Changes in the canon of American Lit

[Jane in NC]

It occurs to me as I read literature lists that certain authors who were commonly read when I was in school have been replaced by other writers. For example, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson was a staple of American Lit when I was a student, as was Spoon River Anthology. Do students encounter these works anymore? I also remember reading Carson McCullers' book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

 

The Education of Henry Adams was a book that several people encouraged me to read when I was younger. Is it still recommended?

 

Do you remember some other works that perhaps have not been dropped from lit lists but have been perhaps pushed to the side in favor of other literary works?

 

Jane

[cathmom]

I was forced to read Winesburg, Ohio when I was in high school. I detested it. I had to write a term paper on it, and because of the parameters of the assignment, I couldn't write about what I wanted to write about, which was how these people used predestination as an excuse to sit around and DO NOTHING to try to better their lives. I ended up writing about sex. How boring.

 

So I'm OK with that not being assigned anymore LOL!

[happygrrl]

I read Winesburg, Ohio as an adult and liked it very much. In my American lit class (class of '89) we read only 2 books; "The Scarlet Letter" and "Children of the Corn". Seriously.

[Jane in NC]

I was forced to read Winesburg, Ohio when I was in high school. I detested it. I had to write a term paper on it, and because of the parameters of the assignment, I couldn't write about what I wanted to write about, which was how these people used predestination as an excuse to sit around and DO NOTHING to try to better their lives. I ended up writing about sex. How boring.

 

So I'm OK with that not being assigned anymore LOL!

 

I wonder if you would still feel this way about the book reading it as an adult. Scarlet Letter, for instance, is a book that I appreciated more in recent reading than I did as a high school student.

[mamakven]

Ok, so i have never heard of ANY of those books! (OP, i mean)

 

what we read in JHS and HS, and i graduated 16 yrs ago, were books like

 

Old man and the sea... what else... scarlet letter... hmm... call of the wild.

[swimmermom3]

Oddly enough, I remember very little American Lit from 2 years of AP English in high school. The usual suspects of Twain and Hawthorne must of been in there, but we spent most of our time with the likes of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, and company. Jane, I can tell you that the Spoon River Anthology and McCuller's works are still covered in AP classes and on the AP test. I don't remember seeing Sherwood Anderson on any of the 10 AP syllabi that I have spent the past two weeks poring over.:tongue_smilie:

 

My personal observation is that students in AP classes still have exposure to the great works we experienced. Unfortunately, while the number of AP students is growing, that still leaves a large percentage of the student population reading recent coming-of-age novels or works like Tuesdays with Morrie or Into Thin Air. Do I sound bitter that my dd has read more Sherman Alexie novels than Shakespeare in 3 years of high school? Perhaps it takes too much work to prepare students for great works. You have to start with the Bible and world mythology, Greek and Roman classics. You have to get past parents who don't want the Bible or mythology taught or parents who think the Greeks and Romans have no influence on our current lives.

 

Really, I am not bitter, just out of coffee.:D

[nmoira]

Really, I am not bitter, just out of coffee.:D

An all too common affliction, I'm afraid. :ack2:

 

I'm interested to hear more about what people did studying and what is being studied now. I'm Canadian, so we only studied a handful of American works; most of our selections were British, French, and CanLit.

 

I do remember:

 

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

To Kill a Mockingbird

something by Steinbeck

Death of a Salesman

a number of poems by T.S. Eliot (for those who count him as American)

short stories by Poe, Thurber, Hawthorne

[Jane in NC]

I'm interested to hear more about what people did studying and what is being studied now.

 

I also remember reading Shirley Jackson's story The Lottery, the Thorton Wilder play Our Town and Sinclair Lewis's work, The Jungle.

[Michelle in AL]

The Lottery is still commonly used as well as Out Town. I found out about Sherwood Anderson in the book How to Read Like a Writer. His writing from Whinesburg, OH was quoted several times as an example of excellent writing, enough to check it out of the library and read some. I did enjoy it!

[swimmermom3]

Jane, as we are running through the names, I keep thinking, "Well yes, I've read that, but not in high school." I suspect at that age the siren call of British lit would have dimmed American lit's prospects with me. Sad to say but it's a bit like my kids who as native Oregonians do not want to hear one more Oregon Trail story and that will hold true until they are adults and develop a new appreciation.

