tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/classic-literature-12941/articlesClassic literature – The Conversation2023-11-15T17:45:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177492023-11-15T17:45:16Z2023-11-15T17:45:16ZSaltburn: why you should read Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, the book that inspired the new film<p>Ever since I first read Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited as a master’s students many years ago, I have been smitten. Literary trends and fashions come and go, but I still return to Brideshead every couple of years for sheer reading pleasure.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly Waugh’s most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited was first published in 1945 after the second world war. Its narrative is deeply imbued with nostalgia for an unspoilt, quasi-mythical rural England of stately homes and bright young upper-class people that, it can be argued, never really existed in the first place. </p>
<p>Waugh’s protagonist is Charles Ryder, a young middle-class man with social aspirations, whio meets and befriends the upper-class Sebastian Flyte while at Oxford. Ryder is seduced by the easy charm and carefree attitude of Sebastian, an infatuation that only increases once Ryder accompanies Sebastian to his ancestral home, Brideshead, and meets his family. </p>
<p>This storyline is emulated in English director Emerald Fennel’s new film, Saltburn. The film follows Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), an awkward student who is trying to find his place at Oxford. Quick is taken under the wing of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to spend a memorable summer at his sprawling family estate Saltburn. </p>
<p>A riveting thriller, the film is also deeply nostalgic for an England of stately homes full of hedonistic, bright young things. It shows the timelessness of Waugh’s story and your appreciation for Saltburn will only be strengthened by getting to know the novel that inspired it.</p>
<h2>A lost upper-class world</h2>
<p>For Ryder, life at Brideshead offers glimpses into a world he aspires to – a world of connections, money, and an assured self-confidence that comes from generations of privilege. Seduced by the lifestyle, Ryder fails to see that Flyte battles his own demons and the pressures of his Catholic family. Eventually, Flyte succumbs to alcoholism and the friends lose touch with each other.</p>
<p>Years later, during a cruise, Ryder, now a relatively successful painter and unhappily married, meets Flyte’s sister Julia and the two start an affair. Both plan to divorce their respective partners and start a life together at Brideshead. But, once again, Ryder fails to read the signs.</p>
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<p>Julia, also raised a Catholic, caves in to pressure and renounces the relationship, which her faith judges immoral and wrong. The novel ends as it has started – at a war-time Brideshead which, requisitioned by the army, has fallen into disrepair. Ryder now has also converted to Catholicism and is reminiscing about the past while seeking solace in the chapel.</p>
<p>This brief plot summary does not do justice to a novel that stands out because of its beautiful and haunting prose and its depictions of pre-war British society. Waugh was a gifted writer and the evocation of a lost upper-class world was something particularly close to his own heart. </p>
<p>Brought up in a literary middle-class family – his father was the writer, publisher and literary critic <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1943/Obituary/Arthur_Waugh">Arthur Waugh</a>, his older brother was the novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alec-Waugh">Alexander “Alec” Waugh</a> – he had considerable social aspirations. Barred from Eton due to the scandalous publication of his brother’s novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1205804.The_Loom_of_Youth">The Loom of Youth</a> (1917), he was educated at Lancing College and Oxford University. </p>
<p>Waugh always maintained that not having been at Eton precluded him from being fully accepted by his many upper-class friends. After a brief – and pretty disastrous – career as a public-school teacher, Waugh turned to writing full-time, both as a journalist and as a novelist. </p>
<p>His early novels stand for through their social satire and modernist style, satirising the fast and furious lifestyle of what he came to term the “<a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Bright-Young-Things/">Bright Young Things</a>” of upper-class society, flitting from entertainment to entertainment.</p>
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<h2>Modern invocations</h2>
<p>Waugh converted to Catholicism in 1930 and his writing style changed considerably from that point onwards. His novels became more nostalgic and wistful in tone. </p>
<p>Brideshead is the culmination of that later career stage, bringing together several preoccupations close to Waugh’s own heart. Although it is no longer fashionable to combine an author’s biography with literary criticism, it is certainly possible to say that there is a lot of Waugh himself, albeit probably subconsciously, in the depiction of Charles Ryder who tries so hard – via Sebastian, via Julia, via Catholicism – to become a part of Brideshead and its family. </p>
<p>While Waugh subtitled Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, giving it the framework of a biographical coming-of-age story, it is, from a 21st-century perspective, particularly rewarding to read the novel in a way that might have been unintended by Waugh. That is as the story of a relentless social climber who will change, chameleon-like, love, interests and affiliations in the pursuit of social status. This 21st century take is also what is being teased out in Fennel’s re-imagined Brideshead, Saltburn. </p>
<p>The stylistic beauty of Brideshead Revisited, its character dynamics and thematic focal points, have been the inspiration for many other novels – Alan Hollinghurst’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/22/line-of-beauty-alan-hollinghurst-book-club">The Line of Beauty</a> (2004) or Sarah Waters’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7234875">The Little Stranger</a> (2009), for instance. Despite being published in 1945 and seemingly dealing with societal issues no longer considered of relevance in contemporary society, Brideshead has a perennial influence in British literature and culture – a modern classic that is always worth reading and rereading.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Berberich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The tale lamenting the loss of a mythical British upper class is as sharp now as ever.Christine Berberich, Reader in Literature, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2086512023-07-12T12:39:51Z2023-07-12T12:39:51ZClassic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536664/original/file-20230710-27-mgth0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5815%2C3234&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Novels about underwater adventures offer a glimpse at oceanic life.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/underwater-ocean-royalty-free-image/1485125421?phrase=underwater&adppopup=true">fotograzia via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When OceanGate, the deep-sea exploration enterprise, created a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi60tvRwRlE">promotional video</a> for its ill-fated US$250,000-per-head trip to see the wreck of the Titanic, it told prospective passengers to “Get ready for what Jules Verne could only imagine – a 12,500-foot journey to the bottom of the sea.” Those behind the video hoped viewers would recognize the allusion to the author of one of the most influential and widely read oceanic novels of all time, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/855909314">20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</a>.”</p>
<p>There are indeed eerie similarities between the 1870 French novel and the circumstances surrounding the Titan submersible, which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/missing-submarine-titanic-search.html">lost contact less than two hours into its descent</a> into the depths of the Atlantic.</p>
<p>In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg. A man of untold wealth dreams of voyaging to the bottom of the sea, sharing with a select few passengers a glimpse of the mysteries of the deep. He descends to the ocean floor in order to gawk at the wreckage of a great ship that sank years before. But later in the novel a technical problem in the submarine starts a race against time as crew members try to reach the surface before their oxygen tanks are empty. And not everyone survives.</p>
<p>For me, as the leader of a “<a href="https://ihr.asu.edu/blue-humanities">Blue Humanities” initiative at Arizona State University</a> that explores how the literature of the past can inform the present about the importance of the oceans, revisiting the novel served another purpose. It reaffirmed for me how classic literature – particularly stories about adventures at sea and, quite frankly, misadventures, as well – continues to serve as one of the best ways for humanity to educate itself about the largely unexplored realm.</p>
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<img alt="A character from Jules Verne's novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' looks out a submarine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536679/original/file-20230710-25-v6kppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jules Verne’s novel ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ follows a wealthy man who voyages to the bottom of the sea to explore a ship that sank years before.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/captain-nemo-twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea-jules-news-photo/869034230?adppopup=true">Marka/Universal Images Group Editorial via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Exploring the ‘seven seas’</h2>
<p>Verne’s original title had “les mers” - seas, plural. A “league” (French “lieue”) was a measure that has been different lengths at different times in history. In the novel, it is just over 2 miles. So Verne was alluding to distance traveled, not depth of descent. The deepest place on Earth, the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mariana-trench-is-7-miles-deep-whats-down-there/">Mariana Trench</a> in the Pacific, is only 3½ leagues down, whereas the journey of the imaginary submarine, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, is a 40,000-mile circumnavigation of what used to be called “the seven seas.”</p>
<p>Verne’s novel and other classics – such as Herman Melville’s “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1263807806">Moby-Dick</a>” in 1851, and Thomas Hardy’s 1912 poem on the sinking of the Titanic, “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47266/the-convergence-of-the-twain">The Convergence of the Twain</a>” – are allegories of nature shattering the hubris of technology.</p>
<p>In Melville’s novel, the great white whale rams the good ship Pequod and drags Captain Ahab to a watery death. </p>
<p>For Hardy, <a href="https://www.historyonthenet.com/the-titanic-why-did-people-believe-titanic-was-unsinkable">the claim that the Titanic was “unsinkable</a>” is a prime example of human arrogance. In his poem, he imagines how sea-worms – “grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent” – now crawl over the gilded mirrors that were meant to “glass the opulent.”</p>
<h2>Unexplored depths</h2>
<p>The ocean bed remains an alien world. Like outer space, it is truly a final frontier. Indeed, it is often said that <a href="https://whalebonemag.com/know-more-about-mars-bottom-ocean/">we know more about Mars than we do about the bottom of the sea</a>. The National Ocean Service reminds us that the seas cover more than two-thirds of the planet. Still, “more than eighty percent of this vast, underwater realm remains <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html">unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored</a>.”</p>
<p>The mysteriousness of what lurks down there makes the seabed a prime location for fantasy. This can be seen in <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/atlantis">Plato’s ancient idea of a lost kingdom called Atlantis</a>. And it can also be seen in the enduring idea of the <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-mermaid">mermaid</a>, or the comic world of SpongeBob SquarePants – which was created by a marine science educator, the late <a href="https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/spongebob-squarepants-creator-dead-dies-stephen-hillenburg-1203037362/">Stephen Hillenburg</a>.</p>
<p>There is an ingrained human fear of sinking below the waves. This fear is depicted in such haunting paintings as Théodore Géricault’s “<a href="https://smarthistory.org/theodore-gericault-raft-of-the-medusa/">The Raft of the Medusa</a>” and J.M.W. Turner’s “<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-shipwreck-n00476">The Shipwreck</a>.” So too, from the Greek tragedy of “<a href="https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/objects-and-artworks/highlights/context/stories-and-histories/the-death-of-hippolytus#:%7E:text=As%20he%20leaves%20his%20home,tell%20Theseus%20of%20the%20disaster.">Hippolytus” by Euripides</a> to “<a href="https://www.tor.com/2009/10/13/the-way-the-world-ends-john-wyndhams-lemgthe-kraken-wakeslemg/">The Kraken Wakes</a>,” a 1953 novel by science fiction writer John Wyndham, there is terror at the idea of a monster rising from the deep.</p>
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<span class="caption">A spare anchor sits in its well on the forepeak of the shipwrecked Titanic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/forepeek-of-titanic-shipwreck-royalty-free-image/520112444?phrase=titanic&adppopup=true">Ralph White via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In our world of <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/bio/lauren-kubiak/marine-biodiversity-dangerous-decline-finds-new-report">marine biodiversity loss</a>, <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062016/coral-bleaching-alarms-scientists-climate-change-global-warming-great-barrier-reef/">bleached coral</a> and <a href="https://marinesanctuary.org/blog/ocean-acidification/">ocean acidification</a>, we need positive as well as paranoid imaginings of the deep. The literature of the sea gives us not only tales of maritime bravery and catastrophe, but also compelling imagery that fosters a more sobering understanding of the threats to the world’s oceans and oceanic life.</p>
<h2>Among the first</h2>
<p>Jules Verne was indeed a pioneer of the celebration of underwater life that has been the mission of natural history documentaries from Jacques Cousteau’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr4FrELKfvk">The Silent World</a>” in 1956 to Sir David Attenborough’s “<a href="https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/blue-planet">The Blue Planet</a>” in 2001.</p>
<p>It was only with the invention of the submarine that humans could reach more than a few feet below the surface of the waves. In the 1620s the Dutch inventor <a href="http://scihi.org/cornelis-drebbel-submarine/">Cornelis Drebbel</a> descended into the River Thames in a bell-shaped submersible powered by oars, his oxygen supplied by setting fire to saltpeter. </p>
<p>At the end of the 18th century there were <a href="https://archive.org/details/robertfultonsubm00parsrich/page/n15/mode/2up">rudimentary attempts at designing military submarines</a>, including a French one called the Nautilus, which gave Verne the name for his imaginary invention. His more immediate inspiration was the <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/02/priority-plongeur-french-submarine-launched-1863-first-world-propelled-mechanical-rather-human-power/">Plongeur</a>, designed for the French navy in the early 1860s. It reached a depth of 30 feet – or 9 meters – and could stay underwater for two hours. </p>
<p>Verne saw a model of it at the <a href="https://library.brown.edu/cds/paris/worldfairs.html#de1867">1867 Exposition Universelle</a> in Paris, where he also learned about a recent discovery: the mechanical power of electricity. He put the two things together and set about writing a novel about an electrically powered submarine with an invincible hull, snaking under the oceans at unprecedented speed.</p>
<p>In the initial draft, the fabulously wealthy and cultured Captain Nemo is a Polish nobleman and political radical in flight from the Russian imperialism that has destroyed his family and homeland. But <a href="https://frenchquest.com/2020/11/08/hidden-treasures-the-manuscripts-of-twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea/">Verne’s publisher made him remove the politics</a>, since Russia was a French ally at the time, so Nemo becomes a figure of mysterious origins. <a href="http://www.verniana.org/volumes/10/HTML/Bertman.html">The name, meaning “no one,</a>” was taken from the pseudonym for Odysseus, the original maritime voyager of Western literature and main character in Homer’s poem “The Odyssey.”</p>
<p>Nemo is both a hero and a murderous hater of humankind. Disillusioned by the modern world, he takes refuge in the wonders of the deep.</p>
<p>Verne read deeply in the nascent science of marine biology, poring over such works as M.F. Maury’s pioneering “<a href="https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/physicalgeograp00maura">The Physical Geography of the Sea</a>,” published in 1855. By incorporating Maury’s research into an adventure story, Verne was able to educate readers of all ages about the astonishing richness of marine life. The novel is filled with detailed catalogs of fish and corals, delighted observations of organic forms ranging from sharks and whales to mollusks and tiny phosphorescent zoophytes. Like <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo27616248.html">Melville in “Moby-Dick</a>” a few years before him and the great environmentalist Rachel Carson in her “<a href="https://loa.org/books/699-the-sea-trilogy">Sea Trilogy</a>” nearly a century after him, Verne braids together scientific taxonomy and poetic imagery. Melville’s novel vividly realizes barnacles and squid as well as whales and sharks. Carson even makes the reader empathize with slimy eels. So too, Verne’s novel includes dozens of sentences <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2488/2488-h/2488-h.htm">such as this</a>:</p>
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<p>Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish, genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids; finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of water.</p>
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<p>The scientist <a href="https://jbshaldane.org/">J.B.S. Haldane</a> once said, “The world will not perish for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.” Perhaps it is now time to reawaken a sense of wonder at the life of the oceans by returning to such classics of marine literature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The recent tragedy of the Titan submersible bore striking parallels to one of the most widely read novels about life at sea.Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982342023-01-29T19:10:02Z2023-01-29T19:10:02Z‘Nostalgic’ classics, or edgy contemporary texts? What books are kids reading in Australian schools – and does it matter?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505841/original/file-20230123-22-3g6e08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5698%2C3782&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodnae Productions/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Debates about what books students should be reading in high school reach a crescendo at the start of each school year. </p>
