As some of you may have seen in the Cbox, I'm writing a paper on why I chose my major, which is English Literary Studies. Part of the assignment was to ask another English student their opinion. In the course of discussing it with Carmen, I wondered what others of you might think, since a lot of us are English students. So:

How do you feel about a set "literary canon"? Do you think there should be a specific list of texts that everyone must study? Should these texts be all classics, all modern, or a mix? Or, do you think that course material should be left to the teacher's discretion, based on their beliefs and their teaching styles?

Personally I believe that teachers should be free to choose which literary texts they teach. The idea of a set literary canon is incredibly restrictive and I think it contributes a lot to the problem of "no originality" that a lot of people have been pointing out in literature these days. Obviously if we're all reading the same things over and over again, we'll all have similar ideas and styles in mind. The more we read, the more we have to consider and the easier it will be to cultivate our own ideas.

But more simply than that, it is easier for someone to teach something they personally enjoy and are interested in, and when the teacher has an easier time teaching a text the student usually has an easier time learning it.

I do believe that a well-rounded curriculum should balance old and new texts, though. The classics need to be included because they have an important place in literature; they have probably already been read by most literature students and thus provide a common base for discussions to branch from, and they have served as blueprints for later writers. However, modern literature provides us with new takes on old literature, which will in turn generate our thoughts to more interpretations.

When we "study literature," what exactly do you think we should study? Language use, themes, historical/political context, all of the above, etc.?

I'm a big fan of well-roundedness in my education, and I think it's especially important in a discipline that's as broad as literary studies. My college requires Literary Studies students to take 27 credits distributed between four "modes" of literature: history/culture, genre, figure/author and thematics/theory, and I think this set up is absolutely perfect. There are at least eight different classes offered in each mode, of which I only have to take two or three, so I can choose classes that interest me specifically--like when I took 19th Century Novel last semester for my history/culture mode.

I believe that historical and political context has a big impact on literature, including how it's written and how the themes are presented. As such, I tend to focus very much on the time period in which a novel was written. However, I'm also very interested in genres of writing, which covers content and format for me. For example, I like to observe the differences in writing style and conventions between a short story and a novel, and between a suspense story and a romance story. I'm less interested (though only marginally) in literary theory; I like to think of novels and stories as stand-alone works, rather than lumping them into a theoretical perspective.

But, to reiterate, well-roundedness is key, so I believe in at least taking overview or introductory courses in all modes.

There's a call being made by some scholars of literature to make literary studies more "scientific." Do you think a "scientific method of literature" would help or hurt literary studies? Should literary themes and arguments be repeatable and quantifiable, like scientific experiments?

As part of the discussion in my Foundations of English Studies class, the professor had us read this article. In it, the author supports applying scientific experimentation standards to literary experiments, demanding actual data to support literary theories. While his presentation and somewhat pretentious tone really, really grate on my nerves, he gives an example of an experiment that he and his colleagues have done that uses psychology in the context of literary theory; in the experiment, they challenge the "author is dead" notion. He also gives two examples of using computer programs and algorithms to map things like change in literary tradition and the semantic fingerprint of a specific author.

Since reading this article I have contemplated adding a psychology minor to my degree, because I think understanding the human psyche can contribute a lot to the study of literature. Of course, I wouldn't be answering broad questions like why people write or why people read, but I would examine things like what makes popular stories popular, or why certain themes (i.e. romance) are constantly repeated. And characters. You all know how I love characters. I would love to apply psychology to character development.

Like I said earlier, however, I'm not too interested in theory; as such I really have no position on doing experiments to prove literary theories, although I can imagine that it would be pretty difficult in some cases. It would require resetting the literary mind. We're not really trained to think of how to test things; we know how to interpret evidence, but we don't really know how to generate new evidence, or how to quantify our claims. Whether literature becomes more scientific or not, I don't think it can happen quickly by any means.

Whoops, I kind of wrote my entire paper here...anyway, Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Discuss!

Ha! You don't need to ask ME twice.

How do you feel about a set "literary canon"? Do you think there should be a specific list of texts that everyone must study? Should these texts be all classics, all modern, or a mix? Or, do you think that course material should be left to the teacher's discretion, based on their beliefs and their teaching styles?

