Garbage that they teach you in AP classes

[DanielBenoit]

To the thread starter: Well just in case you didn't know, many novels possess symbolism, and are just as valid whether or not the author intended it. I find what your teacher is saying to be very reasonable. If you think that is garbage, then I don't know what you're going to call the stuff they teach you in college. When you get to the works of Pound or T.S. Eliot. . . . . .whooooweeeeee!

Btw, Hucklberry Finn is soooooooo NOT a childrens book.

It's whats wrong with education today. The purpose of education was so that you have a good wide knowledge of the world and are reasonably knowledgeable to make it in the wide world when you come of age. Now it is treated as vocation, where kids only do high school courses to get into their university course of choice, so they can get into whatever profession. Their drive to get the best marks possible clouds what they are learning, they never truly enjoy or love what they are learning (which is important) and end up in some ****house office in some dead-end job spending their life making unfulfilling money, having forgotten everything they crammed for in school, and regretting the time they moaned "when the hell will I need farkin' Shakespeare in a job interview?!".
Yer, the symbols thing is hella annoying, which is why I prefer independent reading to studying texts.

You sir have just said something immensely reasonable. This is EXACTLY how I feel about how education is being done today.

Anyways, what really horrible is when you then start seeing similar symbols in other things... I watched a movie a while back (can't remember what it was) and made connections between it and Albert Camus's "The Stranger" *shudder* and I hated that book... The good thing about putting so many symbols in stories/books is that they are mostly BS, and if you're good at BS, then you do fine

While I pretty much agree with everything stlukes said about reducing literature to a mechanical puzzle of symbols, I have no idea what it is you have against the use of symbolism in general.

All symbolism is BS? I think you've been overdosing on incompitent teachers, or you're just in the wrong class. Ummm so I guess if Kafka, instead of turning Gregor in a "monsterous vermin", he could've just turned him into "a product of modern industrial society". Yeah, that would've been a lot more interesting.

Symbolism makes literature more universal. The Metamorphosis wouldn't be what it is today without the unsettlingly obscure metaphor lurking at the center of it. And what about Moby-Dick might as well just trash that. Animal Farm and The Master and the Margarita wouldn't have been half as funny without its fantastical anthropomorphizations.

This is the problem with American schools today. I have no idea what the cause is, but more and more schools are producing students who seem to become highly allergic to great works of literature. You have no idea how many people my age have said that they hated The Great Gatsby or thought that The Old Man and the Sea was meaningless.

I suppose literature is just an aquired taste.

First of all, sorry that I took so long to post (haven't had time to get on)... Anyways, I'm not saying all symbols are BS, just the horrible ones that AP and IB teachers put into the work .

Thank you for clearing that up

Most kids get through IB with good "BS skills", and those "skills" are incredibly useful in english. I mean, we had to read Equus in theatre, and my theatre teacher went on and on about how the main character was gay, but because his dad was so strict, he couldn't be, and so his motivation was that he wanted to be gay... And that the horse was symbolizing a man or something. I told him that was horribly wrong and... wrong, but I couldn't think of a different motivation for him, so he was convinced he was right (of course my gay teacher would come up with this). And finally, there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

This kind of homophobia immeidetly tells me your level of maturity.

Hey, I go to high school too, and I dislike it probably just as much as you do, but there's a big chance that what your teacher is saying isn't all nonsense. Besides, you'll never get through in literature if you are afraid to look at other peoples peculiarities and problems (i.e.Lolita, Oedipus the King, a lot of Beat generation stuff).


I like everything you said aabbc.

[In case you didn't notice, I'm commenting as I read]

If an authors got something to say, why don't they just say it? Why bury it away in subtle allusions and symbols that may or may not be there? If what the author has to say is important enough to the author, I would hope they would put it right out in front for ALL to see. It would seem that if the idea is important enough, the author would make an effort to make it show through without question.

Then why should an author or any artist even waste the time with the art? If Beethoven wanted to convey nothing more than that he felt melancholy sometimes why not simply say so and forget all the effort in composing a sonata or symphony that might not clearly be understood by all. If Dickens wanted to say something along the line of "poverty sucks" why waste all that time and effort inventing characters and narratives that were completely superfluous? He could have simply said "Poverty sucks," and we'd all nod our heads in agreement and been done with it. And what the hell were all those painters thinking? All those images and colors and textures. Just say what you've got to say and be done with it. And poets! My God, those poets! They're the worst. Rhyme and form and rhythm and all that time seeking for the "perfect word"... the "perfect metaphor". What a waste of time. Surely Shakespeare could have saved himself a good deal of time and paper and ink and replaced half of his sonnets with a simple phrase that was clear and to the point... perhaps something like "When I think of you, I feel blue". Heck, it even rhymes.

