefining what a degree is - so that practical skills that we would consider not "university degrees" in the 70s are making up a larger proportion of our degrees: http://www.aacu.org/aacu_news/aacunews13/august13/facts_figures.cfm - still, we can argue that there is something tangible at the end that this article, trying to recruit students does - namely employers are looking for certain skill sets. Keep in mind, this is the humanities as a broad field, not the humanities as literature.

So why literature and not art history then? Why shouldn't we force kids in school to study mozart and only force them to read Shakespeare? This is ultimately a more problematic question - is something like Beethoven simpler to understand then, lets say, Wordsworth. I personally find something like Brahms rather difficult, much like a difficult poem. Should we not instead push this sort of education on students. Or teach them how to view paintings and understand their aesthetic qualities?

You are arguing that somehow these degrees offer something else, and want me to substantiate these claims, which is difficult given the censorship where I am, but the above post has some nice info, and seems up to date, more or less.

As for the overload, ask other posters on this board. Many who have gone on to do graduate work in the humanities will tell you flat out what a dead end it is in this job climate. Studies have even shown the decline of humanities enrollment being tied to the current economic crisis that began at the very end of the Bush era - clearly economics play a role in this game as well.

Now for the argument with the biology major, I will ask you a question - do you not realize that education is always an economics game, because it is tied to the economy? Education must be measured with economic criteria, as it is a sizable percentage of the economy.

I am not about to argue with someone who quite frankly doesn't get the basics of what it actually costs to educate an individual - whether it be the government paying or the individual. At the end of the day, it all has a price tag, and there must be a reason for it - it must end somewhere. If you keep putting money into a machine that has zero returns, then quite frankly, the ends don't justify the means.

I don't care that your classics department is not worth a Hockey arena or whatever. You neither provided figures (the costs of such arenas or something) or listed the number of students.

Is it so hard to grasp that people have been enjoying art since before the invention of the university? Is it also hard to grasp that many people with degrees or jobs in other fields may actually enjoy, read, and find amusement in artwork? There is no requirement of a bachelor's degree in English to read a novel, as any number of people on these boards can testify to.

In truth, the only thing such specialized degrees lead to in the field is further study within the field. The skills are applicable, but the research is not geared to the development of specific skills, but geared toward the understanding of the field. If you wanted to tell me for four years you were developing writing and critical thinking skills - something which is tangible, - then I could agree. But from what I have seen, there are any number of people who can write better than me without any training in the humanities.

Your suggestions are nonsense, as demonstrated by your clinging to such dated ideologies.

Pater, a rather interesting critic, was a romantic dealing with a bourgeois audience, who had the resources for such study. However, I differ in argument in that I take my notion of literature from the theoretical perspective of "superfluous" or not necessary for societal development, which I believe true. I think there is no link between the actual development of society in terms of humane and cultural terms, and the study of literature. I think the Incas were probably far more humane than their Aztec contemporaries, despite the Aztec's having a more sophisticated literary system, where as the Incas for the most part relied on communication through knots to convey messages (a skill which is now lost). The Natives of Canada and the US were no less morally enlightened than the conquerors who destroyed their civilization and murdered them, despite for the most part a lack of literary forms, and a primitive society of hunting and gathering. Did the Europeans have the nicer art though - well, I would argue by our standards yes.

So the art and the morality don't cross - that's my argument. The function does not really bring one to a higher form of enlightenment, in that such things, not economics, are truly arbitrary and unquantifiable. Otherwise, I would dismiss all you Western idiots for not knowing the true great language of Chinese and its inherently culturally superior Chinese literature.

As for the study, of literature, as something that drinks money, and deserves investment, I cannot help but see it as something that does nothing. When you get to the high level of discussing changes in rhyme schemes in China between the 3rd and 5th centuries, where you debate one scholar's recreation of a pronunciation with another's - all of which does not change the actual rhyming of poetry mind you - then you realize what you are doing is actually very inapplicable, and has no practical purpose in an economic sense. Nobody reads with such pronunciation, and the works themselves still rhyme regardless who is correct. Do I see the need to bring this knowledge to the masses then? of course not.

Now, you seem to be a nice kid, so I will suggest to you to get off your high horse. Take it from someone who actually has completed his degree, and carried more than one job. Also take it from someone who has lived in more than one country, and been involved with 4 different universities. And if you still choose not to listen, take the example of St. Lukes who has not only taught art for numerous years, but been both an artist professionally, as well as an art student. He is better at reading than many of the numerous classmates and students I have had over the years on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. His degree, however, was not in Literature, and he therefore, acquired his skills elsewhere.


You think me then pompous because I study literature yet tell others not to, or suggest people shouldn't, and you suggest I somehow "learned" a set of skills in university that I am now denying others. Good luck proving that. Hate to break it to you kid, you don't know me, and you don't know what I have learned and where. The bulk of my education comes from sitting on my bed with a pile of books taller than you are and burning through at 500 pages a day. Not from some silly class room discussion. I don't know what you do in your classics classes, but I can tell you what you do in literature class, and it is anything but a practical education in "critical thinking" but rather listening to someone's interpretation for 2 hours a week and then writing a 3000 word essay on your opinion of the work you may or may not have read (based ultimately on his/her interpretation).

Practical skills, such as linguistic skills, are not literary skills. Classical Chinese reading is not a skill you learn by reading literature. I can learn Italian without reading Dante, or any literature for that matter, as numerous culturally unread people who speak such languages natively will justify. Language acquisition is not exactly a "cultural" skill.

Graduate with a degree in classics and look for work then try to justify why I should fund such madness, then come back and talk. This is pointless, as your argument is a mix of attacking me on personal grounds, and calling on me to pull up statistics when you do not do so to the contrary. Your quoting of Pater is also not particularly relevant, though I am glad you can brandish your reading knowledge.

[JCamilo]

So why literature and not art history then? Why shouldn't we force kids in school to study mozart and only force them to read Shakespeare? This is ultimately a more problematic question - is something like Beethoven simpler to understand then, lets say, Wordsworth. I personally find something like Brahms rather difficult, much like a difficult poem. Should we not instead push this sort of education on students. Or teach them how to view paintings and understand their aesthetic qualities?


There is a overating faith on literature, mostly because it is a form of status and power, because writting and reading is linked to governament, rulling classes and such. Hence, democracy demands more of it than the teaching of music, despite the fact, that if we consider what art may offer, music can be as good - or even more - than poems or novels. However, music does not allow you to sing contract, to read a newspaper, to vote (imagine in the past, if someone couldn't vote because it couldn't whistle), to be a lawyer, to study maths, philosophy, science...

That goes for Brazil, a country build on musical culture and not the written culture. The number of messianic projects to save our literature is imense and this lead to the undervallue of the musical culture. To the point, music classes, which were part of curricullum until 90's (until 11 years) were vanished. Which is obviously a mistake, even for literature, some of our best poetry was linked to music lyrics (not lyrical poetry).

[Ecurb]

Is that the primary goal of education... producing scholars... or corporate minions who can produce a standard essay?
Again... is writing essays they end-all be-all of education or teaching literacy? Personally I suspect that JBI or I could write far better essays than a student raised on little more than endless drills of standard essay formats.

As a corporate minion, I can assure you that writing essays is not my primary duty. However, when I was a scholar in graduate school, I wrote essays constantly. Writing skills are essential to scholars – but not to corporate minions.

Raising anyone on “little more than endless drills of standard essay formats” would be a mistake. Children should (at least) be given food and shelter, in addition to endless drills. However, endless drills might help the essayist avoid writing, “Personally I suspect…..”, which is redundant.



3 or 4 novels a year? What was that? Kindergarten? I easily read dozens of required novels in a given year as well as histories, biographies, and expository essays. The current direction leans toward 75% non-fiction with a virtual elimination of poetry... beginning in Kindergarten and First Grade. And then the education gurus cannot fathom why children are showing less interest in reading than ever. In the past it was recognized that it was Dr. Seuss, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Where the Wild Things Are, and tales of vampires and ghosts and cowboys, etc... that initially hooked children on reading.

You read “dozens of required novels in a given year”? How many dozens? What school requires students to read a different novel every week? You mention your extensive personal library so often that I HAD assumed that you read novels for pleasure. It now appears that you bought them all to fulfill your scholastic requirements.

Forcing kids to read “dozens of… novels… a year” seems like forcing hungry teenagers to go to a feast at the point of a spear. Why would anyone want to do it? Anyone who has read “Northanger Abbey” knows that in Regency England novels were viewed as suspiciously anti-intellectual. Bragging about reading novels would have been seen as ridiculous –like bragging about watching 5 hours of TV a day.

I like novels. I read dozens of novels every year when I was growing up – although I often skipped the ones I was "required" to read in school. Anyone can pass high school tests and quizzes if he has read the asigned novel. It’s no challenge. The REAL sign of intelligence is to get a “B-“ without ever reading the book.

[stlukesguild]

As a corporate minion, I can assure you that writing essays is not my primary duty. However, when I was a scholar in graduate school, I wrote essays constantly. Writing skills are essential to scholars – but not to corporate minions.

Is the primary goal of teaching literacy... of placing literacy along side mathematics as the central core of education from Kindergarten on... to produce a vast array of scholars?

Raising anyone on “little more than endless drills of standard essay formats” would be a mistake. Children should (at least) be given food and shelter, in addition to endless drills.

Based, no doubt, upon your own expertise in the realm of education and literacy. Current efforts at education reform are the result of any number of issues ranging from poverty, racism, and desire to slash costs as a result of the current recession, to Neo-Con efforts to privatize education in order to eliminate science when it contradicts Evangelical Christian beliefs, curtail the teaching of Multiculturalism, and place education of the next generation within the control of the politicians. Many of the facts bandied about concerning public education in the US, however, are skewed, misconceptions, or simply blatant falsehoods employed to promote a given agenda. Children learn at different rates and they learn in different ways. I have always been a text-based learner. I can easily recall much of what I have read... even after extended periods of time. But if someone introduces themselves to me at a party, I'll have "forgotten" their name within minutes. But others are aural learners. Still others need to be up and moving... they learn best by a hands-on approach. Others are visual learners.

Current efforts at standard-based education are wrong-minded on so many levels. They are based upon data that is quite often false. American students, for example, are commonly portrayed as failing in comparison with the rest of the modern world. Yet if we eliminate the scores of the poorest students, American students as a whole rank among the best in the world. Our numbers are skewed by the fact that the US has the highest poverty rate of any modern Western nation with the exception of Romania. It is poverty that is the primary culprit. But "fixing" poverty is far more complex... and far more expensive than simply blaming the schools and the teachers and then throwing a bunch of money at largely untested standards-based strategies. Ironically, what is wholly ignored is the fact that while certain nations have proven themselves more successful at teaching students to take tests and fill in the bubble sheets, American education which included teaching art, music, literature, history, physical education, etc... has long produced the greatest results in innovation and creative thinking... and such an approach to education it what is embraced by the nation currently ranked as the best in education: Norway.

However, endless drills might help the essayist avoid writing, “Personally I suspect…..”, which is redundant.

Personally, I suspect my writing... and certainly my reading abilities... are more than equal to your own.

You read “dozens of required novels in a given year”? How many dozens? What school requires students to read a different novel every week?

My high-school course on the novel required that we read 6 novels each quarter. The class voted upon a selection from a variety of genre: science fiction, fantasy, classics, modern American, modern European, etc... Beyond this we needed to read one more novel each quarter as part of a group project/presentation, and still another for which we needed to write a solo report. My course on Mythology required that we read the Iliad, the Odyssey, Medea, Oresteia, the Oedipus trilogy, the Metamorphoses, the Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and a slew of other mythological/classical texts. My college course on World Literature was even more intense, yet I had a great advantage at having already read many of the texts we would focus upon. At the same time, my Art History courses were even more in-depth. Since then I have gone back and taken classes on Indian and Japanese and Non-Western Art and Modernism as a requirement of my job (continuing education courses) and found most of these courses laughably easy. My studies in medieval Art History for my Art degree, for example, required that I be able to identify/differentiate the cathedrals of Notre Dame, Paris, Chartres, Rheims, Amien, Strassburg, Durham, Monreale, the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, the Abbey of Saint-Denis, Sainte Chapelle, Salisbury, the Cathedral of Florence, the Cathedral of Milan, Cologne Cathedral... and likely a number more than I have forgotten off the top of my head. These studies were undertaken not in an effort to produce a scholar, but rather as the secondary academic requirements to a primary study of studio art. Those who created the curriculum of my art school fully embraced the notion of the Renaissance Man... the artist/scholar.

You mention your extensive personal library so often that I HAD assumed that you read novels for pleasure. It now appears that you bought them all to fulfill your scholastic requirements.

Like most students... especially art students... I had little financial wherewithal to build much of a "library" at all. The vast majority of my library was accumulated over the years after my degree.

Forcing kids to read “dozens of… novels… a year” seems like forcing hungry teenagers to go to a feast at the point of a spear.

No one was forced. I elected to take the classes I did fully aware of the challenges and the reputations of the teachers. At the same time, I elected not to take further advanced courses in science of mathematics beyond those required.

Why would anyone want to do it? Anyone who has read “Northanger Abbey” knows that in Regency England novels were viewed as suspiciously anti-intellectual. Bragging about reading novels would have been seen as ridiculous –like bragging about watching 5 hours of TV a day.

How does that apply to the merits of choosing to read novels (or poetry for that matter) today?

I like novels. I read dozens of novels every year when I was growing up – although I often skipped the ones I was "required" to read in school. Anyone can pass high school tests and quizzes if he has read the asigned novel. It’s no challenge. The REAL sign of intelligence is to get a “B-“ without ever reading the book.

One can always watch the movie... or get the cliff notes... but what is the point? That's rather like reading the menu rather than eating the food.

[stlukesguild]

JBI- St. Luke, I see nothing wrong with literary education in the Literature Class, but as it is, English class where I am from is the one class everyone going to university must take, without exception. Now, for an engineering student from China sitting beside me, what did he learn when we were reading Ezra Pound that he would either enjoy or translate into something practical.

Of course I was speaking of current trends in American public education at the Elementary and Secondary level. There has been this almost desperate rush toward education reform that has been based on a lot of misconceptions and blatant falsehoods that has more to do with feeding the coffers of certain large curriculum and testing corporations such as McGraw Hill and Pearson as well as Neo-Conservative drive to destroy public education in an effort to undermine organized labor and gain control of what is being taught.

I agree that students... certainly at the college level... should not be corralled into courses that have little or nothing to do with their course of study. My own high-school experience was quite liberal-minded in that beyond certain basic requirements we were given the option to take the classes we were most interested in.

Now the question that many in education have raised is just why do we need a college/university degree for so many careers? When I was in High-School they promoted college with a poster that read "Work Smart not Hard". The image portrayed an office worker and a mechanic or carpenter with the intended message being that those with the college degree were somehow inherently superior. Even if we look at things in a purely mercenary manner, how many successful business were begun by individuals without a college degree? How poorly do electricians, plumbers, etc... fare vs those with PhD.s in Theology, Literature, Philosophy, etc...? But even now we have Arne Duncan, the head of the US Department of Education (who has no real education background at all) declaring that all public school students should be preparing for college... even the so-called "2%" which is made up of "special ed" students... those with autism, those with serious developmental disabilities, even the mentally retarded. This clearly illustrates the almost desperate drive toward education reform that has little to do with reality, facts, research, let alone concern for how children learn.

When I questioned the current push for a literacy/reading curriculum that required 70% non-fiction I was pointing out that this is being imposed upon 1st grade... and even Kindergarten students... ignoring the fact that if we want children to embrace reading/writing at all we must first offer them something that they enjoy.

I see your point that it should not be about prescriptive notions of curriculum, but ultimately you give someone a curriculum that is functional to meet an end that is desirable - such as language learning, grammar, or writing, - and you can actually translate such things into tangible results.

The question here is just what is the desirable end of education... and who decides this? Is it to be wholly pragmatic and practical and what have been the results of such an approach at the elementary/secondary level?

Now, for the humanities, sorry for Americans, but the most important thing is probably linguistic skills. In the social sciences and in the sciences - both theoretical and applied - writing skills are also incredibly important. Communication is always necessary, and someone with sloppy or inefficient writing is always going to be at the back of the line.

So for the one course we must all take to keep going, it makes practical sense to teach the one skill that everyone will need, regardless of either their cultural background or their perspective direction in life. Likewise, for those who do not research English literature, but go on to study Japanese or Arabic, or other canons, these foundations in "Western" works seem more the trivial.

Certainly this is true... at the college/university level.

Everyone has art - peasant and king alike. Yet only a select group are entitled to the "high art" namely that which either requires an education (poetry, literacy) or money/exposure (paintings, sculpture, pottery - anything that needs a personal collection or a museum to access) the text itself was also inaccessible for most, as it was too expensive to physically get as well. We see here then, that literature has by necessity been dominated by a specific educated class of people.

Yes... the appreciation of any Art is an elective affinity. Whether you are speaking of the appreciation of Romantic-era poetry, Chinese opera, or comic books there will be those select or "elite" individuals who elect to put forth the greatest effort in the study/appreciation/preservation/promotion of such. The fact that an individual has a great grasp of poetry or painting or French literature most certainly does not make the individual superior to others who elected to focus upon the study of science or math or basketball. I have long rejected the Romantic notion of the artist (let alone the art lover) as prophet, visionary, all around ethically/morally/intellectually superior dude.

Reading and art have, and seem always will be mainly for entertainment.

While I embrace the art pour l'art philosophy of Walter Pater, Theophile Gautier, Oscar Wilde and the Formalist Modernists, I'm not quite willing to reduce Art to nothing more than "entertainment". Is Art necessary? Many, including William Blake, John Ruskin and William Morris, have argued that it is indeed a human necessity... not a mere luxury reserved for the wealthy... that it gives a purpose to living beyond mere survival... that it made us human. Ruskin and Morris both desired to bring beauty and art to the masses, feeling that industrialism had made their lives ugly... and spiritually devoid. They suggested that art/beauty and utility were equally important.

