My daughter has asked for my advice about what to study at university. Yeah right. She’d rather eat her own hoodie. But I’m going to give it anyway. She is wavering between history and English. Do both, I say. But not many universities offer a joint honours degree, and her (otherwise excellent) teachers seem to think that it is better to focus on one subject, to demonstrate laser-like commitment to your chosen path.
I see specialisation as the enemy of the humanities. Everyone should study at least two of these ‘disciplines’ – which of course overlap with each other. In a way, Classics gets it right, for it mixes literary criticism with history and philosophy, and other things too – politics, history of art.
I studied English. I loved it, at first. It was the thing to study at my school – the magnet for the precocious and pretentious types. One of our teachers enthused about Wittgenstein and Nietzsche when he was meant to be teaching Shakespeare – never mind, it all seemed connected. Literature seemed to me a prime site for the pursuit of Wisdom (though I suppose to others, including that teacher, it seemed a prime tool for the deconstruction of ‘Wisdom’). But a year into my university course, it all looked a bit different. I still enjoyed literary criticism, but it all felt a bit shapeless and superficial. In particular, I felt that we weren’t being properly grounded in the history of ideas. Yes, we were advised to read up on the English Civil War when we studied Milton, but it was assumed that almost no one would bother. And of course, the lecturers wanted to talk about feminist or post-structuralist readings of Paradise Lost, if they knew what was good for their careers.
So part of me wants to tell my daughter: avoid English. Despite the fun of writing essays about fictional people, it lacks rigour and is prey to trends. But I can’t quite. The pleasure, and more-than-pleasure, of analysing literary texts is no small matter. It is hard to describe – but let’s try.
When that English teacher focused on his actual job, he taught us how to read a page of prose, or a poem, with a sort of mental microscope. But instead of constricting one’s view, this microscope opens it up and allows big thinking, and even flights of fancy. Why does the author choose this word? Why ‘snivelling’ violins? Why does he call her ‘beautiful and devout’? Because she won’t sleep with him? If it’s a love poem, why is he rude about her shoes?
It’s called ‘close reading’ and it is, for some of us, a sort of sensual pleasure, to get stuck into a bit of literature in this way, and to respond to the author’s creativity with one’s own. One learns to pay attention in a slow and precise way, to find ambiguity and nuance in a handful of dust. One learns about the power of words to shape thought and feeling. It’s thrilling and it’s deep (for me it’s linked to the way that religion works – but maybe we won’t get into that). It’s also fun: a playground for sharpening one’s wits, trying out theories.
Also, English allows one to think about big issues in a slightly tangential and playful way, which I think is good for young people. Reading Heart of Darkness or Tess of the d’Urbervilles or Hamlet allows one to ponder colonial racism or sexual harassment or young royals with mental health problems – at one remove from the debates of the day. Without such distancing, young people form fixed opinions too early and get sucked into the banal shout-show. Education should complicate and slow the formation of opinions, and the study of literature is good at this.
Too much poetry, unmixed with baser matter, is bad for one’s mental health
And there is something else. I think it is good for young minds to hang out with unworldliness. There’s time enough to learn about sensible and important subjects like the history of technology or economics. Youth is the time to be impressed by the odd intensity of poets, and ponder their odd visions of the world. And maybe to get a bit infected by their extremity. I was deeply impressed, almost seduced, by certain poetic voices. Through them I saw, or half-saw, the appeal of strong ideologies. I sensed that there is a strange intensity at the heart of our culture – there are more things than are dreamed of in our official sensible philosophy. Admittedly I went a bit far in this direction. For a while, I basically thought I was Keats.
History is more rigorous, in the sense that it stays closer to objectively important themes. But it’s too worldly, too literal, too close to the discourse of journalism, politics, panel discussions on Radio 4. Obviously, students should be schooled in the clever discourse of the world – but these things are picking it up anyway. They should also be encouraged to explore other, odder worlds.
If I ruled the world – or at least the world of higher education – I would ban degrees in single humanities subjects. Especially English, which has been in decline for a decade or two. To save it, and renew it, we must kill it off as a subject in its own right. All humanities students should be prodded to read a few fat Victorian novels and grapple with The Waste Land. These things are part of our culture, and we should nurture the idea of a common culture – not allow it to melt away through embarrassment at its canonical aura. And those sensitive souls who are drawn to literature should be saved from themselves. Too much poetry, unmixed with baser matter, is bad for one’s mental health. I’m not saying a literature degree messed with my head – but it took me a further degree, in theology, to recover.
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