Lol, great point

In case some of you AP students didn't realize, but we are surrounded by metaphors. In fact you can hardly escape them. Even if Dickens said "poverty sucks", that would still be a metaphor, its origin coming from you-know-what. . . ..


Also, it has been thrown around a lot in this thread that "they're [the teachers] are just pulling symbols out of their hat, that's probably not what the author even meant." Well as a matter of fact, authorical intention is quite irrelevent in these post-New Criticism days.

[glover7]

I am starting to get sick of my AP class. My teacher is referring to everything as a symbol. The character can be opening a door and the door becomes a symbol of this or a symbol of that. Not everything is meant to represent an idea.

Consider the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a work of children's literature. But my AP teacher tried to portray it as some deep allegory where the river represents freedom. Come on, that's like saying the police station in a detective novel represents security.

Absolutely ridiculous.

I think it's funny that you don't want to find symbolism in children's literature because symobls abound in it. Fairy tales and folk tales are the biggest examples in this category.

First of all, sorry that I took so long to post (haven't had time to get on)... Anyways, I'm not saying all symbols are BS, just the horrible ones that AP and IB teachers put into the work . Most kids get through IB with good "BS skills", and those "skills" are incredibly useful in english. I mean, we had to read Equus in theatre, and my theatre teacher went on and on about how the main character was gay, but because his dad was so strict, he couldn't be, and so his motivation was that he wanted to be gay... And that the horse was symbolizing a man or something. I told him that was horribly wrong and... wrong, but I couldn't think of a different motivation for him, so he was convinced he was right (of course my gay teacher would come up with this). And finally, there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

Are you saying that perspectival differences shouldn't bring new interpretations to text? Perhaps you don't know the contributions that queer theory has brought not only in the fields of literary analysis but also in the world of literary writing as well as in the more practical realm of feminism.

[Haunted]

Symbols are used for a reason. Symbols went back to ancient times when many of the languages were mainly pictograms. But over thousands of years, the languages are lost, so is the wisdom. So concepts were intuitively encapsulated in symbols because as archetypes, even when the languages are no longer recognized, future generations can still access the knowledge because symbolic archetypes appeal to the universal collective consciousness.

I drew this explanation minimally based on Jung's writing and mostly on The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. It's amazing to read about the enormous, transformative meanings in symbols. The crux of The Lost Symbol is that symbols are key to learning ancient knowledge, and by tapping into this knowledge, it's a form of self-empowerment. I highly recommend this book, it's a great resource for understanding the significance of symbology and hopefully, it'll also bring you insight into the world of rich, transcendental literary symbolisms.

[Petrarch's Love]

...But if the only books with these high-brow ideas are the ones that are impenetrable to people without PhD's in literature what becomes the point? We might as well just read John Grisham, because the average person can't decipher the subtle allusions and symbols in these other works.

...This may sound elitist... but it is an elitism that is something of an elective affinity. It is not an elitism of wealth or position or even of formal education of degree...

...I never thought it could be a choice as to how one reads. That authors are writing for the reasons they have and that all books aren't created for all people. I really appreciated your comment of a chosen/self-imposed elitism, an interesting thought. All of my high school English teachers would complain that the only "good" authors were the "challenging" ones and that the rest is garbage and that you are pathetic if that's what you choose to read (ie Grisham, King, etc). They would of course always include that you are stupid if you don't get the "challenging" books as well. So, thanks for a different point of view!

Nathank--I followed the exchange excerpted above with some interest and wanted to add that I agree with St. Luke's observation that grappling with challenging literature is a choice, and "elective affinity," rather than some mysterious gift of divine interpretation. As a college instructor in English and PhD in training I am in the position of finding myself almost constantly engaged in conversations with a huge variety of people about literature, since usually what follows the common question "what do you do?" and my response that I teach college lit. is the thoughts and opinions of the person I am talking with regarding literature. What I have found from this very informal survey of the people I encounter is that, as St. Luke's suggests: wealth, position, formal education and other factors that people might assume go along with an understanding of literature are not necessarily good predictors of who you might find yourself having an engaging conversation about lit. with or who is going to be really interested in wanting to learn about the subject when they encounter a teacher of it. I am also increasingly amused, as my humble self moves closer to attaining the PhD, at the mixture of misplaced respect and resentment my position engenders as a result of the very attitudes you allude to: that "smart people" read "deep" literature and the rest are just moronic unwashed masses who don't get it. The only difference between a PhD in English and other people is that the person with the PhD has devoted years of his or her life to studying and thinking about literature, acquiring the sort of reading and interpretive skills that St. Luke's suggests in his post, in the same way that a Doctor acquires special knowledge of how to "read" and "interpret" the human body in order to help people, or the way a lawyer studies to acquire knowledge of the law.

