On the thread about fashion-maestro Cardinal George Pell’s culture wars intervention around the Canon and the teaching of secondary English, I thought this comment by Russ Degnan was absolutely on the money:
Arguments about the curriculum are irrelevant in the context of a classroom of semi-literates. It isn’t that those students are learning Critical Theory when they should be learning Classics, it is that they are learning nothing at all.
It strikes me that too many of those who are quick to pontificate about school education have little or no idea of what classrooms are actually like, and what the job of teaching entails. It’s hard not to agree with state education ministers that the constant supply of irresponsible (literally, the dude isn’t responsible for any actual schools) criticism and comment from Nelson is insulting to teachers and demeaning of their professionalism under what are often very hard circumstances.
Having done a bit of teaching at tertiary level myself, and having friends who are secondary teachers both here and in the States, I’d be really interested to hear from Pellies and Donnellies and Shakespeare tragics whether or not they think that teaching Shakespeare with the aid of film is acceptable. It works for this Brisbane private school.
But for principals such as Paul Thomson, who also teaches Year 12 English at Kimberley College, those wanting a return to traditional English curriculums, and the “boring” tomes of writers such as Shakespeare, miss the point. “I would agree to teach kids only the classics if they agree to get rid of the television sets and Playstations because that is what we are competing against,” he said. “We are trying to teach literature and literacy in a society which doesn’t value it any more.”An example at Kimberley College - which has topped the Year 12 Brisbane South District English results for three consecutive years - was the approach this semester to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.
Students were first shown the Heath Ledger film 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern remake set in a high school, to whet their appetite and give them an understanding of the story.
“So you jump from the movie to the text and the kids are already taking in with them to the Shakespearean text some knowledge of plot and structure,” Mr Thompson said.
Far from “dumbing down the curriculum”, this school is actually getting top academic results. Would the Nelsons of this world approve of this approach? Or is theirs just populism and/or hidebound conservatism?
Elsewhere: Russ has a thoughtful post on this issue.
Rob obviously isn’t up for a stoush today, Kim.
Disappointing! Though it’s a serious question - I’d be interested in whether those who agree about the Canon stuff are also purists about how it’s taught. I think it does go to some issues about realism and nostalgia when thinking about the process of education.
Ack. How could I miss being taken to task? I don’t think he actually redresses my point though — the vast majority of people in pre-industrial societies had no need to be literate.
I’ve been marking a massive pile of third-year uni student essays this week and I really think there needs to be a greater emphasis on foundational literacy and grammar at some stage in a student’s education. The stuff I’m reading is pretty badly written.
Now, I’m not known for my pedantry but there is something wrong when 20 year old Communication Studies students don’t know the difference between its and it’s, effect and affect and so on. I had many similar problems when I graduated from high school as well.
So. What is going wrong?
I’ve never studied Shakespeare _without_ doing it in conjunction with a film version. Roman Polanski’s version of Macbeth (year 11), Al Pacino’s “Looking for Richard” (year 12). Not to mention Ken Branagh. I think it works really well.
As for its and it’s, I don’t know about the state system, but at private primary & high schools I was never once taught what an adverb is. We spent hours doing handwriting, though (to no avail). Go figure.
While we’re in “fings ain’t what they used to be” mode, when did “I couldn’t care less” transmute into “I could care less”? - which makes no sense when employed in place of the original construction.
Anyway I couldn’t care less about all this talk of the road to moral renewal inspired by studying the classics. ( And “moral renewal” always seems to boil down to “you’re getting more action than we did”.)I mean Germany in the early twentieth century had the world’s best-educated population, schooled on a rigorous curriculum, which soundly dosed them with the classics. And yet pretty much everyone in the whole bloody country either carried out, supported or turned a blind eye to one of the nastiest and most utterly immoral episodes in human history.
By all means get the kids to explore great art, but remember their moral and cultural values are mainly being instilled directly or indirectly by a passel of other factors from the economic conditions that affect how their parents see the value of their lives to government and corporate propaganda to the mass media corralling their attention to sell to advertisers.
