/lit/ - Literature

I was an English TA for a while. Generally agree with the broad sentiments of other posters. Most kids are only just barely literate. My perception of the job is somewhat warped though in that I would mostly interact with kids who were struggling but I would often be in top set classes too and they rarely were much better than the midsets (bottom sets are another story all together, Jesus Christ). What's interesting to me is that English is by far the most hated subject across the board. Maths is much preferred, which is insane to me since it was the exact opposite when I was at school. Kids can't work out why they have to study novels and poetry, it makes as much sense to them as studying the many varieties of postage stamps, and is as about as interesting. English Language study is a little better but that's mostly because its method has a more parsable goal in exams, namely "find this feature in this random excerpt here" which is easier to game than writing about a book you haven't read. Don't get me started on creative writing. Imaginatively bankrupt doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm not expecting 15 year olds to come up with great original flash fiction but to see how consistently they would come up with nothing never stopped being galling. They weren't even capable of plagiarizing shit that they'd seen possibly because they don't even watch fiction. Again, these were mostly kids who were struggling but there were more struggling than not.

Smart phones are indeed a plague among the kids but you should see the staff room during break to see how ubiquitous an infection it is across society. Most teachers I worked with are scarcely up to the task of teaching the kids. They don't read much more than the kids. "English teacher" is, by and large, synonymous with "I didn't know what to do with my life so I fudged it" which is as true for me as it for them. My brief career three year career in as many schools was just a stop gap that got out of hand. I don't want to paint myself as some pedagogical maverick, I was fucking shit at my job. The fact three schools hired me at all is an indictment in and of itself. I could handle retarded kids what I couldn't handle, being a big spaghetti dropping sperg, was bad behaviour which was pretty rampant.
It wasn't all bad. When you do have kids who are engaged it really is a lovely job. It just only happened for me a few times.

literature > philosophy

Who are the best rhymers in the English language? Often Rhyme can feel quite contrived and awkward in English. I have been reading some Thomas Campion and he does it splendidly
>When thou must home to shades of underground,
>And there arriv'd, a new admired guest,
>The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
>White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
>To hear the stories of thy finish'd love
>From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move
Obviously move and love don't rhyme now but I think the rest of it is quite beautiful and elegant.

Who do you think rhymes the best in English verse? Post examples please

>>13988861
What would he have thought of it?

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

>What are now called ‘Departments of English’ will be renamed departments of ‘Cultural Studies,’ where Batman comics, Mormon theme parks, television, movies and rock will replace Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens.
Bloom would be disgusted by this board. All of you who are only capable of talking about whatever topic is hot and whatever meme is popular at the moment. Even those few of you who actually discuss literature have awful reading comprehensions. This place is so devoid of any meaningful literary discussion. None of you have any right to mourn his death. I am done with this place.

>>11654433
it needed to happen. the humanities were ruined, and there is no point in studying them at the modern university.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeIvt9CDlI
>If you don't learn how to read you don't learn how to think, if you don't learn how to think you get Donald Trump

Is he right?

Now that he's gone, how do you think posterity will treat him?

Okay so if I'm reading a book, how much do I actually have to read to say I've read it? I've not got a lot of time but I want to lead at least 50 books this year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harold-blooms-critical-thinking-1491582477

The literary scholar Harold Bloom wishes that he were a bit more like Sir John Falstaff, the convivial, indecorous knight who appears in three of Shakespeare’s plays. Mr. Bloom considers Falstaff—with his good humor, playful wit and lack of inhibition—one of the playwright’s most textured characters. For Mr. Bloom, Falstaff represents human freedom. “The cry of the human is most intense when it comes from him,” he says.

As for Mr. Bloom, who is 86, “I was a much more Falstaffian human being in my youth and in middle age than I am now,” he says. “I had, I think, something of his marvelous exuberance.”

His latest book, “Falstaff,” is the first in a series of short studies of Shakespeare characters planned by Mr. Bloom. Falstaff often exposes pretension in others, Mr. Bloom writes—for instance, when he slyly tells Prince Hal in “Henry IV Part 1,” “Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing.” Mr. Bloom himself has jokingly used the line with his friends.

“Falstaff” is the 46th book by the eminent Yale professor, who even now is teaching two courses, one on Shakespeare and another on poetry. Over the years, he has won a range of distinctions, including a Fulbright fellowship (1955), a MacArthur fellowship (1985) and a gold medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999).