The only mild amendment, or perhaps addition, I would make to St. Luke's post is to his term "elitism" as a way of describing the decision to grapple with challenging literature. While I think SL and I fundamentally agree on this, I would be more likely to express the choice to read "difficult" works in terms of adapting an interested and open mind. I think this may be a more useful way to think of it because I believe it gets to the root of what allows people to get the most out of almost any type of study they engage in, but especially ties into what is most rewarding about the study of literature. By an interested mind, I mean simply a person with questions and with the desire to engage with and know something or someone outside him/herself. This is ridiculously far from being an elite characteristic, and is one of the fundamental things that draws people to all kinds of stories, whether Harry Potter, Henry James, Swift or the Simpsons. Interest goes hand in hand with developing an open mind, because interest in things and people outside ourselves is the big motivating factor for opening one’s self up to the challenge of understanding something that is not immediately clear. There are two components of the open minded person that, in my experience are almost without fail characteristic of those who have the deepest and most interesting understanding of literature (or, indeed, any other field). The first of these is that an open minded person not only accepts but embraces what he or she does not know. I don’t mean by this that the person doesn’t know anything, but that, even if that person knows quite a lot, it is still with an awareness that there is always the potential to learn, the potential to receive more from a new experience, a new conversation, a new book! What you don’t know is much more interesting than what you do know. The second, related, characteristic of an open mind, is the ability to entertain all opinions, thoughts and ideas, even if they are ones you don’t agree with. This doesn’t mean accepting all ideas, but never dismissing an idea out of hand until you have taken a good look at it from multiple angles.

Like interest, this kind of openness is something that is not elite, but can be attained, in some way or another, by a large number of people. One reason that the study of art and literature is both rewarding and important is that the most basic skills necessary to even begin to try understanding it are the ability to take an interest outside one’s self and hear, perhaps even feel, some part of another’s experience: skills that can both help and enrich a person when pursuing their personal interests in fields and pursuits outside literature and in life more generally. One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people. While it is true that the reason my conversations about literature with my academic advisor are more engaging than my conversations with the bank teller because my advisor has a deeper knowledge and experience with the subject, it is also true that it was because he had a particular interest in and openness toward the subject of literature that he set out to acquire all that knowledge. And it is true that my conversations about Dante with one of the janitors at the university can be infinitely more engaging than conversations I may have with one of my students, despite the fact that the student unquestionably has, not only more social benefits and leisure time with which to study, but more formal education, even a better grounding in the classical texts that Dante alludes to and other similar knowledge. This is because the student (and this is by no means true of all my students, but of a few) may, at least at this point in his life, be a bit sophomoric and so interested in showing off what he does know that he isn’t interested in or open to exploring what he does not, while the janitor, perhaps because of greater maturity or different kind of life experience, is well aware of what he does not know, more interested in expanding that knowldege and more open to at least listening to (though by no means always agreeing with!) a different point of view because he might learn something.

[Petrarch's Love]

A response to the OP, Robert E. Lee:

I see two possible reasons for your reaction to your teacher's attempts to point out symbolism and a potential solution for each one:

1) Problem: You agree that your teacher is, for the most part right about the symbols he or she is pointing out in the books you are reading, but you feel this is a heavy handed, slow, and boring way of talking about the literature and it frustrates you!

Solution: It may be absolutely true that this is a boring class and that you are ahead of the rest of the students in grasping these simple bits of symbolism. If this is the case, you can sit and fume and feel sorry for yourself, or you can use this as an opportunity to practice how to deal with boredom and how to tolerate being in a group in which some of the people may be a bit behind your understanding. These are two things--boredom especially--which, I can guarantee you, every single person on this planet has had to deal with, not once, but fairly frequently in life. If you want to make things more pleasant for yourself and others you could, perhaps help your teacher by participating in class and helping your other students understand these symbols more quickly so that it will move along more easily for everyone. Perhaps you could also take it upon yourself to--in a respectful way and with no allusion to how boring you find the symbolism discussion--point out some of the things that you find more interesting and suggest some new questions or ideas to discuss. Most teachers, contrary to popular belief, do not take deep delight in going over the same basic, sometimes formulaic observations about a text over and over again (remember that he or she has been doing this for years) but need to make sure that students are aware that things like symbols do exist in a text before moving on to more nuanced readings. Your teacher might be delighted if one of his/her students both demonstrated an understanding of the symbols he/she is trying to discuss and helped the efforts of the class group by applying this knowledge of the symbolism to new ideas.

