[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Sean LeBlanc (seanleblanc at americanisp.net) wrote:
> On 01-10 10:27, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> > On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 11:22:27 -0700
> > Sean LeBlanc <seanleblanc at americanisp.net> wrote:
> Hmm. I didn't exactly *hate* Old Man & the Sea, per se, but the evaluation
> did start to get old for me. We studied it in high school, and IIRC, we
> spent a few weeks on it. It took about a half hour or so to read, and we
> then belabored it for weeks. The annoying thing I found about it was that,
> from our teacher's perspective, there was One Right Interpretation, and that
> was final. That's a recurring problem I had with the liberal arts type stuff
> throughout my education - whatever is en vogue at the time (or for the
> teacher/prof in particular) that's the lens that all art will be examined
> with. 

I had a teacher in High School whose purpose it was in life was to point
out the 'Christ-like figure' in absolutely every story we read. We all
hated how formulaic it became. She was very rigid. Interestingly, this
seems to have been a High-School only thing. She was the sophmore year
in advanced English -- the Junior year the teacher was much better.
The senior year I took AP English, and the woman was a serious nut.
But, she was a great teacher. You never had any idea what her opinion
of a book was -- she was only interested in yours. More importantly,
she would require you to back up any opinion you had about a work with
textual evidence. Which is the only way to go. If you want to say that
the _Old Man and the Sea_ is a marxist tract on the evils of capitilism,
be my guest. If you want to be taken seriously, provide me with some
actual evidence, *in Hemingway's words!*.

And the plethora of English Lit. classes I took in College have all been
like that.  I must have had luck with good professors, but I have never
had one tell students what the 'right' interpretation of a literary work
is.  I would laugh out loud at any professor that believed there was
such a thing.

> <diversion> It was in uni where I found that the lens often used could only
[snip diversion]
> </diversion>

It's odd, you are like the 3rd or 4th 'science-type' student who has
told me this type of anectode.  Do they have the radical feminists teach
the survey courses or something?  Possible, I guess.  I never had to
take an English class that was intented for non-English majors.  Maybe
they banish certain profs to the classes for non-English majors!

I could see how a man-hating teacher could be annoying.  Luckily, my
female profs have all been much more moderate feminists.  I have
actually learned a lot from seeing a consistently feminist, but not
negative, interpretation of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton.

Tim
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