Why Did They Make Me Read This in High School? (Feat. Lindsay Ellis) | It's Lit!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ย. 2018
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Literary critics, writers, philosophers, bloggers--all have tried to tackle where and why and how an author may strike such lightning in a bottle that their works enter the pantheon of “Classical Literature”. Why this book is required reading in high school, why other books are lost to history.
Interested in using this video as a teaching resource? Check it out on PBS LearningMedia: to.pbs.org/34Z2UAa
Written by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
Directed & animated by Andrew Matthews
Produced by Amanda Fox
Executive in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Music and Sound Design: Eric Friend
Hand Model: Katie Graham
Imaged by Shutterstock
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um, no. looking for more lindsay. :)
100% agree. I’ve reread so many books from school that I hated in high school, loving them now.
You sound racist
if they really wanted to make this video true to Lindsay, that robot at the end should have been Starscream.
Lol definitely
Also she managed to sneak drag queens in there, so...
I do wonder how much control she actually has over these lil animations! probably not a lot.
+Chris Russo Probably not. I think Lindsay and Angelina are mainly in charge of the script, and the rest was done by other talents also found by PBS.
Yes, but copyright is a thing and ruins everyone's fun.
For me, one of the most interesting things about reading particularly "old" books is the insight into what people thought about things back in the day. Crime and Punishment was a mini revelation to me back when, not just because it is a good book, but there was a scene where characters casually discussed smoking being bad for your lungs. Until that point, I'd grown up being told that people basically hadn't questioned tobacco being bad for you until the 1960s. But here was a book written 100 years before that suggesting otherwise
I remember Crime and Punishment for two things-being the first novel where I really understood why _these_ were the themes of the novel, and for being deeply confused about why the main character confessed to his crime when he did.
I'm reading it right now and had the same experience. It was both hilarious and fascinating when Raskolnikov accused a police officer of being a public embarrassment for smoking cigarettes.
It has been a long time since I read that book. But I basically took it as that the main character was driven to the crime and the confession more out of mental illness than anything else. The cop who was after him had no hard evidence and basically had to pressure him into an eventual confession through mind games, psychological manipulation and the promise of a reduced sentence
I love coming across things in old books like that. There are a lot of those in Virginia Woolf, I'm still really struck by the way she depicted mental health problems like PTSD years before it was really medically understood. In a similar moment on a *completely* different topic, I had to read some ancient Greek comedies for a history class and was shocked to discover obvious dick jokes and parodies of well-known people. The ancient world always seemed very serious to me, but people have alway been people
I remember in history class in high school when the teacher was telling us about letters sent between children and their parents in ancient roman times that basically read like "We hope you are studying and not wasting all your time at the tavern". There is a poem from like 700 BC by Hesiod that reads something like "Do not let a sweet-talking woman beguile your good sense with the fascination of her shape." Basically "Don't trust a big butt and a smile" is hundreds of years older than Jesus.
The question I find more interesting is "Why do schools fail so badly at teaching students why the great novels and their themes matter?" I got a better understanding of why to care about themes from a couple of people on tumblr contrasting Game of Thrones with A Song of Ice and Fire than from more than a decade of English and Literature classes. I have gained a greater appreciation of many great works of literature (and film, etc) from bloggers and video essayists talking about them than I did from any classroom.
I'm not even sure _why_ what the Internet people say is better at making me care. The two obvious possibilities that come to mind are either that they need to explain why themes matter to retain their audience, or that they're willing to criticize the works they analyze. (When was the last time you saw anyone question whether or not _Romeo and Juliet_ was a successful satire on courtly romance stories?)
I think it is really a failure of our education system to evolve past the concept of one person stands in front of dozens and spews forth the knowledge of what they have learned whether they themselves care about it or not, or for that matter whether it is accurate or not, and the little sponges are taught to soak it up and wring it back out onto a test. What you generally find on places like TH-cam or other social platforms are that you have to be seriously interested in a subject before spending the time make a video expressing your knowledge and opinions and putting it out there where you KNOW that it will be picked apart, your facts and opinions challenged. The point is still that you aren't going to get views unless you can convince people that your subject and your opinion about it matters.
I think its a mix of Intrinsic interest and the fact we're made to "read" something as worthless as frickin' Romeo and Juliet and other Shakespeare plays. Plays are meant to be watched, not read. Shakespeare is overglorified.
probably because in school you are obligated to care and that feeling of imposition it's not something teenagers like?
Oh, for sure! Once I learned how to read literature, I saw subtext everywhere. In fact, I want to study animation as literature, just all kinds of interesting shit going on there. I think part of it, though, is that... Well, one of the main reasons to read Shakespeare, aside from its own merit, is his cultural influence. A lot of modern works carry intertextuality with him, and... Well, you can understand them without that context, but not fully, I don't think. Like, you can't fully understand the answer to a question without knowing the question itself. You know?
Timothy McLean Basic English classes have to wrangle a large group of students (i.e. a big spectrum of tastes and talents) under one banner for one lousy semester. Did your school not offer full year advanced classes? I certainly have extremely warm memories of my high school English and Social Studies classes.
Professor: "Son, I don't think you actually read Moby Dick."
Me: "How dare you! I will not stand here and be insulted by some pedantic, ivory tower milksop!"
Professor: "I think you just watched Wrath of Khan."
Me: "...You got me."
Kid Next to You: "I tried to find the porno parody of Moby Dick on RedTube... could not find it."
Professor: "Are... are you even part of this class?"
How the hell did he miss that? I'm proudly lazy, but if you're too lazy to research porn, it's over for you.
I think you can get more out of Wrath of Khan, but what do I know?".
Who would have imagined that Melville would have thought to include the Moons of Nibia and the Antares Maelstrom?
Ilznidiotic ahahahahahaha
To be fair to Bloom's canon, he includes a myriad of female, black, and Latin American authors, also includes texts from ancient India, and only really ignores Asian literature because, as he describes, much of it has either not been translated or has translations that are inadequate to truly appreciate the texts. Also, his main criticism is that many people who desire to expand the canon want to include mediocre authors of diverse backgrounds instead of celebrating the great works of diverse artists. I don't agree with Bloom's view on political criticism or his fetishism for beauty (ugliness can be equally fascinating, I think), but I do agree that the best way to diversify the canon is by celebrating the great achievements of different groups instead of propping up their rubbish.
A few years ago the British Education Secretary 'reformed' the reading list for state run schools. They took of Of Mice and Men for being 'too American' and put on more old British stuff.
And this was a very sucky move. Because teachers found that Of Mice and Men was a book that students of all levels could engage with.
Very literal example of cultural snobbery being put over education....
the education secretary is Michael Gove
That's so interesting! Also, your user name is awesome, Pavarotti Aardvark. 😊Yeah, it's wonderful how many books have shaped nations and national identity, and how that's ever-changing. Although Of Mice and Men was once important and influential, who knows what will take its place in future? It's exciting to think about what the literary canon will become in future.