As youn undoubtedly well know, in the concentration camps of WWII many inmates... leading musicians, composers, poets, artists, etc... continued to compose music, stage, dramas, draw and paint, put on cabaret shows, and even stage a full-fledged opera which is still performed today (Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis which was a satire on Hitler). Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music, painting or drawing, or writing poetry? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with art, poetry and music? The obvious conclusion is that even in a place where people are only focused on survival and the barest necessities, art must be, somehow, essential for life. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning." Repeatedly the artists at Terezin... most who eventually ended up in the gas-chambers of Auschwitz... insisted that they were not about to allow art and beauty to be taken away from them... that it was a way to continue to insist upon their own humanity and the eventual certainty that the horror would eventually end. Beauty was the ultimate rebellion against ugliness and horror.

I don't see why people cannot just accept that literature does not make them better than people...

Knowing just how sophisticated the tastes of many of the Nazi elite were with regard to Art and Music.... and considering that absolute rapaciousness and blood-lust of many of the Renaissance aristocrats... who also supported the efforts of the many of the greatest Artists, Writers, Architects, and Composers in the history of Western Civilization, I don't think anyone could argue that a love of Art inherently leads to a superior individual.

Keep in mind, this is the humanities as a broad field, not the humanities as literature.

So why literature and not art history then? Why shouldn't we force kids in school to study mozart and only force them to read Shakespeare? This is ultimately a more problematic question - is something like Beethoven simpler to understand then, lets say, Wordsworth. I personally find something like Brahms rather difficult, much like a difficult poem. Should we not instead push this sort of education on students. Or teach them how to view paintings and understand their aesthetic qualities?

Unfortunately, teaching the Arts and Humanities has long needed to be justified on a pragmatic level. The Renaissance aristocrat would never have argued that the value in Music education lies in its link to higher Math scores or that the reason we teach Shakespeare is in order to promote a greater grasp of reading and writing. There is something comic in ignoring the fact that a great deal of Art and Music and Literature is erotic in intent... because this goes wholly against the notion of promoting the Arts on moral and pragmatic levels.

There's a well-known quote by the 2nd US President, John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

I agree that our colleges and universities have been accepting far too many students into courses of a less than practical value: literature, music, art, philosophy, etc... They have falsely promoted the value of such degrees... while slashing standards and accepting many students with little real ability in such studies. On the other hand, I suspect there is a exaggerated urgency in promoting only "practical" degrees. Indeed, I have my doubts about the continued worth of even most "practical" degrees under our current economy. How well off is a student with a degree in education or business management or even law when they come out with $100,000 in debt?

As for whether people should be allowed to study whatever they want - I see no problem with people doing whatever they want on their dollar. Yet when education in Canada is funded pretty much by the tax payer on every level - most people go to public schools, and then all our major universities are public with major funds coming from the government, as is the case with Europe and a part of the US - I do see a problem. When unemployment is costing tax payers money, and employers cannot find skilled labor so we need to import workers, and when all this is being funded by the tax payers themselves - those employers who need skilled labor yet end up funding useless students - then I see it as a personal problem.

OK... I quite agree with this. You touch on a number of issues. You speak of lacking skilled labor... and much of this is tied to the ridiculous notion that everyone should go to college and the snobbish notion that vocational studies are something that should only be reserved for those too ignorant for college. But of course colleges have been pushing for increasing attendance rates and taking advantage of guaranteed student loans in order to fill the coffers.

I question the use of public money to fund public art... especially public art of the ilk that wholly ignores or even thumbs its nose at the audience who is footing the bill. Yet I also question throwing endless millions into the construction of stadiums to be used for 8 home football games a year... or the endless expansion of highways "needed" to rapidly shuttle commuters from their jobs in the cities to their homes in the distant suburbs... as opposed to investing in rebuilding the cities... the schools, police and fire and other services.

[JBI]

Well that brings us back round to the hard question - how much of literature should be taught in schools, on public money. How much can be learned at home on one's own time? And likewise, what is the role of education in the arts.

Generally my perception is that the first year humanities courses that "inspire" people should instead be designed to break people. Whether it be by forcing half the canon down someone's throat, or forcing second languages on people, those who pursue such degrees should be beaten into shape early on. The same way in my field many people after 4 years researching Chinese cannot even speak the language, let alone read a novel in it. Many who study literature are mere hobbyists who would rather read a romance novel than a Shakespeare play. These people are not necessary for the field, and their place in the classroom is meaningless to the field as a whole.

They are their for their degree and their marks, and such things are useless to the "individual" in terms of their growth, and also to the employer, who cares less about what marks one can get but rather about how much one can give.

Take it from me, generally the easiest Ph. D. to get is said to be English literature, simply because it requires very little time, and very little field work. All this love of reading could be done at home.

I am not suggesting removing such subjects, but ultimately a downsizing is in order. I have a good friend who went into major debt to study history in university, and now is depressed wishing he hadn't listened to his parents' urging him to take a degree, and instead did what he wanted to do and became a carpenter. I also had a class mate who was bottom of the class for 4 years through high school who now is making a rather handsome salary as an Electrician. This individual who was basically cast out by any teacher and administrator as an idiot came back to laugh at everyone with the best salary of the bunch.

There has always been this inherent flaw in education that pushes people to study the most useless things. So for instance even within the field of literature, you will find more time spent learning mediocre French theory and all sorts of fashionable pseudo-philosophy at the expense at both reading texts, and also learning applicable skills such as the language of French, or how to read manuscripts, or even formal writing.

And in a greater sense, why the need for university? Most jobs don't require skills learned there, and most of what is done there is superfluous to one's career or development. Other things, such as trade school seem to provide society with what is in demand - namely the fact that there is a constant need in major cities to fix everything, yet there is never a need for more employees with skills in novel reading.

[luhsun]

There are too many university graduates. In developing countries, where 1 in a thousand managed to attend university, the prestige is life transforming and opens many doors. In my part of the woods, 40-50% of young adults have at least a college/university degree- mostly in arts, literature or religious subjects. Unemployed graduates are a real problem here, up to the extent that the minister of education of a nearby country told off young kids hankering for more university places - his riposte was that the country needed more chicken rice hawkers and not more graduates.

[stlukesguild]

Well that brings us back round to the hard question - how much of literature should be taught in schools, on public money. How much can be learned at home on one's own time? And likewise, what is the role of education in the arts.

Generally my perception is that the first year humanities courses that "inspire" people should instead be designed to break people. Whether it be by forcing half the canon down someone's throat, or forcing second languages on people, those who pursue such degrees should be beaten into shape early on... These people are not necessary for the field, and their place in the classroom is meaningless to the field as a whole.

They are their for their degree and their marks, and such things are useless to the "individual" in terms of their growth, and also to the employer, who cares less about what marks one can get but rather about how much one can give.

Undoubtedly, this is true of many students in any number of fields... not merely the Arts and Humanities... and we owe much of this to the misguided notion that a college degree is a necessity for the majority if they are to get ahead in life. It also is owed to grade inflation combined with a "dumbing down" of the curriculum. I have taken college courses in literature that I found ridiculously easy or undemanding... and felt that this was especially embarrassing considering that literature is not even my area of expertise.

Take it from me, generally the easiest Ph. D. to get is said to be English literature, simply because it requires very little time, and very little field work. All this love of reading could be done at home.

I'm not so certain. I suspect you might just find that a degree in studio Art... or Creative Writing... is even easier. Our desire to coddle the fragile self-esteem of students beginning in Elementary School, combined with the belief that Art is wholly subjective... has resulted in a refusal to weed out those lacking in the necessary... especially self-motivation and persistence. Back in the 1980s when Robert Hughes penned The Shock of the New, he argued that we were already churning out far too many BFAs and MFAs each and every year: 50,000 art degrees per year in the US alone... more than the total number of people (let alone artists) living in Rome at the height of the Renaissance... all competing for the few thousand teaching positions that open up each year (and the majority lacking the necessary skills in drawing and painting... let alone the abilities needed to teach... communication skills, etc... The numbers in the visual arts are atrocious: less than 10% are still making art on anything approaching a regular basis 5 years after receiving their BFA.... Fewer than 5% after 10 years. Less than 2% are able to support themselves on their Art. Yet my own alma mater currently charges over $45,000 US per year in tuition. Hell, one could study with any number of professional, working artists for far, far less... and the results would include a far greater mastery of marketable skills and an understanding of the business aspects of a career in art.

And in a greater sense, why the need for university? Most jobs don't require skills learned there, and most of what is done there is superfluous to one's career or development. Other things, such as trade school seem to provide society with what is in demand - namely the fact that there is a constant need in major cities to fix everything, yet there is never a need for more employees with skills in novel reading.

Well... much of the problem rests with colleges and universities lobbying (bribing) politicians into continually promoting a college/university degree, funding even the most useless degrees with government backed student loans, and requiring endless (and rather useless) credits and CEUs to gain or maintain employment. I cannot tell you how many absolutely worthless courses I have had to take in classroom control from 22-year-old Masters candidates in Education who have never stepped foot into a classroom... certainly not into the sort of urban classroom in which I teach... and in which discipline and control is an everyday issue.

[MorpheusSandman]

Of course there are some differences in the human experience across cultures, but only at less fundamental levels. I'm discussing the fundamentals of the human experience: love, sadness, compassion, courage, pride, hate, anger, appreciation of beauty, etc. All of those things transcend culture, and all of those things must be present in art if it is to survive.Of course there are fundamental feelings, but these are abstractions. No art-form operates by discussing abstract emotions divorced from how those fundamental things are configured within a socio-cultural structure and perspective. There are endless variations on how any given society normalizes love, or how that norm gives rise to various transgressions, and how this norm/transgressive structure affects various people within that society. It's been often mentioned that, eg, our modern concept of homosexuality didn't exist in the cultures that wrote those parts of The Bible that presumably are "against" homosexuality; that, indeed, most of those passages have been interpreted by cultures that had very different views and beliefs. Or even taking heterosexual love, the norm/transgressive aspects vary from culture to culture. Consider how different even marriage is viewed in our modern society VS how it was viewed in, say, Jane Austen's society. Can a modern reader, unaware of Austen's society, appreciate her novels for the universal constant that is "love?" Of course, but they'll also be missing arguably all of the meat of Austen's substance, why her novels are considered masterpiece.

Perhaps an even better example of the latter comes from the world of film. Take Ozu's Tokyo Story, which is often thought of as one of the most universal and poignant films ever made. Why? Because it has the "universal" elements of children neglecting their parents, a parent dying, and the children lamenting that death and their earlier actions. Pretty universal, sure, but if that was all there was to it then there's no reason that film should be considered better than Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow, which has almost the exact same premise. Rather, the real meat of Tokyo Story's substance is Ozu's implied commentary on the changes in the family structure in Post-WW2 Japan, which changed radically and profoundly as Western influences infiltrated rapidly. In fact, this is really the underlying commentary of almost all of his Post-WW2 films. Really, his Late Spring is no less a masterpiece than Tokyo Story, yet its story of an elderly father setting up his "aging" (probably in her mid-to-late 20s, which is old for marriage in some cultures) daughter for marriage, and sacrificing his own happiness for her, is a much more "foreign" form of sacrifice, love, etc. to our Western eyes than what we see in Tokyo Story. Afterall, to most modern Westerners, the "norm" is for children to "move out" some time in their early 20s, go to college, get a job, and fall in love/get married on their own. This is certainly NOT the norm for Japan prior to WW2, so the cultural situation of Late Spring can prevent many from even understanding the underlying, fundamental emotions. Perhaps they understand the sacrifice and love, but because the socio-cultural aspects are so different, it's not as resonant.


Actually, the boldfaced was one of my ideas, and not one of Faulkner'sFair enough, and sorry about the confusion.


Still, what are present in Shakespeare's work are the fundamental constituents of the human experience that I mentioned above, and those are why Shakespeare survived, and why his work resonates with so many people, not because he appealed to politics; those things are transitory, and are therefore secondary, but basic humanity is not.Sure those fundamentals are found in Shakespeare, but also are they found in MOST writers on some level. To me, Shakespeare's representations and configurations of such fundamentals in his plays resonates with so many not because of those fundamentals, but because so many of the social structures are still very much in place, like the casual, anti-semitism of The Merchant of Venice, which is not terribly dissimilar to the kind of casual racism that still exists in our culture; or the kind of casual misogyny within Taming of the Shrew, which was very much in our society until feminism and still exists in lesser forms today. I think Shakespeare's supreme gift wasn't just in seeing down to the fundamentals, but in seeing down to various socio-cultural structures that seem to repeat themselves in various forms almost everywhere. Of course, there's also a lot that's changed that many modern audiences miss, probably mostly so in the History plays, and maybe that's why the History plays are consistently less popular than the great tragedies and comedies.


Look at music, and namely music without lyrics; it is free of ideas--pure, some might say. Do we listen to the Goldberg Variations to ponder Bach's Christianity--an act that would be nonsensical--or do we listen to them to cheer ourselves up when we're sad?Yes, but music is a non-representational art-form, which is very different than literature, film, and most forms of visual art. Schopenhauer thought music the superior art-form on that basis alone, and there are times when I agree with him. It's nice to have something that is so socio-culturally transcendent, purely abstract. Of course, music has its socio-cultural connections to, but these seem to be less relevant/intrusive than in the representational art-forms. Yet, don't we miss much if we aren't aware of Shostakovich's attempts to render the Soviet revolution in his music, especially the symphonies?


If a person will appreciate a poet more or less purely because of ideas such as Feminism or Formalism, then his approach is perverse. Again, I'm saying that the best art will appeal to everybody (in the loose sense of the word). If an artist can only appeal to one group, that artist has failed.Well, I doubt it's rarely ever so severe that an artist ONLY appeals to one group, but there are undeniably artists who appeal MORE to certain groups and LESS (if at all) to others. I also don't think it's "perverse" for readers/critics to have their preferences in terms of what aspects they appreciate most in art. Being someone who tries to write poetry, who is very interested in how ideas/concepts are rendered and enhanced (or hindered) by form, I tend to appreciate formally virtuosic poets more so than political ones myself; but if I'm going to allow myself such a preference I certainly can't deny anyone else their own, or try to claim superiority over them.


Which authors don't appeal to them? If they were to say that, for example, one of the authors that I mentioned doesn't appeal to them at all, that they can't see their value, then one would have to ask: Are you being completely honest? Did you really give him/her a chance?As I said earlier in the thread, I'm not really interested in getting into particulars in this thread, but merely questioning various assumptions and preferences and how those affect canonization. I can imagine, though, why a feminist or Marxist or racial poet/critic would find far less to appreciate in, to use one of your examples, Tennyson than a formalist would. Tennyson himself said that he was a poet of music and not ideas. I can myself speak as a formalist and say I don't find much that appeals to me in what I've read of Adrienne Rich; yet, she seems to speak strongly and profoundly for many feminists.


Who can't relate to that?I don't think you have to look very hard to find people whom Shakespeare doesn't appeal to. However, going back to my first point, surely it's not difficult to see the various cultural assumptions within even Shakespeare's sonnets? Even the sonnet form itself comes loaded with cultural associations that were widely known in Shakespeare's time, but much less so today. What's more, even a lot of the legal and economic terminology would be lost on many in different societies with different legal and economic terminology.

[Ecurb]

]
Personally, I suspect my writing... and certainly my reading abilities... are more than equal to your own.

.

Good one! What "reading abilities" are you referring to? Can you read dozens of languages? Are you proficient at reading Braille? Can you crack codes? Are you expert at reading messages written in invisible ink?

How is your TV-watching ability? Are you proficient at that, too?

[stlukesguild]

As you are ever so masterful in your reading comprehension, you will undoubtedly have no problem discerning the following:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/doofusjpg_zps593862ac.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/user/StlukesguildOhio/media/doofusjpg_zps593862ac.jpg.html)

[JBI]

Good one! What "reading abilities" are you referring to? Can you read dozens of languages? Are you proficient at reading Braille? Can you crack codes? Are you expert at reading messages written in invisible ink?

How is your TV-watching ability? Are you proficient at that, too?


And you Mr.? What of us who actually can read obscure or difficult languages, both classical and Modern. Not counting the languages in which my proficiency is limited, English up until Chaucer more or less, Chinese both modern and classical, Biblical Hebrew, as well as some proficiency in modern Hebrew. But even so, my grandmother could speak over a dozen languages - from a series of Central Asian languages and dialects through Russian, Yiddish, Farsi, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, and English - some of these languages extinct by the way. Yet I had never seen her ever open a single book to read, and likewise she was never a "reader" in the sense of reading literature. The only book I ever heard her discuss was the Old Testament and various interpretations, and mostly as adages and not as literature.

The argument then would posit that she was actually a rather unread person, and most likely had limited capacity at analyzing literature.

Now, I have professors here who are restricted to one language. They however more or less can see things within the text that I could not pick up on, and they can do the footnote work that so many people rely on merely from memory. There is a fine tuned skill there that comes with a sort of familiarity and expertise in dealing with literature. There are any number of good readers who are monolingual (though none of my English professors were, as generally Ph. D. work in most respectable institutions requires a second language, though the practicality and enforcement varies).

As a sort of summary - the proficiency in reading has nothing to do with multiple languages, only the proficiency in reading the language that is on the text in front of you. As such I would not trust st. Lukes' commentary on a Medieval German text, though his interpretation of its translation may yield interesting things.


I've been living in a country that treats me like an illiterate moron everywhere I go, and to read such posts is insulting to the integrity of anybody who reads anything in a foreign language. Do you think it is somehow a sort of joke to know how to read? What of the people who because of the color of their skin are automatically disregarded as a foreign intrusion. You realize soon that your actual abilities are discounted from the "otherness" of your skin tone.