 

I do know that we did Our Town but not The Lottery or The Jungle. The Lottery is commonly used for AP and Honors courses here along with The Most Dangerous Game and the Gift of the Magi. We did read those short stories in high school.

[cathmom]

I wonder if you would still feel this way about the book reading it as an adult. Scarlet Letter, for instance, is a book that I appreciated more in recent reading than I did as a high school student.

 

I've wondered that too. However, books I liked then I usually still like and vice versa. I really liked Scarlet Letter then, and I still like it now. I'll have to try it again someday.

 

There was a thread a while back about what lit people remembered reading in school. It was interesting. I don't know anything about what high school are requiring now, though.

[Jane in NC]

Jane, as we are running through the names, I keep thinking, "Well yes, I've read that, but not in high school." I suspect at that age the siren call of British lit would have dimmed American lit's prospects with me. Sad to say but it's a bit like my kids who as native Oregonians do not want to hear one more Oregon Trail story and that will hold true until they are adults and develop a new appreciation.

 

I do know that we did Our Town but not The Lottery or The Jungle. The Lottery is commonly used for AP and Honors courses here along with The Most Dangerous Game and the Gift of the Magi. We did read those short stories in high school.

 

Funny, I keep thinking that I was assigned a lot of Midwestern writers and wondering if that is because I grew up in the Midwest. Or is it just that a number of great early 20th century American authors are from the Midwest?

 

We read The Lottery in 10th grade. I remember it vividly--the story completely creeped me out!

[kokotg]

I think it's been quite awhile, really, since one could point to a standard canon of American lit that any fairly well educated high school or college student would be familiar with. I had a professor in college (uhh, not recently. Let's see...this would have been at least 14 or 15 years ago) who talked about this. He made his point by trying to find a single American novel that everyone in the class (of around 25 mostly English majors) had read. The Great Gatsby was the only one we could come up with. "That's because it's short!" he barked, in his fabulous Mississippi accent. So I think it's true that things shift and certain books are trendy to teach now that weren't 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but I don't think it's true that there used to be a single accepted canon and now there isn't. An emphasis on multiculturalism is certainly at play now in in a way it wasn't a generation ago (and rightly so, I would say). I remember reading that Their Eyes Were Watching God was the most assigned novel in college lit classes, I think it was, awhile back. I read it for at least two different classes when I was in college. Hmm...I guess I would say that there's a core group of classics that endures and will always be widely assigned, but then there's a sort of second tier that is more susceptible to cultural shifts.

[cathmom]

We read The Lottery in 10th grade. I remember it vividly--the story completely creeped me out!

 

We read many, MANY, many creepy stories.

 

I remember asking my junior year English teacher if we couldn't just read something ONCE where somebody didn't go insane or the whole story was horrible or all the characters died. It's why I like Seton English so much - they have found mainly positive works of literature to study. I don't think it's good to dwell so extensively on the dark, depressing side of things at that vulnerable age.

[Lori D.]

For some reason, I never had American Lit. in high school (I think because I was taking the Journalism alternative so I could write for the school paper). I only had a 1-semester British Lit. class, in which I remember doing a prose translation of the Canterbury Tales (we listened to this scratchy record version every day for 2 weeks to memorize the first 18 lines of the prologue!!), and Hamlet. I'm sure we covered other works -- that's just all I can remember.

 

My college American Lit. class (early 1980s) included:

- The Scarlet Letter

- Billy Budd (Melville)

- Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson

- The Bear (Faulkner)

- several Hemmingway short stories

and a few other works I can't recall now

 

After high school graduation, I spent my free time in the summers for the next number of years "self-educating," reading classics I knew I missed out on such as American works like Catcher in the Rye (Salinger), Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), The Jungle (Sinclair), Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), Hiroshima (Hersey), etc. I have to say I am still quite ignorant -- I'm not at all familiar with the 2 works you listed in your original post, Jane! :) I recognize Sherwood Anderson from a few short stories in the anthologies I have on the shelf...