In this kinda world, learning how to communicate properly, understanding the wherefores and how whys behind the media barrage and grasping the fundamentals of logic and the scientific method is essential.
And then discovering you’re not alone in podulating on the mutability of human nature by reading Hamlet, A High Wind In Jamaica, To Kill A Mockingbird or The Naked Lunch. (Only one of those books was prescribed on my school reading list).
So yeah, Tomato Man, the unAdmirable Nelson et al should stop wagging fingers at that mythical bugbear, lefty teachers poisoning young minds with “Johnny Has Two Mummies”, and start coming up with ways to better fund schools so at least the kids can read and think through the canon they’re so keen to wheel into place.
I gave up worrying about correcting its and it’s years ago, Kate. But I doubt that it’s the end of the world - we were taught grammar for years in High School and nobody much except for a few students ever got it. I’ll return again to my constantly made point - there was never a golden age where everyone wrote correct English.
Some unis I’ve taught at try to teach essay skills (including writing and expression) in first year. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in the quality of essays written by students where this has been taught and where it hasn’t been taught.
On the more general point, I ran into a former student of mine in a bar the other night - she was telling me how much she enjoyed the subject I taught and I asked her what she’d learnt from it - and the answer was “nothing that I can remember, but it was interesting at the time - I just wanted to get a pass”.
After nine years’ teaching, I’m convinced that teaching will be most effective when students want to learn. Teaching things tediously won’t foster that - hence I’d also support innovative approaches to Shakespeare not the awful “read it out aloud” stuff I had at High School.
Like Kent, I’ve only ever studied Shakespeare in conjunction with a film or performance piece. It really helped some kids in the class get their heads around it all.
Kate - I totally agree. I stopped studying grammar when I was 12 years old. That was stupid, really stupid. Grammar and basic structures of the english should be taught in high school.
I recently wrote my phd thesis and getting the basic grammatical structures down was a lot more trouble than it should have been for someone who has been in the education system for so long. It isn’t just me either, I know a lot of my physics colleagues went through the same thing. I now permanently keep a little book on english grammar in my laptop carry-case (Strunk & White, “The Elements of Style”).
Yeah Mark, I don’t think there was a golden age either (that’s my point about functional literacy now and in the past) but I have been a little shocked with some of the appalling essays I’ve been marking!
I guess it’s inevitable though especially with a number of English as a second language students also doing the course.
But then, I don’t know how many times I’ve written: “please consult the university style guide”. (Students should at least learn to reference things properly.)
Obvs. I’m not perfect myself — I’m prone to making very basic errors and my typing is such that I regularly inflict horrible typos upon the world.
Kate, I guess the shock wears off when you’re in your 9th year of doing it.
I haven’t noticed any particular deterioration over that time, btw, contrary to Nelson’s doom saying. Standards certainly vary across universities and Faculties, and it’s true that international students often struggle. English grammar is quite confusing as it’s not particularly logical and often the “rules” are just an attempt to systematise inconsistencies.
Nobody does Shakespeare better than Kurosawa. His adaptation of The Idiot is also the best Dostoevsky I’ve seen on screen.
Olivia Hussey should be taught as Juliet rather than Clare Danes. Just comparin…
I knew Paul Thompson back in the 1980s when he was in the Ed Dept at Kimberley Park Primary. He was always an innovative teacher and administrator. The school was jumping out of its skin with vitality.
On film and Shakespeare, however you go about education it’s only successful if it’s finally integrated into each student’s experience. Shakespeare, unfortunately, is not as accessible to most as he was to audiences in his own day. So starting with a film is a good move, I think. It creates a bridge to the students’ experience and works as an advance organiser.
On grammar, we had great slabs of it from our German teacher who said he couldn’t teach us unless we knew English grammar. Ditto for Latin.
I wonder whether there is a cultural issue here. My daughter taught English to Japanese in Japan for three years and then applied to do a very high pressure language teaching certificate offered here by Cambridge University. The application involved some exercises which she asked me to look over. I was rapidly completely lost, but she was doing OK from the sophisticated grammar she had used in Japan. When I asked her about it she said that the Japanese students force their English teachers to learn grammar they never knew existed by the questions they ask.