Get over yourself, seriously, for all the snigger and pomp of your post, it adds nothing to a conversation to which you have added quite little. Other than derail such a thread, perhaps you should answer the original question, or build on the existing discussions that have developed from there.

to build on this, let me pose a question - perhaps a big challenge to literature today is the marginalization or "fashion" of some foreign languages over others. So something liek traditional Western languages will be swept aside as an education in favor of 6 semesters of Chinese instruction and a degree in finance.

[JCamilo]

But this wouldn't be a danger to literature, but only to whatever language is swept. And really, chinese (japanese kind already does it) will not cause more marginalization than english already does.

[JBI]

But this wouldn't be a danger to literature, but only to whatever language is swept. And really, chinese (japanese kind already does it) will not cause more marginalization than english already does.

What I meant was, we no longer take the idea of studying language as paired with the study of literature or culture. So basically, I can train myself in Chinese without reading much in Chinese literature, or I could learn French without reading a single poem. Language in a sense gets divorced from culture, so the study of language becomes something marginalized.

So instead of learning the language of Shakespeare, we learn the language of commerce and the market place. Or instead of learning the language of Moliere, we learn the language of the French Canadian parliament.

As it is, the Chinese departments of almost all the major universities in the US have hired more teachers of language than teachers of culture, literature, history or art. Linguistic acquisition has been divorced from cultural knowledge, while the intent of the students moved from proper "research" in the humanities toward thinking learning Chinese will open up new job prospects in marketing or international trade/relations.

The old idea of the "area studies expert" or "orientalist" in the Said sense is pretty much replaced with linguistic capability and cultural illiteracy. In the old days, they used to force everyone to learn a little of everything about the area - so for my professors, it would have been a focus on linguistic acquisition, reading of literature, history, law, sociology and politics, with discussions aimed to create a sort of rounded "area specialist". Now you can learn the language without the culture, or even focus on the "legal history" of China without reading a single poem.

The shift away from literature, history, art, and other humanities subjects as a round area, toward a deliberate focus has in a sense marginalized literature. I can study French law from an historical perspective without knowing a single thing about French society. Even time in the field has been ignored. I cannot tell you how many graduate students I have met who have never set foot in the places they are researching - be it a Shakespeare scholar who has never been to England, or a Philip Roth specialist who has never been to Newark, and also lacks the fundamental understanding of Jewish history to pull off the research properly.

The idea of literary studies, in a sense, has traditionally been a sort of comparative studies. Linguistically, language functions more or less the same everywhere. Rhetoric also has equivalents in most cultures. So that when I read a poem in Chinese, I can break it apart in rhetorical terms, and just study the translation of the rhetorical term I use in English - Metonymy becomes 转喻，metaphor becomes 暗喻, etc. Even schemes more or less have their equivalents. Likewise, there is a specific set of vocabulary that the culture used to determine their own literature based on sociological and linguistic realities - so instead of thinking of meter as Iambs, or as Dactyls or whatever form is prevalent in a culture, you convert your thought into Syllabic meters (Haiku, Tanka, etc.) or Syllabic-tonal meters (Regulated Chinese verse). And then you flip your forms from Sonnet to whatever. The universal nature of these things is so apparent that once you know all, you do not need much to hop from one to another. You may need to recode your sense of metaphor or language, but the general principles of composition are rather the same, and haven't changed much since ancient times.

Now, for the student who knows English Poetry, learning Chinese poetry is not difficult from a rhetorical approach. Linguistically it can be challenging, but that comes with any new language. But for the students who come in with no general knowledge of anything except their desire to make money, literature is impossible for them. The general area studies has instead been butchered up. So the French student will not need to know how to read a poem - given that they cannot manage to do so in English, so why bother.

In that sense, education in languages has more or less been divorced from education in literature. Learning more languages generally does not teach one anything about literature unless one actually goes on to study such things. Though, of my First year Chinese class of 100, 3 completed the 4th year course in university (the only real place to properly learn Chinese is in a difficult school) and of us, only 2 will ever read a poem (the other is a Japanese girl, who probably will read poetry in Chinese because Chinese poetry has a strong influence on Japan, and was written in Japan until the 20th century).

My understanding was that the traditional study of language included a sort of cultural component, so Leopardi sitting in his library hour on end would be learning the languages with the literature. Or the Cambridge bunch would be learning the culture with the language.

The idea of someone like Pound now seems completely foreign - going on to study Romance language literature, which seems a sort of impossibility now.

Every single university seems to offer "business" whatever as a course. Be it Business French, Business Japanese, or Business Italian. this new trend of practical language is in a truth limiting to the cultural approach that seems to have been somewhat important in the past.

[JCamilo]

But JBI you just told us how one of your grandparents knew several languages and how that had no relation to reading. New languages expertise had always been more related to pratical motivations, such as diplomacy or commerce, which happen more often than literary pratice anyways. I never took an english course, but I saw some of the notebooks and I never saw Shakespeare being used for example. When there is a literary piece, it is often something like Conan Doyle. Take Latim for example, it is taught to priests and lawyers around here, obviously not to read Virgil or Cicer.

But even so, those courses follow a pattern, they will produce texts or choose texts already produce. Be it a commercial text or a law text, still be linked to reading and to literature. But that is not the point, how many multi-linguistic writers of books were produced? We have Joyce, but even his works had english as basis and would certainly be out of School. Beckett. Pessoa. Borges. If you publish a chinese book of poems, your work will be judged and consumed by the chinese audience. Not even by canadians who happen to read chinese. Just like the americans who may know, 2,3,4 other idioms will publish in english and be judged by those who consume the english literature.

It is all busines like you say, the academy can go in a path for people fanatic with alphabets instead of texts, but they go out in the shinning world and will have to face all the system: what they will do for enterteiment. They will be exposed to all marketing strategies, they will belong to their groups, etc. If they were readers in first place, they will end picking most of their books in their own language. The academic focus on liguistics will affect the market how if the market knows they represent just a small part of the potential mark?

In the end, a ultra dominanting language like English can cause more damage, because in the past, this ended with other languages and some literary work were lost - not to mention the oral tradition. In the end, the new trend is an international language that is not an intellectual language.

[JBI]

I meant language acquisition in the university department not the world. Most language learning is not done in universities.

But still, the commercialization of foreign languages has in many senses led to a simplification of cultures, no? we couldn't say that because of the emphasis on language as product we strive to make language more universal, and therefore lose much of tradition.

So take modern Chinese for example - many people today can speak, read, and write such a language without much difficulty. But give them something written 100 years ago and they get nowhere. Give the foreign person such a work and they also get nowhere.

With such a radical change in language through modernity (which is endemic of Korea, Japan, and China) and a shift toward the practical of language and not the history of language, the culture in a sense is divorced from its origin. Shakespeare's language is not particularly difficult or distant from modern English, but it is a series of uses that are rooted in culture (for instance Greek and historical names) that seems to make up much of the footnotes required to get somebody through the text. When something like Jove must be footnoted for someone to read it, it sends a clear sign that the culture has been divorced from the language.

So in that sense, to be "fluent" stops meaning getting the language, both history, and usage - culture and dynamics - but getting the hollowed out form instead.

This is a sort of dumbing down, in a sense, of seeing things like Irony become obsolete, in favor of more direct forms of communication - of a simplification, if you will, of the language's core.

There is no doubt that such a trend is possible - Modern Japanese is far simpler then 19th century Japanese (one employed 4000+ characters, whereas now students limit themselves to 2000, and most dialects have been stomped hard) - and such a trend poses direct consequences. Can the reader of, lets say only modern fiction, actually read anything written before 1800? Can people actually read after such education.

I am not saying I agree with all these points, I am merely floating them as a sort of branching of ideas. We certainly are going through a cultural simplification, with dialects and languages dying every day. Culturally we are also, I would argue, becoming simplified.

[JCamilo]

I do not disagree either, but my point is that linguistic studies and the learning of a new language have been always a most pratical thing. And if Academy has other means, it is not a danger to literature. How many relevant authors were academics in first place? Some, just like some were drunkyards sailors.

We have something new. Latim was an universal class for intelectuals: priests, philosophers, etc. It was never intended to be universal or represent a cultural empire, since the given empire crumbled. Dante and peers changed it, we started to have national languages. At some point, they absorbed other languages cultures, but mostly the national idioms worked against the diversity of language, but not against literature diversity. you may think "oh, we lost watever literature rooted on tradition in there or there", but we cannot say literature was simplified by it.

Now, the new thing is how English is a language for everyone and come with a cultural imposition over everyone. And this is a cultural danger, no doubt. The other languages are more in risk to be studied as hobby indeed, since with english you can solve all. They will be left in their country and if the country has not a 'defense' ready to resist, perhaps this is commun in japan or korea, their own idiom may be under risk. I do not see however, Portuguese being replaced by english in Brazil, Arabic in the arabic countries, etc. What you say may be an effect on america, but frankly, if all americans stop writing and reading literature will still prosper, in my opinion.

Maybe also, the difficulty with chinese 100 years ago may be a chinese trait. Americans or brits do not seem to have that much problem, brazilians deal with portuguese easily, i doubt french will tremble reading rousseau or voltaire, arabians learn and study from a 1300 years old book. And really, will Shakespeare requires notes about greek-roman references after things like Percy Jackson? Borges or Umberto Eco probally demmand a lot of references too from the readers, but all them seem to have a richer source than work with a difficulty language. But if the question is more what kind of literature will come when we know have to select the references from a huge number of source, which was in the past, often, under the domain of elite.

I agree with the simplification. But I would not say it is a linguistic matter. Or only this. Other aspects have been simplified, losing the historical bound, even from most faery tales. There is a over simplification of Red Hidding hood as a metaphor of sexualization and historical aspects, which are even more relevant for perrault, the class matter, ignored. You get persian tales with islamic meanings and are transformed in a simple history success quest like Paulo Coelho. Vampires losing their negative symbolism. Greek myths turned in a matter about fame or existence of god. The english pagan myths in a metaphor about school days.

But how much of this perception is only possible because we are close to the object? As literature danger new technologies still the only "danger", but only in the sense literature may lose the status as the "Keeper" of knowledge and study. If Oral literatury resists, i do not see how written literature will not.

As a side note, maybe the question is why Tolkien survives. With all his narratives flaws. Why a narrative that gave up basic narrative elements for extenssive visual descriptions stands out?

[JBI]

You are discussing the major languages, think Basque, Provencal, Catalan, etc. or even Scots, or various American dialects. Chinese dialects in one generation have already been beaten out of most of the population - the same thing that happened to the majority of the British isles. Continental Europe seems more stubborn, as people there have deep rooted hate of their neighbors and a strong sense of regionalism, but even somewhere like France has demonstrated the power of centralized linguistics. Think of Italy too - the efforts to sort of homogenize the population for better or worse are a product of modernization.

It seems almost every language I can think of has such "modern" authors who drastically change the idiom of literature to something rather standard and concrete. Benedict Anderson describes this as the power of the nationbuilding that draws connections between people, but I think it goes far deeper in that it changes the range of experience, and further marginalizes certain groups. You go from a regional identity to a "national identity," and anything in between sort of gets stomped out, or ignored.

It's the same way that American history is written as American history, and not that of conflicting viewpoints between colonies, or that of various expansion and integration and slaughter of various minorities - the mainstream mode is completely tied with this systematization that came about as a product of nationalism, and is rooted in such linguistic reform. Take a look at somewhere like the city of New York and you see originally a distinct divide between people, with neighborhoods even having different language usage. This more or less is being standardized.

When I speak to my Arab friends, they note the major variance in something like Arabic. So I asked them what language is television using, and they say there is an attempt at standardization, where the cultural language has been a medieval lingua franca amongst elites. Now what does that do to the vast geography of Arabic speaking countries, with regional language and culture - it standardizes it into a sort of unified coherent whole, or encourages an ardent nationalism, and a shift from "dialect" to separate language category, or an intense defensive mechanism.

In practicality the difference between a South Fujianese dialect of Chinese and the standard mandarin taught in schools is farther than French and Spanish. Even the terminology we use is derived from a national emphasis on what is "united" and what isn't. If France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were one country, we would call almost all those regional languages dialects of a wide Romance category, as originally they were, with a standard rooted in Latin.

Latin is a nice example in that it functions as a literary ancestor, as well as a cultural commonality - the same way Classical Chinese worked as a communication language from China through Vietnam, Japan, Korea, and beyond. The spoken regionalism and developed culture ultimately was rather rich, but the elite line of literature remained steady, fostering a sort of communication, as well as requiring an education in a canonical bit of texts to enter the discourse. The same can be said of Classical Arabic with the linguistic importance of the Qur'an as a source of language - a sort of lingua franca for the educated elite, and for writing.

In that sense, we see Erasmus as not as much as teaching a tradition of literature, but a literary tradition closely linked with language usage. Those adages after all, are meant to be used, to sort of empower one to properly communicate, the same way that the Confucian poetry canon was used in China and the Qur'an was used in Arabic speaking places. This was not only a cultural phenomenon, but something that maintained a coherency in the actual canon - the language of exchange allowed someone to enter the canonical sphere.

Now we base our language more or less on a spoken norm from the time a country modernizes - British English is rooted in "schoolroom" English from the 19th century, which took over as a standard over a linguistically diverse place. That a sort of artificial became a spoken norm, and then people were taught to "speak" like so is a very modern phenomenon. The same can be said of the "vernacular" Chinese (which must have been spoken in various linguistic regional forms for thousands of years) overtaking classical language, and then becoming the language of "spoken" Chinese.

It's strange actually the linguistic force that new vernacular has taken. Western languages went through a tripart process of first the move to vernacular - Dante, Shakespeare/Chaucer/Milton, Moliere/Racine, etc. and then a further modernization that moved away from the written to the spoken as example. Yet still the important damage was done. If Latin were a spoken language today, it would not be taught as a written language, and it would not be attached to the adages and textual background it was in the past - we would learn merely to imitate its spoken features, as we learn Englsih today.

It's incredibly strange to have a language not based on a written standard (Latin, for example, which diverged in writing and speech rather early) and instead move to a language based on a spoken standard (current British English, or American English, which are the products of the streets and the schoolroom more than the press). I have the suspicion it will yield incredibly strange results in the future, especially as language changes yet this new written language does not.

[JCamilo]

It is not the major languages only. Basque or Catalan was not under danger now (if anything, they have a new political power), but the Spanish formation in 16th century already damaged them. The same goes for maney other european dialects obviously: you can say this is a danger to catalan or basque literature, but to literature overall? In a sense, how many languages did Cervantes needed to know? Just one. In the end, any national side will have a national language and culture and this culture will have a literature. Meanwhile, traditional idioms, based on small groups, and often oral, can be completely erased. No doubt, Brazil has several idioms being killed, India, China and Africa a lot also. But the process is old. Not new.

I mean, Sappho was already victim of the process of cultural unification by standartization of a language. That was one of the reasons her registers were lost. It just cannot be new.

I find weird the arabic, if anything they are under a process of second standartization - not strange, oral and written languages are reckognized as different in many contries - but the grammar was all based on a millenium world book. They are not strange to this process. What may the biggest conflict is that every arabian country speaks english (a few may not, but will speak french) and they will communicate with it. The same probally goes to India. You are creating a world wide market (as long literature is a profitable market, it will be strong) of some sort of second class citzens, speakers of english. Very few interference and exchanges between english speakers from arabian countries or indian or persian world will be accepted in USA or England, they will have little or not conection with the political-social world there, yet, they must speak english. In the past, the contact between different speaking backgrounds could not be controled, it was richer, but I doubt the expression, the unusual syntax will be viewed except as a comedy by standard speakers. As you said, you are frowned upon in China. Those people learn english but they do not really conect with english literature, sometimes with music and movies, but with this you may have the weird Japanese mixs or Bollywood. Is this bad or good for literature?

Those kind of conflicting background generate good and original literature in the past. The 1001, Magic Realism, Kipling, Japan Modernist literature... but probally had some bad effect as well. More than the oral aspect of english, I find the fact they are unlike latin, a cultural domination power - perhaps more seen with movies, the dubbed or subtitle discussion. Had you no academic career, or religious and you could leave without a word of latin. Now it is borderline impossible to dismiss english, the medium more powerful and open in the world is basically in english, except some rare cases like the crazy china control or the brazilian population trolling rejection to english. Even when French was the intelectual language, it was linked to only to those who wanted to read. To a elite.

With this aspect, more than how the academy takes on linguistic, how to produce the new literature, the inclusive, democratic literature, you must do in english, using english referencials and definitions even if those make no sense outside America or England.

[Ecurb]

Personally, I suspect my writing... and certainly my reading abilities... are more than equal to your own.

.

As a sort of summary - the proficiency in reading has nothing to do with multiple languages, only the proficiency in reading the language that is on the text in front of you. As such I would not trust st. Lukes' commentary on a Medieval German text, though his interpretation of its translation may yield interesting things.



``Miss Eliza Bennet,'' said Miss Bingley, ``despises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else.''
``I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,'' cried Elizabeth; ``I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.''

“Proficiency in reading” is unclear. JBI offers one of many possible meanings, and stluke’s meaning remains uncertain. Indeed, JBI’s notion of what constitutes reading proficiency suggests stluke’s screed is unreasonable: stluke’s “reading abilities” (compared to anyone’s) are determined by what he is reading.

In fact, stluke seems to want to compare Verbal SAT scores, like an insecure high school senior. Perhaps he can clarify.

Stluke might mean that he can read standard, canonical English language texts better (“more than equal to”) than I can. But what does this mean? It is true, of course, that specialists can glean more from texts than amateurs. Experts in literature understand the literary context in which a canonical text was written, the biographical factors to which the text might make reference, and the literary allusions the text might include. If this is what stluke means be “reading abilities”, I’d suggest that such an expert’s reading of a text differs from that of the amateur, but is not necessarily “better”.