 

I guess my point is that I did more of my reading of classics throughout my 20s than in I did in high school, and was more prepared to handle them. I've tried to walk a fine line in what I've chosen for our homeschool high school literature... Just my 2 cents worth of mutterings and meanderings... ;) Lori D.

Edited September 3, 2010 by Lori D.

[JennW in SoCal]

It occurs to me as I read literature lists that certain authors who were commonly read when I was in school have been replaced by other writers. For example, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson was a staple of American Lit when I was a student, as was Spoon River Anthology. Do students encounter these works anymore? I also remember reading Carson McCullers' book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

 

The Education of Henry Adams was a book that several people encouraged me to read when I was younger. Is it still recommended?

 

Do you remember some other works that perhaps have not been dropped from lit lists but have been perhaps pushed to the side in favor of other literary works?

 

Jane

 

I like to think of myself as being fairly well read and educated, but I've never heard of, much less read, any of those titles!!

 

KarenAnne and I were just wondering why it is that a country that is known for its youthful and optimistic can-do spirit has a canon of such depressing and dark works? (We were thinking of Sue in St. Pete's thread.) Before kids I was an undergraduate adviser in a literature department and the one required class that English/American Lit majors all put off taking until it was time to graduate was early American literature. They all dreaded a semester of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville! Cracked me up -- they'd change their major to "General Literature" just to avoid that course!

 

In high school the only American works I remember reading were Grapes of Wrath, Death of a Salesman, and Great Gatsby. I only liked, but was depressed by, Grapes of Wrath. I read some of Steinbeck's other works because I liked his writing. I hated Death of a Salesman and felt paralyzed by having to discuss imagery in Gatsby -- those stupid glasses on the billboard and the green light out in the harbor.

 

We had to watch a film version of The Lottery every year starting in 4th grade. I look back and attribute us having to watch it due to my school being a teaching school for the nearby university. This was in the late 60s and early 70s when every education student felt a calling to train up a socially responsible younger generation!

[Lori D.]

... KarenAnne and I were just wondering why it is that a country that is known for its youthful and optimistic can-do spirit has a canon of such depressing and dark works? (We were thinking of Sue in St. Pete's thread.)

 

I've been participating in that thread, and I posed the thought that maybe it is precisely because of the that attitude, that artists and authors were free to (and able to) also look at the "dark side" -- some of the ugly realities -- that go along with that optimistic spirit and attitudes.

 

Another thought comes to mind: Amer. Lit is very young (Washington Irving is considered the first true/serious American born author, and he was writing in the 1820s), and so Amer. Lit. is perhaps especially influenced by the politics, society values, and culture within it -- any art form (and I think of Literature as one of the Arts) is always influenced by or is in reaction against the culture of which it is a part.

 

 

- Ugly Political Realties

When W. Irving was writing, the US was the only nation still importing African slaves (Britian had put a halt to importing new slaves in 1807, and would abolish slavery in 1833). So you have an ugly paradox in the "paradise" of the U.S. still ongoing until 1865, and and after effects of it reverberating throughout the nation for another century!

The terrible oppression (and ignoring/covering up) of nations of Native Americans.

 

Think of how hard-hit the U.S. ("optimistic/land-of-plenty/land-of-opportunity") was in the Depression -- and it went on for 12 years. That's got to lead to some dark themes.

 

Wrestling with the horrors of various wars -- for example, the Civil War -- brother against brother; WW1 -- the horror of the first fully mechanized war, turning war into the depersonalized, mechanized slaying of millions, which in turn slays the hopes of the young adults of that time, turning many into the "Lost Generation" -- there is no God, there is no purpose, and American ideals are just a false front.

 

 

- Big Religious/Social Shifts

French Enlightenment ideas from the late 1700s have taken root; rise of Transcendentalism in 1830s, and other movements, leading to worldview/theme shifts: If God is distant, or just spirit, or non-existent, a logical train of thought is where will man find meaning in life? Leads to some pretty bleak and despairing worldviews and literary themes.