Yeah I remember my English teacher saying that. Even though the book we were reading, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was her favorite
Of Mice and Men was one of the few books I read in high school that I actually loved. And I have my own copy today.
Well, where I am from teachers aren't forbidden to have their students read books that aren't on the list.. we were asked to read several books in addition to the official list and I find the idea that language/literature teachers in other places aren't allowed to add books and/or short stories etc. to their curriculum very disconcerting .
My opinion on most of these books being required reading in highschool was because they’re public domain and a little cheaper to afford. Probably not the main reason, but I think it helps a lot.
Fun fact: The Great Gatsby is still not in the public domain.
wooooo! In my defense I used 'most' not 'all' lol
I mean, one would assume that a book written in 1925 would be, but...
*sigh*
US copyright law.
Fun Fact! Lindsay Ellis briefly mentioned US copyright laws in a video a few years back!
I feel this way because during my brief stint as an english major I was leafing through one of the required textbooks in class (most of them were just lots of books and stories in a textbook) and noticed most of them were public domain so I figured "I guess it makes sense to make a huge book out of smaller books and not pay anyone royalties" (granted said huge thick textbooks also did have commentaries from scholars on the stories and essays on the stories as well)
The fact that many of the books you read in school are public domain probably has less to do with the fact that they are in the public domain and more to do with the fact that they are really old. Really old books are more likely to be held as important by old white men in academic positions than newer books.
For the record, plenty of books read in school are not public domain. Others have pointed out that The Great Gatsby is not in public domain, but neither are To Kill a Mockingbird, In True Blood, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, or The Grapes of Wrath.
Really liking this series so far. More Lindsay is always a good thing.
Yeap
Go. Watch her other videos. She has a ton on TH-cam.
@@tofu_golem who are you saying that too? The op alrrady implied that they are already a higr fan.
oh wow popular books in west were written by white men!? omg, how horrible! such injustice to all the African/Native American scholars!
More actual Lindsay rather then still images and the voice... give us those red lips baby... might get shot for that but... whatever...
I love the classics, but most of them aren’t meant for teenagers. You need some life experience to connect with many of them.
I don't know I read a lot of Dickens and Hugo and some Tolstoy and I found them wonderful. I am a teen and none of these were required reading at the time but I thought they could feed my brain. They did. My mom told me most kids dont do that and that I was smart but I dont think being smart is a requirment for good literature.
Most teenagers can connect with HUCKLEBERRY FINN.
"You have to be over thirty to enjoy Proust"--Gore Vidal
That is so true
EMILY GRAY Agreed. I’m just saying that most of the lit we teach in school is not YA lit and is about adults dealing with adult problems. Sure, teens can get something from it, but they were never the intended audience.
Yeah, most of them are extremely depressing. And I don't think they should be shoved down teenagers' throats the way they currently are. I liked reading light and fun stuff like Harry Potter because I was ALREADY DEPRESSED. Teenagers are already angsty and depressed and hormonal----why would you force them to read these books that are going to make those mental health issues worse??
Good to note that this is WESTERN literature. I'm pretty sure any civilization with a difinitive written language had its own share of important books, it's just that we're western-oriented so schools dont have us read those babies. Not to mention oral traditions and their written down counterparts.
And it's a pity we don't learn about other literary traditions more! A brief search on the internet will reveal that, for example, Chinese literary cannon is crazy big and contains many works people from other cultures can enjoy. I recently discovered contemporary Arab novelists, and I am only starting to comprehend the culture they came from.
Even then, i'd say this probably best reflects US (and maybe canadian) lit courses. No doubt various european countries, including britain and ireland, have their own ideas about which works are important to teach. Then there are some of the private schools that can also get weird; i read albert camus and virginia woolf and toni morrison but never touched austen or hugo or steinbeck. YMMV.
Good luck getting high school kids to read the tale of genji
I'm Spaniard, and I remember all high school reading and hating all the books just because there weren't women on it. So basically, the boys couldn't handle a female protagonist, but girls had to read full chapters of the male protagonist talking about how much he hated women, or women being killed or raped. Not all "classic" literature is worthy
It is not even Western literature, it is US centric literature, no one outside of the US ever even take a glanze at Moby Dick, it has little international relevance, and is dwarfed by more important US literary works in what people need to study,
The required reading I hated the most was the type of books that were literally only written to be used as required reading in high school. All those "young adult with problems" books like Go Ask Alice.
RPGFan go ask alice was entirely faked, btw
I read that one on my own, that's the only time I will ever touch that book. Not again.
I remember really hating having to read that book in school because I had this mild phobia of drugs (brought on by enthusiastic anti-drug education) and I had nightmares about it.
There was some book about juvenile delinquents in the Grand Canyon that I hated with a passion
Agreed. I always hated that kind of book. It seemed as if both the author and the teacher were talking down to me, as if I couldn't be expected to read a "serious" book, i.e., one that wasn't dumbed down to what the school district thought I could - and should - be able to handle.
"Loose Canon"? More like Lit Canon, amirite?
Genius. 😊(Lindsay Ellis is so awesome: if I'm being honest, she's the only reason I'm following this series)
Rashmika Likes Books she is an international treasure and must be protected at all. My heart breaks for when I hear how much people with a certain ideology harass her online.
As an (English) English Literature graduate I can't entirely comment on the canon of literary classics as it relates to the teaching of literature in American schools and colleges, but over here the literary canon of specifically English classics (while super white) does have quite a few women in it. This, I think, relates specifically to the nature and history of the novel. For a long time the novel as a form was seen as a bit of a frippery, something read by (and therefore often produced by) women while men concerned themselves with "serious" works of non-fiction or the elevated literary and artistic styles of poetry. As a result, the English literary canon of poetry remains fundamentally male, but once you're talking about novels then the likes of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Virginia Woolf have long been accepted parts of the established canon over here (and seen as writers of books of big ideas on culture, nation and society) and I was taught all on a fairly traditional English lit course. You have to wait for very recent writers and books, though, to get any recognition for English writers of BAME backgrounds in our established teaching of literature.
If you've never heard of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Bronte sisters, or Virginia Woolf, I have to wonder if you've been living under a rock for the past 200 years.
No one lives for 200 years.
lain iwakura True. But there is a difference between writers people have heard of and writers who are deemed "important" enough to earn a place in the literary canon. The English writer that more people around the world have heard of than any other may well be JK Rowling, but she has not been granted a place in the canon of English literary classics (partly because too recent, partly because for kids, partly because fantasy). Jane Austen, however, may be dismissed by some "serious academics" as lightweight romantic comedy, but she nevertheless undoubtedly has a place in the English literary canon. She's taught on most traditional English Lit courses and the big themes and ideas of her books are given weight in academic discussions and publications. She's even on our banknotes in a place once occupied by Dickens and Shakespeare.
moviesforme Also. Fun fact! Rowling's publishers asked her to go with "JK Rowling" in fear that little boys would not want to read books by "Joanne Rowling", by a woman.