Perhaps stluke means he is more emotionally sensitive to literature than I am. If art is intended to evoke an emotional response, surely that is a reasonable understanding of “reading abilities”. We don’t know what stluke means, because he has failed to write clearly
.
To return to the topic of threats to literature: I see stluke’s emphasis on “competitive reading ability” as a threat to literature. Reading (to stluke, based on the evidence of his responses to me) is a competition for which you should receive a grade, and those people who enjoy (and properly interpret) canonical works receive “A”s.

To shoot at a higher target than stluke, I’ll offer a famous quotation from E.M. Forster’s “Three Cheers for Democracy” (included in Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style” as an example of elegant writing).


“I believe in aristocracy, though -- if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but power to endure, and they can take a joke.”

I agree with White that this piece is well-written, but I’m suspicious of its “democratic” orientation. Although Forster CLAIMS that the aristocrats of the sensitive, considerate and plucky are to be found in “all nations and classes”, the “secret understanding between them when they meet” makes that unlikely. (ASIDE: Forster, who was gay, may imply a double meaning, suggesting that the “aristocrats of the sensitive” have finely tuned “gaydar”).

The canon functions to maintain the intellectual and social aristocracy not only by its reverence for Dead White Males, but also by creating a social bond between those educated at Oxford and Cambridge (in the past, other Universities may be included today). The “reading abilities” stluke refers to are (I think, stluke wasn’t clear) a form of specialized training.

This might explain stluke’s disdain for Tolstoy’s theories on art (we discussed this in another thread, and Tolstoy thought art that could be enjoyed only by those with specialized training was second-rate). The problem with generalizing “specialized training in a certain type of reading” to “reading abilities” is that it is condescending to those who lack specialized training. Indeed, just as Joe Schmoe lacks the specialized training to interpret canonical texts as well as the specialist, the canonical specialist lacks the training to understand feminist texts or language poetry or post-modern texts as well as specialists in those fields. I once tried to read Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. I was unfamiliar with both the language and the concepts – so I had difficulty understanding it. I’ll bet stluke would have difficulty understanding it, too – but (evidently) understanding mathematical texts is not included in his understanding of “reading abilities”.

Returning to Forster: do readers who love D.H. Lawrence, or Rilke, or Auden constitute an “aristocracy of the sensitive”? The “secret understanding between them when they meet” involves asking what literature they like. It’s a bit like middle school kids, who always ask new acquaintances what kind of music they like. The question has two functions: first, kids who like music like to talk about their favorite bands. Second, certain musical tastes are socially acceptable in certain cliques, and unacceptable in others. The “secret understanding” involved in sharing musical (or literary) tastes is a form of snobbishness and bigotry. The “aristocracy of the sensitive” is not so distinct from the “aristocracy of the rich and well-educated”, or the cliquishness of “skater-kids” vs. “heavy-metal kids” (or whatever the categories are, these days). Would it be reasonable for skater-kids who like Ska to think they are better “listeners” than classical music lovers (or vice versa)?

The answer to such snobbery is not to eliminate the canon. Instead, it is to broaden our judgments about what constitutes “reading ability”.

[JCamilo]

Nice, so when Dante meets Homer and cia.on Limbo, thus listing the canon for Classical Culture, he was under Cambridge or Oxford influence. Or when the bishops selected the canon writen by dark-skinned asians and named them Luke, Mathew, John and Mark, it was Cambridge or oxford...

[Ecurb]

No. The Cambridge and Oxford scholars were influenced by Dante (obviously), just as they were influenced by the Council of Nicea. In addition, I was discussing one FUNCTION of the canon (to identify membership in a clique) rather than how literary works gained membership in it.

[HSPS]

Of course there are fundamental feelings. . . .

I don't want to imply that context doesn't matter, but what matters more to the common reader: the social/historical context of Austen's novels, or the emotions she explores in them? To think that a reader goes to a novel looking purely or even primarily for an exposition on the social issues of the time is audacious and, I think, false. What can Austen offer that history books can't? More elegant quotes, maybe, but there would be little difference in the information. No, a reader wants more than pure information or social/political commentary. The context can underline the experiences of the characters, but it is always secondary. You can have love without any given conflict, but you can't have the conflict without love.

Forgive me if I've misinterpreted what you've written, but the context of Ozu's film isn't as restrictive as you seem to think. Are viewers so simple-minded that they can't compare his characters' problems to their problems? Two conflicts do not need to perfectly match each other for those involved to relate them. I have not seen Late Spring, but going on what you've written, the father's sacrifice in that context can be compared to the sacrifice of a parent in North America making sacrifices to save up enough money for his children to go to university. Again, I don't think most viewers are so simple that the power of the film is largely lost on them purely because of a foreign concept. We all make sacrifices for different reasons, but that doesn't mean that we can't empathize with each other. We're all human, no? Why is the real "meat" of the film contained in its unique context?

I don't need to be a homosexual to relate to a homosexual's writing, assuming the writer involves the fundamental emotions/experiences that I'm talking about. I can't completely identify with a gay character (for obvious reasons), but I know what emotions feel like; I'm not a psychopath. However, if somebody were to write a novel primarily about, say, Feminism and how great it is and ignore fundamental human issues, I wouldn't be able to relate to that, because I'm not a feminist. If one includes elements that only some humans at a certain point in history can relate to, how long can one expect one's art to last? It may be a useful reference for a historian some years down the line, but it won't captivate the souls of multitudes of readers centuries from now.


. . .music is a non-representational art-form, which is very different than literature. . .

Why must literature be any different from music? Why must literature involve ideas? A lot of music was inspired purely by emotion, so why can't poetry be as well? Why can't poetry be about sadness and nothing else? No writer is obliged to comment on society, politics, etc. Many do, but why do people love Whitman's "Lilacs" so much: because they're Abraham Lincoln fans, or because it elegantly explores loss? ("Lilacs" doesn't involve political commentary that I remember, but you get the point.) As far as pure information is concerned, we certainly miss something if we're ignorant of Shostakovitch's situation. Nevertheless, the beauty is there regardless of one's politics.

If a reader approaches art for political reasons alone, I can't stop them, but I can doubt how long that will last. I've been a socialist, a conservative, and I am currently a centrist. I used to give Feminism some consideration, but I then realized how much more logical it was to simply call myself an egalitarian and not associate myself with the radicals that are around today. And I'm not unique. Do you see the nature of politics? Do you see how fleeting such things can be? I have, however, always been human. I hope you'll excuse the anecdote, but I figured it was appropriate as this is anything but formal.

Not every human can relate to racism, bigotry, discrimination, etc., but everyone can relate to suffering. We've all felt isolated and unloved to different degrees, at different times, and for different reasons. Reasons that weren't equally extreme, but the feelings, however powerful, were still there. Therefore a writer can write about those things, but he will be remembered (or forgotten) based on how well he represents the human, and not the politics. Humanity is not restricted to contexts. Political ideals come and go, and societies evolve and change, but the aspects the human consciousness that I've outlined are interminable.

Lastly, the cultural concerns in Shakespeare's work are certainly trumped by the more important subjects (on which I no longer need to elaborate). As long as one can get across any potential language barriers and reach the core of what he's saying about us, I can't see how one won't find something to relate to. He certainly doesn't need to be one's favourite writer, but to deny that his work is essentially concerned with the human would be foolish.

[Drkshadow03]

.


“Proficiency in reading” is unclear. JBI offers one of many possible meanings, and stluke’s meaning remains uncertain. Indeed, JBI’s notion of what constitutes reading proficiency suggests stluke’s screed is unreasonable: stluke’s “reading abilities” (compared to anyone’s) are determined by what he is reading.

In fact, stluke seems to want to compare Verbal SAT scores, like an insecure high school senior. Perhaps he can clarify.

Stluke might mean that he can read standard, canonical English language texts better (“more than equal to”) than I can. But what does this mean? It is true, of course, that specialists can glean more from texts than amateurs. Experts in literature understand the literary context in which a canonical text was written, the biographical factors to which the text might make reference, and the literary allusions the text might include. If this is what stluke means be “reading abilities”, I’d suggest that such an expert’s reading of a text differs from that of the amateur, but is not necessarily “better”.

Perhaps stluke means he is more emotionally sensitive to literature than I am. If art is intended to evoke an emotional response, surely that is a reasonable understanding of “reading abilities”. We don’t know what stluke means, because he has failed to write clearly
.
To return to the topic of threats to literature: I see stluke’s emphasis on “competitive reading ability” as a threat to literature. Reading (to stluke, based on the evidence of his responses to me) is a competition for which you should receive a grade, and those people who enjoy (and properly interpret) canonical works receive “A”s.

[ . . .]
The answer to such snobbery is not to eliminate the canon. Instead, it is to broaden our judgments about what constitutes “reading ability”.

Do you think everyone has the same reading ability? Do you think everyone has the same math ability? The same music ability? I don't mean to barrage you with a bunch of rhetorical question, but if we accept people have differing natural abilities and acquired skill (based on the time they spent learning them) in other disciplines, why should we assume reading is different?

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't want to imply that context doesn't matter, but what matters more to the common reader: the social/historical context of Austen's novels, or the emotions she explores in them? ...What can Austen offer that history books can't? ...the context of Ozu's film isn't as restrictive as you seem to think. Are viewers so simple-minded that they can't compare his characters' problems to their problems? ...I have not seen Late Spring, but going on what you've written, the father's sacrifice in that context can be compared to the sacrifice of a parent in North America making sacrifices to save up enough money for his children to go to university... if somebody were to write a novel primarily about, say, Feminism and how great it is and ignore fundamental human issues, I wouldn't be able to relate to that, because I'm not a feminist.I think, perhaps, you've misunderstood what I was saying. I think there are fundamental emotions underlying all art. I doubt seriously you could point to a single novel, film, poem, representational painting, etc. where you couldn't point to some underlying, fundamental, universal, human emotion. So, if all art has some fundamental emotion, what differentiates them? What makes us consider some works masterpieces and not others? Is it not how those emotions are rendered? And isn't how they're rendered inextricably bound up in their socio-cultural/historical context?

Jane Austen is the perfect example where there are two very different kinds of readers: there is the "general" readers that read her novels no (or little) differently than any other cheap, dimestore romance novels; and then there are the academics that find Austen a genius of social satire, irony, and subdued, realist observationalism. General readers see P&P as a romance between Elizabeth and Darcy; academics see it as a commentary on how society biases and distorts our perspectives of reality and others. In a funny way, the "general readers" are as much victims of the thing that Austen is satirizing/parodying! Of only seeing reality (her novel) through their limited perspective and social biases.

My point with the Ozu films were that if you remove the socio-historical context then there's really no way to explain why Tokyo Story is more popular than Late Spring, or even why Tokyo Story is more acclaimed than Make Way for Tomorrow. If it's all about the fundamental emotions, then these three films should be equally popular and acclaimed, but they're not. It's not that viewers ignorant of the socio-historical context can't relate to Late Spring at all, I simply think that because its premise of an elderly father creating an arranged marriage for his "aging" daughter is more foreign to us today than Tokyo Story's premise of children not appreciating their parents. I could argue that Late Spring is actually the superior film on almost every other level.

You say that you couldn't relate to a book only on feminism because you're not a feminist... what do you say about any other civil rights movements? The thing is, if you're like me, a white straight male, it's a simple truth that neither of us know what it's like to be oppressed. We have what's called white privilege, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege) and even if we can by sympathetic to those struggling for equality, it's impossible to empathize, and to identify. The closest I've ever come to in my life to the suffering and struggles of minority and women was being picked on in school for being a geek, but that's nothing compared to the casual and pervasive racism and sexism that still exists, often right under our noses. That struggle for equality, for forging an identity against the dominant, ruling classes, the "other" is essentially what feminism IS. I would argue that the suffering under such persecution and oppression IS a "fundamental emotion," and if it isn't fundamental to you, like it isn't to me, then that's a product of that privilege. So saying that you can't relate to a book on feminism is essentially saying you can't relate to such struggles/suffering, and even if you didn't mean it like that, that's actually a very common feeling amongst people who have never dealt with such a thing, and it's precisely those insensitive, unsympathetic, types that look to dismiss art that are expressing ideas, feelings, etc. that are "fundamental" to such groups.


Why must literature be any different from music? Why must literature involve ideas? A lot of music was inspired purely by emotion, so why can't poetry be as well? Why can't poetry be about sadness and nothing else?Literature and music are inherently different because literature involves words, and words have no value if you remove their referential (in terms of the objects/things they refer to) and meaningful (what significance those referents hold to a person/community in a given context) value. Words can't exist as pure, abstract, arranged "sound" as music. Even when music has structures like, say, sonata form, no melody, rhythm, harmony, development, etc. inherently "means" anything. There's no "this note refers to this thing, which means that to those people." (one exception would be Wagner's leitmotifs, but this is a self-contained meaning, achieved through Wagner attaching motifs to objects, characters, etc.). Music's most representational aspects are in those historical contexts, where we can say that a composer tried to evoke the feelings/thoughts on something by certain means. Yet, as I said in my last post, unlike with music, it's impossible to write poetry or literature without this representational aspect. You can't just write about any emotion without attempting to evoke that emotion through some kind of representational context. EG, try this with sadness:

O, sadness!
I feel sad!
Sad, sad, sad
Super sad
Oh super-duper sad, sadness
I'm so sad
Sad I am
Sad sad sad!

On the other hand, something like, to use your example, Whitman's Lilacs, the sadness of that poem is inextricably bound up in symbols that are meant to evoke sadness, like the setting sun, the solitary thrush, the darkening clouds, etc. Such things are representational; they are not explicitly, but implicitly, about sadness; but such implication is impossible without a communally shared understanding of such symbols and their implications and connotations, and such communal understanding is extremely socio-cultural/historically dependent. JBI could probably write you a novelette on the symbols in Chinese poetry and what significance they hold for that culture that wouldn't be the same here, for us.


Not every human can relate to racism, bigotry, discrimination, etc., but everyone can relate to suffering. We've all felt isolated and unloved to different degrees, at different times, and for different reasons...Yes, but, like above, if the representational context that's portrayed that's meant to evoke suffering doesn't resonate with many people because they've never suffered in such a context, there's a great possibility that that depiction won't evoke for them the feelings of their own suffering. If you've never been a victim of racism, then it's quite possible a depiction of racism will not make you feel any emotions, at least not any deep ones, because you've never been there; there's no link between emotion and representational context.

Even using a less extreme example; if you've never burned your hand on a stove, or gotten burned by any fire, it would be very hard for you to feel something sympathetically, empathetically, for an artistic depiction of someone burning their hand on the stove; on the other hand (no pun intended), if you have, such a depiction might immediately conjure up the same feeling of when you burned your hand. This is actually a well known phenomena in science that happens because of mirror neurons. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) You're right that those who are sensitive are capable of being sympathetic in such situations, but it's equally true that a great many are not, and it's that insensitivity that leads to continuing problems of racism and sexism in the real world, and to the biases in art as it relates to canonization and various "political" interests. You can't just dismiss such things as political, because, as has been said, the political is personal. If you can't see past the politics to the equally personal feelings underlying it, then that's a problem of insensitivity as well.

[Ecurb]

Do you think everyone has the same reading ability? Do you think everyone has the same math ability? The same music ability? I don't mean to barrage you with a bunch of rhetorical question, but if we accept people have differing natural abilities and acquired skill (based on the time they spent learning them) in other disciplines, why should we assume reading is different?

Not everyone has the same “reading ability”. Some people score 400 on their Verbal SATs, some score 750, others are illiterate. Some people can read Chinese, other people can’t. Some people can understand Godel’s Proof when they read it, others can understand journal articles on subatomic physics, others (although only a few) can appreciate Language Poetry or Claude Levi-Strauss’ anthropology books.

The simplest definition of “reading ability” would involve basic literacy – an equivalent to Verbal SAT scores (we hope, for stluke’s sake, that wasn’t what he was referring to). JBI offered a reasonable definition – but it clearly wasn’t the definition stluke was using (or if it was he wasn’t using it in a meaningful way).

My guess is that a high school student who scored well on his Verbal SATs but had never read poetry would not be very good at criticizing poetry (although he could still “read” it). Enjoying (difficult) poetry is a learned skill. In addition, being a “good reader” might mean being able to read and comprehend quickly (if memory of the distant past serves, that’s one thing the Verbal SATs and GREs measure). Or it might mean having unique insights (good critics must be good readers as well as good writers).

So I agree that not everyone has the same “reading ability”. However, until we know what KIND of “reading ability” stluke is referring to, his comment is meaningless. Let’s return to Caroline Bingley, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy (whom I quoted earlier) for their take (I always like to see Darcy polish off Miss Bingley with one of his bon mots -- remember Miss Binley's prior conversation I quoted above):


``It is amazing to me,'' said Bingley, ``how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.''

``All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?''

``Yes all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover skreens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished.''

``Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,'' said Darcy, ``has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse, or covering a skreen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.''

``Nor I, I am sure,'' said Miss Bingley.

``Then,'' observed Elizabeth, ``you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women.''

``Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it.''

``Oh! certainly,'' cried his faithful assistant, ``no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''

``All this she must possess,'' added Darcy, ``and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.''

``I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.''

Bingley and Darcy compare “extensive reading” to “cover(ing) skreens” and “netting purses”. Is “extensive reading” really an “accomplishment”, like covering a skreen? It seems to me that WRITING a book is an accomplishment, reading one is an entertainment. Our high school teachers and college professors grade us based on whether we have actually read our assignments – but surely “A”s are accolades, not accomplishments. If reading a lot of books is an accomplishment, it is (at best) a passive one, not so dissimilar to watching lots of movies or never missing a Cubs game.

I’ve strayed from the discussion about threats to literature. Perhaps, though, one threat to literature is the notion that extensive novel reading is a duty (Darcy was probably referring to reading history, biography and sermons), like netting a purse (whatever that entails) rather than a pleasurable pastime. I’ll grant that we all have a duty to educate ourselves – and we acquire breadth of knowledge through reading. But I can’t quite agree that we have a duty to read novels, any more than we have a duty to watch television or go to movies.

