Free Republic

I used to be just like you, then I learned to think for myself.

Do you have something to add?

Oh I’ll admit it is hard to stop posting. But yes, you are right.

I never meant that people here didn’t understand the complexities—I wasn’t trying to offend any Freepers. I just hear my own area of expertise attacked often as being “outdated” and that literature is constantly moving forward, so we need to lump past epochs of literature into one massive conglomeration.

Someone in my field is expected to know 1,000 years of medieval lit and history and you’d damn well better know Renaissance lit and dabble in some other area as well.

Yes, a lot of literature is based off of Marxist literature, but really only in the last one hundred years or so. There have also been many reactions against Marx. I am a staunch New Historicist (as many medieval scholars are—it may be a dead critical theory in other eras of literature, but not for us), so I reject Marx by default as anachronistic. I also reject feminist theory on the same grounds. Anyways, a bit of a rant, but I do think that canonical works are canonical for a reason. With that said, I am more conservative than many of my liberal colleagues who completely reject putting literature into some sort of categorical chronology. Accepting canonical works of literature is a decidedly conservative stance to take.

The Allegory of Love is one of the seminal works of medieval criticism. It’s still very relevant, and I remember using it in my master’s thesis years ago—I was writing about Chauceriqn allegory and poetics at the time. Now I deal more with early medieval English where Lewis’s work isn’t as important—but it is still a great work price of scholarship and he was so young when he wrote it!

I am a PhD in literature—medieval literature to be precise. Yes, much of what is considered canonical in literature is boring, but the complexity that is lost on so many is what makes literature what it is. Clancy is topical, and a requirement of “true” literature is that it must be universal. Is Clear and Present Danger going to be something everyone can relate to? I think not.

And just to rip off from Samuel Johnson, a work needs to have at least survived for 100 years before it can be considered truly canonical. I’m not saying that I agree, so make of that what you will.

Actually it was the conservatives who were persecuting Christ. The Pharisees were about as conservative as you get. I’m just agreeing with those above who said that this was a completely ridiculous analogy to make.

Ok, so some physical abuse is ok? Must it be “SEVERE”? I don’t understand...

You greatly inflate professor’s salaries. Perhaps a president or chancellor will make 200k a year, but almost no professor makes that much money. You are correct, however, that we TAs do not get paid for the work we do. As I said above, I get $13k a year, but I still have to pay $800 a semester in “fees” and I DO NOT get health insurance. Many colleges do not provide insurance for their TAs. Yes, I don’t have to do this, bu it is worth it for the end result. That said, compared to many idiot public school teachers out there, we are vastly underpaid.

Now that is not a huge increase, but to be fair, I am a TA at a large school in the South, and we only get paid $13,000 a year for what is only supposed to be 20 hours of work a week (but is in reality 30). We have a union here, but almost no one joins because there are pay incentives for good evals, etc.

It might be halfway productive to give a time when this will be going on for us without cable so we can figure out how to watch it online.

Many of you have disparaged John Stossel for his views, but he was telling you this years ago. You just dismissed him as a libertarian idiot. I love you guys here at FR, but as JS would say...give me a break!

I totally agree, I’m just saying that the “less than holy” that were mentioned will be crying out to be able to commit suicide, but they won’t be able to.

I see, this makes a bit more sense now. Thanks!

Ok, well here’s a solution.

Just make anything having to do with the government public domain. For instance, how many movies are there portraying the CIA as bad guys, and alternatively as good guys? So if Disney decides to depict them as villains, someone else can come along and depict them as heroes.

I really don’t see much of a problem with this. Why should the public sector profit from something that will make more jobs in the private sector?

It’s going to happen anyways (or desired to happen):

People will cry out for the mountain to “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (Rev. 6:13-17)

I just wish the nannie-staters would stay out of it. Like college kids won’t drink to passing out anyways...yeah right! Personal responsibility has to come in somewhere.

All kids are going to do now is go to the extra trouble of making Jungle Juice, with who knows what in it (drugs, ruffies?)—at least with 4Loko, you know what you’re getting.

As I am a medieval specialist nerd, “The Bible guarantees it!” reminds me of the call for the first crusade cry of “Deus vult!” or “God wills it!”