At the undergraduate level, how has the study of literature changed

>>8752742
Instead of reading for merit, you'll read books that were selected out of racism ("Afro American lit") and sexism ("Female writers").

>>8752749
not a /pol/tard by any means but this is honestly the truth

>>8752742
Less focus on breadth and more on depth

Unfortunately I believe the only way to gain depth is by focusing on breadth

I go to Columbia and theres a huge emphasis on breadth and IMO its a lot more important because you get a bigger picture of the world and you can chose to focus on stuff in your free time you honestly care about

>>8752749
Im reading Maupassant, Sophocles, Kafka, Joyce and Hemingway. Maybe you just go to a shitty university?

>>8752773
u in the US?

>>8752778

fuck no

>>8752832
That's probably why.

English Lit major here. From what my old-as-sin professors say, a lot of the younger staff has come in and complained about the old way of doing things. All white males, no multicultrailsim. And of course, these professors--the same ones who learned about great literature 15-20 years ago teach Afro American lit, women and Lit, etc-- are all fans of the idea of the death of the author... you know, just to be compelelty contradictory.

>>8753144
>all fans of the idea of the death of the author... you know, just to be compelelty contradictory.

this is my biggest gripe with these faggots. They all follow Barth on that, yet they claim that we need to focus on the author writing the shit, because look at that, he's a gay nigger from Trinidad and Tobago, isn't that neat?

>>8753777
Isn't it more that you are now supposed to analyze texts without including anything about the author? I think "death of the author" has more to do with the analysis rather than what is canon or what we study. But I suppose that those decisions and analysis are in some ways inseperable. Still, I don't think what you refer to is totally contradictory.

>>8753792
>I suppose that those decisions and analysis are in some ways inseperable

I guess it's what you just said. You are supposed to analyze the text on its own, paying attention only to the internal elements and their relationships. Ergo, I assume, one would try to choose texts that support a rich and complex analysis. But no, actually we have to choose texts based on the color of the skin and sexual orientation of the author.

Why? To better represent minorities. But... I thought the goal of our analysis was to focus on the text. It's not a logical contradiction, maybe more like opposing goals or objectives.

>>8752742
Have a look at VN's "Lectures on literature".
It used to be important to really study books rather than Wikipedia yourself into talking about generalities.

>>8752749
This is literally not true, and I graduated theee years ago. Did you even go to college? Most English curriculums have a few required courses covering theory and time periods, and a lot of electives. There might be a class on women authors or something, but nobody forces you to take it.

>>8754010
I agree. I go to a liberal public uni, and they only require one non-western literature course. Otherwise, you could engineer your schedule so as to mostly take authors in the traditional, mostly white canon.

>>8752749
Only true of very low level English courses desu. Those are basically filled with shit professors and garbage books to filter out the undedicated because English lacks that same cognitive filter that STEM fields have in mathematics.

>>8752749
Stop living in /pol/ world. You must have gone to a shit school

>>8754083
It's not even true of low-level English courses. Those are almost always some surveys of early, middle, and modern lit.

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>>8752742
Originally - still firmly going as late as a hundred years ago - poems were studied to teach fluency in Latin. The questions that were asked about them, the opinions expected, etc. were all completely perfunctory, and only intended to make the student use Latin words.

Bad writers were ones that used vulgar Latin, Latin dialects, or had irregular grammar.

This logic was later extended to vernacular poems. Dante's Tuscan dialect became the new language of all Italy, and dialect speakers had to be taught to read Tuscan literature, and were given questions on it to prove they had read it and demonstrate their fluency.

Same goes for English, French, etc. Scots is an example of the kind of dialect that "the Study of Literature," as they so nobly call it, has eradicated.

Now that most dialects have been wiped out, schoolteachers seem to be forgetting that they are little more than drill marshals of language.

>>8752749
This isn't even true. Did you even go to college? When it comes to /lit/ classes unless it's like an introductory survey you rarely have to read something you're not at least vaguely interested in.

>>8754093
>>8754404
dont be so quick to bash this guy. i went to a state school that is moderately ranked, whos focus is education. my major was psych (lmao) and i took a low level lit course called "small town literature" The teacher was a feminist, and almost all the books were heavily related to feminism. so this stuff does happen.

>>8752742
so your also here at princeton or is that just b8

>>8754693
Was pre-law, took a "writing in law" elective. Literally a bunch of short stories about apartheid and other niggardry. Professor was a self-loathing Jew...go figure.

>>8752754
>I'm not a retarded /pol/ poster by any means but honestly I'm a retarded /pol/ poster