When I was studying English Literature at university a full quarter of a century ago now, in the period just before the reforms of the Blair regime really had time to work their cultural poison, I remember talking to a fellow first-year undergraduate who informed me she was about to drop out. Why? Because she hadn’t realised an English Literature course would involve reading so many books. At school, she said, her teacher had read them all out loud for her. In what she called “a funny voice”. Sometimes even whilst “doing the actions”. Hope they weren’t reading Lolita.
Twenty-five or so years later, thanks to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and a thousand other similar portents of Anti-Christ, we increasingly seem to be entering into a post-literate era in which the presence of students like the above on English Literature courses may now almost be the norm, not a comic aberration. Perhaps this growing 21st century distaste for books – at least for proper ones, not children’s books like Harry Potter, Sally Rooney and suchlike – helps explain why, as the Sunday Times recently reported in a tone of abject despair, the number of undergrads choosing to study English Literature has plummeted by almost a fifth in just five years, going from 49,000 to 40,000 since 2019.
The Writing’s On the Wall
The newspaper attributed this decline to a several possible factors besides a general perceived deterioration in youth literacy and reading for pleasure. For one thing,
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If Steven Tucker weren’t so young a man, he’d know that things were already going wrong with ‘English’ — ‘theory’ starting to supplant criticism — at least thirty years before he did his degree. In evidence, see, e.g., https://dukemaskell.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-the-contemporary-critic.
English Literature is for entertainment purposes (that was why it was written and sold to paying customers), not a subject worthy of academic study. Teach children that it exists, but don’t force it on them, and don’t indulge those who want to waste many years studying it.
i can hear the wails rising like a pipe band warming up: “it teaches the meaning of life”, “it helped me to code”, etc. If that really is the case then please distill these life lessons, so that the rest of us don’t have to wade our way through umpteen books.
its raining all day today, so I’m going back to bed with a good Trollope.
Historically humanities subjects were a gateway into professions such as accountancy because of the analytical skills they taught.
Now certainly English is just indoctrination.
Never mind Pharma’s meds – keep taking the Mozart and Trollope.
I love books and think that “literature” teaches us much about life, helps us to understand things – ourselves and other people – as well as bringing enormous pleasure. Studying “literature” – as opposed to reading it – always seemed to me like a good way of ruining it, but I guess we’re all different.
I haven’t had time to read many fiction books, as I’ve led a rather eventful life.
I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I think I was born into one of those books like War and Peace, luckily without a hot war or physical violence, or much peace either: but very eventful. 🙂
Even better! Make your life your own novel.
“worthy of academic study”? Academic study is the measure of what is worthwhile?
When my daughter was choosing her A levels in 2018 she considered English lit. The only bits of the syllabus the teacher told us about consisted of books around ‘the immigrant experience’. No Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hardy. I’d expect those to make up the bulk of the syllabus. When I studied languages for A level and later university the courses were rammed full of Racine, Sartre, Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich Boell.
Fortunately she chose History instead (which obviously presented its own challenges, seeing a lot of what she was studying as ‘history’ was what as an older parent I’d lived through).
“Where are all the Darkies in Dickens?”
Where they were ….. in their own countries.
That’s me cancelled …….
Not being at all literary, I am still trying to work out whether this is a spoof.
The main takeaway for me was the fact that Professor Batchelor researched for her third book with someone called “Manushag”, which tickled the peurile nerve in me. Yes, I know, I’m in my late 40s and should really grow up.
The standard of written English in general is absolutely woeful these days. It’s a shame for such a historically literary nation.
English Literature courses and similar subjects are easy options. Anybody with average intelligence can write an essay on any book without even reading it. You only need to have an opinion.
Try maths, physics, engineering. A subject where your work is objectively measurable. Whether or not the bridge you designed will stand or collapse is most definitely not a matter of opinion.
Just to add, the latter are actually useful.
Not for long though. There is a movement afoot to decolonise maths!
Write one then?
If you do, I promise that I’ll see to it that it gets published on a substack that occasionally gets in TDS or its News Roundup — one that’s in the latter today.
Come on, Major Major, write your essay and send it to [email protected]. It’s easy you know.
That’s the learned professor’s list of books? No wonder the girl looks so blank. I’ve got 5 glorioius grandchildren all in their 20s and I’m extraordinarily relieved that they’ve all survived education almost undamaged.
Surprised there isn’t a class based interrogation of The Faerie Queene: after all, Marx and Spenser were made for one another.