<p>As parents make their way through school text lists, collecting books for their teen’s year ahead, they inevitably draw comparisons between their own school reading and the literature selected for their children by teachers, schools and mandated curriculum. </p>
<p>Some are astounded their teens are still reading the same books they read at school. </p>
<h2>Everyone has an opinion</h2>
<p>One father of a Year 9 daughter wondered on Twitter last week, at the start of the 2023 school year, why she was assigned the “boring” <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/animal-farm-9781784876579">Animal Farm</a>, <a href="https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/romeo-and-juliet/">Romeo and Juliet</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/wuthering-heights-vintage-classics-bronte-series-9781784870744">Wuthering Heights</a>. (His original post was so flooded with responses, he became overwhelmed and deleted it.)</p>
<p>Some of his fellow parents agreed an all-classics diet threatened to turn teens off reading, and called for older texts to be replaced with contemporary ones that reflected teen lives. Some raised the diversity problem of the so-called – mainly white male – “canon”. And others called for a blend of classic and contemporary books, to tick all the boxes.</p>
<p>But everyone had an opinion.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1615295903774150656"}"></div></p>
<p>Compulsory schooling has done extraordinary things for our collective skills and knowledge. But one of the consequences of requiring almost everybody to complete a secondary education is that it has become common, even natural, for adults to hold strong beliefs about the “right” kinds of literature that should occupy school time. </p>
<p>In the social media age, it is easier than ever for parents to share these views. Their concerns are also tied up in almost perpetual anxiety about <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/what-are-21st-century-parents-concerned-about">young people and their futures</a>.</p>
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<h2>Diversity backlash</h2>
<p>These anxieties have not been helped by political leaders who capitalise on the opportunity to politicise the school curriculum for the purposes of leveraging their opponents and stoking their bases. Whenever attempts are made to read and study texts in the English classroom that reflect the diversity of Australian society – and within Australian classrooms – the backlash is intense and sustained. </p>
<p>When former Prime Minister Tony Abbott appointed staunch conservatives to <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/australian-curriculum/resources/review-australian-curriculum-final-report-2014">review English</a> in the Australian Curriculum, the resulting report was awash with racist commentary about the “wrong kinds of literature”, and called for a greater emphasis on Western <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-peter-dutton-trying-to-start-another-political-fight-over-the-school-curriculum-187021">literature</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, attempts were made by New South Wales legislative council member <a href="https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/pdf/bill/23825666-d434-4634-ab16-6850f5f2a4eb">Mark Latham</a> to amend the Education Act, so that teachers who taught gender fluidity – including through the selection of texts with gender fluid characters – would be sacked. </p>
<p>These examples demonstrate the precarious grounds upon which teachers must make decisions about which literature is best for their students.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-20-years-of-award-winning-picture-books-non-white-people-made-up-just-12-of-main-characters-147026">In 20 years of award-winning picture books, non-white people made up just 12% of main characters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are they reading at school?</h2>
<p>Concerningly, no research has ever been conducted in Australia to collect reliable data about what a typical high-school reading list contains. This means almost all of the discussion about the content of teen reading in schools is based on observations, anecdotes and presumptions. </p>
<p>We do have a good sense of what students might be <em>taught</em>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/english/">Australian Curriculum</a>, along with the various state iterations of that guiding document, makes suggestions about the types of literature students should be exposed to: classic and contemporary world literature, including texts from and about Asia and First Nations people. And about the forms literature should take: novels, poetry, short stories and plays; fiction for young adults and children, multimodal texts such as film, and a variety of nonfiction. </p>
<p>However, specific titles are not identified in these documents. Senior (Years 11 and 12) English and Literature curricula across Australian states and territories provide more guidance, with most jurisdictions providing highly restrictive lists from which teachers must select texts for their classes.</p>
<p>Some of the limited evidence we have from the past and present suggests we have a long way to go to produce reading lists that reflect contemporary realities. For example, <a href="https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/38985">Demond Gibbs</a> studied the content and use of school books in Victoria between 1848-1948. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506005/original/file-20230124-25-kc9e73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The original Victorian Readers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ebay</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The early School Papers (1896-1928) tended to privilege British content, reflected conservative social views, were Royalist in tone, and included a small selection of Australian authors. The 1928 shift to the <a href="https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/collections/89c7b9f6-8f0d-5afe-a019-e77cf359135a?spc.sf=dc.date.available&spc.sd=DESC">Victorian Reader</a>, a series of eight books commissioned by the Victorian Education Department, reflected a strong sense of Australian nationalism and far less emphasis on empire. Titles included: John and Betty, Playmates, and Holidays.</p>
<p>More recent research suggests “traditional” literary texts remain the bedrock of senior school reading. One study of ten years of Victorian Senior English texts lists found Indigenous literature is <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australian-literature-s-great-silence">rarely included</a> in these lists and prescribed lists don’t reflect <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=6903">our diverse society</a>. Almost 10% of all texts listed are from the writing of William Shakespeare, John Donne, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, and Ernest Hemingway.</p>
<p>Another study reported that in New South Wales, the recycling of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-recycle-the-same-old-texts-in-our-english-curriculum-39633">the same old texts</a>” – like <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/great-expectations-9780099511571">Great Expectations</a> – is common practice, and <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-enduring-cultural-cringe-about-teaching-australian-literature">others</a> concluded the teaching of Australian literature is inconsistent. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.vate.org.au/news/report-trends-senior-english-text-lists">Research</a> also suggests there is an almost total lack of opportunity for students to read and study digital forms of literary work in the senior years of schooling. </p>
<p>It appears those lamenting the death of the classics have nothing to fear.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506031/original/file-20230124-2613-abepin.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Great Expectations is one of the school texts commonly recycled in New South Wales. Pictured: Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham in a 2012 adaptation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ImDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens-class-prejudices-the-convict-stain-and-a-corpse-bride-159816">Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: class prejudices, the convict stain and a corpse-bride</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why does it matter?</h2>
<p>Given we don’t really know what students are reading in schools, and the world has continued turning on its axis, does this really matter? </p>
<p>On the one hand, it matters greatly. Schools have a powerful role: consecrating some stories and knowledges at the expense of others. As renowned French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/sociology/education-and-sociology/pierre-bourdieu/">established</a> across decades of research, schools and education systems are fundamental tools of state. They actively contribute to the production of certain types of “cultivated” people. </p>
<p>The inclusion and exclusion of literary works is just one way this tool operates. This cultivating has its foundations in ideas about so-called classics.</p>
<p>Arguing about the texts teens will read at school is a perfect example of what Emeritus Professor <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Engaging-Curriculum-Bridging-the-Curriculum-Theory-and-English-Education/Green/p/book/9780367342623">Bill Green calls</a> “the representation” problem. </p>
<p>Since we cannot fit the entire world into the classroom, we must use the curriculum to select which forms of life to represent. Discrimination is inevitable and always political. This discrimination is evident in decision-making about which <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-20-years-of-award-winning-picture-books-non-white-people-made-up-just-12-of-main-characters-147026">children’s picture books</a> receive awards, just as much as controversies about narrowly selected judging panels for <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-prime-ministers-literary-awards-have-proved-contentious-but-this-years-winners-are-worth-celebrating-196217">adult literary awards</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506034/original/file-20230124-13-g5otj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Since we can’t fit the entire world into the classroom, we must use the curriculum to select which forms of life to represent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Katerina Holmes/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adding all texts and all textual modes to school reading lists is impossible. The challenge is for teachers and other stakeholders to be honest about the current state of affairs and priorities – and to also reflect on what might be missing and in need of attention.</p>
<p>Australian schools have been lucky to avoid the waves of book-banning spreading the US. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/19/ron-desantis-bans-african-american-studies-florida-schools">most recent</a> iteration bans African American studies and even the use of the word “gay” in classrooms. </p>
<p>Such bans reflect <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-bans-reflect-outdated-beliefs-about-how-children-read-189938">highly outdated and uninformed views</a> about how children read and the purpose of literature in schooling.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-booktok-and-how-is-it-influencing-what-australian-teenagers-read-182290">What is BookTok, and how is it influencing what Australian teenagers read?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>It’s not what they read, it’s how they read</h2>
<p>Another way to approach big questions about reading at school is to focus less on what is selected, and more on how these texts will be taught. </p>
<p>The conflation of literature and literacy has meant the content of school reading has contributed to an ignorance, at least outside school staff rooms and teacher training courses, of the importance of reading pedagogies: the methods of instruction teachers use when modelling and supporting reading at school.</p>
<p>School reading is about much more than the recitation of details related to characters, quotes and story events. The many reading approaches a teacher can deploy makes it difficult for parents or politicians to judge the validity of a particular text selected for study. </p>
<p>These approaches might include, for example, reading for <a href="https://www.acu.edu.au/about-acu/news/2022/august/reading-for-pleasure-helps-inspire-a-love-of-literacy-and-boost-student-outcomes">pleasure</a>, reading to explore identity and questions of <a href="https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/scholarlywork/1477363-pedagogic-possibilities-of-diasporic-texts-in-a-contemporary-literature-classroom--a-postcolonial-analysis">belonging and alienation</a>, or reading (and writing) to understand <a href="https://theconversation.com/writing-for-our-digital-lives-war-social-media-and-the-urgent-need-to-update-how-we-teach-english-180679">social media</a> and the explosion of digital culture.</p>
<p>Despite the failure of standardised tests like NAPLAN to <a href="https://lens.monash.edu/@education/2021/05/10/1383196/learning-from-disruption-why-we-should-rethink-the-place-of-naplan-in-our-schools">improve school outcomes</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-can-predict-final-school-marks-in-year-11-its-time-to-replace-stressful-exams-with-more-meaningful-education-190071">evidence</a> we do not need high-stakes and high-stress exams to determine end-of-year scores for year 12s, the narrow forms of reading dominated by these approaches crowd out space for rich and diverse school reading.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1615295903774150656"}"></div></p>
<h2>Trust teachers</h2>
<p>We must be honest with each other and recognise we don’t really know whether reading literature makes us better people. </p>
<p>I am reminded here of Franco-American literary critic and philosopher <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332784">George Steiner</a>. He questions the idea high literacy can civilise individuals, by reminding us of those SS officers who would spend their evenings listening to Bach and Schubert and reading Goethe and Rilke, then go to work at the Auschwitz <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem-and-the-problem-of-terrifying-moral-complacency-187600">concentration camp</a> in the mornings.</p>
<p>It would be wonderful if school reading <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-reading-help-heal-us-and-process-our-emotions-or-is-that-just-a-story-we-tell-ourselves-197789">could help heal us, process our emotions</a> and develop empathy. </p>
<p>For now, we must put our faith in English teachers. We must trust them – without interference – to select texts for our teens. They know how literature can support the learning needs of their students better than anyone else. And they have spent their entire working lives specialising in the craft of teaching and supporting reading.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Bacalja is affiliated with the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English, and is Victoria's delegate to the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. </span></em></p>Every year, parents have an opinion on the books on their kids’ reading lists – whether they think the books are stale, unchallenging or confronting. How are books and reading taught?Alex Bacalja, Senior Lecturer, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1961862022-12-19T13:36:14Z2022-12-19T13:36:14Z5 wintry books to read during long nights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501588/original/file-20221216-20-9ln2hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C3%2C703%2C675&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Walden Pond was Thoreau's sometimes chilly muse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/leaf-in-ice-at-walden-pond-news-photo/120004362?adppopup=true">Lane Turner for The Boston Globe/via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Winter solstice brings the shortest day and longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a great night to spend reading.</p>
<p>I’ve taught English and creative writing in snowy Binghamton, New York, for more than 40 years – <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=Liz+Rosenberg&btnG=">reading, writing, reviewing and judging books all the while</a> – so it’s never hard for me to find something to read. Only to choose. </p>
<p>To save you the same indecision, I’ve picked five books for the darkest time of the year.</p>
<h2>1. Henry David Thoreau, “<a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/1345585403">Walden Pond</a>” (1854)</h2>
<p>Thoreau’s “Walden Pond” is America’s most celebrated nature book, filled with the author’s observations of the woods near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. “Walden” begins in July, but Thoreau welcomes winter in some of the book’s most beautiful passages.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white illustration of a small cabin surrounded by tall pines" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501144/original/file-20221214-14156-hnc795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thoreau’s cabin on the edge of Walden Pond cost US$28.12 in building materials when built in the early 1850s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/henry-thoreau-s-cabin-at-walden-pond-massachusetts-american-news-photo/171212802?phrase=Thoreau%20cabin&adppopup=true">Culture Club/via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The north wind had already begun to cool the pond,” Thoreau writes, when he “went into winter quarters.” Not that he stayed indoors much.</p>
<p>Most of us won’t stretch out face down “on ice only an inch thick,” as Thoreau reports doing, but we can read about him doing it while staying warm. Thoreau noticed frozen bubbles, stacked “like a string of beads” or “silvery coins poured from a bag.” He catalogs – how he loves cataloging! – the colors of the pond, from “transparent” to dark green to “opaque and whitish or gray.” In winter he burned pine, decaying stumps, hickory, dry leaves and logs he’d dragged home while skating across the pond. Fuel provided him warmth, cooked food and company. “You can always see a face in the fire,” Thoreau wrote. </p>
<p>In winter he welcomed rare humans, such as fellow writer Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson. But mostly he encountered foxes, squirrels, chickadees, jays and a barred owl that he described as the “winged brother of the cat.” Thoreau delights in the sound of the ice booming in a thaw and describes moonlit rescues of hikers he escorted back to the edge of civilization. </p>
<p>The five chilly chapters of “Walden” comprise a winter sampler for those who haven’t read this mighty book — and for those returning to it.</p>
<h2>2. Robert Frost, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/2538570">The Poetry of Robert Frost</a>”</h2>
<p>No poet sang of winter like poet laureate and New Englander Robert Frost. In his great “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” he pays homage to winter’s solitude: </p>
