(no subject)

[the_rck]

Cordelia's English class this semester will be doing three different works of literature-- Romeo and Juliet, a collection of Hemingway's short stories, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I haven't read the Achebe, but generically approve of something not by a white guy. I'm not sure that they'll learn as much from a full book of Hemingway short stories as they would from shorts by different authors (and maybe some of those different authors could be not-white-guys? Maybe?).

I'm against Romeo and Juliet in high school because part of understanding the play is understanding that young teens do sometimes act like that. Most kids I know look at the play and feel superior because they would never, ever do those stupid things. They miss the fact that they're pretty much all likely to do other such things.

I'm not against Shakespeare in high school, but I'd go for Macbeth or Julius Caesar or possibly one of the English history plays with a discussion on propaganda and patronage and fictionalizing history. Most of the comedies are bad choices unless one has time to stage at least half the play. The comedies have more moving pieces and rely more on shared assumptions between text and reader/viewer. Understanding the comedies, really understanding them, requires a lot more history (just history of theater and literature) than the damned history plays do.

Of course, I'm very fundamentally opposed to teaching literature without context. I think that a big part of what makes literature interesting is seeing how it looks different from different cultural angles. Part of that is teaching that pretty much everything will have a different effect on different individuals. There is no such thing as universally appealing art.

I should probably see if I can dig up a copy of "Shakespeare in the Bush" to toss at Cordelia. She'd likely refuse to read it, but I think that what's in there matters more than being able to recognize blank verse or to recognize alliteration or archaic dirty jokes (not that that last is utterly without value).

I suppose that Romeo and Juliet, Hemingway, and Things Fall Apart are likely to be on AP tests or something. I just want the kids to learn tools for understanding their world and each other. I also think that reading in general is more important than reading specific texts and that writing coherently and grammatically is more important than reading.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

We read Things Fall Apart in high school -- actually, twice, IIRC -- once in an English class (I think sophomore year?), and once in freshman history. It was definitely interesting -- I didn't love it as a book, but it was very neat to see something that was a product from a very different culture than the Western canon, and it was also something I never would've picked up on my own, which is always a good thing for a school curriculum, I feel.

Agreed with you on Romeo and Juliet in high school. We read that sophomore year, too, and even though it was in the class taught by my absolute favorite English teacher, I still did not get much out of it, and in fact it kind of soured me on Shakespeare until I read more things by him (Hamlet and Richard III). And agreed with you on the comedies, too.

I was a bit older than Cordelia when I first read "Shakespeare in the Bush", but I remember it blowing my mind, and sticking around with me for ages after that, so I hope she does read it. (Also, it proved quite easy to dig up online!)

[evalerie]

I was about to ask what "Shakespeare in the Bush" is (after finding that neither my local library nor Amazon has it listed), but you've answered my question. Thanks! :)

[the_rck]

I read "Shakespeare in the Bush" during breaks while I was working for the unit at the local university library that received donated books and magazines. We put books that were duplicates or otherwise not wanted in the back of a storage room so that someone could do a book sale from time to time, and I sometimes borrowed some of those to read when I didn't have anything else.

I'm going to toss the link to Cordelia. I'm also going to dig up my copy of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. I remember finding that helpful when starting Shakespeare because it meant that I wasn't trying to figure out the plot the first time I read the plays.

[fred_mouse]

I'm another one who had to read Romeo and Juliet in late high school -- as far as I can tell the requirement of the time for English Literature was one Shakespeare play in each of year 11 and 12. I have zero memory of what I got out of it. But then I also can't tell you what the other Shakespeare play was. I did get a lot out of the poetry we studied, and I still remember one of the other plays ('Juno and the Paycock') quite strongly. It was much more relevant, and the teacher made us go and research the historical context, so I learnt a lot about a historical setting that hadn't even been mentioned in history classes.

[the_rck]

We did Romeo and Juliet then Merchant of Venice the next year. Senior year, there were two English teachers, and one did Macbeth while the other did either Julius Caesar or Hamlet (I don't recall which for sure).

Junior year was entirely US literature, so we didn't read Shakespeare. The teacher that year was convinced that he looked like Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby.