If you want to read books, read books. If you want to know the discipline of literary studies, you learn the discipline as it currently exists. Time travel to 1955 is not an option. |
St. John's.
College of Charleston. Davidson. |
The study of literature is too important to cede to the woke ideologues. |
Well aren't you an enlightened POS |
What does that mean, exactly? There is plenty of parroting of this sentiment among (for example) red-state boards of education, but very few of them are able to explain this. 'Great' literature from the past was not composed as a moral handbook that one can mine for eternal truths. It reflected its time, place, and culture, just as modern literature does. The fact that some people want there to be a teleology of the western canon doesn't make it true. |
Curious that someone who so values literature would use a word as imprecise, subjective, and ultimately meaningless as “woke.” Talk about faddish. |
This is an intelligent and helpful comment, which is lovely to see. |
Thank you! |
My understanding is that Harold Bloom was kind of a dick (may he RIP).
But in all seriousness, have you looked at the course requirements for an English lit major at...any college or university? I attended a fairly lefty private university a while back. There certainly was some occasional political talk about the professors' opposition to the Iraq War (suprise! they were right!), and I chose to take some electives focused on gender and race (as well as a Shakespeare seminar!). But the bulk of the major was developing a base in the canon of English and American literature. Lots of stuff by old white guys. I looked back today at the required and elective courses in the department, and not much has changed. That is typically what you get when you choose to be an English major. If you're talking about comp lit then that's different. It sounds like you're assuming a lot based on Bloom's comments and I suspect he wasn't saying what you think he was saying. |
Bloom may have been outspoken, but no one can deny Bloom had a level of erudition few could match. And he was right about Harry Potter. It's not serious children's literature like The Wind in the Willows or Through the Looking Glass. |