My eighth grade teacher taught Taming of The Shrew in the exact same way - we watched 10 Things.. first to look at the themes and issues, then we read the play, and then we watched the Elizabeth Taylor version of the play to understand not only interpretations of the views but interpretation to the screen - how meanings can alter because of the medium we view it and peoples different interpretations.
It is the only time that I have ever appreciated Shakespeare [also my first ‘experience with reading one of the plays] - It was applied in a way that I could provide a context to and allowed me to understand the work as a whole. And no, that isn’t in a ‘me me me’ type of education that some people complain about “because you haven’t experienced it, it means nothing”.
I’m a product of recent schooling [graduated last year] and my grammar is atrocious and it is not from a ‘who cares’ mentality but I just was simply not taught. I don’t know all that conjuction, prepositions stuff. Heck, we didn’t even do adjectives or verbs - they were “doing words” or “descriving” words. The only time you ever actually do “theory” in English in HS is for about six weeks in first term but it mainly consists of poetry ‘theory’. English can be a beautiful language but we are disregarding the ‘craft’ of the language - how can we create something that says exactly what we want it to say, whether it be written, verbally or visually.
And now I’ll get off my soapbox or otherwise I destroy this whole thread.
Kim, thankyou for the kind praise.
Kate, sorry. For the most part I agreed with you — hence the use of your quote which I thought particularly relevant to my general point. My only quibble was that I think the level of urbanism (the number of jobs that need a literate person) and the general attitude of a society towards education were more important factors in the spread of literacy than whether it was provided by the state. Although it is a poor state that doesn’t respond to that need, they were never the only ones.
Regarding poor writing skills. I think my biggest problem (of which there were many) was that I didn’t write enough. I dictated a lot of notes, but writing I actually laboured over was in short supply until I got to university. That is the real value of the classics as well. Almost all the cultural and thematic value of them can be found elsewhere; but you need to see how great writers go about their craft to appreciate why it is worth learning and then attempting.
“Olivia Hussey should be taught as Juliet”
Raffflphingtuntistly! Best Juilet ever. Her acting was a trifle wobbly in places but she looked and moved perfectly for the part. That’s what Zeffirelli (and yes Lurhman) understood. It’s a hormone-supercharged teen drama, full of insights we wished we’d knew as as teengagers ourselves. (I would never have killed myself over a chick back then if I’d understood what Bill was rilly saying right now.
Phil Spector and Scott Walker got it too. For a while.
“On grammar, we had great slabs of it from our German teacher who said he couldn‚Äôt teach us unless we knew English grammar.”
Ditto that.
That’s cool Russ. I had poor writingly skills too but trimuphtanly overcame myself with them.
And look were I am now . Its a bloodey mironocle.
I used to have a picture of Ms Hussey up on my bedroom wall.
Didn’t help me with the exam questions on Shakespeare though - since we were doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream - so I pieced those together from a book I bought second hand. Couldn’t get into the play at all - when it was being read slowly in class, we’d spend about 5 minutes on discussing what “lanthorn” meant… and we never had a sense of what the play would be like as a performance - when I saw it done by Grin & Tonic about a decade later (I had to be dragged along), I loved it.
And I think Elizajoey has put her finger on a lot of relevant stuff.
I got quite excited by Francesca Annis’ nude hand-washing scene in Polanksi’s Macbeth when I was a wee lass.
Hussey was fabulous but what happened to her? Ages ago I saw her in a TV version of Scott’s The Talisman and she was still fabulous then.
And Polanski’s Macbeth was brilliant.
Kim, I don’t have any problems at all with teaching Shakespeare in conjunction with film versions of his work. In fact I think it’s an excellent way to convey that the language is only a part of the drama, and probably eases the difficulty of understanding the actual texts.
I learned Shakespeare very young, because my parents had his plays around the place and once I could read (almost before I could walk, my parents said) I read everything in sight.
But Olivier’s films of Hamlet, Richard III and Henry V really brought it home for me.
So much for a stoush.
Well, maybe if Cardinal Pell’s reading, we’ll get one?
I even recall that Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’ was used as an intro to Romeo and Juliet even in my day.
