Posted on 04/14/2006 2:47:18 PM PDT by CheyennePress
ONE of the world's leading authorities on Shakespeare's work, Harold Bloom, and the nation's pre-eminent poet, Les Murray, have declared literary study in Australia dead after learning that a prestigious Sydney school asked students to interpret Othello from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives.
"I find the question sublimely stupid," Professor Bloom, an internationally renowned literary critic, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and Berg Professor of English at New York University, said yesterday.
"It is another indication that literary study has died in Australia."
The question was an assessment task in March set for advanced English students in Year 11 at SCEGGS Darlinghurst, an independent Anglican girls' school in inner Sydney. Considered one of the nation's leading schools, it charges almost $20,000 a year in fees for senior students.
The assessment task asked students to write an essay explaining how Othello supported different readings.
"In your answer, refer closely to the prescribed text and explain how dramatic techniques might be used to communicate each reading. You must consider two of the following readings: Marxist, feminist, race," the question says.
Bloom is a renowned defender of the Romantic poets and a critic of Marxist and post-modern approaches to literary criticism, among others. His 1994 work, The Western Canon, attacked the rise of ideologically based criticism.
Murray, who has just published his latest volume of poetry, The Biplane Houses, described the question as horrifying and said Australian literary study was "worse than dead".
He said literature should be removed from school curriculums, which, in the words of US poet Billy Collins, teach students to strap poetry to a chair and beat meaning out of it with a hose.
"Students are being taught to translate (poetry and literature) into some kind of dreary, rebarbative, reductive prose for the purpose of getting high marks," Murray said.
"They're being taught to overcome it, not to appreciate it, not to value it, not to be changed or challenged by it but to get mastery over it."
But SCEGGS head Jenny Allum defended the question, arguing that it asked students to show their understanding of Othello's themes.
"It's phrased in a slightly different way ... but it's about the role of women, the role of black men in that society, the role of the worker, which I think are clear themes of Othello," she said.
Ms Allum, also chairwoman of the academic committee of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia in NSW, said it was a legitimate way of interpreting Shakespeare's themes using a modern-day understanding of feminism, race relations or Marxism. "There's always been different ways of looking at a play and drawing different meanings," she said.
SCEGGS head of English, Jennifer Levitus, said terms such as Marxism and feminism were modern labels used to help simplify the universal themes found in Shakespeare.
The president of the English Teachers Association of NSW, Mark Howie, said the assessment question was in keeping with the syllabus - that students develop a personal understanding of the text and can relate to the notion that it can be interpreted differently in different contexts.
I think that any critiques of literary works are intellectual masturbation. Just READ the damn stuff. If it speaks to you, then great. If it doesn't, find something that does.
I just think that too many literary critics are trying to cover up their own creative constipation
They left out sexual preference????
Shameful. /sarcasm
Nope, sure haven't.
Amen! My writing mentor use to remind us, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, become critics."
Look at Roger "fatboy" Ebert. His one and only screenplay was Valley of the Dolls (come to think of it, he might have also written Pirahna...) Fine films, indeed.
Your opinion is exactly the same as my dad's and (admittedly probably just to spite him), I have never agreed with this train of thought. Literary analysis is SO important...and fiction, similarly, should be taken seriously. Yes, novels contain elements of the author's imagination but large segments of the novel develop from more serious issues in our world at large. Consider authors in opressed countries. They cannot write bland, non-fiction novels about the suffering or restrictions that their government or state leader imposes; their book would almost certainly not be published. A fiction book, however, a little more subtle, can allow these authors to express their views and opinions on the matter...and, I might add, give us fantastic insights into how people are living in the circumstances, through character developments, etc...and when it comes to Shakespeare, which is, I believe, where this forum initiated...it does not matter that Shakespeare lived before Marxism..one of the fantastic things about Shakespeare is that his work transcends time and culture barriers...sure, his plays may not have people being lined up on a wall and shot, but the same moral and ethical foundations are in his works, and from these we can further understand the nature of humans and their evils, which has never changed.
Marxism is a theory of History so you can apply it to any point in human history.
Fiction affects the way people see the world. Shakespeare virtually invented modern English and the idea of the human personality as an ever changing thing. You don't think something like Uncle Tom's Cabin or 1984 had an effect on history?
Bloom was held in great disdain when I was at the University of Houston.
But then, the freaks I went to school with thought Derrida, Foucault, and Irigaray were the last word in lit crit.
The thing is--Henry James is a phenomenal writer as well, so any criticism from him has merit. Your average New York Times hack, or academic 'shining star' is a failed literary writer (and yes, I'm aware of the glaringly broad statement that is, but them's my story, and I'm a-stickin' to it.)
And I always maintain, it's easier to critique and deconstruct than it is to create. Look at Roger Ebert.
No kidding. People clamor to be emotionally manipulated by made up stories.
You don't think something like Uncle Tom's Cabin or 1984 had an effect on history?
Of course it did, and that IMHO is a real problem.
Fiction doesn't always just work on the emotions. It can work on the intellect as well. Opinions can often be expressed with more nuance and detail when expressed metaphorically.
If everyone understood it that way, then there would not be a problem.
What other form of understanding fiction is there?
You won't catch too many males making this assertion is my guess, but Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady may be the most interesting character that I've come across in literature. James is phenomenal. I actually made a pilgrimmage of sorts to Lamb House in Rye, England, to see his house. On one hand, I was very enthusiastic to see children going from door to door and caroling. It fit the cobbled streets perfectly (and Rye is a beautiful little town). Sad thing is that none of them knew who Henry James was. To be fair, the oldest was only about 12 or so, but I'm willing to bet James is the most famous person to have lived in that town.
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