@@dlbkelly1 "The English writer that more people around the world have heard of than any other may well be JK Rowling, but she has not been granted a place in the canon of English literary classics"
What about Agatha Christie, I never learnt none of her books at school.
Also, although I was educated in the North East, we never read any Catherine Cookson at school. My only enounter with her work to this day has been TV adaptations of her work from the early 1990s by (who else?) Tyne Tees Television.
I read Ender's Game when I was in 4th Grade because it was recommended to me and I thought it was an awesome sci-fi book sought out all the sequels on my own. Flash forward to now, and I'm meeting kids who are slowly slogging through because its assigned reading at schools.
Oh, the times.
I did read “Les Miserables”. I love Disney’s “Hunchback Of Notre Dame” and one of my fangirl friends, who was also a huge Victor Hugo nerd, encouraged me to read the original, as well as “Les Mis.” We’re reading “Gatsby” in our Novel Writing Class right now. And for funsies I’m reading Blanche Wiesen Cooke’s “Eleanor Roosevelt.”
I actually liked Gatsby. Les Miserables, though... I couldn't get past the five chapters about the Bishop. Jean Valjean and I shall not be acquainted any time soon, I fear. Same with Moby Dick. 12 pages about the painting in the tavern did me in. I shall never meet Captain Ahab.
I hated Gatsby. I wanted to read it before the film got out. I never went to see the movie. The manner of writing and the characters are just really insufferable.
I think sometimes the issues stems from the almost requirement to like or find interesting what you're reading within a class setting. And if you don't like something well that's your problem. Students aren't encouraged to develop the language of criticism and cultivate a good reason why they don't like a particular book. Dislike is seen as thoughtlessness, and because it's so rarely explored in a class setting it becomes that instead.
I think there's lots of genuinely good reasons why people don't like certain 'classics'. I hated reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and really loathed having to read The Handmaid's Tale for the fourth time during the course of my academic life, and I still went off to University to study Literature! But having an alternative view was practically encouraged by the time I got to university rather than discouraged as 'Oh you haven't actually read the book' or 'You can't dislike it, it's a classic!'
That's funny. Of Mice and Men was one of the ones I read in HS that stuck with me the most, but I still don't get why anyone teaches The Catcher in the Rye. That one was a slog... Different people get inspired by different things... But that is part of what the "forced reading" in schools benefits. It forces you out of your comfort zone so you can discover new and challenging things. Some of those things will land. Some will teach you what you DON'T like. It's all good in the end.
@@BTheBlindRef As someone who quite likes Catcher, trying to follow Holden's thought process is kind of a fun journey, just because you never quite know where he's going with anything lol.
Later I happened upon it in a psych course about mental illness and psychological disassociation and enjoyed it even more. I think the thing with Catcher is you can read it on a lot of different layers, they're just not always obvious...or logical if you don't really follow the books scattered frame of mind.
@@BTheBlindRef For sure, I think forced reading can be a good thing especially if a book challenges a preconceived notion you have or you disagree with how the subject matter is represented. The sloggiest slog I ever had was definitely Clarissa, but I think if anything that book made me interested as to why it was chosen and why it was considered the first novel ever (depiction of a fictional character rather than religious or mythological), because there's lots of books that could fall under that description but for some reason didn't make the cut. I hated reading it, but kind of enjoyed exploring the historical and cultural elements of it.
Agreed. I had to read Tess of the D'Urbervilles; a play by some Russian playwright where a woman with a first name beginning with "A" kills herself after becoming pregnant in a marriage with a man she finds boring and the mayor or something wants to have an affair with her; another equally depressing play by that same Russian playwright (it was someone by the name of Igor/Ivan Tchekov or something); Woman Warrior; the Old Man and the Sea; House of Spirits; and the Odyssey. I was so bored that I could not bring myself to read past three pages of Tess (and I am an AVID reader; that was the ONLY book of all of the stuff we were forced to "study" that I simply could not bring myself to read). The Russian plays made my depression three times worse than it already was, and it made me wonder if I would prefer going the way of Anna or Andra--A---whatever her name was who killed herself rather than continue reading the books in this school program. Woman Warrior was extremely weird and confusing, but I could at least swallow the only interesting chapter----the one retelling the legend of Fa Mulan; because, shockingly, that story actually IS classic and IS worth retelling! The Old Man and the Sea was tolerable but not interesting. House of Spirits was tolerable for about halfway, then I got too overwhelmed with other work to finish it, not that it was interesting. And finally, the Odyssey. The Odyssey. The ONE BOOK in the entire pantheon of books that were shoved down my throat-----THE ONE THAT WAS ACTUALLY GOOD. CLASSIC. LITERATURE. It could have been ripped straight from Ancient Greece and put into modern times and I wouldn't have known the difference except for the very Hellenistic names. You know why? Because it was actually a good story that, similar to Fa Mulan, is WORTH RETELLING (or making an entire class of high schoolers read).
My 9th grade English teacher would read to the class huge sections of the novels assigned to us from the curriculum. We LOVED it! It made for rewarding class discussion. More teachers should do this, especially if they have a dramatic flair.
I remember my 4th grade teacher reading sections of The Hunchback and Phantom of the Opera for us. I remember the class gasping when she read "red ink" and her saying, "you know what that means" to us 😂 At the time, I didn't like her because she was a strict teacher. But her classes were so memorable 😝
Nearly 20 years later, I end up wanting to reread all of those books I read in high school because I feel like I have a greater appreciation and understanding for them now. My experiences as an adult have helped inform me more about their context, and made me appreciate them so much more than when I was forced to plow through them in a short amount of time to do assignments about them. Crazy how a book written decades ago or more can remain not only relevant in the age of TH-cam and social media, but be even more powerful in some cases.
I'm so proud of Lindsay. She's come a long way.
Really enjoying this series. It hits a very sweet spot for me in its delivery and presentation -- and of course I'm an avid reader and writer, so. Please keep up the great work!
I’m a junior in my school’s AP English class, and we just finished reading “The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story had a good premise, but the outdated writing style made the book a pain to read.
Virginia Woolf isn't "now being added" to the literary canon, her novels were extremely popular and well regarded when they were first published.
Doubt it. Women's voices were ignored in the past, and they are ignored now under neoliberal cissexism.
I love PBS so much for having you do this series!
I watch Disney, but I always read dystopias. Farenheit 451, Stranger in A Strange Land, Brave New World, Rhinoceros, and 1984.
The book that made me want to write/draw was the comic Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and the movie before it. But the comic has endured in my mind where the movie has not (other than for nostalgia) because the comic had the space to properly expand on its themes and characters. The movie is very much a matter of taste as to whether you find the protagonist inspiring and compelling (like I do) or preachy and obnoxious.
