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Joseph Stitt's avatar

I'm heavily in favor of a traditional liberal arts curriculum and am open to Bloom-ism or a more broad-based Great Books approach or an even more broad-based world-civ model. I spent a great deal of time and energy arguing in favor of these things when I was still in academia. Unfortunately, those of us who made these arguments did not persuade the people who needed to be persuaded (administrators and other faculty).

I'm for continuing the good fight where it can be fought, though, because I am not in favor of a thoughtless and post-literate world.

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Mark Wills's avatar

Mrs. Wills a.k.a. my present wife earned a B.A. in Australian Literature and Literature. 40 years later it's interesting to see what she thought of her degree. She got a really solid block of Austen, Eliot, Bronte's and she argues strongly that this is worth reading solely for the quality of the prose. The American literature she had mixed thoughts, the newer works didn't really move her but the Fitzgerald, Maddox Ford type authors did. She doesn't like poetry much but thought the range of English and other European poets gave her a good insight into metaphorical and allegorical thinking. Doesn't care for Shakespeare but agrees it is a must. Australian literature was hit and miss but some of the turn of the century writers like Handel Richardson, and later period writers like Hal Porter. She thought that the greatest value of much Australian fiction was as a historical record, the country had few people and fewer stories, so many authors wrote about the growth of the country. What was interesting was that she read virtually nothing political or philosophical.

She now works as a florist and is a voracious consumer of audio books. Her degree certainly flamed her passion for literature, and she did learn what a great work is and why. The relative narrowness of her studies i.e. novels, poetry and plays, suited her as she had a moderate interest in political writing.

The net result was that she learned how to understand prose, and write it well. She felt you had to be circumspect of the set ciriculum and have an idea as to what you wanted from the degree. When she likes a book she says it was good. Period. One of the few books she has ever effused over was The English Patient mainly because she thought it was so beautifully written.

Lastly she thinks a good literature degree should teach you about ideas that describe human behaviour and are transcendent. Miss. Havisham being a great example, or what dancing alluded to in Pride and Prejudice. when she talks about anything she reads or watches now she has a strong framework to compare them to.

Lastly she always jokes about any literature degree, you can't read everything.

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