Why should we even read literature?

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

Texas is the largest customer for school textbooks. Yes, they DO (or did) set the agenda for developing minds. Not me, we had our own bull shirt. But I do at least remember where “ The Alamo” is:) 

I guess I was unclear.  I was agreeing with you /corroborating you about this infamously and widely known condition for what is taught in the schools in the USA, and particularly in the South and Southwest.  AZ and some other states are in that game now too -- no teaching materials that speaks of Mexico, Mexicans, Mexican culture with approval, mentions that the US went to war with Mexico over slavery, etc.  They don't know that Spain and Mexico controlled the Southwest of the US -- O no! NOT California too! -- until we went to war and took it.  And these are kids from these states.

And so much else they have no idea about, such as Haiti was a US military occupation from 1915 - 1935 -- or even where it is on the map. This, despite two earthquakes that might have put it on the map for their generation.  OTOH they are very young.  And they get younger every year!  

[HoodedCrow]

Yes, California, too. ( why else have all the missions and mission style?) Good point about The Raven” . In my view that poem is a home run. I can’t even imagine sustaining that kind of intensity for a novel. Just for fun, I tried to use the scansion, and immediately ran into problems. It has a thumping rhythm in the best way:)
As far as Harry Potter goes, one could write an essay on “The Defense Against the Dark Arts” alone. Everyone is coping with malice and the “ adults” are not immune.

[polishgenius]

In fairness like, history is really difficult to teach even if you do it with the best will. It's almost impossible to teach a country's complete history even in the 14 or so years kids are at school and also teach them how to handle history. You can see the difference in how British and Polish schools do it. My cousins can all reel off all the important dates, events, and people down Polish history from very early right to pre-Communism, but as far as I can tell they never really learned to engage with it unless they specifically chose to study history at the point things became more specific. In England meanwhile you're taught far, far less of the overall timeline, focusing on a few short periods in-depth where the depth includes how to read primary vs secondary sources, how to interpret, etc etc. So there are massive gaps in my knowledge of British history in terms of what happened. 

I can't necessarily say which way is best but I am glad we got that education in engagement. It does make it easier to skip elements of British history that someone doesn't want taught, though- we basically didn't cover the British Empire at all, despite studying the Victorians in depth. The skills we learned did lead me to being able to find out and form my own opinions later down the line, but that only helps if a person has an interest in doing that, so you'll have a lot of people coming out of school with honestly no reason to even suspect Britain did bad shit.

 

Ultimately though I do think the British way is probably better coz it leaves people less vulnerable to, shall we say, informational warefare. Honestly I think that kind of engagement should be taught separate to history anyway- there should be classes on how to engage with news, media, whatever- but since there aren't it's probably the best substitute.

[Zorral]

Teaching students there is a past, there is history, goes right along with teaching students to evaluate 'news.'  The real goal of teaching history is to make it common, understood knowledge that nothing is permanent, things always change, that change is inevitable.  If more people in the US were taught this from childhood, that there is a past in which things were not as good and maybe some things were better than right this present moment, might possibly help people negotiate without going crazy the momentous changes we have been living through in the last decades.  OTOH, these last decades have tended to enforce my personal shock from learning so many people are stupid, cruel, filled with hate, and miserable, and want to stay that way.  Seeing the international 1920's and 1930's fascist methods and techniques for taking over happening at a much accelerated intensity, thanks to the 'new' media -- has been a terrible blow. 

Goes back forever, not just to Darwin and Marx -- the very idea in Christianity is permanence, nothing can change. Immediately upon publication of the Origin of Species and Das Capital,  the south's slaveocracy pained northerners as communist apes who were going to hell and take away our slaves.

 

[HoodedCrow]

Yes, the personal shock is great. Even worse for my friends that I would defend to my own death. It doesn’t matter? 
For those that wonder, San Francisco means Saint Francis. Santa Clara means saint ( female) Claire, San Antonio means Saint Anthony. I did not learn Spanish by itself, but I’m not psychic. Linguistics can help you trace historic migrations. Studying one controversial figure can enlighten with all the biased accounts, secondary sources, etc. Hilary Mantel, for example, knows her stuff. You can read Anne Boleyn as a temptress( who kept declining as a wicked ploy) Or you can go to an extreme which depicts Anne an incestuous witch. Do you think it’s likely that she was a witch?

[Feologild]

Yes if you want to, 

 

[maarsen]

I suppose I should reply to the OP as to why we should read literature. The answer is quite obvious in that if we don't read literature we can only read the stuff  Robert Stanek puts out. Give me my literature!!!

