Transcript Slide 1

English Literature as a school
subject
Renaissance Man
(1994, dir. Penny Marshall)
• 1. Why ‘literature’?
• 2. Why Shakespeare?
• 3. Why Hamlet?
What is Bill Rago teaching the
‘Double D’s?
„basic comprehension”: two senses
1. Understanding (literary) language
Bill Rago’s pleasure vs. difficulty
“Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off”
(simile, metaphor, oxymoron): language
skills
→ understanding complex texts;
analytical skills
“
...Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to mee returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine”
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Three, lines
40-44
What is Bill Rago teaching the
‘Double D’s?
„basic comprehension”
2. Understanding complex human
situations
literature as a life manual; psychotherapy
This is tested in the film:
- Melvyn reading the letter from home
- Benitez reciting in the rain from Henry V
- Nathaniel Hobbs reading Othello in jail
The humanist idea of literature
Appreciating beauty → self-improvement
Art transforms us
(Rilke poem: „Change your life!”)
Catharsis
Why Shakespeare?
1. Universal appeal
„Isten másodszülöttje”
Professor Quiller-Couch (1917): letting
Shakespeare “have his own way with the
young plant  just letting him drop like the
gentle rain from heaven, and soak in”
Why Shakespeare?
Cultural authority
But:
„He that increases knowledge increases
sorrow”
(Ecclesiastes. 1.18; quoted in the film by
Hobbs)
Why Shakespeare?
National symbol
usable as propaganda
(Laurence Olivier’s 1945 film Henry V)
Used in education
→ Eng. Lit. as a school subject
institutionalisation
What did we have before
‘Eng.Lit’?
what subjects did it replace?
Classics
Bible studies
Rhetoric
1828: First chair of Eng. Lit. (London);
1904: Oxford
after WW1: “Eng.Lit.” with its present
function
“England is sick and … English literature
must save it. The Churches having failed,
and social remedies being slow, English
literature has now a triple function; still, I
suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also,
and above all, to save our souls and heal
the state”
(Prof. George Gordon, Oxford)
Eng. Lit. as a school subject
its function is not the passing on of
knowledge but “the cultivation of the mind,
the training of the imagination, the
quickening of the whole spiritual nature”
(Prof. Moorman, Leeds, 1914)
Why Hamlet? Why Henry V?
• Student vs soldier
„Duplicity” of „Eng. Lit.”
(1) HUMANIST MYTH
„All pupils need the civilizing experience of
contact with great literature, and can
respond to its universality. They will
depend heavily on the skill of the teacher
as an interpreter” (Newsom Report, UK,
1963)
(2) THE POLITICS OF ENG. LIT: the
classroom as a civilising place
Interpretation and power 1
„Vajon érted-é, amit olvasol?
Mi módon érthetném, hacsak valaki meg
nem magyarázza nékem?” (Ap. Csel.
8.31)
„Understandest thou what thou readest?
How can I, except some man should guide
me?” (Acts 8.31)
Interpretation and power 2
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s
almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel,
indeed.
H: Methinks it is like a weasel.
P: It is backed like a weasel.
H: Or like a whale?
P: Very like a whale.
Interpretation and power 3
Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew:
Petruchio: Good lord, how bright and goodly shines the
moon!
Katharina: The moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now.
P: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
K: I know it is the sun that shines so bright.
P: Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
K: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
„Added values”
• Class, race, gender issues and identities
• unasked questions
The history of “Eng. Lit.”
Eng. Lit. Invented as a “civilising
instrument”: mission of civilizing the
natives (“savages”)
1835: English Education Act (India)
Back in Britain: civilising the “savages” at
home
standardising language, inventing national
identity
Curriculum, Classics, Canon
Classics: taxation categories
Canon: religious context: texts with
authenticity, authority, and value.
secular context: same features
related to “cannon” and “cane” (Gr. kané)
What we read and how we read