You may also simply need to take a deep breath and be more patient while the others catch up in their understanding. Just think about how you feel when you are in a group in which you are not understanding things as well as the top people in the group do. Act toward your fellow students with the type of graciousness with which you would like the person who is better than
you at something to behave toward you. You may also find that, even if a lot of what's being presented in class is pretty basic to you, reviewing those basics can be helpful in allowing you to rethink some issues in the text, or there might be some things mixed in there that you really hadn't noticed before. This might also give you some empathy for your teacher who is, after all, spending much of his or her life going over things he or she mastered long ago in the interest of helping other people understand.

2) Problem: You think your teacher is wrong about the symbols in the texts you're reading.

Solution: This is an issue, not about whether the teacher is wrong or not about the symbols in the books, but about how you handle opinions you disagree with. Like boredom, encountering people you disagree with is a very common part of life and this can be an opportunity for you to practice how you want to deal with that. Yes, you can be dismissive of everything your teacher presents you with because you don't agree with his/her identification of some symbols, and you can complain and sulk about the stupidity of that instructor. It might be more productive, however, both for yourself and for the class, to consider, not what the teacher is wrong about but what you don't understand. It is entirely possible that your teacher is wrong about some of the symbolic readings he or she is presenting. I don't know. However, what I do know is that you are not understanding something: either you are not understanding your teacher's point about the symbols in the books or you are not understanding how or why your teacher came to the conclusions he or she did about the symbolism, whether those conclusions are right or wrong. Either way, the way to begin is to acknowledge and express that you are not understanding why your teacher is emphasizing these symbols in your study of the literature (note that this may or may not mean that you are having trouble understanding the book you are reading). Most teachers will be happy to explain why they are making a claim in class if a student respectfully says that they don't understand the reasoning behind it. If your teacher does explain his or her reasoning, you may be surprised to find that it does make the symbol clearer to you and that you do agree with what the teacher is saying after all. Your teacher does, after all, know more about this subject than you do or he or she wouldn't be teaching it. It is also possible that you will still disagree with what the teacher thinks is going on with the symbolism, but now you will at least understand what evidence and thought is behind his or her claim and you will be able to question that evidence or suggest different evidence that you think points to what you think is important in the book. Hearing and understanding the other person's point of view and the reasons behind that point of view before presenting your own reasoning in response involves a little more work but is much more productive for everyone than simply stating you disagree.

Whether your teacher is right or wrong, if you aren't making an honest effort at understanding his or her points and working at developing the way you understand what you're reading (regardless of whether your understanding necessarily corresponds with your teacher's or not) then you aren't putting enough work in to justify complaining about someone who is putting a lot of work in. More importantly, you are cheating yourself of the potential enjoyment of exploring the texts you are reading. If you are making a genuine effort and you still find the teaching approach uninspiring, then you're still not losing out because making a real effort to understand why you disagree with what you're being presented or what you think instead will give you a better understanding of what you are studying regardless of whether you ever agree with the teacher's points or approach.

[stlukesguild]

The only mild amendment, or perhaps addition, I would make to St. Luke's post is to his term "elitism" as a way of describing the decision to grapple with challenging literature. While I think SL and I fundamentally agree on this, I would be more likely to express the choice to read "difficult" works in terms of adapting an interested and open mind.

My use of the term "elitism" is something of a conscious decision to employ or identify with the very term often used by others in derision. In some ways it mirrors the manner in which the visual artists (especially) over the years came to embrace the various terms of derision leveled at them... the various "-isms" (Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, etc...).

Currently, there is a particularly interesting artist from Norway named Odd Nerdrum who is among the leading figures in the return to a rather old-master-ish manner of painting. He recalls an instance in which he and an uncle, also an artist, stood on a local mountain top after a long hike watching a magnificent sunset. At one point Odd remarked, "it's simply gorgeous," to which he uncle replied, "Yes, but don't get caught painting anything like that or else they won't take you seriously."