[Zorral]

16 hours ago, Feologild said:

Yes if you want to, 

 

Benioff and Weiss agree!  "Creatively it made sense because we wanted it to happen."

[sologdin]

class room discussion debating the intricate world-building of the farseer trilogy and arguing about the in world politics and hypothesizing on what tragic event will happen to Fitz next.

this is not an accurate representation of colloquy in a literature course.

 

Either way that has not to do with English Class. 

this recitation doesn't fit into any curriculum that i've seen.  what principle then controls the deductive prescription?

 

this isn't because they aren't taught history, they have 6 to 7 years of history classes.

as in loewen's lies my teacher told me, wherein he argues that students know less about history the more they've participated in history classes at the secondary level.

[butterweedstrover]

On 9/5/2021 at 11:06 AM, HoodedCrow said:

As far as Harry Potter goes, one could write an essay on “The Defense Against the Dark Arts” alone. Everyone is coping with malice and the “ adults” are not immune.

Being able to write an essay on something does not make it literature or worthy of an english class curriculum. The fault here is that no one feels the need to defend their opinion, they instead assume it should be taken for granted that Martin, Hobb, or Rowling should be taught in standard English class parallel to biology, history, and math. 

But that is a radical position, no serious school board has widely considered delving into modern speculative fiction. So why should we now? Don't assume your position is right when it has no precedent. Show humility and explain why. 

I have made my personal opinion known already, but I think people who say English is just a course to read stories that have personally affected themselves have a total disregard for English as a professional subject (and not just a hobby). 

Maybe its just a hobby and literature is not worth serious consideration. But I think the history of the Tang Dynasty, The Republic of Florence, and the existence of religion put that claim to doubt. 

[butterweedstrover]

On 9/23/2021 at 9:14 AM, sologdin said:

class room discussion debating the intricate world-building of the farseer trilogy and arguing about the in world politics and hypothesizing on what tragic event will happen to Fitz next.

this is not an accurate representation of colloquy in a literature course.

 

That is the meat and bones of her series. Why should students wade through thousands of pages of world-building, character-back story, and emotional manipulation to discover something worthy of literary merit? 

In that same strain why should we have students (who are capable on their own accord) live vicariously through the adventures of Harry Potter and his seven book series. What? To become friends with Harry and Hermione and Ron as if the point of literature was to satisfy a readers internal craving rather than challenge them and force them to grow? 

If you want friends and memorable adventures go read on your own time or watch television. Do not pollute an entire curriculum with popular fiction to the end that English shall be consider a non-serious subject in the face of Math, History, and Biology. 

 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

2 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

Do not pollute an entire curriculum with popular fiction to the end that English shall be consider a non-serious subject in the face of Math, History, and Biology. 

There is no pristine lake of pure literature in which everyone agrees to swim - it’s a system that recycles itself through time and the broad ocean of fiction around it.  Your concept of “challenge and forced to grow” and “pollution” has the stench of Objectivism about it - I do recall the author of The Sword of Truth novels insisting that his books weren’t fantasy because they were about “important universal human themes”.

[butterweedstrover]

8 hours ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

There is no pristine lake of pure literature in which everyone agrees to swim - it’s a system that recycles itself through time and the broad ocean of fiction around it.  Your concept of “challenge and forced to grow” and “pollution” has the stench of Objectivism about it - I do recall the author of The Sword of Truth novels insisting that his books weren’t fantasy because they were about “important universal human themes”.

That is based on people defending their radical opinions with no precedent. If all you did was read this thread it would be easy to imagine Harry Potter or LOTR in standard English class was common. 

So what is the basis for having students slog through a seven book series with no climax until the end? The characters? Books like Harry Potter are made for you to identify with the main characters and befriend them. That is great fun for people who want to live vicariously through their reading. Or books like that of Robin Hobb or Tolkien which have endless world-building and scientific details that go on for more than a thousand pages.  

Or Ironically enough The Sword of Truth is very much like those other books. 

Why have students read these in class? In class where English is about challenging the reader, not sating an internal craving for imaginary friends or obsessive world-building. 

The defense cannot be it is popular so therefore it should be read. One person here said that people read popular fiction alongside the classics. That is not a defense, people do many things on their free time. 

School is about learning, and literature has more substance that giving readers what they want. People don't read The Stranger or Moby Dick because they personally relate with Meursault or Captain Ahab. Challenging a reader makes them uncomfortable, and it does not satisfy them on the surface level. Popular fiction that you mention is meant to give readers what they want so they come back for more. That is not the purpose of school, and in the consideration of time they don't have the luxury of wading through a twelve book series to finally get to the end of a single story.   

