On Textual Poachers (aka I luff my school library)
So, because I so obviously don't have the time right now, I decided to start reading to Jenkin's Textual Poachers in bits and nibbles. Since there is only so much lit studies I can get through before my brain melts and I spend hours in the library anyway...
But, whatevs. Only a few pages in, I realized how aged this book is. It's still a very important work and a lot of what he writes ought to be as valid now as then - but if anyone has some commentaries, good critical articles etc, they'd be much appreciated ^^
Also, why is Iceland separated from Europe in the foreword? 0_ô
Let's switch topics, to the real reason I'm sitting in the school library!
We got a quite interesting discussion going in the seminar today, altough as usual we had to leave because the next class came just when things got a bit heated. What I have noticed on this course, however, is that most of us are sorely lacking in a structural grounding. I've got at least some basic feminism and queer theory, but there's a lot of other ways to work with a literary text and nobody has told us how to do this.
While I can understand the merits of this more practical approach too - we read texts in pretty much cronological order, see how they build on each other and pick up bits and pieces of theory as we go along - some of the teachers don't seem to understand that most students have NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE REFERING TO. Or they just don't know how to teach students who have this vague grasp of literary theory. The books we read either assume that people know this stuff and just refer to [difficult concept]; I am looking at you in particular, Mr Auerbach's Mimesis.
Or, even worse, they don't really spell out what the heck kind of theory they are using, leaving everyone in substantial confusion because we wouldn't know a Freudian literary analysis if it bit us in our non-existing penii
Strangely enough, except for my forays into gender studies and feminist history, I have mostly been able to draw from my German high school year. It may have been a bloody nightmare to attack Kafka and the suffering young Werther in German, but at least I received the tools to pick apart a text.
This is btw a problem I've seen in loads of courses at university, and only the humanist subjects. Nobody expects you to come into a chemistry class and know... anything, except what they teach you in high school, basically. But whether it's introduction to gender studies, or linguistics, or... anything (except rethorics. that was an extremely practical class, where they basically told us that the theory comes next year) there is this underlying assumption that you 1) know who Freud and Focault are 2) have a general outline of their work fresh in your mind 3) and if you don't, hey, just pick them up at the library and read it without your teachers bothering to mention them/their most important works by name until three months into the course.
It's getting a wee bit annoying
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.
But, whatevs. Only a few pages in, I realized how aged this book is. It's still a very important work and a lot of what he writes ought to be as valid now as then - but if anyone has some commentaries, good critical articles etc, they'd be much appreciated ^^
Also, why is Iceland separated from Europe in the foreword? 0_ô
Let's switch topics, to the real reason I'm sitting in the school library!
We got a quite interesting discussion going in the seminar today, altough as usual we had to leave because the next class came just when things got a bit heated. What I have noticed on this course, however, is that most of us are sorely lacking in a structural grounding. I've got at least some basic feminism and queer theory, but there's a lot of other ways to work with a literary text and nobody has told us how to do this.
While I can understand the merits of this more practical approach too - we read texts in pretty much cronological order, see how they build on each other and pick up bits and pieces of theory as we go along - some of the teachers don't seem to understand that most students have NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE REFERING TO. Or they just don't know how to teach students who have this vague grasp of literary theory. The books we read either assume that people know this stuff and just refer to [difficult concept]; I am looking at you in particular, Mr Auerbach's Mimesis.
Or, even worse, they don't really spell out what the heck kind of theory they are using, leaving everyone in substantial confusion because we wouldn't know a Freudian literary analysis if it bit us in our non-existing penii
Strangely enough, except for my forays into gender studies and feminist history, I have mostly been able to draw from my German high school year. It may have been a bloody nightmare to attack Kafka and the suffering young Werther in German, but at least I received the tools to pick apart a text.
This is btw a problem I've seen in loads of courses at university, and only the humanist subjects. Nobody expects you to come into a chemistry class and know... anything, except what they teach you in high school, basically. But whether it's introduction to gender studies, or linguistics, or... anything (except rethorics. that was an extremely practical class, where they basically told us that the theory comes next year) there is this underlying assumption that you 1) know who Freud and Focault are 2) have a general outline of their work fresh in your mind 3) and if you don't, hey, just pick them up at the library and read it without your teachers bothering to mention them/their most important works by name until three months into the course.
It's getting a wee bit annoying
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.