Thanks a fool in paradise.
Posted on 08/30/2020 9:46:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sadly, it is happening. When the portrait of Wiliam Shakespeare is removed from the main office of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, the study of “English” as a discipline ceases to exist. If war chants around a campfire are some how equivalent to King Lear, then there is no need for an Engish Department anywhere.
The irony of convincing people that liberal arts have no value, is that they soon reralize they have no jobs. Tey blowing up their own livlihoods. Liberal arts colleges are dying all across the country. So much for the Woke Wookies.
Micheal Crichton did this in med school - he re-wrote Beowulf and named Eaters of The Dead. That was made into the movie: The 13th Warrior. Crichton did a great job.
Starting Beowulf with “Bro” May be a mocking of Seamus Heaney’s popular translation which started with “So”.
Thanks a fool in paradise.
>yawn<.........wake me when they make Canterbury Tales into a movie.............
The connection is sloppy use of language. John Dewey and Martin Heidegger used the same or similar terms and ideas but with different definitions. Researchers in Education, primarily people like Nell Nodding, have used Dewey’s terms with the early Heidegger’s definition. It should be noted that later in life, Heidegger repudiated his own position and replaced it with a more mystic or spiritualist concept akin to listening to your inner voice. So when I write about the influence of Heidegger I am doing doing so based upon the concepts in his early work, Being and Time.
This is problematic because Dewey was many things but he wasn’t a subjectivist. John Dewey believed that if you let children learn in a “naturalistic setting” that they would find an absolute truth. For Dewey, 2+2 always equaled 4. It didn’t matter how you reached 4, it was the answer was the important thing. (His idea of truth being an New England -upper middle class-white-lapsed Protestant-World view) At no point did Dewey claim that truth is a narrative, or a construct. This, as far as it goes is not a bad concept and there is some value in using it to help children see how what they learn applies to real world settings.
Heidegger, on the other hand, was a near complete subjectivist who thought that absolutes were a linguistic creation. In his work, Being and Time, Heidegger writes about the concept of “A thing in the world” or an object that becomes what it is through the process of definition or naming of that thing. This is a useful concept in some ways and can be explained as an extension of Plato’s theory of forms. We call those “Chairs” Chairs because they all have the qualities of “chairness” even though they might have have as many differences as similarities. But, when we, through a process of examination and discovery name something a “chair” in a known language, it is absolutely a chair, not a sofa, nor a stool, not a bench. But, for Heidegger, there was no form or absolute chair, only attributes that we attribute to a thing. Thus, in early Heidegggerian thinking, all truth is a process and truth merely a label.
For Heidegger discovering truth was a process, and it was the process, not the outcome that was important. Thus, 2+2=4 is not as important as how you arrive at 4. The answer is less important than the process. The end result can be anything we choose to name it.
In this way, US educational philosophy has been subverted by Post Modernism from a loosely Christian world view espoused by Dewey, Mann and Montessori into a system lacking absolute value or meaning. The focus has changed, without educators realizing it, from child centered, to process centered. Only the process is important there is little or no value in the end result.
This is why I state from time to time that the public education system is child abuse. It is a system that, at its core, espouses meaninglessness as truth. Which, is another way of saying, there is no truth. If there is no truth, there is possibility of education. If there is no possibility of education there is no purpose in school.
Or at least that is my contention.
Agreed.
Seamus Heaney’s translation is the best I’ve ever read. On a cross country trip with my wife, we took turns reading to each other as we switched drivers. It was a very memorable trip. We both really enjoyed it. She read better than I did, sadly.
And she must be white. Because it should be “BRUH” not “Bro”.
And what did you think of it?
Sounds like fun. Beowolf was BEOWOLF when it was made. We have this tendency to automatically elevate something after a couple hundred years. But a lot of that stuff wasn’t high art then, it was passing the time entertainment. I don’t have a problem getting it back to that.
Unlike his amazing, "fairy tale" settings, yet powerful HENRY V, his HAMLET is far too "pruned" and flat for me.
Hadn't thought about it before, but yes, it is stuck in Freudian and Oedipal land; sadly.
People have called the scenes between Hamlet and Gertrude love scenes.
Here you go. Clear out your earholes with this:
Beowulf, read in Anglo-Saxon, Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz_kMwW3Rw&list=PLaN2-enaIS4Q_CAYyqOyQlTcakKOgqBJN
11 parts, each no longer than 15 minutes.
I'll watch it again and see if I agree.
Frankly, when it comes to Shakespeare plays on the screen, I prefer the ones done by Orson Wells.
The most modern ones are the worst, with Kenneth Branagh's being THE WORST EVER; except for his HENRY V!
I’ve never seen his Hamlet, but it is complete and unedited.
His HAMLET isn’t bad; his version of the comedies are all AWFUL and the uber PC/DIVERSITY cast destroys the films for me.
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