It seems that Oxford University Honours School of English Language and Literature has been debating the future of Old English (which a lecturer seemed to think was an irrelevant dead-end), Chaucer, and Shakespeare, in the compulsory parts of the syllabus.
For all I know, they are no longer compulsory.
The new syllabus includes Phillip Roth. The subject of his book, 'Portnoy's Complaint', is masturbation.
I can think of no 'deader-end' than that particular vice.
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4 comments:
Just today I was telling my wife why I liked this course so much and consider myself so lucky to have got a place on it: the history of language component. Thus Oxford adbicates leadership and joins the sheep. The Roth component is symptomatic in that it reflects the postmodern culture's dominant contraceptive and narcissistic traits and its refusal to grow up from callow sexuality.
Ben - please don't be depressed by the indignant and resentful bellowing of this old dinosaur. I was only reporting a debate at Oxford which may have ended diffently. Roth wrote other books.
Your course must be very interesting. I did a similar one nearly fifty years ago.
Tried to find your blog by tracking back from your name, but no success. ould you please give me the url?
www.uzima.blogspot.com
I'm also prone to indignant and resentful bellowing, which is why I stopped engaging in debates on Facebook: I found it too easy to let myself be goaded by unprincipled postmodern trolls to whom nothing is sacred. Better my own blog where I can edit the comments :-)
By "this course" I'm referring to the Oxford Eng Lang and Lit course which I did 34 or so years ago. I was only a few years too late for Tolkien, who was a great champion of Old English and philology at that university.
I did it from 1961-1964 at New College. Tolkien's son, Christopher, taught us Old English and John Bayley Shakespeare and XIX Century.
Best of all, we had John Buxton, now, I fear, forgotten, for Renaissance to XVIII Cent.
Everything was historical, the only approach I can deal with. Themes and genres? Phooey!
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