Years later, during the period of absolute control of Modernist abstraction, he began to exhibit his realistic paintings and rapidly discovered that he was repeatedly the target of abuse by the Modernists. In one instance, a group of Modernists petitioned to have his works removed from a university exhibition. He confronted them and asked, "how could you do this to a fellow artist?" One of them responded, scornfully, "You're not one of us. This isn't art, it's Kitsch." I might note that Nerdrum's paintings are far from being "kitsch" along the lines of such saccharine sweet schlock as churned out by Thomas Kinkade:



Rather, his paintings offer a rather dark and bleak, yet unquestionably masterful vision of a Post-Apocalyptic world not unlike something out of Mad Max:





While still a student in art school, during the period in which Nerdrum first came to recognition, I clearly remember the derision poured upon his work by certain Modernist faculty and dutiful students.

Nerdrum now embraces the term "Kitsch," has published several essays proudly proclaiming himself a "kitsch artist" and even maintains a website in which he promotes "Kitsch art" and fellow "Kitsch artists" including various students. Of course, it is all somewhat tongue-in-cheek... but there is also a degree of seriousness. He suggests that in an era in which feces in a can, installations with endless meaningless documentation, grainy and inane video-tape loops, baroque-scaled photorealistic paintings of pornographic scenes rendered by an army of anonymous studio assistants, and gold-plated, life-sized ceramic sculptures of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp are acclaimed as serious "Art", and skillful and sensitive renderings of the human beings which attempt to convey something of human emotions are considered "kitsch", then he is proud to accept the label "Kitsch" because what is now "Art" is not something he aspires to.

In the same sense I often elect to employ the term "elitist". Definitions for "elitism" include: A recognition of the value of the opinions of those individuals who are highly educated or have otherwise attained a superior status within a given discipline by virtue of intelligence or greater accomplishment; A recognition or belief that a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes related to a specific discipline or field of endeavor are those whose views on a matter should be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight. These aspects of "elitism", from my perspective, would seem to be admirable. If we were in need of surgery we would not want an average or mediocre surgeon, but an elite surgeon. Charged with a crime we would desire an elite lawyer to argue our case. And yet the term "elitism" has come to carry solely negative connotations... especially in the political spectrum.

We are certainly all aware of instances during the last election in which Obama and other candidates who had attained highly valued degrees from well-respected universities... achievements that one might assume were worthy of recognition and respect... were instead derided as "elitist" and "un-American". The rather warped insinuation being that succeeding in academia... graduating with honors with a degree from an Ivy-League school... indeed, thinking too much is somehow a negative attribute and un-American. This would be comic, if it weren't so dangerous to the nation and the world as a whole.

A similar anti-intellectualism shows up from time to time in discussions of the arts. Comically, relativism, or the notion that all opinions regarding Art are subjective and as such hold the same value (and thus all Art is equal... there is no good nor bad) is a concept that evolved out of academia itself. certainly, there are aspects of "elitism" that are less than attractive: the notion that one is deserving of respect... that one's opinions should hold more weight simply as a result of social status or wealth... the notion that intelligence is connected with social status, wealth, or formal education... the notion that education, politics, the Arts (etc...) should be reserved for persons of a given social-economic class. These are all unacceptable.

My embrace of the term "elitism" has more to do with the notion that within the arts it is most certainly those who have made the conscious effort to invest the time and rigorous study of a particular discipline whose opinions matter most to myself... and to the development of that given discipline. We continually come across the snide dismissal of the opinions of "stupid teachers", "elitist critics" or the "snobby academics" and the pretentious and patronizing "art world", where we would never hear similar condescension directed toward the opinions of the whole of the scientific community concerning scientific questions... or that of the medical community concerning medical issues... at least not in the past... not until recently in the US where a great many having just scraped through high-school physics and biology somehow believe they are fully qualified to discuss questions of global warming or medical treatment.

What I repeatedly point out is that my interpretation of "elitism" is not about intelligence, but experience and knowledge... and not limited to just academics or critics and those with recognized formal education. It is the result of choice... an elective affinity. There are those with little or no formal education in literature or art whose opinions are still of the greatest merit because of the fact that they have a given passion for the subject and have put forth the effort to explore, study, develop an appreciation of and an ability to discuss. As such, the "experts" to my mind, when it comes to the arts include not merely the academics... the critics, the historians, the teachers, the curators, etc... but also the artists/writers and the serious art/literature lovers... the "common readers" in Virginia Woolf's sense of the term. Neither do I suggest that the opinions of the "experts" should be automatically held as sacrosanct... that they are never wrong, nor do they ever disagree with each other. On the other hand, it would seem to me that respect for one's opinion concerning Art... or any endeavor... is something that must be earned... not an automatic entitlement. Yes... everyone is entitled to their opinion; not every opinion is entitled to the same degree of respect or held in equal merit.

