Historical Notes

[caitri]

My life lately:


Source

Yeah so in writing class today we workshopped my revised 16th c. printerfic. Now at this point everyone in the class *knows* I TEACH printing/print history for a living. And YET, there were a bunch of comments like "Would this be happening then?" "Women couldn't do that back then!" "Were there black people in England back then?" (They got some polite historical footnotes verbally.)

Here's the killer to me though. Here's a line in the first paragraph: . I felt foolish in my boy’s garb, a half-wrought Cesario, with few pennies and less honor to my name than any Viola.

THREE OF NINE ENGLISH PHD STUDENTS DID NOT RECOGNIZE THE REFERENCE.

This...kinda makes it hard for me to want to take any of their other comments seriously.

Am I being pedantic? Snobbish? ...Something? Or do I have a legitimate reason to finish the box of chocolate jo-jos in the cupboard? (That last question, possibly not academic.)

SO HAI GUYS HOW ARE YOU?????

Comments

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I think they're just REALLY into contemporary literature--like they throw around the names of all these books I've heard of/seen in bookstores but never read because I don't typically do mundane fiction. (Does that sound mean? It wasn't meant to be. But that's how I think of it sometimes.) Mostly I've just never understood people writing about contemporary times if it's not genre--if the main characters aren't going to hook up, solve crimes, or run into vampires or aliens, but just go about being people...why bother? *is honestly perplexed*

[morfin.livejournal.com]

And there's the rub. "Contemporary Literature." Snort. If they're going to be REAL academics, they need to bury their nose in Beowulf, The Wanderer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. As you said, in modern times, it's the genre stuff that's important, not the latest novel by some yuppie scum contemplating their why their parents didn't spend enough on them or why they aren't being coddled until they reach their point of self-actualization.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Wow, that list conveniently leaves out everyone from Lady Murasaki to Zora Neale Hurston, just to name a couple off the dead White male beaten track.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

And all of those go back to genre issues, right: there's the medievally romances, there's the...I don't know what to call contemporary stuff. "Literary fiction" covers a multitude of sins and makes me squirm, because say a book like Mists of Avalon should be covered there but it gets pigeonholed into SFF. (I think Lady Murasaki could go into romances and Hurston into folklore.)

**Librarian disclaimer: I am a librarian. I like to classify things, even when I don't. >_>

[morfin.livejournal.com]

One must remember, since I specialized in medieval history in college, I consider anything after 1746 to be current affairs, not history ;)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

I feel like there's a Scottish devolution and possibly a bonus Highlander joke just out of my reach....

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

*beams at you* Last year I convinced two of the Literature teachers that Lovecraft has literary merit so they sould let a kid write a paper on it. That whole 'real literature' vs 'genre literature' thing is so ludicrous.

[caitri.livejournal.com]

And YET it persists!

BTW my week has been insane and I have not had a chance to call you. Is there perhaps a good time this weekend? I know people I'm meetign up with haven't really lined things up uber-well either, but possibly the best nights to meet up will be Friday or Saturday. Do either of these work for you?