[mal4mac]

Perhaps, though, one threat to literature is the notion that extensive novel reading is a duty (Darcy was probably referring to reading history, biography and sermons), like netting a purse (whatever that entails) rather than a pleasurable pastime. I’ll grant that we all have a duty to educate ourselves – and we acquire breadth of knowledge through reading. But I can’t quite agree that we have a duty to read novels, any more than we have a duty to watch television or go to movies.

The view that reading novels is just another passive, easy pastime, like watching any old TV programme, is one of the greatest threats to literature, just as great as thinking that reading novels is a "duty". Reading a novel is *not* a passive activity, how could it be? You construct whole worlds from a linear sequence of 26 symbols arranged in various orders - how can that be passive? Of course, reading serious novels is a pleasure, an entertainment, but it is much more than that.

Suggesting that writing any novel is an accomplishment, but reading one never is, is ridiculous. Any idiot can throw 50 000 words together, many are in this "novel writing month". There are great readers and great writers, both reading and writing are accomplishments if they are done well.

[Ecurb]

Obviously, that depends what you mean by “accomplishment”. I mean, watching a TV show is an “accomplishment” in that you might set out to do it, and then “accomplish” your goal. Watching TV is not passive either (although I’ll agree that it’s MORE passive than reading), and neither is watching Cubs games.

I can’t agree that “both reading and writing are accomplishments (only) if they are done well.” Some things that are worth doing are not worth doing well, and others are worth doing whether we do them well or badly. Both reading and novel-writing may fit into the last category. The notion that it’s an accomplishment to read a novel “well”, but (perhaps) not an accomplishment to read it badly makes no sense. Where’s the cut-off line? Is it OK to skim the boring bits? Must one engage in close, textual analysis in order to accomplish anything by reading novels? That’s part of my basic argument here: we need not be elitist about literature. Reading great novels carefully and analytically can be enlightening and fun – and so can reading great novels quickly and breezily.

So of course there is a sense in which reading a novel is an accomplishment, just as there is a sense in which watching a movie is an accomplishment. But it isn’t a public accomplishment – like netting a purse. There’s nothing tangible to show for it. So there’s also a sense (the sense in which I was using the word) in which nothing tangible has been accomplished. Only when the reader becomes a critic has his “accomplishment” become of interest to the public. The novel writer has produced a novel (even if it’s a bad one), just like the purse netter has produced a purse (which might have been bad, too). What has the novel reader produced?

[HSPS]

I think, perhaps, you've misunderstood what I was saying. I think there are fundamental emotions underlying all art. I doubt seriously you could point to a single novel, film, poem, representational painting, etc. where you couldn't point to some underlying, fundamental, universal, human emotion.

I didn't think that you were saying that the things I'm talking about aren't present in some art, but I did think you were trying to diminish their importance.


So, if all art has some fundamental emotion, what differentiates them? What makes us consider some works masterpieces and not others? Is it not how those emotions are rendered?

Precisely


And isn't how they're rendered inextricably bound up in their socio-cultural/historical context?

Not inextricably, no, as the same basic emotions could have been evoked in another context. If, for example, a romantic interest of mine were to leave me, and my friend were to lose a parent, we would both still be experiencing loss, even if for different reasons.

There are so many things that comprise a great film: fluent, elegant, and fresh dialogue; intelligent and creative cinematography; good actors; good characters/character development. Those are all elements of importance. Two people can make a film about the exact same thing, but one will get better reviews and generally more respect if it does all of the things I mentioned better than the other.

Look at Shakespeare again: his plots were often nothing to write home about, but it was his magical verse and the powerful ways he had of representing the personalities in his plays that have kept readers obsessed.


Jane Austen is the perfect example where there are two very different kinds of readers: there is the "general" readers that read her novels no (or little) differently than any other cheap, dimestore romance novels; and then there are the academics that find Austen a genius of social satire, irony, and subdued, realist observationalism. General readers see P&P as a romance between Elizabeth and Darcy; academics see it as a commentary on how society biases and distorts our perspectives of reality and others. In a funny way, the "general readers" are as much victims of the thing that Austen is satirizing/parodying! Of only seeing reality (her novel) through their limited perspective and social biases.

This is a little condescending, isn't it? So only academics are studious or keen enough to discover and appreciate all of the fine details in great literature? Perhaps some readers read it like any other novel, but they can at least recognize the superiority of its prose, the greater depth and complexity of its characters, and the greater intelligence of it's author. Still, there are intelligent common readers who appreciate and understand the works as much as academics.


You say that you couldn't relate to a book only on feminism because you're not a feminist... what do you say about any other civil rights movements? The thing is, if you're like me, a white straight male, it's a simple truth that neither of us know what it's like to be oppressed. We have what's called white privilege, and even if we can by sympathetic to those struggling for equality, it's impossible to empathize, and to identify. The closest I've ever come to in my life to the suffering and struggles of minority and women was being picked on in school for being a geek, but that's nothing compared to the casual and pervasive racism and sexism that still exists, often right under our noses. That struggle for equality, for forging an identity against the dominant, ruling classes, the "other" is essentially what feminism IS. I would argue that the suffering under such persecution and oppression IS a "fundamental emotion," and if it isn't fundamental to you, like it isn't to me, then that's a product of that privilege. So saying that you can't relate to a book on feminism is essentially saying you can't relate to such struggles/suffering, and even if you didn't mean it like that, that's actually a very common feeling amongst people who have never dealt with such a thing, and it's precisely those insensitive, unsympathetic, types that look to dismiss art that are expressing ideas, feelings, etc. that are "fundamental" to such groups.

Others don't know exactly what such oppression is like, but I don't think it is correct to say that the feelings of suffering involved are so radically different that nobody else can properly empathize. What about a person who has had major depression: a very different situation, but it involved feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness that many victims of discrimination probably felt during their struggles. Like you said, a number of people have been singled out for different reasons. We haven't all experienced systematic oppression, but to say we can't empathize, or that we can't understand, is unfair and self-indulgent, in my view. It is our ability to imagine the suffering of others that keeps us from inflicting that suffering on them; that is what empathy is, and it is much more powerful than you're letting on. I don't know exactly what it is like to be threatened with murder, but I know that I wouldn't want to be, because I have an imagination. Moreover, I can recognize that a person may be innocent and undeserving, which leads to feelings of compassion. Empathy where one must have actually endured a certain experience to feel it is perverted empathy.

I can't relate to a book about values of feminism because I'm not a feminist. I don't have the same values as many feminists these days.


Literature and music are inherently different because literature involves words, and words have no value if you remove their referential (in terms of the objects/things they refer to) and meaningful (what significance those referents hold to a person/community in a given context) value. Words can't exist as pure, abstract, arranged "sound" as music. Even when music has structures like, say, sonata form, no melody, rhythm, harmony, development, etc. inherently "means" anything. There's no "this note refers to this thing, which means that to those people." (one exception would be Wagner's leitmotifs, but this is a self-contained meaning, achieved through Wagner attaching motifs to objects, characters, etc.). Music's most representational aspects are in those historical contexts, where we can say that a composer tried to evoke the feelings/thoughts on something by certain means. Yet, as I said in my last post, unlike with music, it's impossible to write poetry or literature without this representational aspect. You can't just write about any emotion without attempting to evoke that emotion through some kind of representational context. EG, try this with sadness:

O, sadness!
I feel sad!
Sad, sad, sad
Super sad
Oh super-duper sad, sadness
I'm so sad
Sad I am
Sad sad sad!

This is a straw man. Of course literature is fundamentally different from music, but you misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that literature does not need to be--and in my view shouldn't be--politically or philosophically charged. In the context of my post, "ideas" include political ideas like feminism, Marxism, libertarianism, etc., or other ideas like the values of multiculturalism, the dangers of nuclear weapons, etc. Rather, there is no reason why literature can't just be about the fundamental human experience, the emotions we all feel, and the creation of unique personalities, among other things. Politics and philosophy can be used to the extent that they are part of a personality, but if the text is written with the sole intention of propagating one's own politics or philosophy, and contains very little of anything else, then it is essentially lacking. Dostoevsky may have had such intentions, but at least his art is great for other reasons.


On the other hand, something like, to use your example, Whitman's Lilacs, the sadness of that poem is inextricably bound up in symbols that are meant to evoke sadness, like the setting sun, the solitary thrush, the darkening clouds, etc. Such things are representational; they are not explicitly, but implicitly, about sadness; but such implication is impossible without a communally shared understanding of such symbols and their implications and connotations, and such communal understanding is extremely socio-cultural/historically dependent. JBI could probably write you a novelette on the symbols in Chinese poetry and what significance they hold for that culture that wouldn't be the same here, for us.

There is undeniably a cultural disconnect when it comes to literature, but any diligent reader can bridge that gap--that's the whole point of studying it. There are idioms that are used in British literature, especially older British literature, that aren't used in Canada, but I can research them and gain an adequate understanding of them. There is also the problem of archaic or obsolete language in old literature from all cultures. Nevertheless, rarely will a piece of art be so culturally or historically dependent that its essence will be entirely lost on a person from another culture or time period.

Different cultures value different art more or less; the fundamentals remain the same, though. But there doesn't even need to be a cultural disconnect for there to be disagreement over the value of certain art. There is still a lot of debate in North America over who the most important writers are even if you only include the "dead, straight, white males," the ones that so many have come to resent, in the discussion.


Yes, but, like above, if the representational context that's portrayed that's meant to evoke suffering doesn't resonate with many people because they've never suffered in such a context, there's a great possibility that that depiction won't evoke for them the feelings of their own suffering. If you've never been a victim of racism, then it's quite possible a depiction of racism will not make you feel any emotions, at least not any deep ones, because you've never been there; there's no link between emotion and representational context.

Like I said before, this is flawed. Can I not appreciate the power of a poem about the death of a romantic partner because I've never experienced that kind of loss? Humans aren't so limited that they can't imagine these things, or relate them to things they have experienced, to appreciate them. Look at 12 Years a Slave: it got great reviews from all kinds of critics, none of them having ever experienced slavery, but their reviews aren't suddenly unfounded and worthless because of that fact. None of us has witnessed a global nuclear war, either, but one would have to be a maniac to want it to happen, because we all have the capacity to imagine what it would be like.


You can't just dismiss such things as political, because, as has been said, the political is personal. If you can't see past the politics to the equally personal feelings underlying it, then that's a problem of insensitivity as well.

Politics are personal, but they are limited to certain groups of humans. The human, at its must fundamental level, is not. That is why art that appeals to only a certain type of person will die out. Beyond that, there is art that was intended to appeal to everybody that will die out as well, because it was executed poorly.

[Drkshadow03]

I assumed St. Luke's meant good critical reader. Good critical readers or people with superior reading abilities (to put it in the wording that's been used, although I dislike the connotations here): would be someone who understands the main points of the texts they're reading, understand how a text is constructed to produce its meaning, be able to make good inferences about elements in a text, recognize references, allusions, and the relationships between texts across literary history, and know how to ask good questions of a text.

I'm not sure I agree with your interpretation of the scene from Jane Austen. I guess on some level you can say he is comparing reading extensively to covering skreens in that they are both being discussed in terms of women's accomplishments. However, Darcy explicitly rejects that it is enough to cover skreens to be accomplished since it's a common trait and specifically puts forward extensive reading as the ultimate characteristic of an accomplished woman in which the text implies is an uncommon trait.

[JBI]

I think I A Richards already proved how readers can vary, and how they are framed, and how some are better than others. In point of fact, if you gave some poetry to my Chinese classmates without name or title, none of them would probably be able to put anything about the works on the page. the idea that somehow everybody has this ability is complete bogus, given that the very vocabulary we use to describe such works is in itself an education, which had to be constructed.

Seriously, I challenge anybody here to read somebody else's close reading of a work, namely a good critic like Booth on Shakespeare's Sonnets, and see if they could come up with the depth and points that he produces themselves. I would argue that he is a particularly good reader of Shakespeare's sonnets, and probably a good reader of poetry in general (as he should be, given his intellectual background).

Now, when we look at such readers abilities, we will notice that it is a sort of skill to read, which is not exclusive to academics. It comes with a sort of affinity you build up by comparing and closely reading texts over a large period of time.

[mona amon]

Obviously, that depends what you mean by “accomplishment”. I mean, watching a TV show is an “accomplishment” in that you might set out to do it, and then “accomplish” your goal. Watching TV is not passive either (although I’ll agree that it’s MORE passive than reading), and neither is watching Cubs games.

I can’t agree that “both reading and writing are accomplishments (only) if they are done well.” Some things that are worth doing are not worth doing well, and others are worth doing whether we do them well or badly. Both reading and novel-writing may fit into the last category. The notion that it’s an accomplishment to read a novel “well”, but (perhaps) not an accomplishment to read it badly makes no sense. Where’s the cut-off line? Is it OK to skim the boring bits? Must one engage in close, textual analysis in order to accomplish anything by reading novels? That’s part of my basic argument here: we need not be elitist about literature. Reading great novels carefully and analytically can be enlightening and fun – and so can reading great novels quickly and breezily.

So of course there is a sense in which reading a novel is an accomplishment, just as there is a sense in which watching a movie is an accomplishment. But it isn’t a public accomplishment – like netting a purse. There’s nothing tangible to show for it. So there’s also a sense (the sense in which I was using the word) in which nothing tangible has been accomplished. Only when the reader becomes a critic has his “accomplishment” become of interest to the public. The novel writer has produced a novel (even if it’s a bad one), just like the purse netter has produced a purse (which might have been bad, too). What has the novel reader produced?

Anyone and everyone can lie back on a couch and watch TV, so although I may have fun watching Masterchef Australia or The Big Bang Theory, I feel no pride or sense of accomplishment. On the other hand if I'm able to read a text that's generally considered difficult, I do feel proud of myself. And if I come across people who read a lot more, and a lot more difficult texts, in foreign languages and so on, I can only admire them, just as I would admire a concert pianist or a good athlete or a gourmet cook or anyone who can do stuff that's way out of the ordinary.


There’s nothing tangible to show for it.

Umm...why should there be a 'tangible' accomplishment? Surely if there is any usefulness in literature at all, it is also useful to have people who can read it and enjoy it, discuss it with others, interpret it for others or help them in their own interpretations, and so on.

[Ecurb]

I love criticism (not of me, of course). However, it seems to me that the critic “achieves” or “accomplishes” something when he writes his critique – not merely by reading the book he is criticizing. No doubt a good critic has insights while he is reading – but as long as the insights go unshared, why should we the public call them “accomplishments”?

There are all kinds of critics: literary critics, social critics, television critics, and political critics. The television critics may be better at watching TV than the rest of us: better able to put TV shows in the artistic and cultural context of their times and better able to make trenchant comments on the various components of television shows. The rabid Cubs fan may be better at watching baseball than the rest of us: better able to grasp the historical importance of certain feats, and better able to understand both the tactics and personalities that make the game dramatic.

If a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make a sound? If a “good reader” reads a novel well, why should we care? It is only when the “good reader” shares his insights that they become valuable to the rest of us.

“Accomplishment” as used by Jane Austen (and other Regency authors) was used to describe the education of gentile women. Caroline Bingley lists: “knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages…. (as well as) something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice…. Etc.” So when I pooh-poohed the “accomplishment” inherent in reading novels, I was thinking of the Regency definition. For Miss Bingley, an “accomplishment” was social – it gained the young woman acceptance and membership in gentile society, and made her a marriageable adult.

That’s why Miss Bingley insulted Elizabeth by calling her “a great reader”. The “accomplishments” Miss Bingley lists are social – playing music (in the days before recordings), drawing pictures (in the days before photographs), dancing, and being able to converse with modern Europeans. When Caroline calls Elizabeth a “great reader”, she is saying, “She has her nose in a book all day, and is anti-social. She is not quite ‘the thing’.”

Darcy (of course) disagrees (he doubtless does think an “improved mind” is an accomplishment, but his main goal is to put down Caroline Bingley, and flirt, mildly, with Elizabeth, who has recently been called a “great reader”).

The point I have been making in this thread is that one function of canonical literature is social and cultural. There is one way (at least) in which “good reading” (i.e. reading canonical books and expressing canonical tastes) is a cultural marker – just as middle school kids saying they like Ska or Heavy Metal is a cultural marker. The “aristocracy of the sensitive” that Forster admires is (perhaps) a literary clique – not unlike the skater-kids in a middle school, or the “accomplished” young women in Regency England.

Cliques are not necessarily evil. If ‘good readers’ want to discuss books with other ‘good readers’, there’s no harm in that. We all come to the Literature Net Forums to do just that. My objection is to the conceits and delusions that come along with cliques. Are “good readers” who can read canonical literature insightfully “better readers” than “good readers” of post-modern philosophy, or feminist literature? Do they constitute an “aristocracy of the sensitive”? Is any reader (like Tolstoy, or George Bernard Shaw, for example) who doesn’t like Shakespeare automatically a “lousy reader”?

[JCamilo]

No, and surprisingly, Tolstoy is a good reader, despite expressing anti-canonical taste. Which, should give you a clue, besides the one that the canon predates the so called social function you keep repeating, that your assentement about the canon is a non-sense. The canon is not defined, you can express anti-canonical feelings and be part of the canon, you can be anti-social, you can be a lot of things, specially considering the canon is shifting from society to society that nobody needs to bend down to the canon to appear "canonical". Two critics in the same day from the same region with the same age will disagree with each other about the canon, yet, you somehow insist that the presence of the canon is a cultural determinism while it is just natural recording of history.

I must laugh of those talking about accomplishment trying to imply a clear cut between entertaiment and "high art". The Cistine is not famous for provoking more than awe. People to do not have any accomplishment and beware, Big Bang Theory (i think not, but Chaplin will be and it is basically the same function) will be a classic one day. And we will be those dumb critics who didnt saw it in our plain sight.

