English Literature as a school
subject
Renaissance Man
(1994, dir. Penny Marshall)
• 1. Why ‘literature’?
• 2. Why Shakespeare?
• 3. Why Hamlet?
“Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour
off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on
Denmark”
(simile, metaphor)
“
...Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to mee returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine”
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Three, lines 4044
Basic comprehension
1. Understanding complex (literary) language
Bill Rago’s pleasure vs. difficulty
language skills
analytical skills
basic comprehension
2. Understanding (complex) human situations
literature as a life manual; psychotherapy
This is tested in the film:
- Melvin reading the letter from home
- Benitez reciting in the rain from Henry V
- Nathaniel Hobbs reading Othello in jail
The humanist idea of literature
Appreciating beauty → self-improvement
Art transforms us
(Rilke poem: „Change your life!”)
Catharsis
Why Shakespeare?
1. Universal appeal (Sh=‘great literature’)
„Isten másodszülöttje” („the second-born of
God”), Isten után az első („second only to
God), irrespective of age, sex, ethnicity,
religion, historicl period: timeless
• Professor Quiller-Couch (1917): letting
Shakespeare “have his own way with the
young plant  just letting him drop like the
gentle rain from heaven, and soak in”
• Shakespeare: passport to a ‘we’
Shakespeare:
Cultural authority
But:
„He that increases knowledge increases sorrow”
(Ecclesiastes. 1.18; quoted in the film by Hobbs)
Why Shakespeare?
National symbol
usable as propaganda
(Laurence Olivier’s 1945 film Henry V)
Used in education
→ Eng. Lit. as a school subject
institutionalisation
What did we have before ‘Eng.Lit’?
what subjects did it replace?
Classics
Bible studies
Rhetoric
‘EngLit’ was not respectable enough for long
1828: First chair of Eng. Lit. (London);
1904: Oxford
after WW1: “Eng.Lit.” with its present function
“England is sick and … English literature must save
it. The Churches having failed, and social
remedies being slow, English literature has now
a triple function; still, I suppose, to delight and
instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our
souls and heal the state”
(Prof. George Gordon, Oxford)
Eng. Lit. as a school subject
its function is not the passing on of knowledge
but “the cultivation of the mind, the training
of the imagination, the quickening of the
whole spiritual nature”
(Prof. Moorman, Leeds, 1914)
Why Hamlet? Why Henry V?
• Shifting emphasis from Hamlet to Henry V
• Student vs soldier
„Duplicity” of „Eng. Lit.”
„All pupils need the civilizing experience of
contact with great literature, and can respond
to its universality (HUMANIST MYTH). They
will depend heavily on the skill of the teacher
as an interpreter(THE POLITICS OF ENG. LIT)”
(Newsom Report, UK, 1963) : the
classroom as a civilising place
politics = involving power
Interpretation and power 1
„Vajon érted-é, amit olvasol?
Mi módon érthetném, hacsak valaki meg nem
magyarázza nékem?” (Ap. Csel. 8.31)
„Understandest thou what thou readest?
How can I, except some man should guide me?”
(Acts 8.31)
Interpretation and power 2
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost
in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel,
indeed.
H: Methinks it is like a weasel.
P: It is backed like a weasel.
H: Or like a whale?
P: Very like a whale.
Interpretation and power 3
Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew:
Petruchio: Good lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!
Katharina: The moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now.
P: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
K: I know it is the sun that shines so bright.
P: Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
K: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
„Added values”
• Class, race, gender issues and identities
• (no other subject offers similar opportunities)
• unasked questions
The history of “Eng. Lit.”
Eng. Lit. Invented as a “civilising instrument”:
mission of civilizing the natives (“savages”)
1835: English Education Act (India)
(EngLit was indispensable for native officials)
The history of “Eng. Lit.”
Back in Britain:
civilising the “savages” at home
Working classes
standardising language
inventing (reinforcing) national identity
Curriculum, Classics, Canon
Classics: taxation categories
Canon: religious context: texts with authenticity,
authority, and value.
secular context: same features
related to “cannon” and “cane” (Gr. kané)
What we read and how we read