Also, the movie was adapted by Miyazaki at a time when he was still learning his animation craft. He's admitted he has always been unhappy with the ending of the movie and the fact that the whole thing feels rather shallow. It's primarily because he was trying to compress a story that he created to be vast and as complex as Tolkien's Middle Earth into a single two-hour movie. It didn't really work, and he acknowledges that. It's still beautiful and has its good points. Particularly the animation and the music, but there are several really great scenes as well.
But I'm thankful for that movie because it allowed us to later have such movies as _Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi_ (Spirited Away) and _Mononoke Hime_ (Princess Mononoke) that are more rounded stories and better constructed. He learned, and became the master that we know he is from the talented young animator that he was. (Although I Have a soft spot for the earlier _Kariosutoro no Shiro_ (The Castle of Cagliostro))
I think that "Les Miserables" by Hugo is the greatest novel written. It is shocking how its story of moral duty vs law is something we all still struggle with. Also, despite its very French setting, it is a universal story and we can all sympathize with at least one character in the plot.
I'd love it if they did a series like this for movies.
In Germany, what gets on the list of books you're required to read is basically handled by the government, represented by an assembly of teachers. Then your teacher gets to pick, like, 2 or 3 out of that list. And because teachers already have lectures prepared for the stuff that is on that list every year, those are usually the books that you have to read. "Nathan the Wise" anyone?
Oh, alright, that last one is actually kinda OK.
Believe me, though, there are some mainstays, like "Effie Briest", which is about as Victorian and colonial as anything the Brits put out. I still have my copy of "Wilhelm Tell", which I was required to read 3 separate times (because I kept switching schools).
It's not required reading, it's miserable reading: Because of the changes to society, most of the topics are either not important to us any more, or very, very old-fashioned. You basically need a history lesson on top of reading the book to understand it. Which is a good reason to read it while you're in school, where you can get "assisted reading" done.
Yeah, and the thing about national identity ..... most of the times I'm sitting there and reading things about timid women, who suffer nobly, the racist and/or sexist side characters, men being total dumbasses but still getting to decide everything ..... it's not fun.
Like, yeah, if I want to come off as "cultured" I might want to know some of this stuff, but these books do not reflect the modern culture I identify with, and make me question why the fuck I want to identify with it still.
Which, in Germany, might actually not be a bad idea.
Fontane was pretty progressive for his times, though, so I think works like that help us to put the changes from then to now into context.
There should definitely be at least one work read per year that the students participate in choosing. Perhaps something contemporary, on the bestseller list if no one comes up with anything else, to examine the writing of then and that of now as well.
I'd also be in favour of only reading plays after watching it performed - they weren't meant to be read first.
But in all of that, the state of the German publishing industry doesn't really help. SciFi and Fantasy are still looked down upon. The English-speaking world isn't very inclusive when it comes to works that weren't originally written in English, but they do seem much more competent in creating and publishing and advertising many different books. (Then again, I suppose there's such a lot of native English speakers in the world that they have enough audience to publish for to justify the effort financially)
In Finland, we read the short stories included in the textbook, but for novels and poetry we got a free pick and we then wrote an essay - you had to get your choice approved by the teacher first of course, so as to not pick 'Jerry Cotton, FBI Agent, vol. 123'. One book of Finnish author before 1950, one after, and so on, depending on the course. Teacher lectured more generally on themes, genres and eras of literature.
Have you read Berlin Alexanderplatz?
Sadly, no. It sounds fun (wikipedia), but we read more "classical" literature. No Sheakespeare, you understand, but so called 'great German classics'.
They weren't that great to be honest ;D
The thing is: "Effie Briest" has some interesting themes and character moments that could still be relevant today. Problem is: They are burrowed under piles of pretty irrelevant stuff and foreshadowing.
Currently, I've been reading through edited versions of "Count of Monte Christo" and "Moby Dick", and though they're still pretty long and some cuts are obvious, lecture isn't painful.
If we'd get edited versions of "Effie Briest", maybe it'd be a lot easier.
I did enjoy both those books infinitely more than Effie Briest. Though, I had to read them privately.
Well, in defense of Harold Bloom, he did include non white non male authors in his canon.
Thought that part of the vid was a little blithely passed over.
He loves Jane Austen and Latin American literature. This video completely caricatures his position.
I disagree with Bloom’s dismissal of resentment, but I do think his aesthetic notion of canon makes sense. And as literature continues to diversify, so will the canon.
Well Bloom was a huge snob beyond a doubt, but he genuinly really loved literature and had a lot of knowledge, and I will always respect him for it. And he was no reactionary.
I think this conversation could go both ways. As a teenager, one book I had to read was Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". At the time, I completely didn't get the point of it. As an adult, though, when I picked it up again, it really enjoyed its portrayal of human nature and social manners. And I think it's culturally important that people have some level of common understanding across at least some of these books, especially in a digital world where we often can't remember what was important a fortnight ago, let alone last year or beyond.
Having said that, as an Australian, I wish there was more focus on our local authors, including more recent ones. There is a lot about our history which is important (but forgotten) for people of all backgrounds. Our history needs to be more broadly examined from a variety of angles, and talked about, to be better understood. Literature can better help us to understand how we came to become who we are - regardless of country - which I think can help to build empathy and understanding of each other.
I'll be sharing this with my Lit survey class as we discuss the notion of The Canon and its function in society today. Thank you!
gonna sum this one up
all the books I read in high school were based on the penultimate REAL WORLD and therefore were REAL
all the books I LIKED to read were fantasy novels, therefore not REAL stories with REAL meaning
that's the attitude my teachers had, that's the answer to the question. No genre I like will ever be a classic because all the genres I like exist for escapism.
oh and also because my english teachers had a fetish for misery porn and made us constantly read those classics written during WW2 because clearly teenagers are not depressed enough. :l
Some of the kids at my high school read The Once and Future King but my class didn't, I remember that really pissed of one of my friends because that was the closest he could get to reading fantasy for class. We did read Ender's Game in middle school though, so at least we got some sci-fi
The second-to-last real world?
The Lord of the Rings is (kinda) considered a classic... but God literature teachers should learn that students can learn from more than just dystopias because life is bad and technology/sensationalism/whatever is bad and this book is criticising it and you should read it. I mean seriously 1984, Brave New World, Corpus Delicti in quick(ish) succession and Kafka and Crime and Punishment (okay last 2 are not dystopic but still the general pessimistic mood is similar)
My primary school made us read The Hobbit (but it was so slow it got boring) and in the same school we got read Percy Jackson while learning about Greek Mythology (which me and my friends then picked up and ended up finishing it and it's sequel series by the end of the year because it was so slow) but that's the only fantasy we get.
I swear a "fetish for misery porn" is a requirement to be a high school English teacher.
Honestly, its more than what we personally like and what "some old white guy" thinks is important. Literature is a window into how the world thinks at a given point in time. For instance, I hate Steinbeck in general but I'm glad I read The Grapes of Wrath because it was a window into the desperation of the era in which my father grew up and the importance of family.