[Ecurb]

As I told you before, JCamilo, a "function" of an institution is not necessarily the "cause" of the institution. So the fact that the canon predates (one of) its current function(s) is irrelevant. Clearly, Ska music was developed before it was adopted by American Middle-school skate-boarders. That doesn't preclude it from serving as a social and cultural marker for skater culture. The canon (by the way) is not the only art that serves the function of helping to define one's social and cultural status. There are endless jokes about artsy types suffering through operas because attending confers status. Clearly, generational divides invite particular artistic tastes to mark one's identity (think, "Rock 'n Roll" music, or hip-hop). It's not revolutionary to think artistic tastes serve the function of confirming membership in a group or clique. It's obvious (in some cases, although maybe not for the Literary Canon).

Clearly, you are correct that the canon changes and that it varies from culture to culture (just as acceptable music for skaters probably varies from east coast to west coast in the U.S., or even from one Midle School to the next). I also agree (as I pointed out earlier) that calling reading an "accomplishment" but refusing to grant TV-watching that same status makes little sense. Obviously, some TV shows have more artistic value than some novels. C.S. Lewis wrote a good essay deploring the distinction between "high-brow" and "low-brow" art, but I can't find it on line. He argued that so-called "high-brow" art is not different in kind from "low-brow" art -- the difference is in the quality, the duration, and the extent of the entertainment it provides.

[stlukesguild]

JCamilo- Latin was an universal class for intellectuals: priests, philosophers, etc. It was never intended to be universal or represent a cultural empire, since the given empire crumbled. Dante and peers changed it, we started to have national languages. At some point, they absorbed other languages cultures, but mostly the national idioms worked against the diversity of language, but not against literature diversity. you may think "oh, we lost whatever literature rooted on tradition in there or there", but we cannot say literature was simplified by it.

Now, the new thing is how English is a language for everyone and come with a cultural imposition over everyone. And this is a cultural danger, no doubt.

Cultural Imperialism... rooted in language? Or is it rather economic and military power that makes a nation also a cultural powerhouse? Within Western culture France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Russia, Italy, Greece, the US, and even Portugal... for a short period have all fallen into such a category of economic/military power. Prior to Pessoa, the sole Portuguese writer of any renown outside of Portugal seems to have been Luís de Camões whose Os Lusíadas is essentially the Portuguese epic... in praise of the Portuguese voyages that put Portugal on the map as a European power. I suspect much of the literature translated is translated because those in one country recognize the economic/military importance of another country. There are undoubtedly more translations from Spanish and Portuguese of South and Central-American literature done in the US than in France or Russia or England... because South America holds a real value to the US. The same was true of Japanese and Russian... and now Arabic and Chinese. Put how much has been translated from Poland, Norway, Hungary, Estonia?

Is this not also the same situation when we turn to music or the visual arts... which are not limited by literacy in other languages... or the availability of translations. Russia is virtually non-existent within most surveys of Western Art History... until Russian begins to be recognized as a major European power... at the same time when Russian Music and Russian literature enter upon the scene. Japanese and German art became dominant in the 1980s as Japan and Germany became major economic powers after years of rebuilding.

JBI- ...the commercialization of foreign languages has in many senses led to a simplification of cultures, no? we couldn't say that because of the emphasis on language as product we strive to make language more universal, and therefore lose much of tradition.

So take modern Chinese for example - many people today can speak, read, and write such a language without much difficulty. But give them something written 100 years ago and they get nowhere. Give the foreign person such a work and they also get nowhere.

With such a radical change in language through modernity (which is endemic of Korea, Japan, and China) and a shift toward the practical (use?) of language and not the history of language, the culture in a sense is divorced from its origin. Shakespeare's language is not particularly difficult or distant from modern English, but it is a series of uses that are rooted in culture (for instance Greek and historical names) that seems to make up much of the footnotes required to get somebody through the text. When something like Jove must be footnoted for someone to read it, it sends a clear sign that the culture has been divorced from the language.

I agree with much of this... but then again, isn't this part of what Eliot was eulogizing in The Wasteland... the loss of the "universal" or collective mythology or narrative? But this universal narrative/mythology was only "universal" among a very limited audience made up of the aristocracy, the very wealthy, and the high-ranking clergy who were literate. A great majority of literature was built upon a foundation of older myths and narratives (Biblical, Greco-Roman, etc...). A writer could be reasonably certain that his audience would be well versed in these narratives and grasp any such allusions. The same was largely true of the visual arts. This began to fray with the development of Gutenberg's movable type and the proliferation of literacy. The "novel" was "new"... the "new romance"... new narratives.

With the 20th century we see the increased collapse of this universal narrative or shared mythology. We have the decline of religion. WWI and WWII result in the larger masses questioning the superiority of the "nobility"... the "elite". And then we have the developments of sound recording, photography, film, radio, and TV which result in the proliferation of popular culture. The result is that T.S. Eliot was right... the collective narrative or shared mythology of "fine" or "high" art would fall into a decline... or rather it's relevancy to the culture as a whole might be called into question... and its relevancy to the artists... at least in economic terms... would also be called into question. Entertaining the masses is far more lucrative than entertaining the "elite".

What Eliot missed was the fact that popular culture would produce its own universal myths or collective narratives... and its own "elites". Jove and Hephaestus and Ezekiel and Job and Don Qixote and Falstaff may no longer be recognized by the majority of the audiences reading or looking at art/photography/film/TV or listening to music... but we do have Popular Myths/Narratives: Batman, Superman, Hollywood celebrities, etc... and there are artists who have been able to build upon these... drawing upon the same themes of conflict, friendship, loss, love and sex, death, etc...

I have two Asian studio mates: one Korean and one Chinese. Neither was raised upon the Western myths of the Greeks and Romans or the Bible... although the Korean is now a practicing Christian. Nevertheless, both are able to grasp the underlying human dramas and emotions expressed in paintings such as these:

http://nonsite.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/1a.-Crucifixion.jpg

http://www.maison-du-muscat.com/images/blog/JAMES%20FLORENCE.jpg

They are "literate" in reading the emotions expressed and the implications of the inferred dramas. They are less "literate" in recognizing the specific narratives and how these relate to other narratives within the Bible... nor are they "literate" with regard to certain iconography. They likely wouldn't grasp the relevance of the lamb in Grunwald's Crucifixion, or the vines beneath St. Anthony and St. Sebastian's feet. They wouldn't recognize that the figure on the left, punctuated with arrows, was Saint Sebastian... or that the woman kneeling distraught before Christ is clearly Mary Magdalen... or why she is dressed in red. Unlike myself, they wouldn't be surprised to see the mother (the Virgin Mary) robed in red and green. On the other hand, they are likely more "literate" in reading these paintings within the context of art and art history. They would immediately the interlocking serpentine composition of the Raphael Madonna and the sophisticated use of diagonals in the Grunwald. They might also immediately recognize both paintings as precursors for works by later artists: Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Picasso, Ingres, etc...

Certainly, "Literacy" functions on a number of levels. Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare was rooted in the notion that Shakespeare's dramas only spoke to a highly educated, "elite" audience. That may have become increasingly true over the passage of years as a given deal of his vocabulary has become outdated or archaic... and it may be true of an audience unfamiliar with the structures or forms of poetic language... but it is not less true of Tolstoy. Tolstoy assumed he was writing in the "natural" language of the people (so did Robert Burns and even Joyce). As time passes, much of the history in Tolstoy has become less familiar with the audience as a whole, more and more of his vocabulary becomes dated, and even the artifice of the novel... especially of such length... becomes foreign to an audience raised on news-clips, blurbs, and twitter.

So again, "literacy" functions on a number of levels. There is literary history, linguistic history, cultural allusion (high and low), the formal structure of the artistic forms, how the art forms build upon or allude to history, religion, science, etc... how the given works act as precursors to subsequent artistic creations.

As a side note, maybe the question is why Tolkien survives. With all his narratives flaws. Why a narrative that gave up basic narrative elements for extensive visual descriptions stands out?

Hasn't Tolkein simply become just one more example of the Popular (Populist) Mythology?

My objection is to the conceits and delusions that come along with cliques. Are “good readers” who can read canonical literature insightfully “better readers” than “good readers” of post-modern philosophy, or feminist literature? Do they constitute an “aristocracy of the sensitive”?

Are the cliques of insightful comic book aficionados, lovers of Post-Modernist literature or philosophy, or Feminist literature any less elitist or snobbish than those readers of canonical literature? Are the comic book aficionados not sure that certain writers and certain characters and certain narratives are better than others? Are not the holier-than-thou readers who pride themselves on rejecting the notion that some literature... some art... is better than others just as snobbish?

[Ecurb]

Are the cliques of insightful comic book aficionados, lovers of Post-Modernist literature or philosophy, or Feminist literature any less elitist or snobbish than those readers of canonical literature? Are the comic book aficionados not sure that certain writers and certain characters and certain narratives are better than others? Are not the holier-than-thou readers who pride themselves on rejecting the notion that some literature... some art... is better than others just as snobbish?

Of course there is snobbery and elitism in most cliques. I would certainly never reject the notion that some art is better than other art. I'll even agree that some art appreciation is better than other art appreciation -- although this is more problematical. I hate to discourage art appreciation through unfavorable comparison.

[JCamilo]

As I told you before, JCamilo, a "function" of an institution is not necessarily the "cause" of the institution. So the fact that the canon predates (one of) its current function(s) is irrelevant. Clearly, Ska music was developed before it was adopted by American Middle-school skate-boarders. That doesn't preclude it from serving as a social and cultural marker for skater culture. The canon (by the way) is not the only art that serves the function of helping to define one's social and cultural status. There are endless jokes about artsy types suffering through operas because attending confers status. Clearly, generational divides invite particular artistic tastes to mark one's identity (think, "Rock 'n Roll" music, or hip-hop). It's not revolutionary to think artistic tastes serve the function of confirming membership in a group or clique. It's obvious (in some cases, although maybe not for the Literary Canon).

You are obviously missing that something cannot function for something it has no capacity for. The Canon, for being build outside the academic circle you insist to link, has no use to promote the academic views. Dante is is a religious bigot, Blake is anti-academic and anti-science, Cervantes almost anti-literature, Shakespeare a buffon. You seem to fail to get that the fact the Canonical works predate the actual academy shows that it is not the Acamedy that is using the canon for a fuction, just because they share some ideas to a few cannonical work. It is part of the natural process of the canon itself to have cliches among educated group, popular, etc. The Academy will read the classics and try to adapt their idea to watever reading their intend. Just like at some point, Italians decided to read roman literature as their national opus, but in sequence it was read as a form of humanism, middle age read virgil as a pagan prophet, etc. It is the canon that cannot be trully refuted, because such refutaiton will only increase the canon and not destroy it.

The High-brow-high-brow, popular-elite art distinctions all existed because in reality, the frointeirs do not exists. It is a commun place on speech (like saying only academics read in depth texts, despite the fact deeply reading predates the modern academia for 2000 years or more) and like many commun place, do not survive much.

Clearly, you are correct that the canon changes and that it varies from culture to culture (just as acceptable music for skaters probably varies from east coast to west coast in the U.S., or even from one Midle School to the next). I also agree (as I pointed out earlier) that calling reading an "accomplishment" but refusing to grant TV-watching that same status makes little sense. Obviously, some TV shows have more artistic value than some novels. C.S. Lewis wrote a good essay deploring the distinction between "high-brow" and "low-brow" art, but I can't find it on line. He argued that so-called "high-brow" art is not different in kind from "low-brow" art -- the difference is in the quality, the duration, and the extent of the entertainment it provides.[/QUOTE]

[Drkshadow03]

Cliques are not necessarily evil. If ‘good readers’ want to discuss books with other ‘good readers’, there’s no harm in that. We all come to the Literature Net Forums to do just that. My objection is to the conceits and delusions that come along with cliques. Are “good readers” who can read canonical literature insightfully “better readers” than “good readers” of post-modern philosophy, or feminist literature? Do they constitute an “aristocracy of the sensitive”? Is any reader (like Tolstoy, or George Bernard Shaw, for example) who doesn’t like Shakespeare automatically a “lousy reader”?

No, they are both "good readers." However, I would think this relates to depth of experience rather than ability. One of of those will have a more expansive palette, while the other will have a more limited one.

[JCamilo]

[COLOR="#B22222"]
Cultural Imperialism... rooted in language? Or is it rather economic and military power that makes a nation also a cultural powerhouse? Within Western culture France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Russia, Italy, Greece, the US, and even Portugal... for a short period have all fallen into such a category of economic/military power. Prior to Pessoa, the sole Portuguese writer of any renown outside of Portugal seems to have been Luís de Camões whose Os Lusíadas is essentially the Portuguese epic... in praise of the Portuguese voyages that put Portugal on the map as a European power. I suspect much of the literature translated is translated because those in one country recognize the economic/military importance of another country. There are undoubtedly more translations from Spanish and Portuguese of South and Central-American literature done in the US than in France or Russia or England... because South America holds a real value to the US. The same was true of Japanese and Russian... and now Arabic and Chinese. Put how much has been translated from Poland, Norway, Hungary, Estonia?

Is this not also the same situation when we turn to music or the visual arts... which are not limited by literacy in other languages... or the availability of translations. Russia is virtually non-existent within most surveys of Western Art History... until Russian begins to be recognized as a major European power... at the same time when Russian Music and Russian literature enter upon the scene. Japanese and German art became dominant in the 1980s as Japan and Germany became major economic powers after years of rebuilding.

I didnt said as a root, but as a toll. More than not, a national idiom happens linked with some desire of centralization of power and when you go outside, most "Metropolis' will demand their language. Many reason of course. Controlling the language of commerce, laws and military is an advantage (and controlling literature also, since literature is the path for ideologias). But of course, if you break down the language of a people, you break part of their cultural unity and wihtout union, it is rather harder to resist to an empire.

Here in Brazil for example, before Portugal started to colonize the southwest region (today, São Paulo), Jesuits came. Since Jesuits are not really under the domain of Portuguese crown, they didnt imposed portuguese upon the natives. They tried to "pacify" them using their several idioms, wrote using it, etc. When the Crown started to have interest on those regions - basically Jesuits fall from grace all over europe, the spanish influence on them, etc - they destroyed all works they found and imposed portuguese as language all over the colony. Of course, cultural imperialism is a consequence of political imperialism.


I agree with much of this... but then again, isn't this part of what Eliot was eulogizing in The Wasteland... the loss of the "universal" or collective mythology or narrative? But this universal narrative/mythology was only "universal" among a very limited audience made up of the aristocracy, the very wealthy, and the high-ranking clergy who were literate. A great majority of literature was built upon a foundation of older myths and narratives (Biblical, Greco-Roman, etc...). A writer could be reasonably certain that his audience would be well versed in these narratives and grasp any such allusions. The same was largely true of the visual arts. This began to fray with the development of Gutenberg's movable type and the proliferation of literacy. The "novel" was "new"... the "new romance"... new narratives.

My opinion is that Elitot and many apocalyptic literature that went on the "end of narrative", such Walter Benjamin, are reflecting some sort of dellusion with XIX century (a century that central european-american countries have gone far into the popular-folklore-traditions invenstigations - and discovered in the city mankind was far from wisers. It was very commun this kind of view and I suspect like you they weren't looking in the right places - because they need to look the "old" in new places. For example, there is text from a librarian, Mary Shylock, from 1902 (or 3,4,5) when she is describing the transformation of public libraries in oral storytelling centers, the exactly opposite of what Benjamin claimed. Or Yeats, despite his Twilight, claimed to be quite easy to find oral storytellers.



With the 20th century we see the increased collapse of this universal narrative or shared mythology. We have the decline of religion. WWI and WWII result in the larger masses questioning the superiority of the "nobility"... the "elite". And then we have the developments of sound recording, photography, film, radio, and TV which result in the proliferation of popular culture. The result is that T.S. Eliot was right... the collective narrative or shared mythology of "fine" or "high" art would fall into a decline... or rather it's relevancy to the culture as a whole might be called into question... and its relevancy to the artists... at least in economic terms... would also be called into question. Entertaining the masses is far more lucrative than entertaining the "elite".

And then, Cinema and TV build up from intense mythical narratives. Sports for example, the teams identidy, the players and athletes personal anedoctes, how the story is view (Jordan stops to play baseball then return to tryumph is certainly cooler than: Jordan wins 8 NBA rings straigthly.) Like you said, I suspect, the elite has to adapt and absorb the myths created by popular culture as much or more than the masses have to come down to the winner ideology, unless militar or political power was imposed.


Hasn't Tolkein simply become just one more example of the Popular (Populist) Mythology?

I do not really think so. Tolkien own mythology does not seems to lead people to dig the sources so much (of course there is), but in the other way, he seems to spawn more "Mythology creators" than researches. Also, I think they will repeat elvish rather than read Bewulf. I don't know if even functions as a mythology, as in mythology all is truth, the mythos happens in this reality, and while Tolkien claims it was our past, the feeling is more of another world with their own story. Neverland kind of stuff. Also, his real "Mythologic" work, silmarillion is like the girlfriend's 12 years old sister. Came with the package.

But Tolkien somehow persists, we can say Stoker persist because of the sense of evil that Dracula represents and how this was perfect for popular culture, but Tolkien? Except for maybe, creating a thematic for visual arts, which i think are more famous now that his books.

[Ecurb]

JCamilo: it is not the academy that uses the canon to promote itself, but individuals who use both the academy and the canon to promote themselves. Here in the U.S., mentioning that you attended Harvard is lampooned as, "Dropping the H Bomb". If you ARE a Harvard grad, it's tempting to drop the "H" Bomb because it provides social cachet -- it immediately identifies you (supposedly) as among the intellectual and social elite. For centuries, the British Empire was administered by graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, who gained their administrative positions through the cachet and "old boy" networks their alma maters provided. The canon serves as a sort of lesser "H Bomb". Familiarity with it demonstrates membership in a cultural class, the educated elite, just as having attended more than 50 "Grateful Dead" concerts demonstrates membership in a different cultural class: hippydom, or mentioning that your favorite music is "Death Metal" demonstrates membership in yet another cultural class, young men whom your daughter should never date.