<p>“Between the woods and frozen lake/The darkest evening of the year.” </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/2538570">The Poetry of Robert Frost</a>” weighs in at more than 600 pages. “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/12036745">You Come Too</a>,” a beautifully curated edition of poems for the young, is less than 100. </p>
<p>Both books contain popular midwinter favorites. Even their titles suggest the poet’s strong connection to winter: “Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter”; “A Hillside Thaw” (“Ten million silver lizards out of snow!”); “Good-by and Keep Cold”; “A Patch of Old Snow.” </p>
<p>In “Birches,” Frost writes of branches that turn raindrops into ice crystals melted by sunlight.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust –</p>
<p>Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away</p>
<p>You’d think the inner dome of heaven has fallen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Frost’s poems are easily memorized and lovely to read aloud over any blustering gales. </p>
<h2>3. Dylan Thomas, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/966631968">A Child’s Christmas in Wales</a>” (1952)</h2>
<p>As Frost wrote for all ages, so did Dylan Thomas in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” – available in its original Tiffany blue New Directions paperback edition, decorated exquisitely with illustrations by Ellen Raskin – a winter’s poem made to be sung. We can even hear the poet chanting it aloud on <a href="https://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Literature/European-Classics/A-Childs-Christmas-in-Wales/146">his 1952 recording</a>.</p>
<p>One need not be Welsh to love Thomas’ seaside childhood. One need not even celebrate Christmas. </p>
<p>“One Christmas was so much like another,” the poem opens, “that I can never remember whether it snowed/for six days and six nights when I was 12/or whether it snowed for 12 days and/12 nights when I was six.” </p>
<h2>4. Italo Calvino, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1051073902">If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler</a>” (1979)</h2>
<p>Italo Calvino bundles magic, metafiction, philosophy, danger and love into “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.” It’s Calvino’s most mystifying work, challenging readers’ assumptions about reading and storytelling.</p>
<p>Not exactly a novel, it comprises the first chapter of 10 invented novels by 10 imaginary authors. Is it still winter? a reader may wonder. Was it ever winter? </p>
<p>As Calvino admits, “The only truth I can write is that of the instant I am living.” </p>
<h2>5. James Fenton, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/48122710">A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seeds</a>” (2002)</h2>
<p>Some gardeners spend all winter dreaming. Others spend it busily planning. </p>
<p>“A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seeds” proposes a radically old-fashioned approach – to grow a garden simply sprung from seed. Author James Fenton explains, “[S]imple-mindedness was a part of what I was after: buy a packet of nasturtium seeds and plant them, grow some very tall sunflowers – this is what gardening should be all about.” </p>
<p>A garden doesn’t need expensive starter plants or even a plan. The great question in life, as well as with gardens, is: What do I want to grow? </p>
<hr>
<p>Winter unearths simplicity – the stark black-and-white vista it presents, the bare-boned landscape. It encourages readers to follow suit by ridding themselves of the extraneous and making room for life. As the celebrated saying goes, “If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but the same amount of snow.” </p>
<p>Besides, as December ends, we turn the corner toward light. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of soft brown pots with seedlings growing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501149/original/file-20221214-14133-5pwq8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Gardeners spend winter nights dreaming of green growing things.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/seedlings-planted-in-pots-and-labelled-royalty-free-image/1306011708?adppopup=true">Busybee-CR via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Rosenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A literature professor suggests some classic reads to curl up with when it is cold.Liz Rosenberg, Professor of English, General Literature and Rhetoric, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1951412022-12-02T06:50:24Z2022-12-02T06:50:24ZNetflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover reduces this tale of class conflict to a simple love story<p>It is easy to understand the appeal of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) for filmmakers. The issues the novel addresses are so rich. Written in response to the general strike of 1926 in the UK, the story examines the sources of class enmity and imagines how it might be overcome through tenderness, touch and sex.</p>
<p>Many, including the author Doris Lessing, have argued that Lady Chatterley’s Lover <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/15/classics.dhlawrence">can only be understood</a> in the context of its time and societal stresses. However, this latest film version strips out the social context and class detail of the novel and with them go most of the psychological complexity of the characters, leaving simply a love story with a happy ending. </p>
<p>In the book, Constance Reid, who has been raised in a bohemian upper-middle-class family, marries the aristocrat Clifford Chatterley. Shortly after their marriage, he is paralysed from the waist down in the first world war. On his father’s death, he becomes a baronet and takes Constance to live in his ancestral home in the Midlands (Wragby Hall), also taking ownership of an adjacent colliery in the village of Tevershall. </p>
<p>His injuries mean that Sir Clifford is unable to father an heir, so he coldly suggests that his wife gets pregnant by another man. However, rather than simply sleeping with someone from their social circle she starts an affair with her husband’s gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. </p>
<p>Mellors is working class by birth and preference but has moved into the middle class through education and his promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the army. Like Constance, Mellors is unhappily married and displaced between classes. Together they must struggle to overcome their deeply-ingrained class attitudes, and it is a painful and unresolved process. </p>
<h2>Playing down class tensions</h2>
<p>The novel was written in three wholly different versions between 1926 and 1928, and each one reflects <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA608502056&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00114936&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ebf815a29">Lawrence’s pessimism about the future</a> of England and his fear that a class war was imminent.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/the-general-strike.htm">The general strike</a> was called to try to force the British government to reverse both pay cuts and worsening conditions for miners. Coal seams had been depleted during the war and production was at an all-time low in the early to mid-1920s. A reduction in wages was proposed to maintain profits. </p>
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<p>In the novel, there is an atmosphere of simmering unrest between the mine owners and the colliers. Sir Clifford plans to further mechanise his colliery, replacing men with machines. He seeks to develop coal by-products to maximise income. Local pits are only working for part of the week, and socialist and even Bolshevist ideas are gaining traction with the miners. </p>
<p>In this film, industrial unrest is condensed to a passing street protest. The brief glimpse we get of the mining village (Tevershall) makes it seem more like a pretty Dorset village in a Thomas Hardy novel than a Midlands colliery town in the 1920s.</p>
<h2>Flat characters</h2>
<p>The worst flattening of the novel comes in the film’s depiction of the class struggle between Constance and Mellors.</p>
<p>In the book, Lawrence’s Constance Chatterley is empathetic towards Clifford’s servants and staff and she takes an interest in the plight of his workforce. But, at times, she tends to stereotype the working classes and revert to a learned form of snobbishness.</p>
<p>We see her inner conflict play out when she first views Mellors washing at the back of his cottage in Wragby wood. It is a confusing encounter, which arouses class-based disgust while also confronting her with feelings of physical attraction. </p>
<p>On one level he is “merely a man washing himself! Commonplace enough, heaven knows.” But on another, it is “a visionary experience” which hits her “in the middle of her body”. The film’s Constance Chatterley suffers no such inner dilemma. She merely views the man and giggles. She doesn’t need to root out any internalised class prejudice.</p>
<p>Lawrence has Mellors speak two languages: a Derbyshire-inflected regional speech and dialect and received pronunciation. Mellors and Constance have to find a middle ground beyond the divisions of class and language. They achieve this by mimicking one another’s language and laughing away their differences. </p>
<p>Constance comically imitates Mellors’ regional speech patterns and he teaches her new meanings for the proscribed words “cunt” and “fuck” which transform them from terms of abuse into poetic words for sex and the mysterious experiences of the body. Mellors, in turn, lets down his psychological barriers, coming to see her not as “your ladyship” (an embodiment of the Chatterleys and the ruling classes more generally) but as Connie. </p>
<p>They jokingly call their sexual organs “John Thomas” and “Lady Jane”, parodying names and titles. He gradually finds a language with which to respond to Connie as a woman he loves rather than a lady he serves. </p>
<p>In the film, however, this is all gone. Mellors speaks throughout with the same slight regional inflexion. There is no linguistic readjustment required. The only resentment he seems to feel is irritation when she first asks for a key to his hut or temporary outrage that he has been used when she tells him she is pregnant.</p>
<p>At one point in the movie Sir Clifford’s nurse, Ivy Bolton, even says outright: “This is a love story.” In terms of the film, she’s absolutely right. </p>
<p>There are things to enjoy. The music is atmospheric and hints at emotional depths and nuances that the script skates over. The scene in which Connie and Mellors cavort naked in the rain has a joyous sensual quality. This scene reminded me a little of Lawrence’s paintings <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/Paintings-D-H-Lawrence-David-Herbert/10050748097/bd">Dance-Sketch and Fire-Dance</a>. </p>
<p>But the characters are so flat that those who have read the novel will be disappointed and those who haven’t will wonder what all the fuss was about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Harrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>D.H. Lawrence’s book is a seething commentary on class, exposing his fears for Britain’s future. But the film is a romantic period drama.Andrew Harrison, Associate Professor in English Literature, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1854272022-07-03T19:53:56Z2022-07-03T19:53:56ZDangerous attractions and revolutionary sympathies: 5 Jane Austen facts revealed by music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470994/original/file-20220627-12-7i9jk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C2044%2C1143&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Emilia Fox as Georgiana Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1995), BBC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><h2>1. Jane Austen played and sang</h2>
<p>Jane Austen played the piano from the age of about ten. Her family inherited some of her <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/janeaustensmusic/austen-family-music-books">books of sheet music</a>, including hundreds of manuscripts in her hand as well as printed music. </p>
<p>Along with piano music, there are many songs in the collection, and judging by the music we have, she seems to have been a soprano. She could accompany herself, improvising the piano part if necessary. </p>
<p>Most of what we know directly about <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/janeaustensmusic/home">Austen’s musicianship</a> relies on the memories of her niece Caroline, who was only 12 when Austen died. Uniquely among her younger relatives, it seems, Caroline actively shared both Austen’s literary and musical interests. Caroline remembers some of the songs Austen sang for her in her last years, and in January 1817, six months before her death, Austen wrote to Caroline: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Piano Forte often talks of you; – in various keys, tunes & expressions I allow – but be it Lesson or Country dance, Sonata or Waltz, You are really its’ constant theme.</p>
</blockquote>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sense-and-sensibility-in-a-time-of-coronavirus-vicarious-escape-with-jane-austen-142817">Sense and Sensibility in a time of coronavirus: vicarious escape with Jane Austen</a>
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<h2>2. Musical women featured in 5 of Austen’s 6 novels</h2>
<p>Catherine Morland in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50398.Northanger_Abbey">Northanger Abbey</a> happily abandoned her music lessons at an early age, but there are <a href="https://dspace.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/handle/2328/8256">female musical characters</a> in the other five of Austen’s six completed novels. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14935.Sense_and_Sensibility">Sense and Sensibility</a> Marianne Dashwood is the musical one, while her sister Elinor was “neither musical, nor affecting to be so”. Marianne’s music becomes a “nourishment of grief” for her when she is abandoned by Willoughby. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eUKqSIfFrMk" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Another pair of sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Bennet in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1885.Pride_and_Prejudice">Pride and Prejudice</a>, are both musicians. In their case, the contrast is between their attitudes to their music-making: Mary insists on playing a “long concerto” at an evening party, while Elizabeth “easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well”. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45032.Mansfield_Park">Mansfield Park</a>, Fanny Price is not musical. Fanny has been brought to Mansfield Park as a young child to be brought up with her rich cousins, Maria and Julia, who are slightly older. Even at the age of ten, she can see that competing with her cousins for accomplishments will be futile, and she refuses to have lessons. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mx6mKSRitAc" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Emma Woodhouse doesn’t exactly compete with Jane Fairfax in the music stakes in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6969.Emma">Emma</a>. Emma knows perfectly well that Jane is much the better musician, and coming to admit that to herself and others is one stage in her faltering journey to maturity. </p>
<p>And in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2156.Persuasion">Persuasion</a>, Anne Elliot is a consummate musician but does not envy the more showy accomplishments of the Musgrove sisters who play the harp, while she is still on the old-fashioned pianoforte.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-jane-austens-emma-at-200-51022">Friday essay: Jane Austen's Emma at 200</a>
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<h2>3. Austen’s musical men are deceitful</h2>
<p>All sorts of women can be musical – or not – in Austen’s novels. It tells us something about each of them, but there’s nothing that the musical women have in common – they can be heroines, anti-heroines, dependant orphans, or spoilt rich young women. With the men, things are a bit different. </p>
<p>Who are the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2017.1322386">musical men</a> – not just the ones who enjoy music, but those who have some musical skill? There are not many.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a feathered hat smiles at a man in a straw hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471006/original/file-20220627-17-q4cce8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Greg Wise as the dangerously attractive but unreliable Willoughby, in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995).</span>
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<p>Willoughby, in Sense and Sensibility, sings duets with Marianne and copies out sheet music for her. In Emma, Frank Churchill sings duets with Emma and with Jane Fairfax at the Coles’ dinner party. What do these two gents have in common, apart from being musicians? They are unreliable and deceitful. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-clueless-at-25-like-a-totally-important-teen-film-140749">Friday Essay: Clueless at 25 — like, a totally important teen film</a>
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<h2>4. Austen heroes fall in love listening to musical women</h2>
<p>In Georgian times, the main role of the true gentleman, as far as musicianship is concerned, was to be an appreciative listener. One mark of an Austen hero is listening with enjoyment and attention to the woman who has attracted his interest. More than once, this is the shortest route to falling in love. </p>
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<p>Colonel Brandon, unlike the rest of the company, pays Marianne “only the compliment of attention” when she is playing the piano in Sense and Sensibility. Mr Darcy’s “dangerous” attraction to Elizabeth is enhanced by music, which gives him an occasion to observe “the fair performer’s countenance”. In Mansfield Park, poor Edmund Bertram is “a good deal in love” after listening to Mary Crawford playing the harp. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-revolutionary-vision-of-jane-austen-71000">Friday essay: the revolutionary vision of Jane Austen</a>
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<h2>5. Austen’s music collection reveals sympathies with Revolutionary France</h2>
<p>Although <a href="https://essaysinfrenchliteratureandculture.com/gillian-dooley-jane-austen-and-the-music-of-the-french-revolution-essays-in-french-literature-and-culture-57-2020/">French music</a> is not mentioned in the novels, Austen had several French songs in her collection, some of them overtly political. </p>
<p>The husband of Jane’s cousin Eliza was executed by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-long-standing-mistrust-between-the-french-people-and-the-elites-165569">Revolutionary</a> government in 1794, so one might expect royalist sympathies. However, the music in her collection provides an interesting new angle. </p>
<p>Within a few pages of one of the manuscript books, we find not only a Royalist ballad, and a song lamenting the suffering of Queen <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-marie-antoinettes-private-boudoir-and-mechanical-mirror-room-at-versailles-160599">Marie Antoinette</a> as she awaits her fate, but also the music and five verses of words of the Marseillaise, the revolutionary anthem. </p>