[sologdin]

That is the meat and bones of her series. Why should students wade through thousands of pages of world-building, character-back story, and emotional manipulation to discover something worthy of literary merit? 

what constitutes the meat and bones is a matter of interpretation. whereas i'd flunk any student who says world-building without defining it as 'the rhetorical strategy of setting development,' instead using it as some sort of poorly conceived synonym for the setting itself (just say setting FFS), any of those items listed could be a matter of heuristic value for a course.  any text could be made to work as a heuristic.  the goal of a literature course is after all not the seamless assimilation of students into the ruling aesthetic order by means of indoctrination in a hierarchy of merely gustatory refinement, but rather to expose them to a specific set of hermeneutic principles and skills.  the notion of literary merit is itself a matter of ongoing interrogation through these principles and skills.

agreed nevertheless that mega serials are unsuitable for a course.

[butterweedstrover]

On 9/3/2021 at 10:38 PM, larrytheimp said:

Yeah, you're not actually addressing anything.  Still not answering any questions that I or others have asked you.  Don't worry, won't bother you anymore with having to defend your position.

eta:

What's rude is constantly cherry picking shit, like "Robin Hobb", without addressing anything else that's in there.  I answered what you asked me, what's rude is not reciprocating.  

 

Since you didn't want to continue the conversation I decided not to respond and left it at that. So feel free to ignore this if you so desire.  

But what exactly was your question? I read your post and I don't see a question. For this to function we cannot assume Harry Potter or other popular fiction deserve to be in a school curriculum because they are popular. 

There is no precedent for that, so you have to offer a defense. You cannot presume it is the most normal thing ever and that it is incumbent on me to explain why not.   

Certain things are self-evident. Popular fiction drags for multiple books to end one story because they want readers coming back for more. They give readers what they want, characters to associate with, imaginary friends to make, and microscopic world-building details to obsess over. If that is your hobby or what you read in your free time then great. 

School is about learning and challenging students through literature. In any class room experience there requires an expenditure of energy to comprehend and grow, people do not read popular fiction to spend energy. They read it for satisfaction, they read Harry Potter because they relate to the characters and want to find out what happens next, they decipher ever mystery of ASOIAF and theorize about world-building elements because that is what they enjoy. 

Literature challenges the readers which is why students do not always overtly enjoy reading them. When you read the Stranger or Moby Dick people do not come out from it relating to Meursault or Captain Ahab, they do not satiate a desire for imaginary friends or fictional science, they make readers uncomfortable because literature does not service your desires, it requires engagement like does math, history, or biology. 

Literature does not excel and scientific analytics so the purpose is not world-building, and the emotional complexity does not come from bating the readers to buying the next book. That is not feasible for sake of time, but it also an an explanation why classics have climax and ending by the end of their books rather than dragging it on for three, or seven, or fourteen volumes. 

What you propose is against the status-quo, so you must provide defense, you can assume it to be true and then ask why not?     

[butterweedstrover]

10 minutes ago, sologdin said:

That is the meat and bones of her series. Why should students wade through thousands of pages of world-building, character-back story, and emotional manipulation to discover something worthy of literary merit? 

what constitutes the meat and bones is a matter of interpretation. whereas i'd flunk any student who says world-building without defining it as 'the rhetorical strategy of setting development' rather using it as some sort of poorly conceived synonym for the setting itself (just say setting FFS), any of those items listed could be a matter of heuristic value.  the goal of a literature course is after all not the seamless assimilation of students into the ruling aesthetic order by means of indoctrination in a hierarchy of merely gustatory refinement, but rather to learn a specific set of hermeneutic principles and skills.  the notion of literary merit is itself a matter of ongoing interrogation through these principles and skills.

agreed nevertheless that mega serials are unsuitable for a course.

But there is a reason these popular series go on for multiple books. It is because they serve a craving, and attempt to give readers more of what they want. People read books like Harry Potter to be given something, to be given the relatable characters and imaginary friends. And that urges them to want to know more so they buy the next book. 

All these series of which you speak are otherwise a thousand plus pages (which is not common in English Class), or multi series books with no ending until volumes later. 

World-building is not just background, it is the central element of books like Lord of The Rings or Farseer or ASOIAF. When asking students to read they must read the pages in chronological order, and they will be bogged down by useless details with scientific accuracy. Literature is about emotional communication, and using scientific details to achieve that emotional affect is not only ineffective, it is counterintuitive. 