One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts. Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.

[mal4mac]

Harping on about symbols is now the fashion in Frenchified literary circles in the School of Resentment, ever since structuralism reared it's ugly head. One of the founders analysed every fairy tale in the world to find the common symbols in each fairy tale. When I read about this, in some boring book of literary theory, it struck me that this must have been a really boring thing to do, the literary equivalent of train spotting. Wouldn't it be much more fun to just actually ..er.. read the stories! Reading that boring book of literary theory made me glad i didn't take literature at University... if that's what goes on I'm well out of it. I just like reading books, I'm half way through the excellent RSC Complete Shakespeare edited & footnoted by two modern scholars (Bate & Rasmussen) who haven't mentioned symbolism, semiotics, or structuralism once ... So there's hope...

[Petrarch's Love]

Harping on about symbols is now the fashion in Frenchified literary circles in the School of Resentment, ever since structuralism reared it's ugly head. One of the founders analysed every fairy tale in the world to find the common symbols in each fairy tale. When I read about this, in some boring book of literary theory, it struck me that this must have been a really boring thing to do, the literary equivalent of train spotting. Wouldn't it be much more fun to just actually ..er.. read the stories! Reading that boring book of literary theory made me glad i didn't take literature at University... if that's what goes on I'm well out of it. I just like reading books, I'm half way through the excellent RSC Complete Shakespeare edited & footnoted by two modern scholars (Bate & Rasmussen) who haven't mentioned symbolism, semiotics, or structuralism once ... So there's hope...

I am almost certain that the high school teacher of the original poster to this thread was not attempting to teach structuralist symbolism. The OP seemed to be complaining that his or her teacher was trying to point out that there was such a thing as symbolism or metaphor in a fictional text, which is not an unreasonable thing to observe if you are trying to understand many works of literature.

As for your assessment of literary criticism, I think the problem is that you are judging the structuralist or formalist book you read (I'm guessing Propp's Morphology of the Folktale?) by the same criteria as you are judging the RSC Shakespeare edition. Propp's book is aimed at a group of people who have a highly specialized interest in the study of literature. It is meant to engage and challenge them and help them think over their ideas and attitudes about literature so that they can do a better job of producing the best, and most well thought out ideas to students in the classroom or readers of books that are aimed to a larger audience. Because this is the aim of the book, it is not surprising that it may not be an interesting read for people who don't have a fairly detailed interest in understanding the way literature works, its history, and theories about how we should interpret it. The aim of Bate and Rasmussen in the edition of the RSC Shakespeare is to reach a very broad audience of people and to help them understand and appreciate one of Shakespeare's plays. This type of editing work is much more like the work that a teacher does in the classroom and obviously is much more interesting to more people because that it what it is designed for. However, I know for a fact that both Bate and Rasmussen have read structuralist books, along with many other books representing a wide array of schools of literary criticism and that this wide ranging scholarly reading has contributed to their knowledge and abilities for going about doing a job like editing Shakespeare.

[IceM]

Seeing as how I don't have the time to read each individual post, I'll just post my opinion and start responding later.

I find it interesting how the OP disagrees with what can be symbolism. About 3 weeks ago, our AP teacher assigned to us a 1 paragraph assignment in which we were to mimic the style of Thoreau. Unintentionally, I found myself with at least 4 different symbols and 2 allusions. Nothing's wrong with symbols. You could almost argue that, without symbols and the attention required to discover those symbols, literature would be a denser version of a bedtime story.

To the poster who said that authors should be blatant in their writing and not create characters, plot etc., I only respond with this: are you serious? If I said, "Literature is boring," (not my actual belief) it wouldn't be as powerful as the same theme with pages upon pages of discreet argument. Deep symbolism, thematic elements, and plot are what make literature literature. Without the analysis required to evaluate the themes, the theme lacks punch; it would come across as a mundane observation. It is the description and implications that take place in the plot which add significance to the theme. Would the necessity of sacrifice seem as significant had Sydney Carton not risked his own life? Would the spiritual alleviations possibe through redemption seem as significant had Dante never traveled through Hell to understand what those who had neglected redemption suffered?

It is the implications of the plot that add significance to the plot.

At least, those are my thoughts.