 

 

- Flow of Communication/Ideas

Many of the authors of the 1800s knew one another and were in frequent contact with one another, and shared or explored ideas/themes, and were great influences upon one another. Many of them also spoke on the lecture circuit which was so popular in those days, and, let's face it, dark themes and "edgy" ideas are going to be more sensational and bring in more $$ ... :tongue_smilie:

 

 

- Effect of Specific Events on Authors and Their Reactions

 

Hawthorne, in an attempt to distant himself from his Puritan ancestor judge who condemned the Salem witches to hang, writes about those who are tortured by Christian doctrines taken to unnatural extremes.

 

Hemingway suffers emotional, spiritual, psychic loss in WW1 and writes from a depressed existential worldview.

 

Edgar Allen Poe suffered from poverty and mental illness, and exacerbated his dark/depressed/creepy minset with drug use.

 

Emily Dickinson lived as a virtual housebound agoraphobic.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was too fond of his fast-living wife, wine, and a high-living lifestyle to give it up, yet was also disgusted with himself for not having the courage to let that all go and do the right thing. That is surely going to lead to some dark and comflicted themes in his writing...

Edited September 3, 2010 by Lori D.

[swimmermom3]

Is part of the issue that you can't assign the really funny stuff until the kids are seniors in high school or are in college? I still maintain that Melville can be very funny and I outright adore Saul Bellow. Updike? Okay, so the humor is rather dark and twisted, but they are funny.:D

 

ETA: Wrong thread. Oh well. Still think they're funny.

[Guest]

I liked your list of possible cultural and personal influences, Lori; but many of the same kinds of things went on in England, for instance, including slavery (although not on the scale of the U.S. -- but England actually had quite a problem with Muslim raiders on the southern coast taking sailors to Morocco into slavery in the 1700s), Civil War (1660ish), religious wars (Renaissance), a history of invasions by others and of invasions by British and colonial rebellion; the Enlightenment; Industrial Revolution; etc. Yet in among the bleak works there are many, many works with comic elements, spoofs, satires, very dry humor, word play, experimentation with narrative conventions and the physical text as early as the 1700s, etc. We seem to be missing this strand here, barring individual exceptions such as Twain or Thurber. It's only relatively recently -- maybe since the 60s? -- that I find an American version of this sort of literary play and satire; even then it seems haunted by the underside (I'm thinking of works like John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces). But I don't know American literature nearly as well as British, so maybe there are recent authors I'm unaware of?

 

Interesting that in visual culture (movies etc.) we seem to be so much more adept at and engaged by comedy or satire.

[Jane in NC]

I've been participating in that thread, and I posed the thought that maybe it is precisely because of the that attitude, that artists and authors were free to (and able to) also look at the "dark side" -- some of the ugly realities -- that go along with that optimistic spirit and attitudes.

 

 

 

It was that thread which led to my musings. I wondered if the canon of previous generations was as bleak as today's seems to be. That led to recollections of my own high school assignments and hence the questions I posed.

[Lori D.]

I liked your list of possible cultural and personal influences, Lori; but many of the same kinds of things went on in England, for instance, including slavery (although not on the scale of the U.S. -- but England actually had quite a problem with Muslim raiders on the southern coast taking sailors to Morocco into slavery in the 1700s), Civil War (1660ish), religious wars (Renaissance), a history of invasions by others and of invasions by British and colonial rebellion; the Enlightenment; Industrial Revolution; etc.

 

 

What I didn't flesh out in my "argument" :tongue_smilie: is that comment that the U.S. is a very young nation -- and like a youngster, much more easily swayed with the prevailing culture.

 

In contrast Britain had been an established nation for centuries before those modern stress factors surfaced, and the ones that occurred prior to 1800 that you mentioned happened while Britain was still very firmly in a Christian worldview. And I DO think that makes a big difference, because even if you were not part of the church, you still held those basic tenets of a set of universal truths (morality, right and wrong, justice and mercy, etc.) outside of yourself. And that, I believe, leads to answers and themes outside of yourself, rather than to themes of self-focus, meaninglessness, loss and despair. JMO.