<p>She chose not to write about it in her novels, but Austen knew very well what was going on over the channel – as her music shows.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/la-marseillaise-has-the-song-that-unified-the-french-republic-become-too-divisive-99045">La Marseillaise: has the song that unified the French republic become too divisive?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gillian Dooley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Music is featured in most of Jane Austen’s novels and recent research is teaching us more about her personal love of music. What can it tell us about the world of Jane Austen?Gillian Dooley, Adjunct associate, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1785132022-03-14T12:20:40Z2022-03-14T12:20:40ZWhat classic literature knows about refugees fleeing persecution and war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451369/original/file-20220310-21-llmtqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=73%2C0%2C5390%2C3571&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces member hugs a resident leaving his hometown following Russian artillery shelling in Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXRussiaUkraineWar/baef932200704d64b1f1bf4e1f04277a/photo?Query=ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=101098&currentItemNo=355">AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine could create “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/1-million-refugees-flee-ukraine-in-week-since-russian-invasion">the biggest refugee crisis this century</a>.” Two and a half million people <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/more-than-25-million-people-have-fled-ukraine-un-says-2022-03-11/">have already fled</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the rest of the world sits <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/opinions/watching-ukraine-war-on-screen-hemmer/index.html">watching the war on screens</a>, which can <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444818760819">promote empathy</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60557186">but also can lead to helplessness and distress</a>.</p>
<p>There’s another way to try to understand refugees’ experience. Alongside the reality of desperate people fleeing danger is a rich history of classic texts about characters seeking protection or new lives.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/robert-barsky">a professor of humanities and law</a>, I have spent the past few years <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/clamouring-for-legal-protection-9781509943166/">delving deeply</a> into what <a href="https://www.angelicum.net/classical-homeschooling-magazine/first-issue/the-great-books-movement-a-return-to-the-classics/">classic literature</a> has to say about the challenges of fleeing persecution. From Odysseus and <a href="https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/">Dante the Pilgrim</a> to Frankenstein’s monster, many familiar characters encounter obstacles well known to contemporary refugees.</p>
<p>These stories can’t replicate what it’s like to experience bombs and shells raining down on Syria, Ukraine or Yemen. But they may help readers identify with characters they already know, which may in turn <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190523-does-reading-fiction-make-us-better-people">create empathy and compassion</a> for refugees.</p>
<h2>Sharing the story</h2>
<p>One text worth recalling in this regard is <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.3.2?ven=The_Contemporary_Torah,_Jewish_Publication_Society,_2006&vhe=Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah&lang=bi&aliyot=0">the Book of Exodus</a>, and in particular the scene in which God appears to Moses at the burning bush.</p>
<p>God has been watching the Israelites’ suffering as slaves in Egypt, he reveals to Moses. The Almighty wishes to intervene – and calls upon Moses to act as his emissary.</p>
<p>“I will send you to Pharaoh, and you shall free My people, the Israelites, from Egypt,” God commands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="God speaks with Moses at the burning bush in a painting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451363/original/file-20220310-17-14o8od4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘God Appears to Moses in Burning Bush,’ by Eugene Pluchart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moses_Pluchart.jpg">Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Saint Petersburg/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moses’ initial reaction is not to obey, but to question. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” he asks. He fears that his poor speaking skills render him ill equipped to fulfill God’s will. “I have never been a man of words,” he protests; “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”</p>
<p>His hesitation is a reminder that vulnerable migrants often have nothing with them other than their own story – a story they may have to tell in a language that is not their own. Ukrainians who are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/27/ukraine-refugees-photos-videos/">currently in flight</a>, for example, will have to explain themselves adequately. Being able to tell their story in the right way, to the right people, will be crucial to their very survival.</p>
<p>Moses is also unsure whether God really is who he says he is. Can this great power be trusted? Moses wonders. As refugees <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/waves-of-ukrainian-refugees-overwhelm-poland-11646856187">flee their home countries</a>, they too may wrestle with whether to trust people and officials from powerful institutions offering aid, like host country officials, or representatives from United Nations agencies or nongovernmental organizations. </p>
<h2>The land of milk and honey</h2>
<p>To persuade Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, God promises the Israelites not just protection, <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.3.18?ven=The_Contemporary_Torah,_Jewish_Publication_Society,_2006&vhe=Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah&lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">but a better life</a>: “I will take you out of the misery of Egypt … to a land flowing with milk and honey.”</p>
<p>Historically, many people fleeing home are escaping not war or persecution, but poverty – though the lines between refugees and so-called economic migrants <a href="https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/refugee-or-migrant-sometimes-the-line-is-blurred">are getting blurrier</a>. Those who wish to deny entry to refugees or undocumented migrants often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466395_016">describe them as “parasites</a>” or “illegals” who are leaving their homes to reap the milk and honey of others’ lands.</p>
<p>John Steinbeck’s novel “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/354795/the-grapes-of-wrath-by-john-steinbeck-introduction-and-notes-by-robert-demott/">The Grapes of Wrath</a>” tells the story of desperate American families during the Great Depression fleeing the <a href="https://drought.unl.edu/dustbowl/">Dust Bowl</a> droughts that devastated their crops. They are “people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there.”</p>
<p>They dream of a new paradise, and of plenty. Tom Joad, one of the book’s key characters, provides a vision of the life that he imagines in California: “Gonna get me a whole big bunch of grapes off a bush, or whatever, an’ I’m gonna squash ‘em on my face an’ let ‘em run offen my chin.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women and a man in old clothing look out from a car window in a black and white photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451365/original/file-20220310-19-16s6nuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actors Dorris Bowdon and Jane Darwell, with Henry Fonda playing the lead role of Tom Joad, in a still from the 1940 film adaptation of ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dorris-bowdon-jane-darwell-and-henry-fonda-in-a-truck-in-a-news-photo/1965238?adppopup=true">20th Century Fox/Moviepix via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may be a pipe dream, but what option do these vulnerable migrants have? Like millions of people in places like <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/">India, the Philippines or Bangladesh</a>, they have been internally displaced because of natural disasters and climate change. The only way to safety is forward.</p>
<p>“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?” Steinbeck writes. “No. Leave it. Burn it.”</p>
<h2>Leaving paradise</h2>
<p>No matter how great the persecution, not everyone will flee in search of protection. Home still provides us with a sense of rootedness; home is where we speak the language; home is where we have friends and family; home is filled with familiar landmarks. </p>
<p>And for people fleeing Ukraine, the decision to leave means enduring <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-refugees-1.6364074">huge lines, freezing cold and administrative barriers</a> – particularly for non-Europeans who resided in Ukraine, such as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60552271">Indians</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/nigeria-condemns-treatment-africans-trying-to-flee-ukraine-government-poland-discrimination">Africans</a>, who have faced discrimination.</p>
<p>John Milton’s “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45718/paradise-lost-book-1-1674-version">Paradise Lost</a>” is one of the great stories about massive displacement and the effort to survive in an inhospitable environment. This 17th-century epic poem describes two acts of exile: rebel angels’ expulsion from heaven, and Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.</p>
<p>After the war in heaven, when Satan attempts to lead one-third of the angels in rebellion, God’s retribution is swift and horrible. Satan’s followers are “hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie / With hideous ruine and combustion down / <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45718/paradise-lost-book-1-1674-version">To bottomless perdition</a>, there to dwell,” in Milton’s description.</p>
<p>Even Satan, who actively led the uprising, was filled with the despair at all he’d lost: “Now the thought / both of lost happiness and lasting pain / torments him.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man with bat wings stands, looking worried, on a cliff." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451406/original/file-20220310-17-1dzbks8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration for John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ by Gustave Doré.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paradise_Lost_13.jpg">Paradise Lost/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These terrifying lines hold one of Milton’s masterpiece’s most important insights for migration crises today. Through expulsion, these fallen angels have lost everything they hold dear, and now they are condemned to hell. Their pain is mixed with “obdurate pride” and “stedfast hate.” </p>
<p>If contemporary refugees are unable to find a new sense of belonging and opportunity, then their frustration and trauma sometimes turn to <a href="https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/NSI-Reachback_B5_Dealing-with-Radicalization-in-IDP-Camps_Feb2020_Final.pdf">resentment and radicalization</a>. From Ukraine and Yemen to <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/reshaping-us-aid-afghanistan-challenge-lasting-progress">Afghanistan</a> and elsewhere, many desperate people are in need not just of assistance, but long-term solutions that provide a chance for them to rebuild their lives. </p>
<p>These examples from classic texts intimately depict refugees’ challenges through characters who have peopled our imagination. Perhaps this same process of creative association with well-known stories of displacement <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.3.1.06dji">can help inspire</a> ways to help vulnerable migrants in our midst.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert F. Barsky receives funding from Rockefeller Foundation; Vanderbilt University; SSHRC; CRC</span></em></p>Classic literature is full of themes that speak to refugees’ experience today, from the Book of Exodus to ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’Robert F. Barsky, Professor of Humanities, and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1556122021-03-04T12:42:15Z2021-03-04T12:42:15ZThree ways museums are making classic literature more attractive to young readers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387563/original/file-20210303-21-i0xl9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5760%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Engaging young people is a challenge for museums</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cute-schoolgirl-backpack-sitting-on-floor-1166327335">Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many lovers of classic literature, opportunities to devour the works of undiscovered authors can be enough to make people’s eyes light up. For those who aren’t as keen on the genre, the appeal of these titles is a little less obvious. In fact, it’s one of the reasons museum professionals are running into issues when it comes to inspiring new generations to read such works. </p>
<p>Engaging young people is a <a href="https://kidsinmuseums.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Hurdles-to-Participation.pdf">challenge for museums</a> and the traditional approaches that literary heritage museums take when dealing with classic authors is becoming a problem. This is because literary heritage museums usually focus on presenting the biographical story, personal effects or archival collection of an author. Relevant and interesting perhaps to those already familiar with an author’s works, but perhaps less successful at engaging would-be readers. The language of some of these authors can also be a barrier to new readers, as can the difficulty of reading “a classic” – which might be seen as irrelevant or out of touch with the modern world.</p>
<p>As the community, learning and engagement officer at <a href="https://www.wirksworthheritage.co.uk/">Wirksworth Heritage Centre</a> in Derbyshire, my role is to engage audiences of all ages with the local history of Wirksworth. A key element to Wirksworth’s heritage is its literary connections to writers (including George Eliot, DH Lawrence and Daniel Defoe) and the inspiration they took from the people and the landscape of Wirksworth. My PhD research considers how literary heritage is presented in museums throughout the country. I have a particular interest in Nottingham, which was awarded the <a href="https://nottinghamcityofliterature.com/">Unesco City of Literature</a> bid in 2015 due to its rich literary heritage, but also has some of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/17/boys-literacy-schools-ks3">lowest literacy levels</a> in the country.</p>
<p>Since COVID-19, finding new ways to share our literary heritage both inside and outside of museum walls has become incredibly important. So how should museums show that these authors remain relevant in the 21st century? Literary heritage museums are doing this in a whole host of ways, but here are the three examples of approaches I believe are particularly successful.</p>
<h2>1. Retelling stories</h2>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/booklist/286811/the-austen-project">Austen Project</a> to the many graphic novel <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/genres/fiction-books/graphic-novels.html">retellings</a> and classic novels reimagined as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/30/heathcliff-classic-books-reimagined-as-text-messages">text messages</a>, retelling stories with a contemporary twist is a well-trodden (if not always well-reviewed) path. It’s also a method of interpretation that literary heritage museums are beginning to embrace. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"786665466974597120"}"></div></p>
<p>Using new and creative formats can remove some of the barriers to young people wanting to experience these stories and can inspire them to try the “real thing”. As part of my own curatorial work with Dorking Museum, I wrote a book entitled <a href="https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/new-book-honours-works-of-novelist-e-m-forster/">Forster in 50</a> which accompanies the exhibition <a href="https://dorkingmuseum.org.uk/forster50/">Forster at 50</a>. The book provides visitors with an overview of five of Forster’s novels in only 50 words with illustrations, providing more of an accessible introduction to EM Forster’s work.</p>
<h2>2. Using technology to draw audiences in</h2>
<p>Technology and literature may have seemed like a mismatch once upon a time, but more and more museums are using different technologies to engage audiences with their collections. Before its <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35933620">closure</a> in 2016, the DH Lawrence Heritage Centre presented the 1915 censorship trial of Lawrence’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Rainbow.html?id=D-D4nTFpAgUC">The Rainbow</a> through a series of Twitter posts in their exhibition <a href="https://www.visit-nottinghamshire.co.uk/whats-on/no-right-to-exist-the-rainbow-and-other-books-that-shocked-p666051">No Right to Exist: The Rainbow and Other Books Which Shocked</a>. This condensed the complexities of the trial into a series of 140 character posts, allowing younger audiences to explore the debate in a familiar format and go on to consider what we consider scandalous in literature today. </p>
<p>My own work has included the co-production of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-533137667/walking-with-lawrence">Walking with Lawrence</a>, a digital walking tour written from Lawrence’s perspective which allows the listener to connect the author with the city they see today. The use of a creative narrative which is listened to rather than read provides a format that’s easier to understand, removing some of the barriers created by large amounts of text.</p>
<h2>3. Collaborating with creative partners</h2>
<p>Working with creative partners such as artists and writers can help museums to reach new audiences, providing more approachable information for younger generations in particular. Graphic novels and comic books are incredibly helpful in this respect. I’m working with Wirksworth Heritage Centre’s writer in residence Helen Greetham, who’s currently producing a graphic novel about the literary heritage of George Eliot in Wirksworth. </p>
<p>A similar project is underway in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, working with young people to produce their own Lawrence-inspired graphic stories. The <a href="https://nottinghamcityofliterature.com/blog/eastwood-comics">Eastwood Comics</a> project aims to engage “700 further young people (who) will learn about the author and his birthplace by taking part in activities inspired by the young writers’ research”. Here, participation in creative projects and reading new stories help new generations to connect with Lawrence’s heritage in more meaningful ways than regurgitating information about the author. </p>