The Grapes of Wrath promotes White Supremacy, by ignoring the suffering of black bodies in the 1930s.
Yes Lindsey!!! So happy you’re still out there working love your content
When it comes to school specifically, I don't envy the task of trying to pick the most important themes and trends in all of literature and trying to boil them down into a handful of books to assign. All of literature is big, and the realistic amount of time a student has to read a novel in the midst of other assignments is small. Even with that in mind, though, I agree we've mostly done a pretty poor job of being inclusive in our choices for the "school canon," if you will. This will probably (hopefully) keep changing in coming years; fewer and fewer people are finding it credible that All The Best Books just so happen to be by old white men.
Cailin Kless - I’ve noticed that high schools (or at least the ones near me) have strayed away from long novels and instead have students read influential short stories, maybe one or two novels a year.
That's actually easier to manage time-wise
my senior year English teacher would give us a list of like 7 books to choose from with similar themes but various styles, lengths, backgrounds, etc. it was really awesome to have that kind of choice but she was also an exceptional educator so there’s that.
"Robots are OK" Starscream is not amused.
5:20 Lindsay tried to be subtle with her transformers obsession but failed
WE LOVE YOU LINDSAY! So happy PBS has been making so much stuff with you in it!
So happy I found you here! I enjoy your work!
I read Les Miserables. I quite liked it, 80 page digressions and ridiculous coincidences included.
Could not get into Moby Dick, though.
Me neither. War & Peace, OK, not as good as the better Dostoevsky books but still fine, Les Mis, also entertaining, Moby Dick starts promising but then gets stuck in the doldrums.
Same here. I think it had to do with the nature of the 80--page digressions: the ones in Les Misérables served the story well, and usually made sure the reader had important context for what was coming up; Melville's musings on whaling and whale anatomy were dry AF and did little more for the story than bring it to a screeching halt.
Moby Dick's narrator is hilarious. Try reading it as a comedy
Either way, I like the opera better.
same here, though i only read about half of Les Mis because I had it from loan from the school library and they were getting pissy about it being out so long (it is a big book, ok?! eshhh). Moby Dick i listened to on audio because it was free, and tbh, the middle 3/5ths of the book can be ignored and still get a coherent story.
Great video as always!
I always enjoy listening to Lindsay talk. A very calming person
As someone who loves the works of Hugo I can say that while indeed great, you could cut out about 5\6 of any of his books and not lose much of worth, The movie adaptation of Le mis with Liam neeson is my favourite movie of all time because it takes my favorite story of all time, looks at what made it so interesting and makes that the focus, cutting out the unimportant
Somebody should make pins with Lindsay's faces
this
Thanks I hate it.
For what it's worth, I found War and Peace to be a really fun and worthwhile read once I got past the introductory party scene.
Took ur survey just to tell pbs how great you are. Really hope to see more of this!!
Loving this series. Took the poll to let them know !
Honestly I quite enjoyed my AP English classes compared to my Pre-AP ones simply because I felt like the books my school's english department selected were quite interesting. In my AP Lit class we read Grendel paired with bits of Beowulf, Hamlet followed by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Scarlet Letter, A Thousand Splendid Suns (the most recent one) and The Importance of Being Earnest. I was never taught To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men or Huckleberry Finn which seem to be very commonly taught. Come to think of it, there's quite a bit of postmodernism there. We were also taught Poisonwood Bible and In Cold Blood (some of my favorites) apart from the usual Gatsby and The Crucible the year before in AP Language. Granted most of these books are written by white male authors but they are books that I feel like aren't as widely taught in High Schools compared to your Gatsbys and Mockingbirds so I have never heard of them until I had to take the class.
I hated the timed writings they made us due though because I spend a lot of time thinking when writing essays. In fact the one essay I wrote that wasn't timed was the one I wrote on motifs in Grendel and it actually was kind of fun and made me appreciate the book even more
@@snowcherryleopard Were you in my Dad's AP English class? He loved teaching _Grendel_ (and others that you mentioned) and actually retired early when they made him stop teaching it and adhere to their list of "approved literature." (He retired in 2007 after 37 years of teaching in Washington State.)
@@tarmaque No sorry my english teacher was a woman and I took it a couple years ago. That's awful that they made him stop teaching those books for something more standard! Honestly I think it's better to teach works that have literary merit that aren't standard and widely read
@@snowcherryleopard I kinda doubted it, but thought it sounded uncannily like him. But he wasn't the only great teacher in the world. He was a principal for a few years too, but hated that and went back to teaching. It's always nice to talk to people who appreciated their teachers.
@@tarmaque Yeah I really loved that english teacher. She was so passionate about what she was teaching and it really made the entire class so much better
This from the woman that came up with the Twlight/Cthulhu novel to troll everyone.
You're right - Awoken should probably go in the canon, too.
Lots of books have been written for petty/trollish or what might be called silly reasons. 'Alice in Wonderland,' for instance, was written because Lewis Carrol wanted to make fun of things in mathematics that were being discovered at the time.
Enoemen what a fun fact!
Enoemen wait, I thought it was written because he got some weird mental illness?
I always come to gripes with this subject but with movies. The thing with books is that since they come more often than movies (without mentioning they far easier to make for one person than the other) this conclusion seems far more friendly and worthwhile than others. Loved this video
Super important issue! Thank you.
In my experience, Les Mis is actually pretty popular among young people. It's long and boring, but it also has some great characters, some pretty funny moments, and a cast of attractive 20-something men some of whom may or may not be in love with each other. Also, the fact that one of the most popular musicals of all time is based on it really helps generate interest for a wider audience.
While I agree, even among hardcore fans of the musical, lots of them will admit they haven't read the book in its entirety. I myself have barely managed it even once, because it IS really hard to digest, despite having some really compelling moments that don't appear in the musical. This is part of why retelling these stories IS so important, because then these important stories can evolve to meet with modern sensibilities, and we get the stuff that truly matters, rather than a long digression about Paris' sewers.
I actually do remember enjoying the actual book even though I don't remember all of it (I didn't watch the movies or the musicals)
@@Broadwaychica If people read the abridged version of the book though, then they don't have to worry about all those long digressions about the sewer and Napoleon's battles and what-not because they're chopped out and the actual story is still untouched. That's what I ended up doing anyway and it's a personal favorite that I've reread multiple times and keep on my bookshelf.
I actually have that version of Les Miserables, and it's my favorite book, too. Wish it was in better shape.
I adore this series to no end.
I feel my high school actually did a great job addressing this issue. We read a variety of books from different ethnicities and genders. This includes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Zarle Williams, Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya, Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by Bryan Mealer and William Kamkwamba. Of course we still read classics such as Heart of Darkness, Othello, and The Great Gatsby but overall we received a lot of variety in literary view points.
I read Les Miserables last year for fun. Admittedly mostly for the drama 😏 But I did read through the whole book. Even the weirdly long introduction for the bishop and those beefy history breaks.