Like Kim I did wonder who would object - given the article Kim linked to implied that the Nelsons and Pells of the world would.
I seem to remember Robert Dessaix ranting and raving about Baz Luhrman “dumbing down” Romeo & Juliet and how it shouldn’t be used in schools.
A treasured memory is the young Judith Dench playing Viola in a touring RSC performance of Twelfth Night in the 70s as a kid in Melbourne. God, she was good.
“Polanski‚Äôs Macbeth was brilliant.”
Fuckin’ A. I saw it before I got into Bill’s works and so then encounted it on the page - with visions of bloody sweaty hairy Scots barbarians discovering what you win can sometimes be more than what you’re prepared to lose.
And after the other night, when I saw it for the seventh time, I am prepared to say Ian McKellan’s Dick 3 is the finest filmic version of the Bard so far.
” seem to remember Robert Dessaix ranting and raving about Baz Luhrman “dumbing down” Romeo & Juliet and how it shouldn‚Äôt be used in schools.”
I do feel Bill would had have a few choice words for Bob Dessaix here. I’d reckon he’d have loved Baz’s R&J.
And I think more than few younglings would be hipped on this last act exchange when everything’s going to wrack and ruin.
Caliban: I will have none on’t. We shall lose our time. And all be turn’d to barnacles, or to apes. With foreheads villainous low.
Stepano:. Monster, lay to your fingers, help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I’ll turn you out of my kingdom. Go to, carry this kingdom.
Yarrh! Keg party on Magic Island! With hot babes and party monsters.
From The Tempest, the only Shakespeare play that can only be filmed in the future, ever the past.
I’m this close to arguing that we should never ever teach R & J again, especially in conjunction with Baz Luhrmann’s movie. Why? Nine out of forty-two essays plagiarised from the internet, that’s why.
Must say I don’t think using Shakespeare movies to sugar-coat the plays is a very good plan. To have any real impact the students need an independent grasp of the plays or else they wind up seeing the films as mere appendages of the plays, or worse, seeing the playscripts as wrtiien-down versions of the movies. They need to be able to experience the movies as interpretations of the plays, and for that to happen there is no substitute for acknowledging the independent reality of the playscripts themselves. And personally I find it increasingly difficult to teach a play like King Lear as an “original” “authentic” foundational text when the evidence increasingly indicates that the play as we know it is a false, synthetic construct of the nineteenth century.
Quite often students dislike the movies anyway (quite often the movies are second-rate.) The only shakespeare on film course I’ve had any success with was confined to the Henriad - we looked at Chimes at Midnight, My Own Private Idaho, and Olivier’s and Branagh’s Henry V - all brilliant movies independent f what light they can shed on the plays.
“I‚Äôm a product of recent schooling [graduated last year] and my grammar is atrocious and it is not from a ‘who cares‚Äô mentality but I just was simply not taught. I don‚Äôt know all that conjuction, prepositions stuff.”
I got my high school education back in the sixties, when conjunctions and prepositions were still more or less in vogue. All out of date now; much to the disgust of traditionalists, OUP, the acknowledged arbiters of all things English, recently published a new grammar which demoted (?) most of the conjunctions to prepositions. Quite reasonable in my view. When you consider a sentence like “I went to the circus with Mum and Dad” it makes much more sense to treat “and” as a preposition than as a conjunction (the traditional defence of “and” as a conjunction being to parse the sentence as an abbreviated compound sentence i.e. “I went to the circus with Mum and I went to the circus with Dad [at the same time]”.
So there you are - I did learn all that stuff and it turns out to be bloody nonsensical.
Laura, to what degree would your comment be different if you were thinking about secondary as opposed to tertiary teaching?
Gummo, the thing with Grammar of course is that the early English grammarians felt English lost status because it lacked many features of the then normative Latin grammar. Thus silly attempts to force usage into rules which didn’t reflect anything much but an attempt to transpose classical categories onto a modern language.
Ie - the subjunctive tense which barely exists in English (”If I were a rich man, though he be a fool, etc)… and in some manuals, even the ablative.
The history of language shows that grammar tends towards simplification over time.