<p>The pandemic has provided an unprecedented challenge to the heritage sector, but the closure of our sites doesn’t mean we can’t continue to connect people to our history. These new and innovative ways that museums have engaged and inspired younger generations can continue regardless of whether physical buildings are open. In the months ahead, I hope more buildings take similar approaches.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155612/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Green works for Wirksworth Heritage Centre. </span></em></p>The closure of physical buildings doesn’t have to mean that new readers should miss out on literary historyHeather Green, PhD Candidate, Literary Heritage, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1277992020-03-16T22:40:25Z2020-03-16T22:40:25ZWhat my students taught me about reading: old books hold new insights for the digital generation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316797/original/file-20200224-24672-2zy1rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Sssq3zpPhws">Sophie Elvis/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year about 150 students enrol in the introductory English literature course at the Australian National University, which I teach. The course includes works by Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf and Dickens. </p>
<p>I know what these books did for me as a student 20 years ago, but times have changed. I am curious to discover what reading these old books does for young people today. </p>
<p>Last year, 2019, saw the first cohort of students who were born in or beyond 2000 – the so-called digital generation. These students have grown up in a world where you can read a book without holding the physical object. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-laughter-adventure-and-fantasy-a-reading-list-for-teens-126928">Love, laughter, adventure and fantasy: a reading list for teens</a>
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<p>I decided to introduce the option of a bibliomemoir – an <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/92812c26-17d4-11e8-9c33-02f893d608c2">increasingly popular</a> form of creative non-fiction – into their final year assignment. This would allow me to tease out the particular connections students were making between literature and their own lives. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320677/original/file-20200316-18023-k77ksl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">My first year students have grown up in a world where you can read a book without holding the physical object.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/MqKDzLsPVQM">Dexter Fernandes</a></span>
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<p>The idea for a bibliomemoir was sparked in a workshop run by our then writer-in-residence, celebrated Australian teen novelist and author of <em>Puberty Blues</em>, <a href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/carey-gx">Dr Gabrielle Carey</a>. </p>
<p>Carey described bibliomemoir as a piece of writing that shows literary criticism is “best written as a personal tale of the encounter between a reader and a writer”.</p>
<p>Written with flair and precision the students’ bibliomemoirs revealed the formative effects of reading on their lives. Many of their insights related directly to challenges of growing up in the digital age. </p>
<p>They wrote about responding to distraction and cultivating compassion, connection, concentration and resilience.</p>
<h2>Why a bibliomemoir?</h2>
<p>A bibliomemoir might be an account of <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-road-to-middlemarch">how one book or author has shaped</a> a person’s life. Or it might be the memoir of a life structured by reading books. In Outside of a Dog, for instance, Rick Gekoski tells his life story through 25 books that have influenced him, including authors from Dr Seuss to Sigmund Freud.</p>
<p>Gekoski <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/25/paperback-rick-gekoski-outside-dog-qa">pointed out in an interview</a> that bibliomemoir reveals the formative effects of reading. I saw immediately that I could adapt bibliomemoir to help me understand how my students saw books as shaping their lives.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-australian-books-that-can-help-young-people-understand-their-place-in-the-world-127712">5 Australian books that can help young people understand their place in the world</a>
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<p>So, for the final essay of the introductory English course, Carey and I designed a new essay question. It invited students to write a brief bibliomemoir based on one of the novels in the course. Like a traditional essay this would allow me to evaluate their skills of written expression, argument and technical analysis of literary language. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320679/original/file-20200316-18073-90mz3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students who write the bibliomemoir can still be assessed on technical aspects of their writing style.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Hcfwew744z4">Unsplash/Christin Hume</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Unlike a traditional essay, it would allow me to see inside their individual reading experience. I would be able to understand how these books were influencing my students’ view of the world and their understanding of themselves. </p>
<h2>Here’s what the students wrote</h2>
<p>One student shared how reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway prompted a conversation with his flatmate about experiences of digital distraction and strategies for concentration: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Soon we came to the subject of Big Ben, which Woolf uses as a motif through the book. [My friend] said that the way Big Ben interrupted the characters’ thoughts reminded her of how a notification from your phone can interrupt your stream of thought. </p>
<p>I had also noticed the motif of Big Ben, however I appreciated it as an element of structure and pacing in a book that had no chapters, in fact I had sometimes structured my reading sessions around the ringing of Big Ben in the book.</p>
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<p>Another student, reading of the mental torment experienced by the returned soldier Septimus in Mrs Dalloway, gained a new perspective on people who don’t seem to fit in. Reflecting on her initially judgemental perception of a dishevelled man boarding her bus the student asked: “was he so different from Septimus? Wise and lost?”. </p>
<p>She then explained she gained a new and unexpected perspective on life: </p>
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<p>[Woolf] gave me glasses I never knew I needed – lenses smeared with multiple fingerprints that enhanced rather than hindered the view. </p>
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<p>She concluded that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to be a reader is to suspend rigid views, to consider and honour the perspectives of the characters one meets.</p>
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<p>A third student reflected on the challenges of reading itself, and on the rewards of persisting when structure and characterisation are unfamiliar. The student said she set out wanting to be an “inspired reader” but confessed to feeling “frustrated” by Woolf’s “merciless indifference” to her characters in Mrs Dalloway. </p>
<p>In noting this frustration, the student had registered the novel’s lack of clear protagonist or plotline. The novel is difficult to read because, while we do see individual characters trying to interpret their lives as coherent stories, Woolf refuses to impose an artificial grand narrative. </p>
<p>After sticking with it, however, the student recognised the novel’s achievement: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There lies the beauty of it: the ordinary day captured in time and words as a novel. </p>
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<p>This student’s bibliomemoir was a story of the dividends paid by sustained concentration and a flexible mindset.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320683/original/file-20200316-18017-pprewt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One student wrote about how the ringing of Big Ben in Mrs Dalloway was similar to a phone alert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ltPWfy2pX6M">Nick Fewings/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A fourth student used the bibliomemoir to analyse how Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey showed her the value of observing people closely, and has equipped her with resilience as a student facing the challenge of dyslexia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I could not work out how to do the exact things my teachers wanted me to do. What I could do was learn to understand my teachers. By learning to watch them, like Austen watched people, and learning to understand them as people, I began to understand how to jump through their hoops.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While she couldn’t quantify the competencies reading books had given her, the student said she just knew books had formed who she was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I cannot list the strategies that I employ when reading and writing […] I give all the credit to reading literature, to books like Northanger Abbey and writers like Jane Austen and so volunteer myself as an example of how reading literature is valuable in our era.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These examples revealed some of the many reasons new readers, even of the digital age, return to old books and old ways of reading them. The readers expressed an urgency for connection with narratives more complex than a news feed. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-can-read-this-headline-you-can-read-a-novel-heres-how-to-ignore-your-phone-and-just-do-it-116524">If you can read this headline, you can read a novel. Here's how to ignore your phone and just do it</a>
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<p>They recognised that truthful self-reflection can be prompted by sustained engagement with fiction. They proved that connection with others, compassion and resilience are nurtured through a deepened understanding of story in the study of literature. </p>
<p>I can only conclude that for this group of readers, taking a book into their hands is a very deliberate act of identification with the bigger, shared story of reading.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Flaherty works for the Australian National University. From 2008-2010 she was the recipient of an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Award (Industry) at The University of Sydney for the project "Shakespeare Reloaded: Innovative Approaches to Shakespeare and Literature Research in Australian Universities and Secondary Schools".</span></em></p>Last year saw the first cohort of English literature students who were born in or beyond 2000 – the so-called digital generation. I wanted to know whether the classics still affected their lives.Kate Flaherty, Senior Lecturer (English and Drama) ANU, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1262462019-11-18T14:01:02Z2019-11-18T14:01:02ZWhy do teachers make us read old stories?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300926/original/file-20191108-194650-13odlbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teachers often assign older books.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/book-library-school-university-college-on-1444506608?src=bd16c503-99f0-4a1c-ba4a-9b2cf21e5301-1-6">vovidzha/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
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<p><strong>Why do teachers make us read old stories? Nathan, 12, Chicago, Illinois</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>There are probably as many reasons to read old stories as there are teachers.</p>
<p>Old stories are sometimes strange. They display beliefs, values and ways of life that the reader may not recognize.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://english.richmond.edu/faculty/egruner/">an English professor</a>, I believe that there is value in reading stories from decades or even centuries ago.</p>
<p>Teachers have their students read old stories to connect with the past and to learn about the present. They also have their students read old stories because they build students’ brains, help them develop empathy and are true, strange, delightful or fun. </p>
<h2>Connecting with the past and present</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300935/original/file-20191108-194641-19vyyru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Shakespeare wrote plays in the 1600s that are still read today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare#/media/File:Title_page_William_Shakespeare's_First_Folio_1623.jpg">Martin Droeshout/Yale University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Shakespeare’s <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html">“Romeo and Juliet</a>,” for example, teenagers speak a <a href="https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean">language that’s almost completely unfamiliar</a> to modern readers. They fight duels. They get <a href="https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html">married</a>. So that might seem to be really different from today. </p>
<p>And yet, Romeo and Juliet fall in love and make their parents mad, very much like many teens today. Ultimately, they commit suicide, something that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/01/health/youth-injury-death-rate-cdc-study/index.html">far too many teens do today</a>. So Shakespeare’s play may be more relevant than it first seems.</p>
<p>Additionally, many modern stories are <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57225/11-modern-retellings-classic-novels">based on older stories</a>. To name only one, Charlotte Brontë’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm">“Jane Eyre”</a> has turned up in so many novels since its original publication in 1848 that there are entire <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/191995/summary">articles</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CmVQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA189&dq=growing+up+empowered+by+jane&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq2s_E3trlAhUBm-AKHcrtCHQQ6AEwAXoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=growing%20up%20empowered%20by%20jane&f=false">book chapters</a> about its influence and importance.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137539236">I found references to “Jane Eyre” lurking</a> in <a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B000FC1T8U&tag=bing08-20&linkCode=kpp&reshareId=GG4QQ034GJ68KKBAB615&reshareChannel=system">“The Princess Diaries</a>,” <a href="https://stepheniemeyer.com/the-twilight-saga/">the “Twilight” series</a> and a variety of other novels. So reading the old story can enrich the experience of the new.</p>
<h2>Building brain and empathy</h2>
<p>Reading specialist <a href="https://www.maryannewolf.com">Maryanne Wolf</a> writes about the “special vocabulary in books that doesn’t appear in spoken language” in <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060933845/proust-and-the-squid/">“Proust and the Squid</a>.” This vocabulary – often more complex in older books – is a big part of what helps <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141021085524.htm">build brains</a>.</p>
<p>The sentence structure of older books can also make them difficult. Consider the opening of almost any fairy tale: “Once upon a time, in a very far-off country, there lived …”</p>
<p>None of us would actually speak like that, but older stories put the words in a different order, which makes the brain work harder. That kind of <a href="https://www.rd.com/culture/benefits-of-reading-books/">exercise builds brain capacity</a>.</p>
<p>Stories also make us feel. Indeed, <a href="http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2011/07/why-fiction-is-good-for-you/">they teach us empathy</a>. Readers get scared when they realize <a href="https://www.wizardingworld.com">Harry Potter</a> is in danger, excited when he learns to fly and happy, relieved or delighted when Harry and his friends defeat Voldemort.</p>
<p>Older stories, then, can provide a rich depth of feeling, by exposing readers to a broad range of experiences. Stories featuring characters <a href="https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf">from a diverse range of backgrounds</a> or set in unfamiliar places can have a similar effect.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301648/original/file-20191113-77320-y64ze3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ has been retold many times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Alice's_Abenteuer_im_Wunderland_Carroll_pic_23_edited_1_of_2.png">John Tenniel/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reading can be fun</h2>
<p>Old stories are sometimes just so weird that you can’t help but enjoy them. Or I can’t, anyway.</p>
<p>In Charles Dickens’ <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm">“Great Expectations</a>,” there’s a character whose last name is “Pumblechook.” Can you say it without smiling?</p>
<p>In Lewis Carroll’s <a href="http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/alices-adventures-in-wonderland/">“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</a>,” a cat disappears bit by bit, eventually leaving only its smile hanging in the air. Again, new stories are also lots of fun, but the fun in the older stories may turn up in those new stories.</p>
<p>For example, that cat returns in many <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781561458103">newer tales that aren’t even related</a> to Alice in Wonderland, so knowing the cat’s history can make reading that new story more pleasurable.</p>
<p>I won’t deny that some old stories <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/463520?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">contain offensive language</a> or <a href="https://isthmus.com/arts/books/laura-ingalls-wilder-little-house-reexamined/">reflect attitudes</a> that we may not want to embrace. But even those stories can teach readers to think critically.</p>
<p>Not every old story is good, but when your teacher asks you to read one, consider the possibility that you might build your brain, grow your feelings or have some fun. It’s worth a try, at least.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
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<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elisabeth Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stories like ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Jane Eyre’ are still relevant today.Elisabeth Gruner, Associate Professor of English, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1031242018-09-18T06:07:15Z2018-09-18T06:07:15ZVanity Fair: Thackeray’s classic novel may be too modern for audiences today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236170/original/file-20180913-177956-1gzm7hy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Olivia Cooke as Becky Sharpe in ITV's Vanity Fair.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mammoth Screen for ITV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest TV adaptation of Thackeray’s 1848 novel Vanity Fair has polarised audiences expecting a traditional period drama. The first two episodes of Vanity Fair, co-produced by ITV and Amazon, received a mixed response on Twitter where viewers commented using the hashtag #VanityFair. </p>
