Saturday, 13 June 2009
Hello blog
Just dropping by from Planet Essay-marking to inform you that I seem to have inadvertantly converted three hundred and twenty-one students to Team Harold Bloom. Who woulda thunk that the youtubification of America's canoniser-in-chief would have the good scholars of tomorrer decrying the political correctitude that has robbed them, robbed them, of the opportunity to read Shakespeare? Nobody reads Shakespeare anymore, it turns out, because the canon-busting femmo-Marxo-anarcho-aesthetic-relativists put all the Riverside editions in a big pile labeled School of Resentment, tossed in a match, and proceeded to toast their organic tofu on little sticks.
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6 comments:
What does old 'arry Bloom reckon of this dedication to his talents by the Venga Boyz, I wonder? It's rather non-canonical, but it does have other virtues:
Bloom! Bloom! Bloom!
I want you in my room!
I want you there forever,
We will be there together....
Is it a generalised library- and bookshop-storming political correctness of which they speak or are they trying to please you by railing against the Marxist-Feminist secondary teachers and curriculum writers who have prepared them so poorly for university study?
Ahhh, that would be why I'm having trouble tracking down a dvd of Richard III for my 12 yr old, poor old Dick de Terd was roasted in his bloomin' yoof.
Hey, tomorrow's Bloomsday! That's a nice thought.
Eyrie, it's the generalised library- and bookshop storming political-correctitude, and the political-correctitude of academics who forcefeed their students pop culture when they could be serving up a nourishing diet of Shakespeare, Austen and T.Sludebottom Eliot. They have a kind of point: it's not much fun going round canon-busting when there's no conspicuous canon to bust, and these young scholars are pretty desperate for cultural capital - which they maybe wouldn't be if they weren't loaded with it already - and however much I tell 'em that Pink and Katie Perry are culture, they don't that that kind of culture isn't going to get them anywhere very reputable.
Gosh, Jayne, if I could help you with Rick III, I would. Maybe we could put on a live performance?
Cultural capital doesn't have anything to do with how many books you've read or even your ability to make intelligent comments about the books you've read. I've found that out the hard way.
Yeah, that's not how we thought that was going to turn out! Maybe we should have included a link to one of the elenty billion versions of Naomi Wolf telling the story about Harvard, Herself, Bloom, and the Hand like a Dead Fish on the Thigh.
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