It’s also worth remarking that many of the conventions only date from the 18th and 19th century and derive from standardising in printing and dictionaries. Have a look at pdfs of Shakespeare and see if he uses “its” and “it’s” or “there” and “their” correctly. Not a chance, because there was no “correct” usage then.
In other words, there is a very respectable argument for not worrying too much about grammar, provided what’s written conforms to normal and intelligible spoken usage.
We also get the interesting phenomenon of “hyper” correctness - ie when (except if a deliberate effect is being tried for) people use archaic grammatical forms which are not really in usage (ie - the subjunctive - “though the storm rage…” or “it is she!”) or misplaced correctness - where people write “Whom” when it is the subject of the sentence or write “the present was given to Jen and I” - when it ought to be “Jen and me” because “us” would be normal - ie it’s the object.
I am an anti-pedant pedant, although my job involves a lot of time correcting spelling/grammar/usage.
Top of my list of People Who Really Annoy Me are the freaks who write back and forth boohooing about “misued” prepositions or whatever in the Herald’s letters page. What a waste of space.
Mark,
Qualified agreement with your remarks on grammar and the classicists.
I’d just like to add that I first noticed the importance of prepositions in English grammar through learning German. My tutor was pretty hot on the topic of how rich English is in prepositions compared to other languages. I’d be all for teaching the subject in schools, as long as kids were learning to unleash the awesome power of the preposition, rather than getting stifled by absurd notions of what’s proper and what ain’t. Or would I? I might have gone over the top a bit there.
…when the evidence increasingly indicates that the play [King Lear] as we know it is a false, synthetic construct of the nineteenth century.
What do you mean by that, laura?
Mark, I should think exactly the same principles would apply in a secondary school setting.
Rob, I was referring to the fact that the radically different Quarto and Folio texts of KL are now generally thought to represent texts probably derived from performance scripts (Q1, Q2) and a version (F) revised later by the author himself. Some editors are dealing with this by not dealing with it, by printing the play in two separate versions. There is no good way to choose between the two, and the two texts are irreconcilable, not to mention that both have gaps and inconsistencies. The c18 & c19 practice of editors cherry-picking bits from each text to suit their own notions is fine in its way, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it allows us to know what Shakespeare wrote.
Here’s a decent summary of the situation.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english/gibbs.htm
Gummo Interesting comments about grammar but you lost me as soon as you used the words ‘conjuctions’ and ‘prepositions’ - I know they mean something but I have no idea what they are and get a migraine any time that I do attempt to learn.
Another issue is that grammar is ingrained - I honestly try to use good grammar and spelling but I don’t actually realise that I’m doing something wrong - it is ignorance rather than a ‘who gives a shit’ factor. I can remember my primary school teachers saying that you can NEVER begin a sentence with ‘And’. So I never do that when I am writing a formal essay.
It also depends on the particular nuances of your teachers - I have a teacher who will mark you down simply because SHE has a preference for Times New Roman whilst I prefer Arial.
I’m not a fan of Shakespeare and I dislike the mentality that I am less cultured or less intelligent [there are other reasons for that ;)] simply because I believe in that old cliche that he is a dead white dude and I don’t think his work was anything to write home about. I actually think it is quite arrogant to place this guy up as the ‘God’ of Western Literature. It also pains my feminist being that we put on a pedestal, these classics that the vast amount are written by blokes.
“It also pains my feminist being that we put on a pedestal, these classics that the vast amount are written by blokes.”
It might also pain my Anglocentric being that dead Italians are regarded as the master practitioners of Renaissance art, but what earthly difference does that make?
Thanks, Laura, I was not aware of that.
Cheers, Rob, it’s nice that you’re interested. It is interesting. And in context of the present discussion, pretty ironic, since it means that genuinely getting down to the nitty-gritty of studying & teaching the play also means dealing with issues of authority and interpretation, precisely those evil poststructuralist practices that the canon promoters think they’re trying to crowd out.
It’s interesting to me because I always had thought that King Lear was the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s accomplishment and, thus, the pinnacle of the canon as a whole, viz: the greatest work in the history of the English language.