What you call "rhetorical strategy of setting development" is just a fancy way of masking the obsessive dominance it has over story and characters and plot. A setting is suppose to be background, if you use setting to eclipse the emotional climax of a book by having characters reveal major elements of the world, detail extraneous societies, cultures, or geography, you are trying to dominate the story telling element, not coexist with it. 

Why should students be forced to read hundreds of pages of world-building just because of the assumption there will be emotional payoff. I don't agree obviously, but even if you were right there would be better books to read that achieve more in a shorter time-frame. 

 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

3 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

What you call "rhetorical strategy of setting development" is just a fancy way of masking the obsessive dominance it has over story and characters and plot. A setting is suppose to be background, if you use setting to eclipse the emotional climax of a book by having characters reveal major elements of the world, detail extraneous societies, cultures, or geography, you are trying to dominate the story telling element, not coexist with it. 

To be 100% clear, I’m not advocating teaching popular fiction as literature.  But all of your yardsticks and purity tests aren’t universal and don’t remotely pass the smell test of a good reason, outside of “this is what I think literature is/is not”.  “Challenging the reader” does not literature make, nor does “extraneous world building” disqualify it- I feel like I had to read as much background cultural context of The Odyssey and Don Quixote as I did the work itself, because that world-building was built in as part of the culture  when it was written.  

[Zorral]

People who don't want to read what's on a Literature course syllabus,  don't take Lit courses.  Most universities are dropping Literature and English as programs anyway, so Harry Potter readers who are angry have already won, since they can and do read Harry Potter for their entire lives without the need of them being in a university course at all.

Why not couch the argument here according to the principle that is the push for the thesis in the first place: Drop Middlemarch, Catch-22, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Pere Goriot, Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz (Nobel Prize for Literature winner, who so influenced Tolkien and Peter Jackson both!), The Leopard, My Brilliant Friend, Bryon, Charterhouse of Parma, Suzanna Arundhati Roy, Keats, Tale of the Genji, etc. from the syllabus in favor of Harry Potter, Stranger in a Strange Land (which was taught actually in some classes back in the 1960's, if I am recalling correctly what my mentors told me, who also feel embarrassed by it now) and Starship Troopers (which wasn't taught) and Andrzej Sapkowski (who was massively influence by Tolkien, not the other way around), and etc. etc. etc.

Win-win, right?

 

[sologdin]

because they serve a craving

no doubt, similar to the neurological craving discharged by classical music, and which someone like stravinsky in his most famous phase challenged.

but one can have this sort of emotional response to milton or virginia woolf or stravinsky's challenge, eventually--it is not limited to YA serial fantasies. i have this response to agamben's homo sacer series, say.

 

World-building is not just background,

it's just the setting, the way you're using it (hence, flunking my class), which is worked up in obsessive detail by any writer influenced by tolkien's secondary creation doctrine.

 

What you call "rhetorical strategy of setting development" is just a fancy way of masking the obsessive dominance it has over story and characters and plot. 

not fancy but precise.  am hesitating between whether this glib response indicates a comprehension failure on your end or a miscommunication on my end. by rhetorical strategy, it is meant the manner in which the text develops its setting over the course of the writing--how the work is accomplished at the micro-level materially to achieve given effects, such as the craving you've identified.  some people pop it in appendices, some have detailed prefaces, some display cartographic precessions, and some have lengthy historical discussions between characters.  these are rhetorical techniques to communicate a lengthy historical res gestae without simply writing a straight history of a fake place.  but there are identifiable rules for this sort of thing.  every YA dystopia needs a teen protagonist, say, to sell to teen readers because they tend to believe that they're being dominated by totalitarian parents and moreover tend to be self-centered and accordingly can only read about someone with whom they might identify--other oppressed teens.

agreed that setting development tends to dominate these sort of stories--though am not complaining, even if reading these things can be labor intensive--but de gustibus est non disputandem, right? 

one furthermore need not read for plot or character. sometimes the setting is the point, such as in every dystopia ever written, including the trifling YA ones aforesaid.

 

Why should students be forced to read hundreds of pages of world-building

this error is definitely not my miscommunication; i said that we are agreed that mega serials are unsuitable for a course.