I don't believe all teachers these days are quite up to par with, say, Aristotle. Thus I don't wish to leave too much entirely at their discretion. While the 'canon', so-called, has been much-maligned in recent years, following the late '60s, I think it's unjust to discard books that have withstood the test of time, quite literally speaking. What is sublime should, writes Longinus (critic of the first century, approx.), resonate throughout the ages. This supposition presumes a kind of basic humanism; that despite cultural barriers, and despite theories like Foucault's, which presume intricate versions of an abhorrent (in my view) cultural relativism, we are able to basically understand each other.

This humanism has recently come under attack by the (liberal) academic circle, and it's deeply troubling to me. Personally, I support the canon, but I agree that we ought to try to discover the new, the obscure, the beautiful, the interesting, wherever we may be able to find them; but don't forget that literature and everything involving language is social, fundamentally so. All communication is social. All words are social. Therefore reading a text or learning a forgotten and long-dead language is an activity crippled from its outset.

I won't argue that 'the classics,' so-called, are ironclad. I hate Jane Austen with a passion I otherwise reserve for certain Adam Sandler movies, for example. But it's important to have those touchstones.

Also, I think there simply aren't that many classics. If you're really devoted to literature, there's such a wide array of enjoyable and beautiful work out there that you needn't feel restricted by what little is taught in classes. I agree there ought to be freedom in curricula--curricula vitae, hehehe (bad Latin pun!).

When we "study literature," what exactly do you think we should study? Language use, themes, historical/political context, all of the above, etc.?

I think the historicopolitical facets of literature are mightily overstressed these days. In fact, most literary theory seems to be thinly disguised leftist propaganda. Feminist criticism makes me absolutely ill. That said, the legitimate study of history is requisite to understanding literature in context, and all text is about context. So: not overmuch with politics, but historical understanding, insofar as it can ever be called clarifying and unbiased, is helpful. I'm talking facts, figures, primary sources. Etc.

I also think language use, aesthetics, etc. are extremely useful when it comes to understanding the rhetorical bare bones of what makes writing so resonant, so convincing; what gives language its (in many ways mysterious) power.

Themes and ideas--well, I'm a Philosophy major as well, so that comes naturally to me. I've recently been reading theories of the sublime (basically, of good and moving writing) and there are several items of importance: good ideas, moving passions, and skilled use of language. We ought, as human beings for whom language is a tool of first and often last resort, to know how the hell to use it. Too many people don't, or are idiots easily swayed by the gloss of glossolaliac gibberish.

There's a call being made by some scholars of literature to make literary studies more "scientific." Do you think a "scientific method of literature" would help or hurt literary studies? Should literary themes and arguments be repeatable and quantifiable, like scientific experiments?

Scientism and literature precisely oppose each other in several ways. Oh, I don't argue at all that science itself--particularly cognitive science, even some branches of logic (which is a language), mathematics--physics--everything--can inform literature. Literature, after all, attempts to rival only philosophy in its unification of the human experience, and science is part of the human experience.

But science can only tell us how and what. Science cannot give us an ontology. Increasingly, in fact, psychology has come to cede to the idea of the narrative--look up something called 'narrative psychology'--the idea that our stories of ourselves greatly influence the structure of our psyches.

In the modern world, we are not machines. We are not automatons. We aren't even computers. We're human beings, and the puzzle of consciousness and subjectivity is one that can only be perceived and unraveled on its own plane--the tool of language is more tenuous than some but less tenuous than the so-called 'human sciences,' which pretend to rigor but achieve only a dull numbness, and fail to encompass the essential personalism of the human experience.

Let science inform you. Never let scientism turn you away from the full glare of the everyday experience, which is, after all, a primary prism of reality.



*watches as AG stares, twitching, at Sam's bombasticism*

Yes, guys. I really write like this sometimes when I'm being loosely philosophical and don't need to make total sense. How do you think I write Cal, huh? I'm f**king nuts. But there it is. My Grand Theory of Litratchoor.

*bows out*