My guest today discusses the matter in her article.
The Teaching of Contemporary
Literature in College Courses
For most of
Western history, education meant one thing to aspiring writers wanting to learn
their craft: the classics. The study of the ancient poets, playwrights,
philosophers, historians and orators of Greece and Rome made up the better part
of any lettered person’s curriculum.
This
Mediterranean dominance was first seriously broken with the rise of the cult of
Shakespeare, the vernacular genius of English literature who was himself mocked
in his time for having “small Latin and less Greek.” In the wake of his
tremendous and all-encompassing output, English-speaking people finally had a
figure they could hold up with pride against Homer or Sophocles.
Similarly, it
took a long time before American literature was considered a subject worthy of
study -- even in America!
To be sure,
founding fathers like Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin had captured the
notice of the literate world. Noah Webster had codified American English as the
unique language of the young republic with his dictionaries. The writers we now
consider the pantheon of early American literature (Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne,
Poe, Melville, etc.) were all aware of their provincial status compared to the
well-established culture of Europe. This comes through clearly in the Old
Europe setting of most of Poe’s stories. Even as late as the turn of the last
century, our most talented writers of fiction (Henry James) and poetry (T.S.
Eliot) both renounced their American identity altogether, fleeing across the
Atlantic and becoming British subjects.
“All modern
American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn.”
So said Ernest
Hemingway. And by the time American Literature was first truly embraced as an
academic subject, after World War II (an event that made the U.S. the dominant
world power culturally as well as politically), Hemingway himself had to be
included, along with other then-contemporary writers like Fitzgerald and
Faulkner.
The percentage
of Americans who attend college shot through the roof with the post-war G.I.
Bill, and has steadily grown higher since. In the meantime, academia became
increasingly politicized from the 1970s to 1990s. Multicultural and feminist
critiques of “old dead white guys” coming to the fore” and ideas imported
(often sloppily) from French deconstructionists making the scholarship coming
humanities departments ever more theoretical and impenetrable. The end result
was a confused canon, but one that rightly tried to include as many great works
as possible from marginalized voices.
Meanwhile,
another very different countervailing trend bubbled below the surface. The
writing of fiction was taught as a practical fine-arts discipline for the first
time, starting at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1936. This MFA-style approach
has lately trickled down into classrooms, balancing out the overly political
and theoretical approaches with an emphasis on craft.
And that’s where
we are today. The Internet, desktop publishing, print on demand and e-books
have all served to democratize literature. If anything, our problem today is
that practically every reader sees themselves as a writer! If this seems to
have some of the potential of a modern-day Tower of Babel, nevertheless it’s a
good problem to have.
In the
literature classes I’ve taken and taught, I’ve seen so much enthusiasm for the
possibilities of contemporary writing, it’s enough to make you want to ignore
all the doomsayers babbling about “the end of the book.” Even if bestsellers
are largely crap, they probably always were. Today’s literate public is as
informed and curious as ever before, and I think this is threatening to some of
the traditional gatekeepers. Here’s hoping our college students continue to
argue passionately about Franzen and Morrison, DFW and Philip Roth, Fifty
Shades of Grey and James Frey...and for that matter, Homer and Sophocles
too!
Angelita
Williams is a freelance writer and education enthusiast who frequently
contributes to onlinecollegecourses.com.
She strives to instruct her readers and enrich their lives and welcomes you to
contact her at angelita.williams7@gmail.com
if you have any questions or comments.
Interesting article. I think it takes a long time for current literature to become legitimate in the eyes of readers. Latino lit is finding it's place in American literature. Since it depicts a very real part of being American, I think one day it will be valued more than it currently is, and hopefully incorporated more in college curriculum.
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