I don’t see issues of authority and authentication as being post-structuralist, I have to say.
It could be post-structuralist, Rob, in the sense that it questions the unity of the signature of the author - who is actually responsible for the oeuvre? It’s very Derridian, actually.
Or it could be an issue of conventional scholarship. Sorry, Laura, I did not mean to sound combative.
I hasten to add that it certainly could, Rob, but the problem looks interesting through a post-structuralist frame.
Derrida wrote about Hamlet in Spectres of Marx.
I wrote a snide response above to Elizajoey who, on reflection, appears to be a high school student. If that was excessive, I apologise. However, I think that high school teachers need to convey the importance of cultural literacy despite the fact that a great majority of students consider it tedious. Australian students are living amidst one of the great ornaments of human history, viz, Western culture. Its art, literature, music and dramatic traditions are not only enjoyed by Westerners but are avidly sought out, appreciated and adapted by other cultures on a scale that is a lasting testament to its value. It seems a terrible waste to live in the midst of these treasures without appreciating them. Even light entertainments like “10 Things I Hate About You”, “Clueless”, “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and (God help us) “Independence Day” are hugely enhanced by getting the references to the Taming of the Shrew, Emma, Pride & Prejudice and Henry V. Similarly, there is a good argument for a basic Christian education in public schools, not necessarily for the religious component but for the literacy in Western culture that it delivers.
FWIW, I’m an first year uni student. It shouldn’t alter what you say - just because I’m younger and not spent years in academia does not mean my points are any less valid.
I was attempting to make a point that these people want us to ‘go back’ and study the classics but I find it interesting and somewhat annoying that these ‘classics’ are so malecentric.
I have to get to class. I’ll be back later to further comment.
What about Jane Austen - they’re classics and they’re hardly malecentric
It is imperative to remember that what are classics now were nothing more than the product of their times too.
Is Independence Day based on a Heinlein novel or something, I hope so because thats the only way I can see it getting a mention with the classics.
I do not care what age Elizajoey is but I find the mentality - dead white dude interesting.
Vee, Independence Day has a hackneyed speech by the President which is clearly intended to evoke the St Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V. I think Elizajoey will find that no matter how many dead white dudes she strikes off her reading list that she will wind up amongst them eventually if she has any curiosity about what she is currently reading at all. Six degrees of Francis Bacon?
Appreciation of art does not on its own make for a better citizen. Nonetheless if we are to have a humanities component on the syllabus then I can’t see why anybody would object to a couple of generally acknowledged great works being included. Learning to navigate the rhetorical strategems of the capitalist order is fine, but the kids deserve some light relief/soul nourishment at the same time. (And not something of the disposable quality that they are nightly consuming on popular TV.)
I’d leave out original Shakespeare, though, as its inaccessibility makes it’s lessons far too onerous given the limited time available in secondary school. I remember vividly the droning recitation around the class-room. The constant explanations of the literal meaning. Wasted hours. I have a distaste for it even now.
I wouldn’t characterise a little grounding in the culture that surrounds you as navigation of the rhetorical strategems of the capitalist order, given that many of these works are pre-capitalist. You can go for lefty feminist grunge literature like Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia and not even get past the title without a smattering of Shakespeare. And half the jokes in the Simpsons will fly right over your head without an awareness of the Bible, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Melville etc etc (although the Simpsons might be a special case).
Elizajoey, you may as well object to the Westerm classical music tradition on the grounds that almost all the great composers were male - not to mention the fact that nearly all performances of their works are conducted by men.
It’s an entirely reasonable point that Elizajoey makes - unless you want to represent the canon as only the work of men (thus implying something very significant about women’s contribution to the Western Civ you and Cardy are glorifying), what in the Dickens is wrong with teaching works of literary value by women?
By the way, Cardy, there’s a reasonable historical argument that normally appeals to righties that England was well on the way to capitalism in the 16th century.
Ironically, despite being a minority, women are far better represented in the literature canon than in music, art, architecture or sculpture. Why, I have no idea, although I believe Germaine Greer had a go many years ago at explaining why there were so few great women painters. It just seems an odd basis upon which to approach any field of art.