It took me a whole month 😅
But the story was very interesting.
I could not believe he never came back, I kept waiting and, nope, he, in any other book, was a one off side character
If the selection of books I was forced to read in school was meant to foster an interest in reading then it had the opposite effect. Every single one I can remember I have a hatred for because of how bad they made me feel. They might be important literature but for some high school students they'll be taken at face value(like me).
Of mice and men - A mentally handicapped person gets shot in the head because hes to dangerous to deal with. Nice lesson.
A child called it - kid forced to drink bleach by his mother writes a book about it. Guess my life isnt so bad, huh?
Lord of the flies - kids stuck on an island kill each other over a conch shell. Kids are savages.
My takeaway? Books suck. It's like a film snob saying Citizen Kane is the best film, watch that and you'll have an appreciation for movies.
Do yourself a favor: Go pick up a Terry Pratchett novel.
geez I ADORE this tune !
I really think going into books with a positive outlook on them helps. Those saying they couldn’t get on board with Moby Dick should seriously try again, I personally loved the book. It’s so well written and the figurative language never stops, the metaphors Melville writes are great. Also, I found it to be pretty humorous too, especially because of Ishmael’s perspective. His internal monologues in certain things can be funny as well as informative.
Couldn't get them to put a in Transformer at 5:20?
And risk angering the Hasbro corporate lawyers?
You really didn't answer the question in the title -- the actual title should have been "A Case for Diversity in Western Canon" or something
Thanks for making this 😄
Moby Dick and Les Miserables are more than worthy of their place in the classics of literature. Both are fantastic. Haven't read War and Peace yet though. And "Native Son" is one of my favorite novels ever.
The only classic lit I read in highschool was huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the rye. We actually read 2 books by Philip k dick though which I really enjoyed.
Unsurprisingly for a Lindsay vid, this one's amazingly thought-provoking.
i grew up having to read lots of these books; in high school, To Kill A Mockingbird was just as heavily stressed as Romeo & Juliet -although I remember R&J better, largely because of how much I disliked Romeo and liked Mercutio- SIDETRACKED SORRY.
I ended up not getting a lot of Jane Austen assigned to me, but I DID end up with a taste for her literature. And of course, I ate up L. Frank Baum's Oz books and CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia all on my own time. Fantasy literature, as I've stated in previous videos, is sort of My Bag.
Of course I also vaguely remember being assigned a few Newbery-style "the dog/best friend/love interest dies in the last ten chapters of this book" coming-of-age stories, but those all sort of blend together. I am not a fan of Death By Melodramatic Convention as a rule. The only exception to this was Bridge to Terabithia, I think again because of the fantasy element.
Romeo and Juliet isn't a book. It's a play, don't read it, watch it performed.
@@DaviniaHill in my school we sat at our desks and read it. My mom loved Shakespeare so I grew up with it and knew a lot of Romeo and Juliet by heart. But I had to sit in that class and listen to my classmates butcher Shakespeare.
When we had read the whole play, we would watch the movie, which I never understood as we just read it.
I feel teaching Shakespeare in High School in this way destroy any love one might have cultivated for Shakespeare if one had found it on one's own.
I love this video series!
Lindsay I even did the survey and talked you up girl! Love this series. Makes me feel like I'm in college again.
It's good the canon is being questioned and diversified, but not to the point of making the canon irrelevant. If we do away with the canon altogether, we'll loose some of the valuable cultural glue that binds us together as readers, and as citizens. The canon, though not fixed and eternal, is not entirely arbitrary either. There are books in the canon that deserve to be there, and that are nearly universally acclaimed. If we're to have a canon at all, we must accept the idea that we need some 'cultural guardians' to help us decide what the canon should be. That said, it's true these guardians have, for too long, been mostly white males, and it's a good thing that's changing.
Umm... except that “Native Son” (Richard Wright), “A Room of One’s Own” (Virginia Woolf), and “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Harper Lee) ARE considered canon, and have been for many years. As are various works by Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and the Brontes, plus Gwendolyn Brooks and W.E.B. Du Bois, Omar Khayyam and (more recently) Sun Tzu.
She mentioned that, even naming Virginia Woolf.
@@bearowl4101 also what do you consider many years
BearOwl - That she did... and Richard Wright, and Harper Lee, which is why I chose them.
My point is only that it's disingenuous to say we've "started" to add non-male, non-white authors to the canon, as though it's a recent occurrence (due, no doubt, to the efforts of the hashtag-Woke generation). In truth, this was "started" generations ago, and as proof I submit three of the very authors she lists.
Each of the works I listed is considered, if not formal canon (if, indeed, a universally accepted list can be found), then at least canonical in stature; and they have been so for all of my 50 years and more. (Lindsay, of all people, should at least recognize "A Room of One's Own", which essay is considered to be one of the seminal works of the nascent feminist movement in the early 20th century.)
I'm honestly curious to know if the texts Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Richard Wright and W.E.B. Du Bois were being taught as a part of American western literary canon in the late 60s. You said you had 50 years, right?
We are rapidly approaching "Okay, bored now," but guess I can go for a little while longer. Sorry if this wasn't clear, but I don't *have* 50 years, in the sense of a teaching career or anything; "my 50 years" is a way of saying "in my lifetime". (Though, full disclosure: I'm actually 48 - "50" just gets the point across better, and the difference is negligible for our purposes here).
I read "Native Son" for high school English in 1985, and while I freely admit that I cannot remember whether the term 'canon' was specifically mentioned, certainly it was treated as being on par with the prior book we'd read, Moby Dick. (Then and now one of my favorites, btw.) Now, 1985 is only 33 years ago, though that's still longer than the start time implied in the segment. But the copy I used for that class? It was my mother's, from her high school days in, yes, the mid-60's.
In my high school, it was The Great Gatsby, The Sea Wolf, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and that's what I remember off the of my head.
this series is so freaking good.
This is SUCH a good episode (and series) but please stop misuing the phrase "Begs the question", especially in a video about language and literature!
So for me the comments about old white men seemed to come out of left field. It doesnt matter what ethnicity age or gender of people decided on literary cannon. The true question is "is it satisfactory or not" "can it be improved?" Those are the questions. They were asked but it seemed to have another agenda there
White MEN, you say... So, has anyone else heard of Hariet Beacher Stowe, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, and Emily Dickenson, or the Bronte Sisters? Okay, so maybe not as many female authors, but they are there.
Excellent, even though it starts with my pet peeve of misusing "begging the question."
I made it through middle and high school without having any of those books assigned, but I was assigned books from a more diverse set of authors (not much more, but like I did have to read “Cold Sassy Tree” in 9th grade and “Things Fall Apart” as summer reading for 10th grade) because I was tracked for college. Kids who weren’t tracked for college had military recruiters for entire class periods- which I didn’t even know was a thing in my school until my brother told me about his experience. America.