[butterweedstrover]

2 hours ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

To be 100% clear, I’m not advocating teaching popular fiction as literature.  But all of your yardsticks and purity tests aren’t universal and don’t remotely pass the smell test of a good reason, outside of “this is what I think literature is/is not”.  “Challenging the reader” does not literature make, nor does “extraneous world building” disqualify it- I feel like I had to read as much background cultural context of The Odyssey and Don Quixote as I did the work itself, because that world-building was built in as part of the culture  when it was written.  

Well then we are not debating each other, if you do not believe we should teach popular fiction in English class there is nothing more to say. But others here have clearly stated that Rowling, Hobb, or Tolkien should be taught in standard English course. 

Yes literary quality is up for discussion, but one must present an argument as to why said series should be taught in school. As for Homer or Don Quixote, these books are set in the real world and teach about actual theological, geographic, mythological, and political realities relevant to Education. 

No one thinks we should replicate the Odyssey if we want to write good literature today, but what must be understood is for its time Homer's writings weren't just literature, they were history textbooks, navigational information, encyclopedias for separate cultures, a mythology/political legitimacy claims. The same goes for War & Peace, but on a much lesser level. 

Reading the same information about middle-earth is in of itself not worthy unless you believe it adds to the emotional context of the story (in which case I have already argued otherwise). 

23 minutes ago, sologdin said:

because they serve a craving

no doubt, similar to the neurological craving discharged by classical music, and which someone like stravinsky in his most famous phase challenged.

but one can have this sort of emotional response to milton or virginia woolf or stravinsky's challenge, eventually--it is not limited to YA serial fantasies. i have this response to agamben's homo sacer series, say.

 

World-building is not just background,

it's just the setting, the way you're using it (hence, flunking my class), which is worked up in obsessive detail by any writer influenced by tolkien's secondary creation doctrine.

 

What you call "rhetorical strategy of setting development" is just a fancy way of masking the obsessive dominance it has over story and characters and plot. 

not fancy but precise.  am hesitating between whether this glib response indicates a comprehension failure on your end or a miscommunication on my end. by rhetorical strategy, it is meant the manner in which the text develops its setting over the course of the writing--how the work is accomplished at the micro-level materially to achieve given effects, such as the craving you've identified.  some people pop it in appendices, some have detailed prefaces, some display cartographic precessions, and some have lengthy historical discussions between characters.  these are rhetorical techniques to communicate a lengthy historical res gestae without simply writing a straight history of a fake place.  but there are identifiable rules for this sort of thing.  every YA dystopia needs a teen protagonist, say, to sell to teen readers because they tend to believe that they're being dominated by totalitarian parents and moreover tend to be self-centered and accordingly can only read about someone with whom they might identify--other oppressed teens.

agreed that setting development tends to dominate these sort of stories--though am not complaining, even if reading these things can be labor intensive--but de gustibus est non disputandem, right? 

one furthermore need not read for plot or character. sometimes the setting is the point, such as in every dystopia ever written, including the trifling YA ones aforesaid.

 

Why should students be forced to read hundreds of pages of world-building

this error is definitely not my miscommunication; i said that we are agreed that mega serials are unsuitable for a course.

Yes, yes, people can have similar experiences with Virignia Woolf or Milton (rather odd to think of) but that would tell us more about the reader than their books. Said authors do not (in the majority of cases) write to provide an audience with a sort of escapism that allows them to live vicariously through their story and develop emotional attachments to fictional characters. 

 But let us not move the goal post now, we were talking about authors who take from Tolkien's secondary world, authors like Hobb, Martin, or Erikson who people here claim should be seriously considered as part of an english course. 

That is the basis of the discussion at hand. If you want to debate the merits of world-building we can. You see my point at the end wasn't to have ignored your agreement on mega serials, but to say popular fiction by consequence becomes a mega serial. Either the book is too long in a singular fashion (Lord of the Rings) or it drags on with seven books (like Harry Potter). This isn't accidental or unique to their situations. 

When the focus is on world building the narrative sprawls to intake as much of these scientific details into the plot. And for world-building to be secondary it requires a number of details to allow it to self-actualize as a realistic counter-part to our world. It can't be like Wonderland or Oz where the Geography and Politics are dependent on the story, so by consequence the series spans beyond a single volume. 

In the case of these Character focused stories like Harry Potter where the entire emotional execution is requisite on readers relating to the characters and liking them, there is by consequence a serialization because readers want to follow along with these characters until the very end, they want more from them and the author is obliged to give more. 

Literature that challenges readers is uncomfortable, it requires expenditure to learn the lessons, and it does not rely on characters you relate to because rather than reconfirming your bias the goal is to expand your knowledge, which is the purpose of school.