 

 

Yet in among the bleak works there are many, many works with comic elements, spoofs, satires, very dry humor, word play, experimentation with narrative conventions and the physical text as early as the 1700s, etc. We seem to be missing this strand here, barring individual exceptions such as Twain or Thurber. It's only relatively recently -- maybe since the 60s? -- that I find an American version of this sort of literary play and satire; even then it seems haunted by the underside (I'm thinking of works like John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces). But I don't know American literature nearly as well as British, so maybe there are recent authors I'm unaware of?

 

 

Hmmm... Well I found William Makepeace Thackery (British, 1800s) to be way too biting and cruel in his satire, and George Bernard Shaw's writing is pretty sharp (though certainly not so painfully so as Thackery), so I guess that kind of satire is not limited to just U.S. authors... Still thinking on who else besides Twain or Thurber for American humor... What about Ambrose Bierce ("The Devil's Dictionary"; VERY biting satire, end of 19th century)? Will Rogers (gentle humorist)? Dorothy Parker (very biting satirical poet)? Bill Bryson (present day humorist)? Or one of these 200 humorists on this Wikipedia page? Maybe we are such a jaded nation we no longer are willing to accept anything without a sharp edge or a dark theme as true, great literature?? Anyways, I'll keep thinking...

 

 

 

Interesting that in visual culture (movies etc.) we seem to be so much more adept at and engaged by comedy or satire.

 

 

That last sentence is a very astute observation! And I would suggest that a lot of American humor from Vaudeville days (visual medium of the late 1800s) on through films and TV sit coms (current visual media) is so dominated by Jewish comedians -- perhaps able to laugh because they realize that other responses to suffering lead to despair and those dark, depressed themes??? Only a few of those people also write and publish (for example, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen) -- and they are best known for their visual work, not their forays into the medium of literature...

 

 

As I was writing this and thinking about this theme, my question was, "Where are the American G.K. Chestertons, C.S. Lewises, etc.?" Classic literary authors who so ably combine hope and humor; faith and the funny. Is America only capable of mocking, of satire and parody?? And if so, why? Is it because our nation was "born" at about the same time as the philosophies and worldviews that opposed the basic tenets of the Christianity that founded and nourished Britain for centuries?

 

Glad you jumped in, Karen. Always love to hear your thoughts! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited September 4, 2010 by Lori D.

[JennW in SoCal]

It seems that dark, bleak themes are not just valued in literature but are also what make works in pop culture considered "important". Bubble gum music and romantic comedies are dismissed as fluff, but works with darker themes are considered profound and are what earns the big awards and critical acclaim. In comic books, it is the conflicted superhero that is popular -- the tormented Dark Knight version of Batman versus the original. It always surprises me that My Fair Lady and Sound of Music won best picture awards. They would never win nowadays!

 

I don't want all happiness and light myself, but all this brings to mind the line in the movie "When Harry Met Sally" when Sally says to Harry something like "Just because you think about death all the time doesn't make you deep!"

[Guest]

A related anecdote: my dh, who went to boarding school in the UK, tells me of how kids aged around eleven or so used to rewrite classic poetry as spoof/satire, just for fun. He remembers a spoof of Kubla Khan. The original goes:

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a sacred pleasure dome decree

Where Alph the sacred river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

The boys' version:

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a sacred aerodrome decree

Where Ralph the main mechanic ran

Through hangars measureless to man

In spotless dungarees.

 

This kind of thing just seems to me so British -- the instinct to parody, spoof -- sort of a Monty Python take/taking down of classics, but a bookish take. We as a nation seem to do this kind of thing more in drama or film.

 

And speaking of Britishness: Bill Bryson always seems to me a sort of honorary Brit, perhaps because of his decades of living in that country. He can combine British and American forms of wit somehow, somewhat as Henry James managed to take on both American and European culture and manners (and I've seen James claimed by both American and British lit).

 

It seems somehow emblematic that British lit begins with riddles, while American lit begins with collections of sermons. I know the huge distance in time and circumstance that goes along with this, but still... somehow it encapsulates a difference. As JennW said, we seem to place the highest value on "serious" literature and denigrate humor. Barring Twain, the people we've come up with (Bierce, whom I love; Bryson; Thurber; Parker) still seem to me little islands in an ocean of Puritanical and post-Puritanical gloom, while in the UK there is more of a sense that satire, wit, verbal play, etc. can become canonical (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Restoration playwrights, Smollett, Swift, Sterne, and Fielding, Austen... on and on to the present). Somehow it seems to go beyond our relative youth as a nation. But I am not a scholar of American lit and really have only this intuitive feeling to go on, not a logical argument.