[Emil Miller]

St Lukes makes an interesting case for elitism. There are, however, certain individuals who have attained their elite status through astute self-promotion but are, nonetheless, held in high esteem by their peers. An example of this appears in my novel Pro Bono Publico in which the protagonist, after a lifetime of dubious political and business practices, is feted as a renaissance man. He is based on an individual who is now deceased but was living at the time of the book's publication. The extract below deals with his retirement and give some idea of the kind of person who gives elitism a bad name:

He began to play the occasional round of golf, and took to reading books on abstruse subjects that would impress the servants and visitors.
It was now that he decided to realize his ambition of writing a life of Erasmus, which he surmised would earn him a place among the literati and seal his relationship with the liberal intellectual elite. In compiling the biography, Roger took himself off to Italy where, ensconced in his villa with numerous reference books, he lived in self-imposed exile for almost a year, except for a trip to England to research at his old university where his subject had spent some time teaching during the 16th century.
As he’d anticipated, the book received favourable reviews from the liberal literary establishment and his intellectual status was assured when he was awarded the Erasmus medal. The addition of such a prestigious international award to his Légion d’Honneur, spurred the British authorities into conferring on him the Order of Merit and his triumph was complete. Now his pretentiousness was matched by an extraordinary pomposity, but his largesse ensured he was spoken of as someone who embodied political, financial and intellectual attainments rarely seen in modern times. The following year, he was created a life peer as Baron Percival of Lea Haven

[Petrarch's Love]

Brian--I had no idea you were an author yourself. I'll have to look up the title in the library catalogue and see if it's available for perusal.

Your too true character sketch fits in with a few of my points in an extended response to St. Luke's that I posted the other day but which seems to have dissappeared!

The pith of my response was that, though I understand and appreciate his clever--and temptingly cathartic!--elitist defense of the arts, I would still prefer to make a claim for respect of those who are learned in their field in terms of being "expert" rather than elitist. Though I appreciate the wit and cleverness of an argument like that of St. Luke's for adopting the term "elitist" in the same way that I appreciate the fabulously named Odd Nerdrum's defense of his art as "kitsch" (and I believe in my original post I also expressed how fascinating Nerdrum's work looks and how crazy a certain clique driven branch of modernism can be!), I do tend to be a bit wary of using a term that requires a certain amount of definition or insider knowledge in order to avoid misunderstanding when using it as a defense to those outside one's own group. Partly this is based on experience I had as a young undergraduate student with employing the term "queer," which is used universally within an academic setting to refer in a positive way to the gay community--i.e. "queer studies"--but when used outside an academic setting led to my causing some very real unintended offense to people. My sense is that, outside a well defined polemic context, the word "elite," even if I tried to explain it, is going to similarly turn most people off.

My other, perhaps more personal, objection to the term stems from my own experience and position in a fairly well known university where I know that I could introduce myself as an elitist among certain groups of people who would readily embrace the term on the grounds of their own supposed academic, social or economic superiority rather than on the basis of our shared love of learning. Though this type is very far from being the majority of academics, and not at all confined to the humanities division--our law and business schools seem especially prone to the elitist syndrome, as they are more often in a position to feel smugly superior, not only intellectually but economically too--it is a very real segment of academia, and one I am very much interested in distancing myself from. (After spending enough time with a certain type of ivy league academic, I sometimes find myself almost ready to start resenting the "intellectual elite" and not a little embarrassed that this is a prominent representative of my profession).

Mostly, however, I feel that talking in terms of being elite means the conversation will go in the direction of defining groups of people rather than discussing why I love literature and helping people to understand things about my field (or hearing what they can contribute to my understanding), which is much more fun.

One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts. Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.

Surely the idea that taking on the challenges of understanding a complex creation from the mind of a human being can help prepare one for the process of trying to understand a complex human being cannot be too unique as one of the many arguments in favor of the value of studying the arts?

As I wrote in my now vanished post, I'm sure Kafka could give you some insights, but it might not be especially comforting. My recommendation for the situation would be to brush up your Shakespeare, whose sensitive and nuanced insight suggests this sort of reaction to the more difficult to deal with among us: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" I also find the description of the circumlocution office in Dickens' Little Dorrit especially enlightening as regards the bureaucratic end of things.

[Inka]

the river represents freedom
Absolutely ridiculous.

Well, when Jim and Tom rafted down the river, it did represented freedom...
you decide for yourself what is important to you to understand the novel.
But if all a teacher do is only gets you confused, I can only sympathize with you

[Reread]

To the thread starter: I understand your pain. We are reading To Kill a Mockingbird in my English class. Rather than merely letting students read what is one of the first real adult literature these kids have ever experienced, we have to suck every ounce of meaning out of it until we've sucked the book dry. No one in that class will learn to love books like that because school makes reading books a chore that's monotonous and excruciating. They are ruining books. That's like murder.