[stlukesguild]

You are obviously missing that something cannot function for something it has no capacity for. The Canon, for being build outside the academic circle you insist to link, has no use to promote the academic views. Dante is is a religious bigot, Blake is anti-academic and anti-science, Cervantes almost anti-literature, Shakespeare a buffon. You seem to fail to get that the fact the Canonical works predate the actual academy shows that it is not the Acamedy that is using the canon for a fuction, just because they share some ideas to a few cannonical work.

Yes... there is this notion that the Canon is produced by the Academy and in support of certain Socio-Economic powers... and yet far too often, canonical authors and artists of all ilk are more than problematic with regard to their support of the values of those in power. Dante is not merely bigoted (the Church would fully support that) nor is Blake merely anti-academy. The two essentially reject the accepted religious views and set about to essential construct their own world view... their own religion. Shakespeare avoids the expected moral messages to the point that Tolstoy could reject him as amoral... if not immoral considering his problematic sexuality. Then there's Michelangelo. I can't think of a more audacious act than his rendering images conveying his own homoerotic desires on the ceiling of the private chapel of the Pope... at the very heart of Christendom. I'm reminded of today's current crop of Neo-Cons who mouth their admiration for the "founding fathers" of the new American nation... but close their eyes to much of what Jefferson and Adams really stood for.

[JBI]

JCamilo: it is not the academy that uses the canon to promote itself, but individuals who use both the academy and the canon to promote themselves. Here in the U.S., mentioning that you attended Harvard is lampooned as, "Dropping the H Bomb". If you ARE a Harvard grad, it's tempting to drop the "H" Bomb because it provides social cachet -- it immediately identifies you (supposedly) as among the intellectual and social elite. For centuries, the British Empire was administered by graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, who gained their administrative positions through the cachet and "old boy" networks their alma maters provided. The canon serves as a sort of lesser "H Bomb". Familiarity with it demonstrates membership in a cultural class, the educated elite, just as having attended more than 50 "Grateful Dead" concerts demonstrates membership in a different cultural class: hippydom, or mentioning that your favorite music is "Death Metal" demonstrates membership in yet another cultural class, young men whom your daughter should never date.

This is nonsense, The majority of people with degrees in English are broke. Take it from me, there are very few doors opened with the study of literature, and very few people make money with it. The Canon only allows you to converse with the canon, or engage in a discussion, not to make money, influence policy, or determine anything.

Most people who are running the country are not doing so because of their background in the canon.

Still, in Asia you are more or less right about the canon's original function - it still takes a family connection to bring you to the top tier, but memorizing books has always been the determiner of political positioning. The old imperial exams were basically a game of memorizing 400,000 Chinese characters to the character, and then turning out answers (including "complete the paragraph from the sentence and offer exegesis") based on a familiar set of works.

Still, you act as if it is some club. My professor who had actually worked extensively with one of these exam candidates remarked how even in his 90s, when asked a question about a phrase, he would spit out the answer by rote. It's not an easy task - memorizing 400,000 words.

Now, for the west we are less fixated on memory, and more into how much nonsense you can create about a text. still, literature never played a great social function in the west in the sense that it did in East Asia.

[mona amon]

I must laugh of those talking about accomplishment trying to imply a clear cut between entertaiment and "high art". The Cistine is not famous for provoking more than awe. People to do not have any accomplishment and beware, Big Bang Theory (i think not, but Chaplin will be and it is basically the same function) will be a classic one day. And we will be those dumb critics who didnt saw it in our plain sight.

But who does that anymore - imply a clear cut distinction between entertainment and high art? I was differentiating between art that can be easily understood by most people without much specific study and art that can only be understood by a few, and sure, there may be potential classics among the former.


Ecurb - like Tolstoy, or George Bernard Shaw, for example

Bernard Shaw not liking Shakespeare is only a myth, perpetrated by Shaw himself, mostly as a reaction against 'bardolatory' and a sort of contrariness in his own personality, but no one takes his flippant, bombastic denunciations seriously. A lot can be said about the subject (because Shaw has said a lot about almost everything) but I'll just quote someone else -


With his habitual bluntness, Shaw frequently makes clear that his attack on Shakespeare is a rhetorical extravagance justified by a strategic purpose. Indeed the passage quoted at the beginning of this article goes on, “But I am bound to add that I pity the man who cannot enjoy Shakespeare. He has outlasted thousands of abler thinkers, and will outlast a thousand more.” Shaw loves his Shakespeare and knows the canon with an intimacy that enables him to catch actors in their minor textual variations and to excoriate managers for their inept cuts and rearrangements. Phrases from the dramas come naturally to his pen, whatever topic he may be writing about. And he regularly displays not only a detailed familiarity with the plays but a powerful grasp of their dramatic technique, the insights of a fellow playwright. It is no accident that theatrical people as intelligent and informed as Ellen Terry and Harley Granville Barker have been glad to discuss Shakespeare with him on equal terms. - Robert B. Pierce

So that leaves only Tolstoy...

[JBI]

And Voltaire, though I suspect that was more of an Anti-English thing.

[JCamilo]

Shaw a fan of Voltaire, Tolstoy a fan of Voltaire... Both anti-bardolatry and attacks on the style of the plays like Shaw and Tolstoy did are already done by Voltaire. So, you can argue Voltaire was the anti-shakespeare hipster.



But who does that anymore - imply a clear cut distinction between entertainment and high art? I was differentiating between art that can be easily understood by most people without much specific study and art that can only be understood by a few, and sure, there may be potential classics among the former.

Art that can be easily understood, just entertainment, popular, art that needs specialists,high brown. That is the popping here.



Bernard Shaw not liking Shakespeare is only a myth, perpetrated by Shaw himself, mostly as a reaction against 'bardolatory' and a sort of contrariness in his own personality, but no one takes his flippant, bombastic denunciations seriously. A lot can be said about the subject (because Shaw has said a lot about almost everything) but I'll just quote someone else -

[mal4mac]

Anyone and everyone can lie back on a couch and watch TV, so although I may have fun watching Masterchef Australia or The Big Bang Theory, I feel no pride or sense of accomplishment. On the other hand if I'm able to read a text that's generally considered difficult, I do feel proud of myself.

Pride comes before a fall :) You might feel pride at reading Dickens, and then attempt Joyce...

I don't really want to generate a sense of pride in myself, or a sense of accomplishment, more a sense of having really enjoyed myself in one of the best possible ways. That I get from reading Dickens, Shakespeare or Tolstoy. Or listening to certain pieces by Bach or Mozart. In reading or listening to the works of these masters my own feelings match what the "canonical gatekeepers" suggest I should be feeling. So I get a sense that I'm doing something right, not a common feeling I have about life in general :(

One problem is that some classics don't work for me (Milton, Joyce, Chinese poetry, Stockhausen...) If I learned to appreciate these masters, I would have a great sense of accomplishment! But, after several attempts at Joyce, I know frustration and failure are more likely. So why should I bother? I haven't read all of Thomas Hardy yet, and I'm pretty certain his particular magic will always work for me. And that goes for a hundred other novelists. And why don't I just re-read all the great works I've previously enjoyed? All this "striving for accomplishment" sounds hard. I can get great enjoyment reading most (non-modernist) novelists, without working hard, so why shouldn't I just read classic novels? I like an easy life, until it gets boring, but Dickens doesn't get boring.

[Ecurb]

In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo….


This is nonsense, The majority of people with degrees in English are broke.
.

It is a bit strange of JBI to claim that my contention that knowledge of the canon confers social prestige “is nonsense” and then to back up that claim with a fictitious statistic that has nothing to do with whether my claim is nonsensical or not. If JBI is to go to all the bother of making up a statistic, why not make one up that actually addresses the question at hand?

If I wanted to invent a statistic that is at least plausible, I’d suggest that the skater-kids with their Ska music, and the aging hippies who attended hundreds of Grateful Dead concerts are broke, not college-graduate English Majors. Does the hippies' and skater kids' impecunious state prove that expressing a fondness for their particular kinds of music serves no social function? Besides, I’ll bet that at MOST only 49% of English majors are broke.

The women who come and go through “Prufrock”, measuring out their lives in coffee spoons and discussing Michelangelo suggest that Eliot agrees with me (although his opinion may be dated). (I hope that arguing a point about the canon through quoting FROM the canon isn't some obscure sort of logical fallacy.)

[JBI]

No it merely proves that you did not understand Prufrock, or Eliot's use of the allusion to Michelangelo, but, more importantly, it also demonstrates your inability to read literature.

Let me justify this rather bold statement. The first thing you need to realize when reading a poem, especially by a modernist, is the difference between the poem's speaker (the Prufrock I) and the poet of the poem, that is Eliot with however many collaborators who edited the manuscript. The first point is there, you are making a judgment that Eliot agrees with you, and basing your argument on his poem's speaker's statement, which you more or less interpret falsely and anachronistically anyway (though you admitted the latter point).

The first thing you should realize when reading a dramatic monologue, if we can call Prufrock such a form, which I would argue we can, is that they generally tend to focus on a specific voice. That is, Tennyson is not Ulysses, and Byron is not some murderous persona, but rather their poem's speakers are those roles. Prufrock then, can be interpreted to be speaking for Prufrock, not Eliot, the same way that Fitzgerald is not Nick from Gatsby, and Dickens is not Pip.

Now, to the quote itself, he is discussing a specific culture - the European sort of art-sophisticate, not the scholar in the university. He is mocking their pretensions, not the art itself mind you, in that they use this sort of dialogue in their smug manner to feel good about themselves - oh the conversation. He is, I would argue (Prufrock not Eliot) not particularly talking about anything to do with the academy.

Now, to the English major claim - since when were they rich. Statistics in Canada before I left were demonstrating the university as a whole was not bringing in as much projected income as trade school. Such debates and research have been done to death. The fact remains there is enough justification to demonstrate there are numerous successful people without such degrees, and there are numerous broke people with such degrees. Take that as you will, I live in China which has an excessive number of these students, for sheer size of their population. The projected income of those who finish their degree and land a teaching job in English (which is not easy mind you) is something around 5000RMB a month. The talk on the street here is that these jobs are "womens' jobs" and the number of students in the arts versus the sciences who are female demonstrates the trend. Having taught 1000+ students here, the majority of which were English majors, I will tell you that 90% of those I taught were female, and not exactly well off. The generally idea is that these are useless degrees, and seeing as what they learned was more or less nonsense, I would agree.

Now, to return to North America as another point of reference, even in Canada's top English department at the University of Toronto, the professors were making a point about how this is a dead end career path. You don't need to have half a brain to realize nobody gets rich from this stuff. Even if one were to land a job as a professor, that is a far cry from the salaries of lets say, a Doctor, Lawyer, Plumber, Electrician, Accountant, etc. I cannot of course link you the information, as like I said earlier, I am blocked from all of the US government data, and most of the Canadian data as well. I could try the Indian data, but I suspect much of that is probably blocked too.

Your point was that the rich use literature to justify their superiority and therefore maintain their wealth. Perhaps that was true in medieval China, but in the west the vast majority of rich people have demonstrated the absolute lack of connection between a degree in the arts, and personal wealth. The university as a whole showed rich people in a variety of subjects in the past, with a cultural elite, simply because people more or less had to be rich to attend in the first place. Widespread university education is a modern phenomenon (as is the university in much of the world as an institution) and its function has changed rapidly. If you don't believe me, check the price of a book in real terms in 1800, then 1700 - you will notice quite clearly that to purchase such an item required more than the vast illiterate population could muster together. From there check the history of libraries in Britain (Cambridge has put out a rather lengthy histories on both these subjects) it will inform you all you need to know, and you will not cry for me to go fishing for statistics.

That the scholars of the past were rich was not tied at all to their actual scholarly pursuits. It was a gatekeeping qualification into the academy, not the purpose of the academy - you have mixed up the entire logic of paying to enter, not entering to be paid.

As for the power of the so called elite in establishing and proliferating themselves, actually you will find literature has tended to have a rather mixed relationship with populist forces. On one hand the rich are the rich, but the university has consistently been an advocate and a romancer of the downtrodden, even when the political and economic realities outside the institution were not. A class example is the treatment of Native Americans by Duncan Campbell Scott, a notorious Canadian Indian Affairs minister. His poems are ultimately a play to the current market of the romantic, noble Indian, who is pure and real humanity, unspoiled. Such a trend runs straight through his poetry. Yet turn to his policy and you notice something clearly different - a horrible racist who was the constructive mind behind residential schools in Canada and a desired destruction of both Native Americans as an entity and as a culture.

The split demonstrates a public policy versus an artistic policy. The actual taste and appreciation of art and subject by the academy is not necessarily linked to the money controls outside of it. You are somehow suggesting that those students in Peking who got the tanks rolling over them somehow were some upholders of a cultural supremacy over the populous? Give me a break. The link between the wealth and the academy has always been a difficult and twisted argument. The progression and placement of an intellectual in culture demonstrates as such. Socrates himself illustrates the scholar's attitude toward the wealth/authority/power outside of the academic setting, as does Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and any other number of historical personages who put the literary ideal (in this case religious ideal) over the political pressure.

Now, back to the current time period, I don't really see much in terms of upholding an elite within academia - the general trend over the past 30 years has been both communist in nature, and iconoclastic in practice. Anybody who has set foot into a class on literary theory in the late 20th century would have a basic understanding of this. It is in no way in support of any wealth outside of itself, and merely a self-supporting entity, designed to propel its own careerists (those who made it past the gate) onto a stage. It does not support, lets say, George W. Bush's Invasion of Iraq as a specific example, anymore than the average person on the street may or may not.

Now, back to the US, with much education in the hundreds of thousands before you get out of there in that country, I would say the majority of people are broke - especially given the research which has been done extensively on the student loan system in the US, and the prospects of students after graduating. The forclosures on these loans every year is enough to illustrate a sort of trend that many people cannot pay these loans back. Likewise the high rate of unemployment documented by your census bureaus in the US will also illustrate the employment offered those who can survive the pressure of the debt. I am not alone in holding this opinion of the broke student, in that numerous of protests and piles of literature have been written on this specific subject. This is not some ostensible conjecture, but rather a more or less beaten to death research topic.

Get over yourself kid, try going to an interview for any job with the line ~I've read the whole canon. You will find it doesn't get you anywhere. Your so called H-Bomb also only applies to those institutions deemed H-bomb worthy, which are limited as well. Take it from me, I am a graduate of a university consistently ranked amongst the top 20 in the year during the time at which I was attending. It gets me no where, and I graduated, believe it or not, as an award winning student with high distinction, and all the decorations to prove it (with all the old names of dead people beside my name now). This is an institution rather renown for its English department as well, producing many noteworthy scholars and maintaining major collections. This so called "bomb" is rather flaccid, trust me, and one's reading knowledge only helps if you are in the setting of an undergraduate class in literature. You seem to know very little about literature, and far less about education. Your whole argument speaks of an out of tune understanding of how the world works.

I'll let you in on a secret - try quoting Chaucer to a woman - rather than think it romantic or sexy, she will most likely think it dorky, and I will be there beside her agreeing.

[Ecurb]

Since the most I ever argued for is that familiarity with and enthusiasm for the canon confers some (minor) social and cultural cachet, most of JBI’s post above is beside the point. I thought I made this clear by comparing enthusiasm for the canon with enthusiasm for Ska music among skater-kids. On the evidence of his last post, JBI would argue that liking Ska cannot possible confer social status on skater-kids, because most skater kids are broke. Huh? What does the one have to do with the other?

JBI, in fact, seems to be uninterested in discussing this point. Instead, he prefers to brag about his academic career. (“Take it from me, I am a graduate of a university consistently ranked amongst the top 20 in the year during the time at which I was attending. It gets me no where, and I graduated, believe it or not, as an award winning student with high distinction, and all the decorations to prove it (with all the old names of dead people beside my name now). This is an institution rather renown for its English department as well, producing many noteworthy scholars and maintaining major collections.”) He also brags about his canonical knowledge (“Get over yourself kid, try going to an interview for any job with the line ~I've read the whole canon. You will find it doesn't get you anywhere.”)

If academic achievement and canonical knowledge confer no status, why does JBI bother to brag about them? I’ll grant that I conflated Eliot’s and Prufrock’s opinion in the interest of simplicity. However, JBI’s own reading skills are dubious, since he writes such nonsense as, “Your point was that the rich use literature to justify their superiority and therefore maintain their wealth.” Huh? As with his statistics about the poverty of English majors, JBI simply made that up. Where did I ever suggest that? I did suggest that Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard degrees confer prestige and old-boy networks that might lead to money– but not that knowledge of the canon does. I quoted Prufrock specifically because I WASN’T referring to the Academy – but to supposed art-sophisticates.

JBI continues: “Now, to the English major claim - since when were they rich.” Who said English majors were rich? I simply said that you made up the claim that “the majority” were broke, which you clearly did. JBI continues to make my point instead of his: “Even if one were to land a job as a professor, that is a far cry from the salaries of lets say, a Doctor, Lawyer, Plumber, Electrician, Accountant, etc.” Since I never claimed that knowledge of the canon had pecuniary benefits, I’m not sure why JBI brings this up. Clearly, the English Professor at Harvard or Yale has a higher-status job than the plumber – even if the plumber makes more money. Surely this supports my position, not JBI's.

Given JBI’s lack of rhetorical skill, it is not surprising that his prestigious degree “gets him nowhere”.

[JCamilo]

That have nothing to do with JBI. You toss stuff like the H Bomb because someone studied in Havard (I, as a brazilian, can say I never meet a Havard student that have read more than I did) and the status attached to it, as if the status come from the reading of the Canon. I am pretty much sure lawyers, medical doctors, etc. are more likely to read Paulo Coelho - isnt that Clinton boy a fan of Paulo Coelho?