The real roots of capitalism arguably go back to the decay of the feudal system and the mvement from a gift to a money economy in the 11th and 12th centuries.
I bet it was mentioning Germaine Greer got me caught in the spaminator this time.
I don’t at all see why it’s odd. By not acknowledging those women who do excel in these areas, you’re implicitly sending a message - stay out, male domain. I can’t understand why anyone would have a problem with this.
I’d agree about the roots of capitalism though.
Rob, I think it’s because writing, unlike a lot of other ‘art’ is something that can be done on a smaller scale with far less equipment, and with less training.
As most women have had to fit their art around their domestic lives, and until recently women were actively discouraged from pursuing artistic endeavours, it makes sense that the art that is ‘easiest’ (in the sense of something that can be done in dribs and drabs, after dinner when the children are asleep, with a pen and a piece of paper as a tool) is the artistic pursuit followed by the most women.
Also, can you imagine the uproar in say, the Renaissance if a woman were to show up to sculpt big heavy blocks of marble?
Anyway, it’s not odd for women to approach art from a women-centric perspective, Rob. Apart from the feminist angle, we like to read about other women, just like men like to read about other men. Part of enjoying great writing (though not all of the enjoyment) is being able to identify with the characters within. That’s not to say that one doesn’t read books for other reasons and from other perspectives, but representation is a key thing.
As a girl, one reads all these books about boys doing exciting things and men going off and having adventures and men being the centre of it all, and women are just these shadowy things on the sidelines. When you discover books about women, by women, it’s like a light going on. Hey, I’m not invisible, I’m not relegated to staying at home scrubbing the floors while the blokes get to have all the adventures. I am a person too, and these women in these books and the women who wrote these books were people as well.
But the canon does include great female writers - Austen, Bronte, Dickinson, Rosetti, etc. And since the canon extends to the present (see Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon and the list of canonical works at the end of the book) contemporary writers like Atwood, Lessing, and Angela Carter among a host of others are included.
Yes, but Bloom’s innovating. Try reading the other Bloom and his Canon is almost all male. He wouldn’t include any of those authors you mention. Don’t forget old Harold’s been accused of being a bit of a po/mo sympathiser. Seriously, the culture warrior nutjobs in the US see him as a dangerous leftie.
And in the 80s and 90s, the decline of Western Civ crowd in the States argued strenuously against according canonical status to Atwood, Lessing and Carter. Haven’t stood the test of time, not “universal” enough (because feminine), etc etc.
Yes, I can see that, Kate. Good points. It works the other way, too. When I first discovered Doris Lessing’s books it was a kind of revelation for me. I’d read lots of books by women, but mainly they were still written for men (or boys). Lessing struck me as an authentic voice of female experience. Fantastic writer, too.
Indeed Rob, but it’s only been recently that the Canon included any women except the Brontes, Dickinson, Austen, Eliot, Rossetti, Wollstonecraft and… and that’s about it.
And when people think canon they usually think older literature. I’m sure some crusty old types (including some of my professors at university) would be Shocked! to see Angela Carter in the canon.
I mean, it’s not like there’s an easy way to decide who makes the grade and who doesn’t. For a long time, it was blokes condescending to include a few women who they thought ‘measured up’ despite all the flaws of the fair sex.
Eliza’s point is that in first year english you get handed some Shakespeare, some Dickens, some Conrad, some Wilde, some TS. Eliot, and then maybe George Eliot and Austen. It’s not an unfair question to ask: “where are the women?” esp. considering a first year english class will consist of a great many female students.
Thanks Rob. I will in no way deny the power of a great many of the books in the Canon (though Conrad bores me silly and I grit my teeth at the mere mention of DH Lawrence) but just that it is fair for a girl to say, “where are the books by people like me, about people like me?”
Remember that the Brontes had to publish under male psuedonyms, as did George Eliot.
Anyway, like most people, I love lots of books, from high culture ‘great art’ to lowest of low genre ‘trash’, by men and women, from all nations and cultures.
I think Kafka’s dictum sums it up: a book must be an axe on the frozen sea inside us.
