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What is the point of studying English literature?


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I adore reading but could never get any joy from English Lit . Mind you I didn't want to take O level so my teacher said just take the exam anyway . I would have passed when I took it . I think one of the reasons I didn't want to take it is I cant stand poetry , now that does bore me big style. I love the classics & enjoy historical fiction . I would never get a kindle because I like to actually get my hands on a book & read it.

I also wondered why on earth anyone do something for 5 years when they don't like the subject , that would be like me doing geography when I hate it. :loopy:

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But Dickens are still fun!

 

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I also wondered why on earth anyone do something for 5 years when they don't like the subject , that would be like me doing geography when I hate it. :loopy:

 

If you did geography for 5 years and hated it, who knows?

 

You could end up running an extremely profitable Irish airline!

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Weren't they all dead by then?

 

Martin Amis claimed he never read anything by someone who had not been dead for at least 50 years; it was proof that what they had written was worthwhile to be remembered. But I say: the obscurer, the better. You should look for writers about whom no one has talked for many a century. Just imagine the privilege to know that you are the only one to read Mary Astell or Elkanah Settle since the early 18th century.

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  • 1 month later...

Seamus Heaney just got me to this thread-oh my word over analysing his poems was a form of mental torture-whilst trying to write something about this whilst avoiding being offensive to a dead man I realised that his poems weren't really the problem-being forced to analyse them was.

 

In my english literature classes I tended to just quietly read the book ignoring the class reading it aloud and ignoring the analysis by the teacher. It was not possible to do this with a short poem.

 

I don't really know why it was a compulsory subject-I think being forced to read something you aren't interested in and to analyse every dull word is a sure fire way to put kids off reading!

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When I bump into those from school who found books boring they're still the same, stunted eg their lives are footie, beer and not much grasp of life outside their bubble. The readers are all like me, sophisticated wits and raconteurs with jobs paying more than 20K.

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