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<p>Comments seemed to broadly fall into two camps: those who admired the adaptation for its “fresh, modern take” on a period drama, and those who didn’t like what they saw as the needless modernisation of a period drama.</p>
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<p>Interestingly, some of the features most identified as modernisations were actually from the original 1848 text: elements such as Becky Sharp throwing from her coach a dictionary she’d been given by her hated headmistress as she rode away from the school. Others took offence at Becky Sharp’s description of herself as a “secretary” – women were not secretaries at that time, one tweet protested. Meanwhile the frequent breaking of the fourth wall (Olivia Cooke, playing Becky Sharp, looks knowingly at the camera for dramatic effect) also caused a fair bit of angst.</p>
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<p>These were not features that viewers associated with the genre of “period drama” and unfavourable comparisons were made with the popular BBC period drama Poldark (based on Winston Graham’s novels from the mid-20th century). That some viewers should so easily confuse historical accuracy with genre conventions is a striking example of the power of those genre conventions.</p>
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<p>It is ironic, too, given that Thackeray subverted and satirised the conventions and tropes of his own time. This was true across his writing. In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pendennis">Pendennis</a>, for example, a novel about the titular young gentleman making his way in London, Thackeray writes in his preface: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the lovers of “excitement” may care to know, that this book began with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies and gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer’s and the publisher’s pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active horrors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Vanity Fair, such subversions are frequent. In the first episode of the new adaptation, Becky Sharp – attempting to charm the wealthy and credulous Jos Sedley into proposing marriage – attends the Vauxhall pleasure gardens. This takes place in chapter six of the book, which Thackeray introduces satirically:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the romantic, or in the facetious manner … Or if, on the contrary, we had taken a fancy for the terrible … we should easily have constructed a tale of thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters of which the reader should hurry, panting. But my readers must hope for no such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with a chapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to be called a chapter at all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within the full version of that quoted passage, Thackeray offers suggestions of how the story might have been written in these different “manners”. He plays with these kinds of conventions to set up readers’ expectations, only to subvert and parody them. One of the century’s other great novelists, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/authors/trollope/thackeray/3.html">Anthony Trollope, wrote</a> that Vanity Fair raised the fundamental question of “what a novel should be.” Trollope takes issue with some of the same things as modern viewers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are absurdities in it which would not be admitted to anyone who had not a peculiar gift of making even his absurdities delightful. No schoolgirl who ever lived would have thrown back her gift-book, as Rebecca did the ‘dixonary’, out of the carriage window as she was taken away from school. But who does not love that scene with which the novel commences? How could such a girl as Amelia Osborne have got herself into such society as that in which we see her at Vauxhall? But we forgive it all because of the telling.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Same story, different flavours</h2>
<p>Like Thackeray, Lewis Carroll, the Victorian author of Alice in Wonderland, was also highly attuned to the way stories become categorised via genre, satirising this in an 1855 short story entitled <a href="https://archive.org/stream/lewiscarrollpict00carruoft#page/28">Photography Extraordinary</a>. Carroll’s story, presented like a newspaper article, reports an invention which literally transcribes narrative fiction directly from the human brain. Not only can Carroll’s machine “develop” a story onto paper directly from the brain, but the story can then be redeveloped into different genres. Story writing, Carroll seems to suggest, was a question of mechanically adjusting language to fit the conventions of distinct genres and meet readers’ expectations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236435/original/file-20180914-177941-1p2wkl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Becky Sharpe at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mammoth Screen for ITV</span></span>
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<p>As 21st-century readers and viewers, we still consume media in this way. Our genres have changed – we are not likely to talk about <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/novelcollection/silverforknovels/">“silver fork” novels</a>, for instance – but our use of genres has not. If anything, we have only become more reliant on them as we create <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444814538646">more and more sophisticated algorithms</a> for organising our digital media.</p>
<p>We also risk letting our expectations shape our understanding of the past. One of the big divergences between Thackeray’s book and the ongoing adaptation is that the series’ producers have elected to depict the Battle of Waterloo. When his military characters depart for the battlefield, Thackeray lets them drift out of view, writing: “We do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is with the non-combatants.”</p>
<p>Thackeray, in other words, is willing to disappoint and frustrate readers’ expectations – he does not feel the need to conform to expectations. It is – as the book’s subtitle warns us – a “novel without a hero” (and in its serial form, not even a novel, simply “<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vanity_Fair_11_cover.jpg">pen and pencil sketches of English society</a>). But, of course, to adapt for television is to adjust the story to meet a different set of expectations. In that sense, adapting Vanity Fair is a bit like churning it through Carroll’s fiction machine one more time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Potter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many viewers think that the recent adaptation of Vanity Fair plays fast and loose with Thackeray’s novel. But the writer was surprisingly modern.Jonathan Potter, Lecturer/Tutor, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/635082016-11-01T19:06:32Z2016-11-01T19:06:32ZGuide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143207/original/image-20161025-4696-1t3fzcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Montaigne: his free-ranging essays were almost scandalous in their day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Montaigne-Dumonstier.jpg">Étienne Dumonstier/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Michel de Montaigne retired to his family estate in 1572, aged 38, he tells us that he wanted to write his famous Essays as a distraction for <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0008">his idle mind</a>. He neither wanted nor expected people beyond his circle of friends to be too interested.</p>
<p>His Essays’ <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0018">preface</a> almost warns us off:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reader, you have here an honest book; … in writing it, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end. I have had no consideration at all either to your service or to my glory … Thus, reader, I myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason that you should employ your leisure upon so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ensuing, free-ranging essays, although steeped in classical poetry, history and philosophy, are unquestionably something <em>new</em> in the history of Western thought. They were almost scandalous for their day. </p>
<p>No one before Montaigne in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Canon:_The_Books_and_School_of_the_Ages">the Western canon</a> had thought to devote pages to subjects as diverse and seemingly insignificant as “Of Smells”, “Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes”, “Of Posting” (letters, that is), “Of Thumbs” or “Of Sleep” — let alone reflections on <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.20">the unruliness of the male appendage</a>, a subject which repeatedly concerned him.</p>
<p>French <a href="http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/davis/davis8-17-06.asp">philosopher Jacques Rancière</a> has recently argued that modernism began with the opening up of the mundane, private and ordinary to artistic treatment. Modern art no longer restricts its subject matters to classical myths, biblical tales, the battles and dealings of Princes and prelates. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French philosopher, Jacques Rancière.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jacques_Ranci%C3%A8re#/media/File:Ranciere.jpg">Annette Bozorgan/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>If Rancière is right, it could be said that Montaigne’s 107 Essays, each between several hundred words and (in one case) several hundred pages, came close to inventing modernism in the late 16th century. </p>
<p>Montaigne frequently apologises for writing so much about himself. He is only a second rate politician and one-time Mayor of Bourdeaux, after all. With an almost <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Socratic%20irony">Socratic irony</a>, he tells us most about his own habits of writing in the essays titled “Of Presumption”, “Of Giving the Lie”, “Of Vanity”, and “Of Repentance”. </p>
<p>But the message of <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book3.2">this latter essay</a> is, quite simply, that <em>non, je ne regrette rien</em>, as a more recent French icon sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that I am without … I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Montaigne’s persistence in assembling his extraordinary dossier of stories, arguments, asides and observations on nearly everything under the sun (from how to parley with an enemy to whether women should be so demure <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0098">in matters of sex</a>, has been celebrated by admirers in nearly every generation. </p>
<p>Within a decade of his death, his Essays had left their mark on Bacon and Shakespeare. He was a hero to the enlighteners Montesquieu and Diderot. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=d9J6CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1517&lpg=PT1517&dq=voltaire+montaigne+least+methodical+wisest+amiable&source=bl&ots=NuH3iXhLOS&sig=csho5S6ETEuHOL04uKfIXvIlxd8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRk8_S64jPAhWHnJQKHQIJCLsQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=voltaire%20montaigne%20least%20methodical%20wisest%20amiable&f=false">Voltaire celebrated</a> Montaigne - a man educated only by his own reading, his father and his childhood tutors – as “the least methodical of all philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable”. <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Schopenhauer_as_Educator">Nietzsche claimed</a> that the very existence of Montaigne’s Essays added to the joy of living in this world.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sarah Bakewell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/5520234327/">David Shankbone/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>More recently, Sarah Bakewell’s charming engagement with Montaigne, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7624457-how-to-live">How to Live or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer</a> (2010) made the best-sellers’ lists. Even today’s initiatives in <a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-in-schools-promoting-critical-creative-and-caring-thinking-44578">teaching philosophy in schools</a> can look back to Montaigne (and his “<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/education_of_children/">On the Education of Children</a>”) as a patron saint or <em>sage</em>.</p>
<p>So what are these Essays, which Montaigne protested were indistinguishable from their author? (“<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/repentance/">My book and I go hand in hand together</a>”).</p>
<p>It’s a good question. </p>
<p>Anyone who tries to read the Essays systematically soon finds themselves overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of examples, anecdotes, digressions and curios Montaigne assembles for our delectation, often without more than the hint of a reason why.</p>
<p>To open the book is to venture into a world in which fortune consistently defies expectations; our senses are as uncertain as our understanding is prone to error; opposites turn out very often to be conjoined (“<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0114">the most universal quality is diversity</a>”); even vice can lead to virtue. Many titles seem to have no direct relation to their contents. Nearly everything our author says in one place is qualified, if not overturned, elsewhere.</p>
<p>Without pretending to untangle all of the knots of this “<a href="essaysbymontaigne.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-1-chapter-8-of-idleness.html">book with a wild and desultory plan</a>”, let me tug here on a couple of Montaigne’s threads to invite and assist new readers to find their own way.</p>
<h2>Philosophy (and writing) as a way of life</h2>
<p>Some scholars argued that Montaigne began writing his essays as a want-to-be <a href="blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/what-is-stoicism/">Stoic</a>, hardening himself against the horrors of the French <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion">civil and religious wars</a>, and his grief at the loss of his best friend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie">Étienne de La Boétie</a> through dysentery. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Did Montaigne turn to the Stoic school of philosophy to deal with the horrors of war?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3343602">Édouard Debat-Ponsan/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly, for Montaigne, as for ancient thinkers led by his favourites, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarch">Plutarch</a> and the Roman Stoic Seneca, philosophy was not solely about constructing theoretical systems, writing books and articles. It was what one more recent admirer of Montaigne has called “<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/hadot/">a way of life</a>”.</p>
<p>Montaigne has little time for forms <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/pedantry/">of pedantry</a> that value learning as a means to insulate scholars from the world, rather than opening out onto it. He <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book1.19.html">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Either our reason mocks us or it ought to have no other aim but our contentment. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">We are great fools</a>. ‘He has passed over his life in idleness,’ we say: ‘I have done nothing today.’ What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of all your occupations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One feature of the Essays is, accordingly, Montaigne’s fascination with the daily doings of men like <a href="http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlsocrates.htm">Socrates</a> and <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html">Cato the Younger</a>; two of those figures revered amongst the ancients as wise men or “<a href="http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Ejannas/Published%20Articles/sage.pdf">sages</a>”.</p>
<p>Their wisdom, <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.36">he suggests</a>, was chiefly evident in the lives they led (neither wrote a thing). In particular, it was proven by the nobility each showed in facing their deaths. Socrates consented serenely to taking hemlock, having been sentenced unjustly to death by the Athenians. Cato <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html">stabbed himself to death after having meditated upon Socrates’ example</a>, in order not to cede to Julius Caesar’s <em>coup d’état</em>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Montaigne revered the wisdom of Socrates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMAntokolski_Death_of_Socrates.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve such “philosophic” constancy, Montaigne saw, requires <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.6">a good deal more than book learning</a>. Indeed, everything about our passions and, above all, <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/force_of_imagination/">our imagination</a>, speaks against achieving that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia">perfect tranquillity</a> the classical thinkers saw as the highest philosophical goal. </p>
<p>We discharge our hopes and fears, very often, on the wrong objects, <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Essays_of_Montaigne/Book_I/Chapter_IV">Montaigne notes</a>, in an observation that anticipates the thinking of Freud and modern psychology. Always, <a href="http://essaysbymontaigne.blogspot.com/2012/02/book-1-chapter-3-that-our-affections.htm">these emotions</a> dwell on things we cannot presently change. Sometimes, they inhibit our ability to see and deal in a supple way with the changing demands of life. </p>
<p>Philosophy, in this classical view, involves a retraining of our ways of thinking, seeing and being in the world. Montaigne’s earlier essay “<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/that_to_study_philosophy">To philosophise is to learn how to die</a>” is perhaps the clearest exemplar of his indebtedness to this ancient idea of philosophy. </p>
<p>Yet there is a strong sense in which all of the Essays are a form of what one 20th century author has dubbed “<a href="http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.hypomnemata.en.html">self-writing</a>”: an ethical exercise to “strengthen and enlighten” Montaigne’s own judgement, as much as that of we readers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book2.18.html">And though nobody should read me,</a> have I wasted time in entertaining myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? … I have no more made my book than my book has made me: it is a book consubstantial with the author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my life …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As for the seeming disorder of the product, and Montaigne’s frequent claims that he is <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.3">playing the fool</a>, this is arguably one more feature of the Essays that reflects his Socratic irony. Montaigne wants to leave us with some work to do and scope to find our <em>own</em> paths through the labyrinth of his thoughts, or alternatively, to bobble about on their <a href="http://people.virginia.edu/%7Ejdk3t/Montaigne3-4.html">diverting surfaces</a>. </p>
