Although he was on a border between two cultures within the UK- a recognisable class division and a national Welsh/English one, we are now in a 30 year period of rapid change brought about by mass immigration and technology. Williams’ appeal to a vague common purpose is now drowned out in a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of ambiguity. No political party can appeal to a mass anymore, for example. Look at the hapless Labour Party or the Greens- rewilding vs open borders? I’m not surprised the young person on the phone hadn’t heard of Williams. Ditched from cultural studies as a pale male no doubt. A young relative of mine has completed an English Degree. Clearly a simple Anglo Saxons to the Present approach couldn’t cover everything but the gaps in her knowledge are shocking: Spenser; Chaucer; Swift; Dryden; Yeats; Pope; Conrad; even DH Lawrence- not a clue. I’ve come across a number of English grads over the past 20 yrs with an increasing ignorance of many key periods and texts. Sadly, used to Bite Sized dished up A Level Courses, many undergrads are now not widely read and English degree courses have declined into extract/themed/cultural studies/theory (except Williams!) courses, often with a desperate attempt to include minor authors in the name of balance. Perhaps it does represent today’s culture- a shifting shiny surfaced glitter ball with many tiny mirrors that merely reflect back the viewer in fragments. If she’d read Swift my young relative would know I’m only echoing his comment in Battle of the Books: ‘Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it’ but young English grads know very little 18th century literature although they might have read an extract ( the full text is too dull and difficult for them) of the minor female dramatist Aphra Behn to ‘balance up’ courses.
How sad (but not surprising) to learn that English Literature is no longer actually read at ‘Uni’. In my day I ploughed happily through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Ashley Cooper, Dryden, Locke, Hume, Pope, Gay, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Johnson, Sterne, Wordsworth, Adam Smith, Coleridge, Byron, Keates, Shelley, Dickens, Elliot, Tennyson, Browning, Wilde, Saki… to name just those I remember reading, some exhaustively, most considerably and none by ‘extract’. I was always reading. With real challenges like ‘Clarissa’ I had a schedule, but even then, once I’d got into the breathless style, I found myself surging on way ahead of myself, feeling perhaps something of the excitement of the intended reader, esconsed secretly in her tiny chamber, desperately turning the pages by a single candle.
Although he was on a border between two cultures within the UK- a recognisable class division and a national Welsh/English one, we are now in a 30 year period of rapid change brought about by mass immigration and technology. Williams’ appeal to a vague common purpose is now drowned out in a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of ambiguity. No political party can appeal to a mass anymore, for example. Look at the hapless Labour Party or the Greens- rewilding vs open borders? I’m not surprised the young person on the phone hadn’t heard of Williams. Ditched from cultural studies as a pale male no doubt. A young relative of mine has completed an English Degree. Clearly a simple Anglo Saxons to the Present approach couldn’t cover everything but the gaps in her knowledge are shocking: Spenser; Chaucer; Swift; Dryden; Yeats; Pope; Conrad; even DH Lawrence- not a clue. I’ve come across a number of English grads over the past 20 yrs with an increasing ignorance of many key periods and texts. Sadly, used to Bite Sized dished up A Level Courses, many undergrads are now not widely read and English degree courses have declined into extract/themed/cultural studies/theory (except Williams!) courses, often with a desperate attempt to include minor authors in the name of balance. Perhaps it does represent today’s culture- a shifting shiny surfaced glitter ball with many tiny mirrors that merely reflect back the viewer in fragments. If she’d read Swift my young relative would know I’m only echoing his comment in Battle of the Books: ‘Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it’ but young English grads know very little 18th century literature although they might have read an extract ( the full text is too dull and difficult for them) of the minor female dramatist Aphra Behn to ‘balance up’ courses.
How sad (but not surprising) to learn that English Literature is no longer actually read at ‘Uni’. In my day I ploughed happily through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Ashley Cooper, Dryden, Locke, Hume, Pope, Gay, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Johnson, Sterne, Wordsworth, Adam Smith, Coleridge, Byron, Keates, Shelley, Dickens, Elliot, Tennyson, Browning, Wilde, Saki… to name just those I remember reading, some exhaustively, most considerably and none by ‘extract’. I was always reading. With real challenges like ‘Clarissa’ I had a schedule, but even then, once I’d got into the breathless style, I found myself surging on way ahead of myself, feeling perhaps something of the excitement of the intended reader, esconsed secretly in her tiny chamber, desperately turning the pages by a single candle.
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