Of course, The Van Dorens of life - are them stll around? - did read the canon and promoted it, but are you sure Kennedys did it? I bet Marylin Monroe read more than John and Ted. Mostly, rich poeple that get a lawyer degree and drop the H bomb will not gloat about the canon because poorer dudes like JBI will wash him outwithout any effort. The status? Probally more close if they sponsor a public library, a museum than actually read a book.

It is silly, many peolple look for status quoting famous works- How many quote Oscar Wilde? I saw some reading baudelaire to a girl, who obviously didnt knew french and had no idea the poem was about a girl with a bad flu. But those people will not survive because there is always one that read more than you. They end exposed like buffons so fast - you those real intelectual types like JBI or Stlukes cannot really hold on and will call bull**** as soon they are annoyed by it.

Forget the canon and Havard and Cambridge, the dead white man, etc. I am neither of them.

[AuntShecky]

I'll let you in on a secret - try quoting Chaucer to a woman - rather than think it romantic or sexy, she will most likely think it dorky, and I will be there beside her agreeing.

Well, yours fooly is a woman, and I've never considered Chaucer's work to be "dorky." Au contraire, several passages of his works can be characterized as informative, hilarious, exciting, adventurous, highly sophisticated, ribald, "dirty," emotionally moving, and yes, "romantic." So now I'm wondering if you read the same Canterbury Tales?





Bernard Shaw not liking Shakespeare is only a myth, perpetrated by Shaw himself, mostly as a reaction against 'bardolatory' and a sort of contrariness in his own personality, but no one takes his flippant, bombastic denunciations seriously. A lot can be said about the subject (because Shaw has said a lot about almost everything)



Right you are, Mona, about GBS. Most of what he said was in the proverbial "tongue-in-cheek," and seemed to downplay the significance of Shakespeare as a way to make his own literary reputation visible despite the Bard's blinding light. That writers shamelessly promoted themselves is more or less common across the last two or three centuries. Oscar Wilde loved to engage in the grandiose practice of what my sainted mother used to call "throwing bouquets," but even today we quote his self-aggrandizing witticisms. Both Wilde and Dickens visited the U.S. in what can only be described as the 19th century equivalent of glorified publicity tours. Walt "Song of Myself" Whitman was no shrinking violet in the ego department. James Joyce famously remarked that people should devote their entire lives to reading Finnegans Wake. Modern and contemporary authors, such as the late Norman Mailer and the quick Jonathan Franzen won awards, but not for their modesty. Recently I came across that Jack Kerouac had a sign over his desk saying "You're a genius every day," and just this morning I was reading a work by an author who for my money is an American Treasure. Here is Jimmy Breslin describing his experience writing a long-running column for the New York Herald Tribune:

"[S]ometimes when I think of this I am so delighted with myself that I could sing a song. And you better do the same thing. For if you do not blow your own horn, there is no music."
I love that!

[JBI]

The process of someone quoting as such in conversation is dorky. It's like how all undergraduate peoples go through the phase of name dropping - in Oxbridge they seem to go through the marxist phase about 1 year into arriving, and are full Tories upon graduating. It is in a sense dorky, the same way that in China which is a place where poetic quotage abounds, nobody will use such stuff to attract the opposite sex. maybe St. Lukes will have a better time offering to paint someone - he mentioned in the past being an artist is a good way to look at naked women all day - but for the most part, it is not the artist types who will bring the opposite sex home, but rather the richer more career-successful types. In a country like China which demonstrates both a penchant for early marriage as well as has a rather large shorter of females, certain degrees, such as humanities degrees for males, are considered dead end bad bet things on these grounds. When I said 90% of my students were female, I didn't exaggerate. The male ones knew that they were regarded as trash. Hell, the university here arranges events now and then that send the arts student female body down to the Technical College on massive blind dates. This isn't Only me who sees this.

So there you have it, perhaps reading Chaucer in and of itself is not dorky (it is to an extent though, especially those who really get into it) but the quoting of it in daily life most certainly is. It gets you nowhere.


Now, back to ECurb, I was responding to a post. You cannot yell at me for reading what you have written and responding. You made the claims and I refuted them, if now you want to back out and say you weren't serious, or what ever other twisting you wish to employ, go ahead. It looks all the worse once somebody has responded, let alone two or three people.

Your post:



JCamilo: it is not the academy that uses the canon to promote itself, but individuals who use both the academy and the canon to promote themselves. Here in the U.S., mentioning that you attended Harvard is lampooned as, "Dropping the H Bomb". If you ARE a Harvard grad, it's tempting to drop the "H" Bomb because it provides social cachet -- it immediately identifies you (supposedly) as among the intellectual and social elite. For centuries, the British Empire was administered by graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, who gained their administrative positions through the cachet and "old boy" networks their alma maters provided. The canon serves as a sort of lesser "H Bomb". Familiarity with it demonstrates membership in a cultural class, the educated elite, just as having attended more than 50 "Grateful Dead" concerts demonstrates membership in a different cultural class: hippydom, or mentioning that your favorite music is "Death Metal" demonstrates membership in yet another cultural class, young men whom your daughter should never date.


Quotes speak better than complaints. Your jump from empire to the H-Bomb only articulates a logic ascribed to the so called "Cambridge and Oxford" old boys club Which seems all powerful to you. There is no real actual status gained by a study of the canon outside of half a dozen people that actually care, and even those are more likely to snicker at you then give you the time of day, as they too think themselves well read, and more than likely are better read than you.

[stlukesguild]

maybe St. Lukes will have a better time offering to paint someone - he mentioned in the past being an artist is a good way to look at naked women all day - but for the most part, it is not the artist types who will bring the opposite sex home, but rather the richer more career-successful types.

Raphael, from all accounts, used his career as a means of picking up women in a manner not unlike today's Hollywood producer: "Honey, would you like to be in pictures?" But then we should remember that Raphael was one of the highest ranking artists of the Renaissance... one of the few in the employ of the Pope and the nephew of the chief architect of St. Peter's. The Florentines and Romans were largely proscribed from painting nudes of the opposite sex. The Venetians may have been a bit more liberal... but I haven't read a great deal about Titian or Veronese seducing their models.

The Dutch were Puritanical busybodies who would have done more than look down upon artists cavorting with models (one need only read up on Rembrandt) while the Spanish had the Inquisition. Rubens (Flemish and working within the highest circles in Europe) may have been one of the few artists who would have been able to seduce young models on a regular basis... but while his oeuvre is certainly filled with sensuality and eroticism, there are little reports of any impropriety.

I suspect the whole ideal of the artist with a harem of comely young model/mistresses was a reality during the Rococo (and almost certainly primarily in France... Paris to be exact... and then from the Romantic period through the early 20th century... and again mostly in Paris... but also Germany and Austria. This is a period in which there were few means of employment open to women and artists... even the poor Bohemians... could afford to hire the services of such. Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Courbet, Whistler, Toulouse-Latrec, Walter Sickert, Egon Schiele, Rodin, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Balthus, Kees von Dongen, Marc Chagall, etc... all fit the mold of the Bohemian artists cavorting with their models/mistresses... but this really dies out by the time of the Abstract Expressionists. Its hard to justify the need for a model strolling about naked for hours on end as they did for Klimt and Rodin when you're painting like this:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqcgetEBRe1qhcav9o1_500.jpg

I suppose there is still a fair amount of artists cavorting with their models... but largely because the model is already a girlfriend and its far cheaper to paint her for free than to hire a professional at $20 and hour.

Honestly, people... including women... are often intrigued at discovering that you are an artist, but unless you are wildly successful, I doubt it would be as much of a selling point as being a corporate lawyer, a doctor, an MBA, or Wall Street broker.

[Sir Thomas Urqu]

It is in a sense dorky, the same way that in China which is a place where poetic quotage abounds, nobody will use such stuff to attract the opposite sex.

You may not be in the real world much, but poetry is still widely used by near every generation alive today (at least in the United States) to show romance. It may not be the most common method, but then I wouldn't really know what a "common" method was in courting.


but for the most part, it is not the artist types who will bring the opposite sex home, but rather the richer more career-successful types.

That's curious, because I still see plenty of poor trashbags (but at least they are good looking...sometimes) pulling all types of women, again, at least in the United States. In fact, as far back as highschool, the smart and successful ones don't get the girl and I'm pretty sure near anyone at least under their 30's can attest to witnessing this debacle. Unless you are talking about middle-aged women/man...but then again that's only one demographic (and not many are smart enough to marry for money). You better be careful with your polemics, not only do they make you a poor debater, but here it almost seems as if you're suggesting money is an end-goal? Maybe I'm streching it too far, but then you've been doing that for a while as well.




In a country like China which demonstrates both a penchant for early marriage as well as has a rather large shorter of females, certain degrees, such as humanities degrees for males, are considered dead end bad bet things on these grounds. When I said 90% of my students were female, I didn't exaggerate. The male ones knew that they were regarded as trash.

Cool, but like...aren't you the only one here in China? There are many different traditions throughout the world. Besides like...I can't really take your word on that.


So there you have it, perhaps reading Chaucer in and of itself is not dorky (it is to an extent though, especially those who really get into it) but the quoting of it in daily life most certainly is. It gets you nowhere.

I don't have anything really...besides your subjective, prejudice and, presumably, unexperienced view. The only thing more insecure, I can think of, than quoting literature to prove your intelligence—is your response to quoting period. And it's dorky if you really get into literature:—are we in highschool? Unless you were being funny. But then you can't blame me for not knowing that—though this is a rather silly, subjective thing to debate about.

[JBI]

I may not be in the real world much? how many men use poetry to seduce women? The reduction of poetry has gone to the point of quoting some cliches, not to using it as a means of seduction. You can argue all you want, but the idea of reading a poem for a woman to attract her is a weird sort of cultural fallacy. Generally speaking, the practice and reading of "poetry" if you will in this extent goes to buying a card with a few lines of verse penned on it. Not the actual use of poetry as a praise or seduction item. It also, has never been proven to have functioned as such, despite the wide use of love poetry as a means of communication in the past. A troubadour may not have even met the woman he was writing the poems about, and Dante only saw Beatrice for a couple brief moments. Laura may not have existed, and Sidney's muse was more literary than practical, as the actual person had no real relationship to him, and he merely used her as a sort of rhetorical game. The debate about Shakespeare's "You" in both his/her forms cannot be linked to actual people, any more than the work's function as a form of seduction, which the content judges it wasn't. Rather his cycle seems to be a rhetorical progression from the Petrarchan into the self-reflexive style that would mark a shift in poetic influence in England at the time. Such ideas are not new. Generally speaking, poetry behaves more rhetorically than practically, and the vast majority of "love poetry" is more constructed than sincere - sincerity after all, emerges as a major literary concern in Europe only in the 18th century.

Now, that is the European tradition in general, which treats poetry far more as text than as practical discourse. The quoting of some verse to a woman seems fine enough, but generally most women I would think would probably tell you they would rather actions, personal sentiments, then the quoting (or oft misquoting) of some cheesy line. The Hallmark sort of poetry usage is merely an extension of the sentiment of giving a gift, not the sentiment itself, and suggests a function to break the silence of not knowing what to express oneself when giving a card, the same way English tombstones are scrawled with quotation rather than personal notes (in contrast to China where the tradition was to give a particularly long summary of the deceased's achievements, background and career).

But I forget, I am dealing with a student, who, from his/her posts on these forums, has not even showed to me his/her own familiarity or interpretive ability in regard to literature or poetry, and merely pokes his head in to make groundless ideological claims.

This weird idea of the Bohemian artist, the sort of Puccini Bohemians as successful romantic is a flawed idea. The whole opera taken as example is alluding to this - the coquette loves rich men, the heroine is a tubercular prostitute. Verdi's La Traviata is no different either, in that the sort of "society" of the courtesan is the original pull of attraction to begin with. The desirability and price tag of the "objectified" woman is the allure of the broke scholar/romantic in the first place. Thais would be a much better example of the practical, with the profane/vulgar.

The romantic scholar always finishes last, and the girls who go with him always die. It makes sense that these sort of "bad women" or fallen women who run off with these scholars in these operas die, especially given the audience of rich, well-bred women who were consuming such literature. It is however, proven to be a real fallacy.

Now, there are plenty of poor guys who enjoy the companionship of women, this I do not dispute. However, there is a specific correlation between desirability and economic status - I would assume this is granted. Likewise, there is a correlation between physical appearance and desirability - this is also not disputed. However, I am yet to find major studies that show on a whole women are looking for men, or men are looking for women who in a sense can "perform" literature - be it through quotation or through knowledge of texts. Perhaps some women are drawn to an intellect - but it is rather a far stretch to assume that most women, not familiar with these works, would be attracted specifically by someone who is. Literature tends to work through mutual appreciation, and therefore it is only natural that the person who does not read will not find the fact that someone else reads something they don't like particularly "invigorating".

Now, this is for the select body of works that fall into "love poetry" which more or less is a restricted genre in English. The vast majority of the canon, after all, is not such poetry of lovely lines, but either the lines (whether sincere or not) of somebody seducing a woman/man (Donne, Marvell, Raleigh, etc.) or being rejected. The rhetorical ploy of the seduction poem has been demonstrated as rhetoric quite early, and not as a serious "seduction" attempt. The second, often is mediocre poetry, and has been disregarded in trope since the renaissance, where it too was more or less an extract of rhetorical games.

Reading poetry has never been actually an attempt either to earn money (as even poets need day jobs, with the exception of a very slim historical few) and professional critics rely on other skills for money (such as teaching, or journalism). You get nothing out of it really except for its own aesthetic satisfaction, and the other "mind expanding" subjective stuff others claim. Reading poetry will not make somebody rich, will not particularly make them attractive to the other sex (or at least no more than any other number of things) and probably will not make them particularly happy either (lets face it, poetry can be a real downer for a reader in many cases, and there is no correlation between a happy mindset and a pursuit of poetic texts). Lets stop pretending.

Now, as for Chaucer - There is nothing wrong with reading Chaucer, I was speaking specifically to the use of Chaucer in conversation - the same way I do not have anything against Star Wars (the original 3) which are quite a part of popular culture, yet are also to be quoted seriously (not ironically) at the risk of sounding dorky. There are dorks of every age and gender, and the sort of medieval dork is just one of a type. I am a studier of medieval and Ancient works myself, I can tell you full out, it is not a "cool" thing to be, in any sense, and there is little money in it. The general question people ask when you tell them what you do is first Why? and then what do you plan to do with such an education. The rather strangeness of doing a degree in a foreign medieval culture is even more problematic for people.

Now, back to China. I mention China a lot with grounds not only because I live, study, and work in China, but also for the simple reason that the East Asian cultural sphere (including Vietnam and various peripheries) has been consistently one of the largest textual countries in the world. The sheer number of extant works from the area is only dwarfed by the "lost" works, as well as the vast number of readers and students here. It makes perfect sense to use the largest population bases on earth as examples, especially considering we are looking at trends. If you want to take the area of Cambridge Massachusetts as a sample of the American literary habit, then by your will - but nobody would take such an argument seriously.

You have only demonstrated not only a xenophobia, but also a lack of understanding of the world. The number of universities in this part of the world, as well as students is so massive as to warrant its use as example. They have tens of Millions students enrolled currently (according To wikipedia 20million as of 2004, and the numbers increase annually). This is even larger than the massive 14.6million full time students registered in the US in 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States). Now, if you want to tell me such statistical data does not make these trends relevant, go ahead.

As for the function of poetry in China, I who live here, read, write about, and study poetry in China would know a lot more than you. I am not the only Chinese speaking reader on these boards (more than one has even posted on these forums) nor am I the only person who accesses these texts. Likewise, when we are asking for trends in the world of education, certainly the largest populations are to be regarded as paramount - the size of the Chinese-cultural sphere of over 1.4billion people certainly dwarfs anything except for Arabic readers, and even then, the Chinese cultural sphere is larger.

Like you said, there are many cultures in the world. I so happen to be rather versed in at least two or three of them. I can easily comment on both Anglo-American trends as well as Chinese trends, being that I have been through both systems, and have written, and translated works and data pertaining to both traditions. I have also taught at the university level in Asia, which gives me somewhat of an insight -(I also helped translate a sizable chunk of census data, but that is another story).

Get over yourself, you will not best me in either the Western or Chinese traditions of literature, I am almost sure at that. Not because you are not creative enough, or smart enough, but because you simply do not really know enough. You are a clever person, don't get me wrong, but you lack the actual experience to turn these ideas into something that resembles a sustainable argument. Calling something subjective is not an excuse for dismissing things, any more than telling me China doesn't matter.

You should relax though, everyone goes through this stage - I certainly did, though not in the same form (the boards discussed more literature and less politics then) back in 2007 or so. Even after I came back from Italy after my stint there, posters noticed how experience and interaction greatly changed my sort of appreciation for the subtleties of such inquiry. Perhaps you just need to get out more. Take it from someone who actually has done the degree in literature - the degree does nothing for someone. It's not like music or painting where you get the tangible skill of the art - you get nothing practical out of this - you don't really learn how to create art, the same way an art historian does not learn how to paint. You do not learn how to create music - the same way a musical historian may not ever play an instrument or compose any music. You do not learn how to even read properly most of the time.
\

[Delta40]

I doubt few of us would want to take it from somebody like you JBI. We'd much prefer to find out for ourselves - especially as so many of us know less than you!

[JBI]

I doubt few of us would want to take it from somebody like you JBI. We'd much prefer to find out for ourselves - especially as so many of us know less than you!

Instead of being deliberately deliberately contrary, you could at least state an opinion worth discussing. Are you telling me you don't agree, lets be honest... As rude as I may be, I'm still right, and I think you know that.

[Scheherazade]

~

Due to the increasing number of personalised posts,

this thread will now be closed.

~