Are the hegemonic fields of politics and sex destroying us?
“English Literature no longer makes the top ten of A-level subject choices. English departments at universities are regularly closing. Studies show dramatic drops in literacy and reading, particularly amongst teenagers. A book and a discussion.
Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline finds itself on the margins of modern society.
James Marriott writes in The New Statesman
English literature – so it seemed to me when I was a bookish zealot of 18 – was the prince of the humanities. When I was interviewed at Oxford and asked why I wanted to study English, I informed my interrogators (I still remember the phrase that I had practised beforehand and considered richly impressive) that “literature shows us what it is or might be to be human”. I believed it. In books, I felt with Tennyson that I had sensed the living souls of the dead flashed on mine. Poems – especially by Hopkins, Eliot and Auden – worked on me like spells. I had contrived to download a recording of Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” on to my primitive mobile phone, and at school would stand in the playground with the device pressed to my ear, enraptured by the tinny incantation, convinced
I was responding to a higher call. Literature, if one were to reduce it to anything so tawdry as a formula, was history multiplied by philosophy multiplied by life. I regarded my peers who had chosen to study mere facts at university rather than to be inducted into the glamorous mysteries of the human heart with some pity (an attitude I have still not entirely shaken off)….
My friends who pursued academic careers in English – no more apocalyptically disillusioned class of person exists – feel they are heirs to a ruined inheritance. They were preparing to take possession of great mansions of learning only to find the windows have been smashed, the furniture looted and the electricity cut off. Partly the problem is tuition fees, but most importantly, literature is becoming culturally marginal. The screen is replacing the book. Studies show dramatic and unprecedented drops in literacy and reading, especially among teenagers…” Continue
The New Statesman’s deputy editor Will Lloyd is joined by the New Statesman’s new culture editor Tanjil Rashid, and columnist and critic James Marriott.
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Catholic Critique 