<h2>A free-thinking sceptic</h2>
<p>Yet Montaigne’s Essays, for all of their classicism and their idiosyncracies, are <a href="http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/montaigne-and-origins-modern-philosophy">rightly numbered as one of the founding texts of modern thought</a>. Their author keeps his own prerogatives, even as he bows deferentially before the altars of ancient heroes like Socrates, Cato, Alexander the Great or the Theban general <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaminondas">Epaminondas</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michel de Montaigne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michel_de_Montaigne_1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a good deal of the Christian, Augustinian legacy in Montaigne’s makeup. And of all the philosophers, he most frequently echoes ancient sceptics like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho">Pyrrho</a> or <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/carneades/">Carneades</a> who argued that we can know almost nothing with certainty. This is especially true concerning the “ultimate questions” the Catholics and Huguenots of Montaigne’s day were bloodily contesting.</p>
<p>Writing in a time of <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.11">cruel sectarian violence</a>, Montaigne is unconvinced by the ageless claim that having a dogmatic faith is necessary or especially effective in <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">assisting people to love their neighbours</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Between ourselves, I have ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of singular accord …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This scepticism applies as much to the pagan ideal of a perfected philosophical sage as it does to theological speculations. </p>
<p>Socrates’ constancy before death, Montaigne concludes, <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book3.4">was simply too demanding for most people, almost superhuman</a>. As for Cato’s proud suicide, Montaigne takes liberty to doubt whether it was as much the product of Stoic tranquility, as of a singular turn of mind <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.11">that could take pleasure in such extreme virtue</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed when it comes to his essays “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.29">Of Moderation</a>” or “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.29">Of Virtue</a>”, Montaigne quietly breaks the ancient mold. Instead of celebrating the feats of the world’s Catos or Alexanders, here he lists example after example of people moved by their sense of transcendent self-righteousness to acts of murderous or suicidal excess. </p>
<p>Even virtue can become vicious, these essays imply, unless we know how to moderate our own presumptions.</p>
<h2>Of cannibals and cruelties</h2>
<p>If there is one form of argument Montaigne uses most often, it is the sceptical argument drawing on <a href="https://thephilosophyofscience.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/the-five-tropes/">the disagreement</a> amongst even the wisest authorities. </p>
<p>If human beings could know if, say, the soul was immortal, with or without the body, or dissolved when we die … then the wisest people would all have come to the same conclusions by now, the argument goes. Yet even the “most knowing” authorities disagree about such things, Montaigne delights in <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">showing us</a>. </p>
<p>The existence of such “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">an infinite confusion</a>” of opinions and customs ceases to be the problem, for Montaigne. It points the way to a new kind of solution, and could in fact enlighten us.</p>
<p>Documenting such manifold differences between customs and opinions is, for him, an <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0114">education in humility</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His essay “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.30">Of Cannibals</a>” for instance, presents all of the different aspects of American Indian culture, as known to Montaigne through travellers’ reports then filtering back into Europe. For the most part, he finds these “savages’” society ethically equal, if not far superior, to that of war-torn France’s — a perspective that Voltaire and Rousseau would echo nearly 200 years later. </p>
<p>We are horrified at the prospect of eating our ancestors. Yet Montaigne imagines that from the Indians’ perspective, Western practices of cremating our deceased, or burying their bodies to be devoured by the worms must seem every bit as callous. </p>
<p>And while we are at it, Montaigne adds that consuming people after they are dead seems a good deal less cruel and inhumane than torturing folk we don’t even know are guilty of any crime <em>whilst</em> they are still alive …</p>
<h2>A gay and sociable wisdom</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voltaire celebrated Montaigne as one of the wisest and most amiable philosophers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atelier_de_Nicolas_de_Largilli%C3%A8re,_portrait_de_Voltaire,_d%C3%A9tail_(mus%C3%A9e_Carnavalet)_-002.jpg">Nicolas de Largillierre/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“So what is left then?”, the reader might ask, as Montaigne undermines one presumption after another, and piles up exceptions like they had become the only rule. </p>
<p><em>A very great deal</em>, is the answer. With metaphysics, theology, and the feats of godlike sages all under a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch%C3%A9">suspension of judgment</a>”, we become witnesses as we read the Essays to a key document in the modern revaluation and valorization of everyday life. </p>
<p>There is, for instance, Montaigne’s scandalously demotic habit of interlacing words, stories and actions from his neighbours, the local peasants (and peasant women) with examples from the greats of Christian and pagan history. As <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0098">he writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much rather have resembled.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the end of the Essays, Montaigne has begun openly to suggest that, if tranquillity, constancy, bravery, and honour are the goals the wise hold up for us, they can all be seen <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">in much greater abundance</a> amongst the salt of the earth than amongst the rich and famous:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: ‘tis all one … To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown; to … laugh, sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse with our own families and with ourselves … not to give our selves the lie, that is rarer, more difficult and less remarkable …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so we arrive with these last Essays at a sentiment better known today from another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Science">A Gay Science (1882) </a>.</p>
<p>Montaigne’s closing essays repeat the avowal that: “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.5.html">I love a gay and civil wisdom …</a>.” But in contrast to his later Germanic admirer, the music here is less Wagner or Beethoven than it is Mozart (as it were), and Montaigne’s spirit much less agonised than gently serene. </p>
<p>It was Voltaire, again, who said that life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. Montaigne <a href="http://www.equilibrium.org/montaigne/essay06.html">adopts and admires the comic perspective</a>. As he writes in “Of Experience”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">It is not of much use to go upon stilts</a>, for, when upon stilts, we must still walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are still perched on our own bums.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe is part of an ARC funded project on modern reinventions of the ancient idea of "philosophy as a way of life", in which Montaigne is a central figure.</span></em></p>Montaigne anticipated much of modern thought, and was profoundly shaped by the classics. His Essays, so personal yet so urbane, continue to challenge and charm readers.Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/631122016-08-14T20:15:21Z2016-08-14T20:15:21ZGuide to the classics: the Icelandic saga<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133053/original/image-20160804-12192-eox4lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Icelandic sagas are under-appreciated in the world of European literature.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oscar Wergeland [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Iceland has been in the news quite a lot lately, mainly because of its young soccer team’s outstanding performance in the Euro 2016 football tournament. And there has also been a surge of general interest in other aspects of Icelandic culture, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/07/icelandic-book-trade-gets-a-kick-from-euro-2016">modern Icelandic literature</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133046/original/image-20160804-12192-sfdsuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Halldór Laxness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Nobel Foundation [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Icelanders love books, both reading and writing them, and in recent years translations of contemporary Icelandic literature have made it into bookshops and literary pages abroad in increasing numbers. Nor must we forget that in 1955 the Icelander <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1955/laxness-bio.html">Halldór Laxness</a> won the Nobel Prize for literature.</p>
<p>Back in the Middle Ages, Icelanders were great literary producers and consumers too. The term “saga” is used to refer to the new literary genre that developed in Iceland from the late 12th century up to the end of the 15th century and sometimes later than that. </p>
<p>“Saga” is an Icelandic word that means “something said, a narrative”. Originally the term is likely to have been applied to stories that were probably formed and transmitted orally. Later, they came to be recorded in writing, in hand-written manuscripts, many of which survive to the present day, though a good number have perished over the past 500 years or so.</p>
<p>In terms of its structure, the Icelandic saga is usually a prose narrative, but in many cases contains a good deal of embedded poetry. With regard to its subject-matter, the saga falls into several categories, and these allow it to be differentiated into generic sub-groups. </p>
<h2>The subjects of sagas</h2>
<p>Sagas of kings are historical biographies of the kings of Norway (and to a lesser extent, of Denmark) from prehistoric times into the 14th century. Although the antecedents of the first kings’ sagas were composed by Norwegians, Icelanders quickly became the masters of this genre, which usually contains much embedded poetry. This poetry is attributed to the court poets, or skalds, of these kings, whose compositions (mostly elaborate praise-poems) must have been passed down by word of mouth, in some cases over more than 200 years.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133051/original/image-20160804-12192-1ytm9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Icelandic saga character Hordur Grimkelsson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Gilwellian (Own work) [Public domain or CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most Icelandic saga writing was probably considered in the Middle Ages to be a form of history rather than fiction. This does not necessarily mean that the standards of modern historiography were applied to it, but what is narrated is likely to have been considered to be within the bounds of historical probability.</p>
<p>Coleridge’s “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, that constitutes poetic faith” might have applied in the consciousness of some audiences to some of the events and characters that appear in a sub-group of the saga that modern scholars call the fornaldarsögur (“sagas of the old time”), in which supernatural happenings abound. But other people would probably have considered such things to have been normal in the society of the pre-Christian age in Scandinavia and other prehistoric realms.</p>
<p>As for the Icelanders’ own history, that was the subject of several sub-genres of the saga, including the best-known today, the so-called “sagas of Icelanders” or “family sagas”, as they are often known in English.</p>
<p>There were also the so-called “contemporary sagas” that tell of what happened in Icelandic society during the turbulent 13th century – in the middle of which Iceland lost its political independence to Norway – and sagas of bishops and saints.</p>
<p>Furthermore, following the Norwegian king <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haakon_IV_of_Norway">Hákon Hákonarson</a>’s introduction of a programme of translating French romances into Norwegian, another type of saga, the sagas of knights, appeared, at first translating foreign romances, later, in Icelandic hands, developing indigenous romance narratives.</p>
<p>From the 18th century, when saga translations first began to appear in modern European languages, sagas of Icelanders (family sagas) in particular have attracted foreign readers. There are now many English translations to choose from, in some cases multiple versions of a single saga. </p>
<p>The most widely accessible at present are probably the most recent Penguin translations, which are new editions of a five-volume series originally published in Iceland in 1997 as <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102538.The_Complete_Sagas_of_Icelanders_Including_49_Tales?from_search=true">The Complete Sagas of Icelanders</a>. These were prepared by a number of saga scholars in collaboration with Icelandic colleagues. Increasingly, there are saga translations available on the web, though their quality is not always reliable.</p>
<p>Sagas of Icelanders are about Icelandic families whose ancestors migrated to Iceland from Norway, the British Isles and (in a few cases) other parts of Scandinavia towards the last decades of the ninth and the first three decades of the 10th century AD. </p>
<p>Some people have called Viking-Age and medieval Iceland the first post-colonial European society and there are certainly parallels to be drawn with ideas from contemporary post-colonial studies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133049/original/image-20160804-12227-380y8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ingólfur Arnarson is considered the first permanent Nordic settler of Iceland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Johan Peter Raadsig (1806 - 1882) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Empire writing back to the motherland</h2>
<p>Icelandic saga writing can be seen in the context of the modern idea (first formulated by Australian scholars) of the empire writing back to the motherland, in this case Iceland “writing back” to Norway and to common Scandinavian oral traditions of poetry and story. In this process, medieval Icelandic authors created a new literary form.</p>
<p>The structure of saga narratives allows a number of different thematic and stylistic tropes to flourish. Many sagas of Icelanders are about feuds between families and their supporters; they give graphic accounts of fights, escapes, outlawry and reconciliation. They detail complex legal procedures that, in the absence of a police force on the island, were the individual’s main recourse to justice, but only if he had sufficiently powerful supporters. </p>
<p>Some sagas, the so-called sagas of poets, detail the love lives and stormy careers of well-known skalds, off duty in Iceland from their careers at the Norwegian court. Others are more regional histories of families from certain parts of Iceland and their struggles with neighbours and with the supernatural inhabitants of their region.</p>
<p>The saga form has often been compared to the modern literary form of the novel, but, though similarities exist, there are also important differences. Like the novel, the saga narrates a chronologically defined story, but as often as not, there is not one story, but several intertwined narratives in a saga.</p>
<p>That may sometimes be true of the novel, of course, but saga strands do not always link up to the main narrative. They may just peter out when the saga writer no longer needs a particular character or line of narration. It is common for saga authors to explain that someone or other is now “out of this saga”. </p>
<p>Unlike the novel, the saga does not normally get inside a character’s skin to reveal his or her inner thoughts or psychological motives; rather, external actions ascribed to the character reveal something of his motivation, given the small-scale society described and its conventionalised behaviour. For example, if a character puts on dark-coloured clothes (rather than neutral homespun), then you can be pretty sure something important is going to happen, usually of an aggressive nature.</p>
<h2>Narrative voice</h2>
<p>The stance of the saga’s narrating voice also differs from that of many narrative voices in the modern novel. The persona of the narrator is not omniscient, although he may reveal what the common opinion of a character or an action may be. Sometimes he will refer to dreams or what we would classify as supernatural happenings as indicators of what is likely to occur in the future or how a present action should be judged. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133056/original/image-20160804-12201-jo7bk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Njáll, the great Icelandic tribune jurist and counsellor, from The saga of Burnt Njáll.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An example from Brennu-Njáls saga, The saga of Burnt Njáll, regarded by many critics as the best of the Icelandic family sagas, shows how the narrative voice in a saga can be heard obliquely.</p>
<p>At a certain point in this saga, a group of men involved in a feud decide to burn Njáll and his family in their farmhouse, an act that was conventionally regarded as a heinous crime. Njáll himself, old and prescient, with an understanding of true Christian values though he lived before the conversion to Christianity, lies down with his wife under an ox hide to wait for death, saying that God “will not let us burn both in this world and the next”. </p>
<p>When, after the fire, the couple’s bodies are discovered to be uncorrupted, the audience is left to draw the conclusion (assuming a medieval understanding of the Christian religion) that God has indeed saved Njáll and his wife even though they were unbaptised. The conclusion here is, however, based upon our knowledge of how medieval Christian audiences, for whom these narratives were written, would think.</p>
<p>It is not directly stated, and quite recently an American scholar,<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24533974-why-is-your-axe-bloody"> William Ian Miller</a>, has repudiated the interpretation above for one of pragmatic realism: the couple did not burn because the ox hide protected them. </p>
<p>I think myself that Miller is wrong, and that the text contains ample clues of how the audience for which the saga was written would have understood it and how we should understand it today.</p>
<p>Although medieval Icelandic sagas are much less well known than many other classics of European literature, they richly deserve a place in the company of the best that European literature has to offer.</p>