 

And it's truly ironic, because there's such a stereotype about "dour" Brits and the stiff upper lip!

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I think it's been quite awhile, really, since one could point to a standard canon of American lit that any fairly well educated high school or college student would be familiar with. I had a professor in college (uhh, not recently. Let's see...this would have been at least 14 or 15 years ago) who talked about this. He made his point by trying to find a single American novel that everyone in the class (of around 25 mostly English majors) had read. The Great Gatsby was the only one we could come up with. "That's because it's short!" he barked, in his fabulous Mississippi accent. So I think it's true that things shift and certain books are trendy to teach now that weren't 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but I don't think it's true that there used to be a single accepted canon and now there isn't. An emphasis on multiculturalism is certainly at play now in in a way it wasn't a generation ago (and rightly so, I would say). I remember reading that Their Eyes Were Watching God was the most assigned novel in college lit classes, I think it was, awhile back. I read it for at least two different classes when I was in college. Hmm...I guess I would say that there's a core group of classics that endures and will always be widely assigned, but then there's a sort of second tier that is more susceptible to cultural shifts.

 

OK, but how much of what is "canonical" depends on fads and fashion. I did English as an undergrad. Even leaving aside the total waste of time that was my contemporary lit course, there were some odd fasions. I think I read three different novels by Toni Morrison. Two or three by Faulkner. But I'd never even heard of Edith Wharton until the movie The Age of Innocence came out a few years later (I find her both modern and bitingly funny in a tart way).

 

To me a canon doesn't represent what everyone has already read. So asking a class of students what they've already taken in wouldn't be proof one way or the other. A canon represents what ought be read. Because it says something about the human condition that transends time and specific place. Or because it so clearly captures the sense of a particular moment that it is worth reading as a way to fully delve into that piece of time.

 

But then I developed a scepticism toward lit profs as an English major. If it wasn't the contemp lit prof choosing horrid nihistic books to read, it was my advisor explaining that the department couldn't possibly offer a wider world lit course because there wasn't anyone in the department qualified to pick titles and lead discussions on the books. (If a Ph D in lit can't pick up a Tolstoy or Dosteyevsky or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, read it and lead a discussion, then what was the point of studying lit in the first place?)

[kokotg]

OK, but how much of what is "canonical" depends on fads and fashion. I did English as an undergrad. Even leaving aside the total waste of time that was my contemporary lit course, there were some odd fasions. I think I read three different novels by Toni Morrison. Two or three by Faulkner. But I'd never even heard of Edith Wharton until the movie The Age of Innocence came out a few years later (I find her both modern and bitingly funny in a tart way).

 

To me a canon doesn't represent what everyone has already read. So asking a class of students what they've already taken in wouldn't be proof one way or the other. A canon represents what ought be read. Because it says something about the human condition that transends time and specific place. Or because it so clearly captures the sense of a particular moment that it is worth reading as a way to fully delve into that piece of time.

 

 

 

Well, but who determines what's canonical? If it doesn't have anything to do with what's assigned and studied and discussed and written about in academia, then where does it come from? I read Morrison, and Faulkner, AND Wharton in college, and I would argue that they're all canonical.

 

My M.H. Abrams says that:

 

The collective cultural process by which an author comes to be firmly and durably recognized as canonical is often called 'canon formation.' Such a process involves, along with other factors, the wide concurrence of critics with diverse critical viewpoints and sensibilities, as well as passage of a considerable period of time. In his 'Preface to Shakespeare' (1765), for example, Samuel Johnson said that a century is 'the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.'

 

I think absolutely canon formation is subject to cultural trends, and a lot of what goes on in academia is a sort of jockeying for position for your pet author or period or whatever. That's always true. I don't think it's a uniquely American or uniquely modern phenomenon.

[Catherine]

I recently heard it observed that comedy is done by "outsiders" and you could argue that we are a nation of outsiders, so do comedy particularly well.