Angela Carter is my favourite writer. Firewoks is the perfect collection of short stories.
(Is the comments preview not working?)
Fireworks.
I love Carter too. Good stuff.
I think it would be quite a contrived reading of Shakespeare to dismiss him as the rhetoric of a capitalist order. Even if he was, should Shaw or Brecht be ignored because of their leftist politics (although I note that Shaw seems to be so out of fashion these days as to be almost invisible, compared to his profile even 20 years ago). But, hey, if people don’t want to read things because their authors are the wrong sex, nationality or colour, it’s up to them. I think they’re missing out. And if someone points me in the direction of something rich, resonant and meaningful, it’s my loss if I say I have listened to enough black jazzmen of the 30s and I’m looking for something more from my own demographic.
Kate, Kingsley Amis (in his own inimitable way) said that when it came to reading he considered himself homosexual. I think many people feel the same way. I’d rather read Lucky Jim again than the Bell Jar. But I would also feel myself impoverished if I hadn’t read the female-authored classics and much else besides.
I wasn’t suggesting that Shakespeare should be read that way, Cardy, and I agree that it would be a contrived reading. I just wanted to make a historical point about whether or not you were correct to describe him as “pre-capitalist”.
Amis’ “The Green Man” is a better read than “Lucky Jim” IMHO.
Amen to that, Your Lordship.
You’re right about Shaw. Shame. St Joan is fabulous. Never was that big on Pygmalion, though (maybe My Fair Lady put me off it).
I’ve read more books by men than by women but if I were to single out individual works whose discovery was in the way of being a kind of revelation, the first ones that come to mind are:
‘Martha Quest’ by Doris Lessing.
‘Alias Grace’ by Margaret Atwood
‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’ by Angela Carter
‘Horace Sippog and the Siren’s Song’ by Su Walton.
All women.
Smugly virtuous me, just like Malvolio. (Now there’s a play - Twelfth Night - that you couldn’t say is ‘difficult’.)
“But, hey, if people don‚Äôt want to read things because their authors are the wrong sex, nationality or colour, it‚Äôs up to them.”
That’s not what I’m saying, yer lawdship. That’s not what anyone says, as far as I can tell.
I’m saying that many people seek out representation as one of the keys to enjoying literature and it is significantly easier for white men to find that representation in the canon than it is for women, non-white people, gays and lesbians, etc.
That doesn’t mean one doesn’t read wonderful literature by people who are not like you. It just means that all of us seek resonance in the art we enjoy, whether it’s pop music or opera. Women’s desire to read books by other women, about other women, comes from that. It’s not about exclusion it’s about inclusion.
“I‚Äôd rather read Lucky Jim again than the Bell Jar. But I would also feel myself impoverished if I hadn‚Äôt read the female-authored classics and much else besides.”
You’re heading in the right direction there M’Lord.
“‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman‚Äô by Angela Carter”
I liked the book so much I wrote a song about it. Fuck, it was exhausting to perform it on stage though.
Did you, Lew? Share it with us….
“Share it with us….”
Not while Family First has a senate seat.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Pretty good for Nabakov. But nothing at all to do with Doctor Hoffman that I can see.
A problem in this debate, wherever it’s carried out, is the difficulty of defining what is canonical and what is not. Our idea of what the canon is in this country is heavily influenced by F.R. Leavis and his followers, partly because many of the present older generation of university lecturers trained in that milieu, and partly because we are still somewhat stuck in the postcolonial groove where canon matters. That is why we immediately think Shakespeare, Austen, Eliot, Brontes, James, Conrad, Lawrence. Americans don’t recognise this clustering as having any special significance at all, and the British see it as a kind of artefact of early twentieth century intellectual history.
I would say that most people teaching literature in English in Australia actually teach very much broader ranges of writers, modes, and periods than the silly idea of Great Books which seems to animate people like Brendan Nelson. Those who do teach these writers generally do so in ways that certainly don’t suggest these texts possess some kind of medicinal powers. I find it impossible to teach Shakespeare, Melville, Henry James without acknowledging the queerness of their writings
This is a really cool site.
Is there a newspaper thingy? Ok bye