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Well said. There are as many kind of interests as there are people. Some people would rather play sports than read, some would rather watch tv, some would rather paint a picture, and then there's us :p Look how many people are reading this thread! Just one tiny fraction of the web dedicated to readers!Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterL
I think it is slightly just a matter of slowpaced vs fastpaced media that discourages people. The other day, my dental hygienist was complaining to me about how she had to read 2 ENTIRE novels per semester for a class she was taking, noting how long reading took and how many other things she could've done with that time. She also went on to talk about spending hours on facebook. It is just all relative.
I lost mine recently; and do nothing more than watching films these days.
Some days I'd rather play sports. Some days I'd rather watch TV. Some days I'd rather read. What ever happened to being well-rounded?Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedWolf
This only motivated the change of the reading material and thus the production. It is no surprise that epic poetry (or poetry overall) lost his spot for romance and novels, and no surprise that short stories are also more relevant those days. Overall, Jornalism is probally the most commun form of reading.Quote:
Originally Posted by Katy North
Dickens was the Dickens of his time, he have no relation watsoever with Rowling. Several authors are also popular during the XIX and we barelly remember him. The matter of fact is that we do not know (or there is no) Dickens of this time.Quote:
b) remember, once the great authors were popular literature too! Charles Dickens was the JK Rowling of his time. I might get burned for this on this forum, but consider... 100 years from now so many movies and even some video games might be considered "classic" literature. That's why there are now film professors in some colleges.
And many movies or videogames are coing to be considered classic literature, how so if they are not even literature? Obviously, a few will be considered classic movies or videogames, but not literature, just like a classic music is a classic music. And few, unless you use classic like they do to promote a new movie (which means that a movie is called classic even before released) will be classic, because the nature of what is classic makes it not to be measure in quantidy and it is a rare event.
That is a very noble ideal, but if JKRowling is the more popular writer in the world right now, Literature is already marketable for young people. Plus, market is not a concern of academics, you can not control it and should not.Quote:
c) I am hoping to go back to school for my masters and Ph.d. in English. It is my goal to make literature "marketable" for young people. While English and writing is not a dying discipline, literature is slowly becoming unnecessary for people attending college. There has got to be a way to make people interested in literature again, and I believe that the key to it lies in teaching students that literature can teach them so many things about themselves and modern society as a whole. I firmly believe that I have better character because I read the books I did growing up... starting with C.S. Lewis and Brian Jaques and advancing to Dickesn, Dostoevsky, and Austen.
That is the best part of making someone be a reader. A co-work between family and school. Since most of educational system in western world have a conflict between both part, we must solve it all first.Quote:
And now my two year old son is continuing the tradition to... I read him "Harold and the Purple Crayon" and "Madeline" and he "reads" the books back to me... I'm already hard at work teaching the next generation of readers :D
"b) remember, once the great authors were popular literature too! Charles Dickens was the JK Rowling of his time. I might get burned for this on this forum, but consider... 100 years from now so many movies and even some video games might be considered "classic" literature. That's why there are now film professors in some colleges.":flare:
In Trinity in Dublin three of the most popular subjects of study are Law, Literature and Psychology, and such has been the case for many years now.
Well... I guess it is not so unreasonable to consider screenplays and video games as classic lierature given a hundred years time. Take a look at the poetry forum. There are many in an argument over whether lyrics can stand alone as poetry.
(I wonder if the Spice Girls have joined up to this forum...?)
I had a "special topics" course on Irish cinema at Trinity :) Almost all of the films we watched were based on books, ex: Angela's Ashes.
Many popular movies are based on books. I think people are still interested in literature, it's just taking a new form that adapts to a new generation.
Even if books are "phased out" there will always be writers, because there will always be stories regardless of the form they take.
JCamilo, perhaps market wasn't the best word I could have used. Of course, it is not the goal of academics to advertise a book for a publishing company. However, it is the goal of academics to inspire a love of their subject in their students. If, as I have read on this forum, one of the things that turns students OFF to reading a book is being taught it in school, I believe it is the teachers job to find a not so boring way to teach the book in class.
And Wlz, Literature, certain movies, certain video games, and possibly certain music lyrics could all potentially have a place under the broader term "media studies. I'm not saying that there have been any films or video games that could go toe to toe with Dickens yet... the art form of film is only a little over a century old, and video games have only been around for 30ish years, while literature has been developing for thousands of years. However, think about not only 100 years from now, but a thousand years from now. If humanity manages not to kill itself before then, it is entirely feasible that some form of video game or interactive media will become a classic in it's own right.
And before you try to separate books, film, and video games into their different fields of study, remember... they all have one thing in common. They tell stories. Homer didn't write the Iliad, he sang it and told it verbally, passing it down through generations. That was their way of telling stories, because they didn't have access to pen and paper. Yet we teach Homer in literature class. Is teaching a more technologically advanced form of media such a stretch?
I find that in a fast moving society, I have gotten into the habit of getting the breakdown of ideas and not fooling around to hear the fluff. I often find myself bored with movies unless there is something blown up every now and again. I have to sometimes take a xanax to read a book...particularly Austen; though, I enjoy it once I've dived in:p
Exactly. Jcamillo is also ignoring the practical reality of studying literature in academia. I can think of at least three fellow students when I was in grad school studying English that were researching video game narratives.Quote:
Originally Posted by Katy North
I always prefer reading even there are things that disturb me: TV, Game, Cinemas etc. The loss of interest is one has not studied deeply in fact. Once one is deeply into books one gets hooked always
Hum, well, its all about dividing one's day, like this: morning, stuff that needs to be done; noon, absolutely nothing; afternoon, reading; seven o' clock onwards, watching TCM. :D Occasionally art sneaks in there too.
Ignoring is something I am not. Videogames are not literature, wont be. Just like cinema is not. The notion that Videogames are a form of narrative does not means anything for literature, since narratives is not something that happens only within literature. They are a arte-visual form of narrative and that is enough on their own.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
Katy:
Of course, you are not wrong to think you must teach the love for literature foremost if your intention to create readers. But exactly because that the repertory is not on your own mind, but in what you will find.
Now, I do not believe some movies are among the greatest art achivements we have, so they are toe to toe with Dickens, maybe some videogames will be too, as I know some impressive videogames. You people seems to think that the status of Literature is such that other artforms must be acclaimed as literature or seems to be inferior. Literature is just one of the forms of expressions, Music another, videogames another, movies another, etc. And yes, a few of XX century products will be labeled as classic, as some books are.
And there is a reason why Homer is taught in literature classes: he is literature. What you study mostly is his texts, which are already no longer orality. Even the oral studies of epic that showed that Homer (or however was him) was first an oral storyteller, does not mean he was not also a writer, and are focused to show how the oral formulas have influence on the writing style. They are different (music have narrative, visual arts have narratives, etc) but they can be studied as the influence between each other. But nobody can say they are literature, which would be denying the very difference that make those fields happen.
The video game God of War is influenced by all of the great greek myths, but I tell you as much as I enjoy Greek mythology, playing GOW is a heck of a lot more interesting and involving. I actually started watching the History channels "Clash of the Gods" series because of it.
@ Spookymulder: imo greek mythology is nothing spectacular in its own form. Instead try reading the tragedies by Sofokles or Euripides - they are amazing.
I live in Scandinavia and here more people than ever are picking up reading. The sad thing is that 80% of everything being read are either Dan Brown, The Twilight series or The Millenium Trilogy by a swedish writer named Stieg Larsson. So even though more people are reading here, the quality of what they read is declining. It seems that for a book to be popular it has to make no demands of the reader and grant instant entertainment.