[Guest]

I recently heard it observed that comedy is done by "outsiders" and you could argue that we are a nation of outsiders, so do comedy particularly well.

 

That is interesting! Interesting also that we seem to have a penchant for doing comedy in visual form.

 

I was thinking about an earlier post referring to American "humorist" writers. I think that category is in itself relevant. The humorists are, for the most part, off in a separate little place and not linked into the canon. Generally (Thurber, Parker, Jean Kerr, etc.) they seem to be thought of more as popular rather than serious writers. In contrast, comic forms such as spoof, farce, satire, word play, etc. seem (again in general) to be part and parcel of the canon in the UK. I'm still thinking this over because it just seems so odd a difference between the two cultures which to a large extent share a linguistic and literary history.

 

Does anyone know about the role that comic forms play in the Australian literary canon? Can anyone point me to a list of Australian canonical works so I can hunt some of them down to read?

[Storm Bay]

Having never took American lit, I can't say much about the changes. I did most of my high school in Canada. What I do want to say is that the books & lit I chiefly remember are the ones I chose to read on my own time that my parents had at home. Canadian author, Brit, world & American. I enjoyed The Scarlett Letter when I read it in the last year or so, but would have detested it in high school. I hated some books with a passion, yet finished them, since that's how I was back then. American books I would never force my dc to study include The Catcher in the Rye and The Grapes of Wrath because I abhored them at that age. I might appreciate them more now, but I would never like the latter because it's just so depressing.

 

When it comes to high school lit courses, I'm a fan of doing a mix of literature & recent novels for a number of reasons. Much lit means more when your older, for one thing. For another, I think it's good to tie in the same themes written at different times. I think you can do this without dumbing things down (still not sure when dumb became a verb), and it's especially helpful if you have a reluctant student.

 

I do have to say that we aren't going to do a lot of Canadian lit in high school because so much of it is dark, but we will do some. This coming year is American lit, and I have my huge list compiled from the suggestions of various people here from which will select works. However, dd still has to read The Odyssey because it took her so long to drag herself through The Iliad, in part because the audio was abridged and she hated the long, boring lists, so it won't be 100 percent American. Plus, I made her listen to the TC lectures on it & answer the questions at the end of each lesson in the book. Plus she'll have to do at least one Canadian author. We're mixing this in with English, though, since she hates studying lit with a passion, and are not doing a full lit course.

[Saille]

I wonder if you would still feel this way about the book reading it as an adult. Scarlet Letter, for instance, is a book that I appreciated more in recent reading than I did as a high school student.

 

I had this experience. I loved Charlotte Bronte in high school, but detested Dickens and Austen. It wasn't until I read them again post-college that I realized they were both funny! It had never previously occurred to me.

 

One of the things I like about WTM is that it exposes the kids to period language early. I had an extensive vocabulary and was an avid reader, but my only exposure to unabridged classics was in high school, and my exposure to primary sources was limited to things like replicas of the Constitution in museum gift shops. It really hampered my ability to engage with the stories.

[Guest]

I had this experience. I loved Charlotte Bronte in high school, but detested Dickens and Austen. It wasn't until I read them again post-college that I realized they were both funny! It had never previously occurred to me.

 

One of the things I like about WTM is that it exposes the kids to period language early. I had an extensive vocabulary and was an avid reader, but my only exposure to unabridged classics was in high school, and my exposure to primary sources was limited to things like replicas of the Constitution in museum gift shops. It really hampered my ability to engage with the stories.

 

I like this about WTM too. One of the hardest things for kids at the University of California where I taught for many years was encountering pre-Victorian language: the syntax, the vocabulary, the conventions of print and genre that pre-date the novel as we think of it. They had not encountered it at all but for a token Shakespeare play and perhaps some Chaucer in translation.

 

I think being comfortable with that kind of language is one aspect of being able to see all the humor, sarcasm, wit, and word play in the likes of Dickens and Austen. If you're struggling with language to the point that it's hard to figure out what's going on, you're certainly not going to see the funnies. Another is having some idea of literary conventions, so you can see where and how authors like these play with them.