I know time is short, but that created a bit of a straw man of Harold Bloom. He’s got more to say than contextless cringe
Yeah, I also agree that time is money in this format but I also thought Lindsay was better than that
The most frustrating thing about this is that his book ACTUALLY PUTS POC AND WOMAN AUTHORS INTO THE CANON, and Lindsay just flat out omits this detail!
She's either intentionally misrepresenting the book or she's making uninformed assertions about a work she isn't actually familiar with, neither of which is a good look.
I agree. It is really easy to make a strawman of his position because he is so hardline on his views but it's important to look at his ideas in relation to the canon in academia. His listing IS inclusive. Many of the books Lindsay put after the critique are ones that Bloom sees as in the canon. Lindsay is doing great work at informing in such a short video but "The School of Resentment" (various ideologies in academia which oppose the status of the western canon)as Bloom puts it should be challenged on their ideas. Lots to unpack there, especially for those who go deeper into literary studies.
I think Bloom expresses his view best in "How to Read and Why" he has lived a life of passion for reading and I think it is important to have a good picture of how literary works influenced each other. We can learn a lot from his decication to literature.
It is useful to have the established canon that people can reference. With only so much time it is helpful to have a canon of literary works to guide the reader's interests. I also trust readers to create their own canons in terms of what they look for in their reading. As readers grow in their tastes, they make their own collections of works that they find essential. Canons are important in terms of highlighting significant works but their role as a tool for personal and independent growth is even more valuable.
Western Canon, Sci-Fi canon, Fantasy canon, Chinese canon, etc. these distinct collections are worth noting because they reflect a specific time period, location, values. I see canons as rooted in academic institutions but with their true worth lying in readers who choose to explore a particular tradition having a reference point. Casual readers sometimes look for something outside of their current sphere of genres and then they come across a body of work on literary canons. What draws someone to past works? Among other things, there is the desire to see what lead to current books and to see what was admired in the past and endures to this day. Anyway, I digress.
Main point: Bloom has been mischaracterized to the general reading public as anti-diverse works but actually his views on the canon are worth delving into and exploring.
Well said, thanks for jumping in. I find Bloom interesting, partly because of the emotion he stirs up with his confidence. I still need to read How to Read and Why (though I gather it's somewhat mistitled, since "How I Read and Why" wouldn't sell as well), but I read Anxiety of Influence over the summer, which was very worthwhile, even if it was taxing at times.
She's not.
4:43
I'm sorry but how is To Kill a Mockingbird and To the Light House more distant voices then Cannon staples like The Illiad and The Divine Comedy? The cannon has been determined by the aesthetic and philosophical value of a work (primarily aesthetic). As Howard Bloom has said. No one is interested in excluding women or minorities from the Cannon. However their work must argued for on their aesthetic value not as political favors for disenfranchised groups.
Canon. Not cannon.
Actually the American canon was defined by cultural needs, not by aesthetic needs. The American canon was valued for espousing American values, and authors who pursued American themes were added to the canon. Or at least, American themes as seen by white men. The American experiences of women, blacks, Latinos, etc. weren’t received quite so warmly.
Glad we read Benjamin Zephaniah alongside Dickens. As a now-24yo its interesting thinking back what we read and why our teachers may have made those decisions.
I read Les Mis on my own steam in junior high. In high school, we did read and discus the same books together but we were also given a diverse list of books to choose one off of and dive into ourselves. I read Yellow Raft in Blue Water; I have never heard of this novel anywhere else and it is one of my favourite books of all time, especially for the re-readability; You MUST read the book more than once to get its full impact.
With every video, my crush on Lindsay Ellis continues. *sigh*
She's married now. Oh well.
Woah woah woah, boy better not be making eyes at my critic waifu.
Is she married? I don't recall a wedding ring in any of her videos.
+r0bw00d She is. She shared wedding photos and talked about her husband in her tweets.
Huh. Was it to Todd? I'll bet it was to Todd.
Speaking as an over educated white guy, I am a little tired of all the white guy protagonists.
It really was atypical for my school to present material that wasn't American or UK focused, with only small time given to epics by Homer or about Gilgamesh.
I had to reach to find material like Arabian Nights, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or the Bhagavad Gita, and I STILL have only outlines or senses of these things rather than being able to see how they ave influenced their countries and cultures. The only reason I know as much as I do about "Journey to the West" is by being told how much it influenced Anime.
Western canon has its place, it is good to make a literary reference and have people get what I am talking about, but I think I would like to be able to reference something that someone from Korea, Brazil, or Namibia would get should be a concern. Can a high school class titled "World Literary Canon" be created?
That would be awesome. Roman novels should also be included as well.
Don't forget Old Egyptian Love Poetry. It's... very saucy ;)
That's all well and good, but there are just so many different cultures and different literatures that you couldn't give anything the attention it deserves.
+Sebastian Schumacher So, since we can't give everyone a piece of the pie, we should give only one person the whole pie?
no u should focus on common cultural background of your culture, bcs it gives u means of comunication inside of this culture and helps u socialize with others through familiar art work. If u want u can study other cultures art but for major part of population its not as important as having to study your own culture. Its the same as studying history. U study history of your country more in depth and other countries history just in relation to your country history.
As a recent graduate in literary theory I must say that a lot of the reading we did in my 4 years was incredibly diverse and the most boring books were the ones considered classics. I struggled incredibly hard to get through Treasure Island, or The Great (if I ever have to write a paper on this book again I will carve out my own eyes with a spoon) Gatsby for instance were horrible, but Book of Salt and a Raisin in the Sun hooked me and made me want to keep reading. Discussions were more engaging and insightful and exploring them by writing essays really made you think, rethink and fall in love.
The literary canon is evolving and growing. Native Son and To Kill a Mockingbird are now part of it.
"Whatever makes you want to read more" is not a particularly interesting position.
The themes, values, principles and archetypes in the content are deemed important not because "Old white men" deemed them so, but because they say something significant about the human condition. You can of course claim that any book says SOMETHING about the human condition, but let's not pretend 50 Shades is going to spur humanity to question itself in the same way War and Peace can and did. "Why not?!" because ultimately the titillation found in 50 shades delves only so deep, eventually you hit the bedrock of carnal desire. That's not to say that there aren't books and authors outside of western canon that don't achieve this and do it in a way that is as significant as the typical roster... but the manner in which you describe it sounds dangerously flippant and dismissive "Yes, perhaps as dismissive as the lost voices throughout history pushed out by 'The Western Canon'" right... but a mistake is not fixed with another mistake. This is not a zero sum game.
I disagree - 50 Shades raises some very deep questions - mostly "why on earth is this garbage so popular?" - the main difference is that interesting analysis of 50 Shades has to do it in context of its reception, while Pride and Prejudice (say) only needs the context of its setting.
I feel like you’re coming at this like you think the only books worth reading are the classics, and that if a book is not a classic then it’s only worth is kindling. Granted, I do not know you or what you have read, or even your personal tastes in books. But since you have picked the ever so easy target of 50 Shades as an example, this has thus informed my opinion. Not that I have come to defend the book.