[DanielBenoit]

Off-topic but there is something in this painting which intensely grabbed me. The face of the middle subject is subtly haunting. I have never seen anything like it.

[stlukesguild]

One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

SLG (quote)-Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts.

Surely the idea that taking on the challenges of understanding a complex creation from the mind of a human being can help prepare one for the process of trying to understand a complex human being cannot be too unique as one of the many arguments in favor of the value of studying the arts?

Well... perhaps it is a variation of an idea that is not all that popular at present. The 19th century critics such as Ruskin were certainly enamored of the notion that art had a moral worth. The argument in support of the public funding of many of the great art museums... especially in the US... was commonly made on such grounds, with supporters all but avoiding to suggest that the art museum and the contemplation of art had replaced the role of the church in the spiritual life of the nation.

As something of a sworn follower of Wilde, Pater, Baudelaire, Gautier, Mallarme, and the other adherents of art pour l'art I have long been suspicious of the notion of attaching any moral/ethical/pragmatic use to art. The sophisticated tastes of the rapacious Renaissance lords such as the de Medici, Barberini, Orsini, Borgias, etc... seemingly put such links between art and morality/ethics in the realm of fantasy, and surely the mania for Wagner, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and old master paintings among the Nazi "elite" drove a stake through the heart of such beliefs. The destruction of the arts under Stalin and his thugs surely undermined a great deal of the artist's willingness to put his or her efforts to work in support of the pragmatic goals of the state.

Neither am I overly fond of the Romantic notion that the artist inherently has a vision which surpasses that of the average mortal... that he or she is a sort of "visionary" who has some greater insight into humanity, morals, politics, etc... The biography of any number of artists surely debunks this myth. The artist is simply one who has the ability to give an aesthetic form to his or her perceptions/ideas/beliefs/thoughts.

Of course there is something quite jaded with regard to Wilde's assertion that "All art is quite useless" and I am always moved by Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech that suggests that art does indeed have a moral worth. Yet this may not be limited to the obvious. Ruskin argued that beauty itself had a moral worth in that it gave a sense of purpose and raised the spirits. Other critics have argued, for example, that the paintings of Matisse and Bonnard created during the Second World War had a moral worth, in spite of their unbridled beauty, sensuality, and almost hedonistic embrace of sensuality, for they offered hope... a belief that the horror of the dark times would end... and in this they may have had as much if not more "worth" than that art which offered up blatant social commentary.

Your brief statement offers some insight into a person belief of why we read... why we waste our time with this thing called ART. Some have argued that we read to learn to talk to ourselves. Tarkovsky argued that the purpose of art was a preparation for death. I've always loved Walter Pater's Conclusion to The Renaissance which I have quoted numerous times before and won't quote again (although here is a link for anyone interested: http://www.subir.com/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html ). Anna Quindlen offers something of a similar expression in a much more condensed form: Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque. Books... music... art are a form of dialog with others... often with those long dead... "An intercourse with spirits," said Kafka. Certainly, I can imagine that learning to understand the beliefs, ideas, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and even prejudices of others through art may indeed serve as something of a preparation for dealing with such with real human beings.

SLG (quote)-Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.

As I wrote in my now vanished post, I'm sure Kafka could give you some insights, but it might not be especially comforting.

Perhaps not... but as my Jewish studio-mate points out he is certainly one of the masters of a somewhat unique dark Jewish humor which grew out of the need to laugh at the absurdities and even horrors of life if only to keep from crying. Certainly there is much of that to be found in the experience of teaching in the public schools in an urban setting in America.

My recommendation for the situation would be to brush up your Shakespeare, whose sensitive and nuanced insight suggests this sort of reaction to the more difficult to deal with among us: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!"

Of course Shakespeare is no less the pessimist than Kafka. Good does not always prevail. Evil is not always punished. Was it not his amorality... or shall we say his position as an objective observer who does not draw moral conclusions that made him the target of Tolstoy's scorn? (Well that... and perhaps Leo's recognition that as great as he was he could not surpass his predecessor any more than Plato could surpass Homer).

I also find the description of the circumlocution office in Dickens' Little Dorrit especially enlightening as regards the bureaucratic end of things.

Again, Kafka offers perhaps the best... or at least the most relevant comment upon the bureaucratic nightmare in any number of his tales, but certainly in The Trial and The Castle. Of course he is merely building upon the tradition of Job: "One day J (Job/Joseph K.) awoke to discover that all that his entire life had been turned upside-down... that all he loved had been taken from him... that he had been placed under arrest for no reason... all at the whim of some nameless superiors whom he could not understand... all for a game...