Comments | tempestsarekind: they're baaaack!

tempestsarekind

they're baaaack!

Dec 03, 2008 11:18

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2008/12/refreshed_classics_abomination.html

(a blog post about No Fear Shakespeare, the new PL translation, and the new Canterbury Tales translation ( Read more... )

chaucer, milton, much ado about nothing, random shakespeare stuff, marry i fear thee (no fear shakespeare), sometimes i do work, austen

Comments 2

a_t_rain December 4 2008, 01:41:05 UTC

I'm with you. The most pernicious thing about those "translations" (and about a hell of a lot of other things about the modern university, but that's another rant for another time) is that they induce a kind of learned helplessness in students. If people are constantly telling them they're not smart enough to wrestle with early modern English by themselves, they need help and handholding, is it any wonder that they start to believe it?

tempestsarekind December 4 2008, 01:47:40 UTC

EXACTLY. It's almost as if it's just become a given, and we keep telling them that over and over, even at the beginnings of editions or introductory books meant to help. (Why do they always seem to start with how hard and foreign Shakespeare is? Why not "look at this really awesome bit"? Couldn't we get to the foreignness a little later, like on page 20?)