I take issue with your complaint about the conclusion that people should read what they want. First and foremost, it is important that reading is encouraged, especially in this increasingly busy world we live in. However, I think most people are scared of reading due to a history of being forced to read books deemed classics that they do not like. Even if someone is an avid reader, if the books doesn’t click with you then it becomes so much harder to read. This is why the pulp books are so important. Books like the Da Vinci Code, Carrie, or even 50 shades are important, in their own way. They’re fine as books go (harmful messages and lackluster composition not withstanding) as long as they aren’t the last or only book. Whatever keeps a person reading. If that means that you mix only a little of Tolstoy between your Brown and King and Butler and Himes, then so be it. I myself have only read a handful of classics, and some of them were finished with half my brain kicking and screaming or not at all.
The themes and motif’s of some of the classics will always be interesting to pick apart, but first a person has to like the book, or everything else is just extra work.
War and Peace may be very influential in academic circles, but you can't dismiss 50 shades as inconsequential, especially from a social standpoint. You say 50 shades does not "spur humanity to question itself" like War and Peace, but how many contemporary people do you think have actually had a real debate with friends and acquaintances, on the nature of relationships and sex, based on 50 shades and the controversies it raised? The same can't really be said for War and Peace.
I get that War and Peace and other novels like it were deliberately written to be a comment on the human condition, but that doesn't really mean they are the only platform we have to better ourselves, or even the best one.
I never said the only books worth reading are classics. I said that the classics are classics for a reason. And making assumptions about me based on a single example of a point I'm making is ridiculous. I also didn't say that people shouldn't read what they want - I'm suggesting that "Whatever makes you want to read more" is not as valuable as what the classics have to offer to humanity as a whole. There is a reason they are considered classics... things don't stand the test of time just because old white men said they should... shit sinks and cream floats and "50 shades of grey" will be as forgotten a tome of pop garbage as "Basic Instinct" was for film.
And reading for the sake of reading is a pointless venture. I can read a fucking TV guide... it offers nothing to the species as a whole. And I didn't even remotely suggest that classics were for everybody or that if you don't like them there is something wrong with you. There are tonnes of classics I started and never finished because I just wasn't that interested in them... but that doesn't make them any less valuable. And no this isn't a hypocritical statement with regards to 50 shades. Time will prove that - when the classics remain and 50 shades is forgotten - like Basic Instinct.
Uh... I absolutely can dismiss it as inconsequential.... and no I really don't think it's material worth delving that deeply into.
You can certainly over analyze pop material if you like, but I'm not particularly interested in bathing in shit.
Oh PBS... why are we giving you money again?
4:58 Yayy !! The Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime movie !
I love using this as a 5-6 minute class start up! Lindsay is perfect for it.
Nothing makes people feel more smug than reading and "understanding" old books...
I have read Moby Dick. I found it to be pretty boring to be perfectly honest. And you can't put that on its age, I read Anna Karenina which is about as old (older? I forget off the top of my head) and I really liked it.
I've been meaning to read Anna Karenina, the problem is that I mispronounced the title in a conversation with my old roommate and I think of that dumb little shame every time it comes up
I wasn't able to get to the ship when I picked up Moby Dick. 12 pages of musings on the painting on the wall pretty much did me in.
Agreed. Go out and read, people! Find what inspires you and get after it.
Love this series!
To be fair, Bloom has _some_ arguments that are a bit more complex than a backlash against increased appreciation of diverse writers in literary academia and his particular variation of the canon did include some diversity such as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and August Wilson (in fact, his version of the canon was sometimes criticized as being "too political"). His review of Harry Potter is still one of the worst reviews I've ever seen.
Having said that, I do think it's entirely fair to criticize the western canon for being extremely white. In particular, I dislike that a story about Christianity wearing the veil of Buddhism (Siddhartha) is more widely taught in America than actual Buddhist writings.
I guess it's probably worth explaining what I mean by "_some_ arguments."
Specifically-and I forget where exactly he stated this-one of his arguments was that coming at a particular work with a particular ideological lens instead of engaging with a work on its own terms prevents you from really appreciating those works. So-and this is my own example-watching Game of Thrones to look for a critique of feudalism would diminish the work. It's not that critiques of feudalism aren't in Game of Thrones (and to be clear: Feudalism was an incredibly shitty system), it's that focusing on that one particular aspect of the show you've decided you're going to focus on beforehand instead of the themes the show seems most interested in means you get less from the work as a whole.
Obviously the examples he would use aren't quite so tailor-made to be inoffensive, and iirc this was part of a screed against the "increased politicization" of English academia, so he's hardly the best spokesperson for this idea. At this point I'm not even sure if it's how he meant the argument to be taken or if it's just my interpretation of his argument. But I think it's an interesting idea and one worth discussing in literary criticism.
Other than that... Well, you got me.
laila and majnu is better than romeo and Julia can somebody back me
@@Sayemsinha Romeo and Juliet is about virgin immature love . laila and majnu is about madness that can cause by love as far as themes go one is clearly supior than the other.
That depends. Laila and Majnun is an old story with many iterations, some better than others, and maybe the best ones can surpass Romeo and Juliet? (I haven't actually read any.) The only reason R&J still holds up is Shakespeare's literally style, and maybe messages - the problem being noone can agree on what those are. I've seen very unorthodox interpretations of R&J - just watch Overly Sarcastic Productions video on the subject.
@@tereziamarkova2822 don't give Disney argument that why we have gnomio and Juliet
As a Tragedy or a Romance?
4:28 I thought he was wearing a scrunchie for a second there 😭
Absolutely brilliant, I am going to find the best guide on building dog catapaults this very moment!
This still doesn't explain why I had to read Ethan Frome. That thing is terrible.
@@FluffyBunniesOnFire I do. But I was never assigned it.
I was so lucky to be in the *one* class with an English teacher who hated Ethan Frome. We read A Separate Peace instead.
I still thought it was bad, but less unbearably awful than Ethan Frome.
Violins1345 we also read A Separate Piece (and watched the movie). Like you I was not a fan, but it's not as depressing as Ethan Frome.
...I didn't even know there was a movie. O.O
Violins1345 there is 2 actually 1972 and 2004. I've only seen the 72 one and barley remember it.
Whenever I hear the word "diverse" nowadays, I consider puking as a fitting response c:
Sometimes people that are different from you seem scary, but they can turn out to be nice if you're willing to be friends!
I’m in high school, and we read diverse books, some that were shown as examples in the video. To name a few, we have read Their Eyes Were Watching God, The House on Mango Street, Fredrick Douglas’s biography, West with the Night, Frankenstein. These are all required readings.
In my experience, kids in high school today are reading books not just by old white men, but POC and women as well. The literary canon is changing.
Don’t forget that War and Peace is also a popular musical!