<p>We do not know the names of their authors, and must recognise that the anonymity of those who created them has a literary point to make: sagas narrate history, and that history belongs, if not to everyone living in Iceland at the time of writing (and to their modern descendants), then to specific families and other interest groups, whose ancestors figure in their stories. The authors shaped those stories but did not distort them.</p>
<p><em>My 2010 book, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10291511-the-cambridge-introduction-to-the-old-norse-icelandic-saga">The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic saga</a>, may be of interest for readers seeking a further introduction to the sagas.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Clunies Ross receives funding from
The Australian Research Council
Snorrastofa, Reykholt, Iceland</span></em></p>Family feuds, love affairs, empire writing back to the motherland - the medieval Icelandic saga have it all. Though less known than other classics of European literature they richly deserve a place among the best.Margaret Clunies Ross, Eneritus Professor of English Language and Early English Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/483522015-10-02T11:02:15Z2015-10-02T11:02:15ZIf only we could ask Euripides about refugees<p>Berlin recently <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/30/refugee-crisis-berlin-agrees-steps-to-curb-migrants-as-merkel-faces-backlash.html">agreed to curb</a> the number of migrants it welcomed after a <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/merkels-welcome-refugees-sparks-conservative-backlash-131025538.html">backlash</a> against Angela Merkel’s <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=merkel%20suspends%20rules%20migrants">suspension</a> of EU rules limiting numbers. It followed previous scenes of crowds welcoming new arrivals, which commentators had suggested was a response to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/23/german-neo-nazi-protesters-clash-with-police-at-new-migrant-shelter">neo-Nazi violence</a> and a move by the nation to repudiate its past.</p>
<p>Similarly, when David Cameron was attacked for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33716501">language he used of migrants</a> earlier in the summer, critics contrasted it with Britain’s record for <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/migrant-crisis-reminder-britains-long-history-welcoming-refugees-photo-report-1517648">welcoming refugees</a> in the 20th century. The Hungarian prime minister’s controversial comments on “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/hungarian-leader-rebuked-for-saying-muslim-migrants-must-be-blocked-to-keep-europe-christian.html">keeping Europe Christian</a>” looks back to a less comfortable part of European identity: the legacy of the crusades, and the idea of an alliance against “infidels”.</p>
<p>The debate is emotional as well as economic. And while recent horrors have led to this emergency, the broader question of how much wealthy countries owe to others in need is hardly a modern issue. In ancient Athens we see the same debate, and similarly emotive appeals in the name of national identity were used to win it.</p>
<h2>Athenian welcome</h2>
<p>Athens prided itself on welcoming the needy from other parts of the Greek world. Athenian myth dwells on how their ancestors offered sanctuary to those bullied by other cities, and these were repeated in the political arena. According to the historian Herodotus, Athenians drew on myths of how they protected vulnerable foreigners in order to <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=hdt.+9.27&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0199">win a dispute</a> among the Greeks over who should take place of honour on the battlefield. Nearly 50 years later, according to Thucydides’s <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html">Histories</a>, the politician Pericles praises Athens’s willingness to help others in his <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D40">funeral oration</a>, the formal speech of Athenian values given in honour of the war dead.</p>
<p>This belief in Athens’s duty to help others had real consequences. In Thucydides’s account of the debate over whether to go to war in Sicily (a decision which ultimately led to Athens’s downfall), the politician Alcibiades <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D18">supported</a> war, arguing that Athens’s greatness was won by coming to the help of all who needed it. His opponent Nicias on the other hand <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Thuc.+6.13&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200">urged the Athenians</a> to change their policy and only make alliances with people likely to provide aid in return. </p>
<p>But the most profound exploration of what is involved in taking in refugees is found in Greek tragedy. Nowadays we are most familiar with classical plays that deal with tensions within the family. But Greek tragedy also handles political questions, and how to deal with migrants is a recurrent theme. While Athens was proud of its mythical record of taking in refugees, in tragedy these stories are used to investigate how much our core values should mean to us.</p>
<h2>The refugee plays</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96795/original/image-20150930-5798-1e7y1eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Euripides wrote the perfect play for today.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Euripides’s <a href="http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_euripides_heracleidae.html">Children of Heracles</a> is rarely performed today, but is the perfect play to reflect on the migrant crisis. It tells of how Athens protected the children of Heracles, who were persecuted by the Argives and driven from their homes in the Peloponnese. The Athenian king Demophon (whose name, “voice of the people”, shows that he represents the national character) gives the children asylum and protects them from the army, though he risks Athenian lives by doing so. </p>
<p>The play does not question that it is morally right to protect these children. But it explores the cost of doing so, and how far a country should go to do the right thing. The limits of Athenian kindness are tested when we learn of a prophecy that another child must be sacrificed to defeat the Argives. Demophon faces civil war if he puts his citizens’ families in danger to protect outsiders. Through this myth, Euripides explores the burden that refugees place on the native population, and how far people can be expected to put their own interests aside for the sake of shared humanity. Politicians in Europe are now struggling with the same dilemma of how much they can ask of their citizens in order to live up to their moral ideals.</p>
<p>The costs and benefits of taking in refugees feature in other plays, where fallen heroes from across Greece make their way to Athens for protection. These people are not innocent children, but have done terrible things. Taking them in is therefore risky, though may offer long term rewards. In Sophocles’s <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/colonus.html">Oedipus at Colonus</a>, the Athenians offer sanctuary to the blind Oedipus, who has murdered his father and married his mother, despite their fear that hosting him will bring divine anger. At the end of the play we learn that his spirit will protect Athens in the future.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96796/original/image-20150930-5798-uyj4so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Medea about to Kill her Children, Eugène Delacroix, 1862.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, in Euripides’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/medea-is-as-relevant-today-as-it-was-in-ancient-greece-29609">Medea</a>, Medea persuades the Athenian king to take her in, presenting herself as a refugee persecuted by the Corinthians. It is his vow to protect her that enables her to kill her own children, confident that Athens will have to offer her refuge when she flees the scene. Medea explores how a nation’s kindness can be abused, and the difficulties of assessing which claims to asylum are genuine. </p>
<p>But as a whole the plays tend to celebrate Athens’s readiness to welcome those in need. While helping provokes conflict, it is the risk involved that gives Athens a claim to moral uniqueness. </p>
<p>British audiences are enjoying an unprecedented flush of Greek tragedy, with the Almeida theatre devoting an <a href="http://www.almeida.co.uk/greeks">entire season</a> to its “big hits”. However, plays that focus on Athenian identity are rarely performed today, and are often felt to be jingoistic or parochial, their themes of little interest in the modern world. But as real life tragedy plays out on the shores of the Mediterranean, these lesser known texts have relevance to our understanding of what we owe to our fellow citizens and to other human beings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Berlin recently agreed to curb the number of migrants it welcomed after a backlash against Angela Merkel’s suspension of EU rules limiting numbers. It followed previous scenes of crowds welcoming new arrivals…Laura Swift, Lecturer in Classical Studies, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/328712014-10-15T19:25:24Z2014-10-15T19:25:24ZHooked on the classics: literature in the English curriculum<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61729/original/znfkj3hb-1413329654.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The curriculum review called for more "Western literature". Given the curriculum is mostly Western literature already, perhaps we can take that to mean "more Bible". </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruth_w/4524261300">Flickr/Ruth_W</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://docs.education.gov.au/node/36269">National Curriculum Review</a> was released this week, with the reviewers calling for a greater focus on “Western” literature in the English classroom. </p>
<p>As former high school and primary English teachers, we were left wondering what reviewers Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire think our students are reading in classrooms across the country, if not Western literature. </p>
<h2>What exactly is “Western” literature?</h2>
<p>The call for an emphasis on Western literature is unsurprising, given in the past <a href="https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/05/the-ideology-of-the-national-english-curriculum/">Donnelly has argued</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>no amount of politically correct clap-trap about the importance of indigenous and Asian texts can erase the fact that central to English as a subject are those enduring literary works that are part of the Western tradition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what is the literary canon according to Donnelly? Alongside Shakespeare and Dickens, the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-29/donnelly-the-bible-deserves-a-place-in-the-national-curriculum/3750156">Bible</a> takes centre stage.</p>
<p>Students already engage with a broad range of Western canonical and contemporary texts, both from Australia and abroad. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61730/original/ns5c8j43-1413329862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It doesn’t get much more Western, or influential than Charles Dickens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/41188800@N00/453620675">Flickr/Jeannie Fletcher</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the <a href="http://syllabus.bos.nsw.edu.au/assets/global/files/english-k10-suggested-texts.pdf">NSW Curriculum</a> suggests using texts from authors such as Dickens, Eliot, Hemingway, Kipling and Orwell in Years 7 to 10.</p>
<p>When Victorian Year 12 students study for the <a href="http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/documents/notices/2013/notice27-2013-2014vceenglishealtextlist.pdf">VCE</a>, they are expected to engage with Western canon greats such as Shakespeare and Bronte.</p>
<p>Barry Spurr, a <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/english/staff/profiles/barry.spurr.php">Poetry and Poetics</a> Professor at The University of Sydney, was chosen to review literature in the English curriculum. Some of his recommendations have made it through to the final report, including a </p>
<blockquote>
<p>greater emphasis on dealing with and introducing literature from the Western literary canon, especially poetry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spurr believes that an </p>
<blockquote>
<p>over-emphasis on 20th- and 21st-century texts produces an unbalanced curriculum, and certainly not a rigorous one, with regard to the discipline at large.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He goes on to declare that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the range of study must extend from Middle English lyrics and the works of Chaucer to the present, with acknowledgement and experience also of ancient texts from the classical world and of the Bible – sources that, through the centuries, have had an inestimable influence on the development of literature in English.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reviewers endorse this position on page 159 of their report, claiming that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>knowledge of the Bible is vitally important for an appreciation of Western literature. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Donnelly has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-29/donnelly-the-bible-deserves-a-place-in-the-national-curriculum/3750156">previously argued that we need the Bible</a> in our schools, prompting the question whether the review is free of ideology.</p>
<h2>Choosing quality literature in the English Classroom</h2>
<p>Currently, there is no prescribed literature in the Australian Curriculum. In its <a href="http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/advice-on-selection-of-literary-texts">advice</a> on selecting literary texts, the curriculum authority (ACARA) explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Teachers and schools are best placed to make decisions about the selection of texts in their teaching and learning programs that address the content in the Australian Curriculum while also meeting the needs of the students in their classes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Australian Association for the Teaching of English <a href="https://submissions.deewr.gov.au/Forms/AustralianCurriculum/_layouts/SP.Submissions/ViewDoc.ashx?id=%7Baab90d68-0205-467a-a017-4216d25bb3d1%7D">submission</a> to the review commended the current situation, where </p>
<blockquote>
<p>schools have the professional freedom to implement the curriculum with texts that they assess as being suitable for their own student cohorts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://submissions.deewr.gov.au/Forms/AustralianCurriculum/_layouts/SP.Submissions/ViewDoc.ashx?id=%7Bf75b7d57-17ee-4390-9341-b3adb4943077%7D">submission</a> made by the Primary English Teaching Association Australia also endorses the curriculum’s flexibility for teachers to have control over context-appropriate literature selection.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61732/original/67hrz34f-1413330055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schools know best what students should study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/satyrika/13405420734">Flickr/Roberta Cortese</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Calling for an emphasis on the Western literary canon makes the curriculum more, not less, prescriptive. This runs counter to the government’s rhetoric on <a href="http://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/school-autonomy">school autonomy</a>.</p>
<p>This kind of prescriptive approach to text selection is the focus of the so-called “culture wars” and has previously been focused on secondary schooling. </p>
<p>What is different in this review, and perhaps most troubling, is the suggestion that this “historical study of literature” should begin from the Foundation year, where memorising and reciting the texts will assist students in ingesting </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the flavoursome vocabulary of the simplest Medieval lyrics and the inventive conceptions of traditional fairy stories, myths and legends.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s questionable whether reciting and memorising Medieval poetry is appropriate for six year olds.</p>
<h2>A call for more literature and less imagination</h2>
<p>While the current English curriculum is not perfect, there are some groundbreaking and innovative features that seem to have become lost in the tired fights about phonics, skills and ideological warfare. One of these is the intertwining of three strands of content - Language, Literature and Literacy. </p>
<p>The Australian Literacy Educators’ Association <a href="https://submissions.deewr.gov.au/Forms/AustralianCurriculum/_layouts/SP.Submissions/ViewDoc.ashx?id=%7B79d1beee-0b47-4927-a18e-2bdff69aca9c%7D">submission</a> to the review commended the curriculum, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The central place of literature in the English curriculum ensures learners are immersed in rich language and that excellent models of written language are used to inspire student writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the reviewers claim that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>during the early years to middle years of primary school, there should be less emphasis on children creating their own literature and more on becoming familiar with literary texts – both fiction and non-fiction – as exemplars of high-quality writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This begs the question whether the NAPLAN Writing Task will continue to be sat by Year 3 and 5 students. After all, the composition of narrative and persuasive texts is a clear example of children creating their own literature.</p>
<p>In his analysis, Spurr declares that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the idea of pupils as ‘creators’ of literature in English needs to be kept firmly in check.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This position has been labelled by the South Australian English Teachers Association president, Alison Robertson, as <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/sa-english-teachers-association-blasts-national-curriculum-review/story-fni6uo1m-1227089287645">“crazy”</a>, with text comprehension and composition going hand-in-hand.</p>
<p>Teachers should be given the professional respect to understand the learning needs of their students and to select appropriate literature for inclusion in their English program. The curriculum already supports this.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Both authors will be on hand for Author Q&A sessions today (October 16) – Eileen from 12:30 to 1:30pm and Stewart from 3 and 4pm AEDT. Post any questions about literature in the Australian curriculum in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The National Curriculum Review was released this week, with the reviewers calling for a greater focus on “Western” literature in the English classroom. As former high school and primary English teachers…Stewart Riddle, Lecturer in Literacies Education, University of Southern QueenslandEileen Honan, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.