Degrees work differently in the UK and students in secondary/high school specialise very early - by 17/18 you're usually only studying 3 subjects at most, people going onto more technical/practical subjects at university like music production or fine art might only do one subject. We don't have the tradition of having to take classes outside of your specialism at university, most people study one subject for their whole 3-year degree.
@ChastMastr I agree wrt the damage done by No Child Left Behind and dropping phonics in the US. In the UK phonics are still taught as part of the National Curriculum - I don't know about sentence diagramming for younger kids but it was being taught as part of A Level English Lang&Lit (pre-uni course for 16-18yos) in 2018 at least. The issue with that is that A Levels are optional as we leave school at 16 in the UK, and of course people can do whatever combination of A Level courses - there aren't any compulsory subjects, someone doing 3 STEM or performing arts subjects for eg doesn't have to do any grammar or writing related learning at all. I don't know how it works for English lessons for younger kids here because all my friends with kids only have preschoolers.
I am a bit puzzled by your reference to old books and their value - like of course there are old books worth studying, but their age and what they teach aren't related. After all, Donne and Milton are both around the same age and teach quite different things. In 1558, John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, John Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, and Thomas Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church were all published - their year of publication is about all they have in common, along with two being written by men named John.
Well, I'm one of those awful people. As soon as I started studying critical theory during my degree, my thought on reading the bible was "it's a text". This meant that it was susceptible to examination in all of the ways I was being exposed to. This excited me greatly, and I still think it was a useful and valuable insight. I am completely incapable of ascribing any value to the bible that is not true of any other creatively produced text. All have the capacity to reveal the divine to us, and therefore of being the word of God, because they are all the products of both creation and creativity. Genre and history have their place in this exploration, but they are not all there is.
I don’t think you’re an awful person. ❤️ The people who hold such views as I’ve described aren’t the same thing as the views themselves. ❤️
I'm a bit confused by this. Surely the problem with awful views is that they make you do awful things? I wouldn't say that someone disagreeing with me on literary criticism has an "awful" view, it's just different. I don't understand how Post-structuralism as a view could be an actual enemy of yours, as opposed to something that would actually harm you.
Like, I hate Nazis because of their Nazi views. Those views are bad because they make them do terrible things, because our beliefs affect what we do. Believing that literary meaning is all constructed by the reader is not going to beat anyone up or burn a building down.
The belief that all truth is subjective and biased may not make liberal progressives do awful things, but it was a factor in the early justifications for the editorial philosophy of Fox News.
There are harms and harms of course. Not all harms are awful - some are first world problems.
One thought: it's been commented that there's much less literary criticism aimed at non-academic readers now than there was fifty years ago. There's less general awareness of books that are written before the current publishing cycle. Furthermore, the books that are published tend to be aimed at what will be teachable in academic settings: not so much of a problem for novelists but I think it may influence the selection of poems in poetry collections (individual or anthology). I think that's a minor harm - if only because it means that for people interested in older books written to an older aesthetic standard there isn't the general demand that leads to them being published.
So the belief, ' all truth is subjective' is in iteslf subjective? I'm reminded of Dr Johnson refuting similar views back in the 18th century by kicking a table! (or was it a chair?). As to philosophy and 'reality', I'll stick with Karl Popper. Johnson also opined, ' the only end of writing is to enable readers to enjoy life, or better to enjoy it'.
Amen to that!
But it's not difficult to find older books on the Internet Archive etc - it's never been easier to find older books, they just might not be physical (and it's not difficult to find someone who can bind printed sheets into a book). As an example from a different field, I dislike a lot of currently fashionable crafting patterns/ideas and have a big interest in old (including very old) crafting techniques eg Victorian knitting patterns or Viking nålbinding. Those are much easier to find now than they were in eg the 90s, because you are no longer limited to physical publishing.
Also wrt the example you use of Fox news - literary meaning being objective or subjective is obviously not the same as factual or non-factual journalistic reportage. Poststructuralism did not cause Fox News to make things up. That may have been their justification, but it doesn't make it true.
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
Also wrt the example you use of Fox news - literary meaning being objective or subjective is obviously not the same as factual or non-factual journalistic reportage. Poststructuralism did not cause Fox News to make things up. That may have been their justification, but it doesn't make it true.
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
You will note that I did not say anything about authorial intent being just one meaning our of many - a position I happen to believe. (Actually I hold the stronger position that it's only meaningful to talk about authorial intention if it may not be a meaning of the text at all. Intention implies the possibility of failure.)
What I said was Fox News justified itself by saying all truth is subjective and biased.
Comments
I am a bit puzzled by your reference to old books and their value - like of course there are old books worth studying, but their age and what they teach aren't related. After all, Donne and Milton are both around the same age and teach quite different things. In 1558, John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, John Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, and Thomas Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church were all published - their year of publication is about all they have in common, along with two being written by men named John.
I'm a bit confused by this. Surely the problem with awful views is that they make you do awful things? I wouldn't say that someone disagreeing with me on literary criticism has an "awful" view, it's just different. I don't understand how Post-structuralism as a view could be an actual enemy of yours, as opposed to something that would actually harm you.
Like, I hate Nazis because of their Nazi views. Those views are bad because they make them do terrible things, because our beliefs affect what we do. Believing that literary meaning is all constructed by the reader is not going to beat anyone up or burn a building down.
There are harms and harms of course. Not all harms are awful - some are first world problems.
One thought: it's been commented that there's much less literary criticism aimed at non-academic readers now than there was fifty years ago. There's less general awareness of books that are written before the current publishing cycle. Furthermore, the books that are published tend to be aimed at what will be teachable in academic settings: not so much of a problem for novelists but I think it may influence the selection of poems in poetry collections (individual or anthology). I think that's a minor harm - if only because it means that for people interested in older books written to an older aesthetic standard there isn't the general demand that leads to them being published.
Amen to that!
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
What I said was Fox News justified itself by saying all truth is subjective and biased.