Who told you that I do not teach literature. What are you talking about.
What is your job?
On 11/1/07, joe green <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Yes, but you are not teaching English Literature. Perhaps the above is
> enough for teaching Creative Writing but it doesn't even begin to cover
> the
> mental anguish of teaching English Liteature -- which begins with deciding
> what period in which to specialize. Here's a glimpse into my thoughts
> years
> agone when I had to choose.
>
> English Literature:
>
> 1. Have the lesser poems of Anglo-Saxon bards been appreciated enough?
> Do enough young people know the word "kenning?" Would it be
> nice to curl up by the fire in the long winter evenings we have
> here and study Old Icelandic? Should I choose Anglo-Saxon?
> Perhaps with enough work I could write a pleasant little
> fairy story as I clench my pipe between tobacco-stained
> teeth and chafe in my tweeds. Choice 1: Anglo-Saxon Literature
>
> 2. Ok. So I stare at Durer prints long and long and ever since
> graduating high school have been prepared for life in the
> 12th (the greatest of all) centuries. I know it was really
> St. Don Bosco who invented basketball and can timor mortis
> conturbat me with the best of them. Choice 2: Medieval Literature
>
> 3. The Renais... Hard to spell but good sex at last. (Medieval sex
> is too much like what happened in the cloakroom of St. Cecilia's
> in 1962). Marlowe's mighty line (What's your sign?), probably
> worlds of sonnet sequences not yet completely explained. The
> chance to entertain students with "jug, jug, jug, tereau tereau"
> or a birthday bash for Thomas Nashe. Shakespeare and the chance
> to know where all those book titles came from. I also suspect that
> Shakepeare specialists are deferred to in courts of law and
> gatherings of high school teachers taking a class for the summer.
> A chance for a dotage a bit more dashing than that expected of
> medievalists. Expansive explanations of bawdy and the significance
> of nothing in Hamlet. "The wild dog shall flesh his tooth in every
> innocent" and a glance at a widow now and then. Choice 3: Renais...
> Literature.
>
> 4. The (as they say) 17th century. Donne undone with Mary. The necessity
> of Eliot. The laying on of sensibility. Wit. Perhaps I could
> specialize in Herrick and dream of cream and strawberries and
> niplets and Old Ben and a parsonage among the daffodils. Or --
> the great tone poems of Sir Thomas Browne.
>
> 5. The 18th century -- Age of Pope or Age of Johnson. A chance of an
> invite to the White House or of, at least, entertaining Canadian
> ladies on trains. Belindas &c. If Pope, a chance to dress
> in a periwig and spit vituperation in heroic couplets with the
> other fellows in the room hilariously dubbed "Gin Alley" at
> the 18th century scholars conference. Automatic justification
> for plotting against the radical dismals in the MLA. I am not
> stout enough to carry off a Johnson speciality but are we
> really satisfied that we know how many times Boswell had the
> clap and don't we need yet another fellow recounting the story
> of Johnson and the ghostly bishop by kicking the rock? Also
> I am very good on Tom Jones and at sipping coffee and chatting
> about the great bubble and have a quite new exegesis of Robinson
> Crusoe ready. Might have to read Clarissa. Ah, my dear God.
>
> 6. The Romantics (we'll include Blake as is customary) What was the
> sheath to which Byron refers? Expertise on Thomas Lovell Beddoes
> already quite remarkable. But... suicide a possibility, of
> course after mooning about the Protestant Cemetery in Rome
> after being betrayed by my mistress. Also, am disturbed that
> Keats apparently wanted to eat everything. Byron's letters
> etc very appealing but will have to deal with the awful Germans
> including Goethe whose last words "Give me your little paw" very
> off putting. The Brontes -- must be dealt with and, in general,
> except (as I now concede) for the sensibilty of Thomas Love Peacock
> and a few others the period is like being stuck in a room
> full of Barrymores forever. Good if confused sex, good if confused
> talk, overseen by nautical gentlemen.
>
> 7. The Victorians. The Kraken is sexy but except for Dickens the
> novels are wretched.
>
> 8. Modernism -- I understand that there is a center for the study
> of Modernism. Let them do it.
>
> 9. More or less recent stuff. Very poor show in Poetry. Prose
> somewhat better but I don't understand why reading most of it
> is not conceived as similar to reading the novels of John
> O'Hara when your adenoids are misbehaving.
> So I wanted a salary of 90,000 a year -- at least. This was in 93. I'd
> require at least 3 times that now.
>
> On 10/29/07, Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > I am also a teacher, Kenneth. And I can consider myself lucky because I
> > can
> > do translations and teach evening adult courses to round the meager
> > budget.
> > I don't think I fit any prototype, and my colleagues are very different.
> > It
> > is a job but I like it, and that is why I still do it.
> >
> > On 10/29/07, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >
> > > M. Borges Accardi wrote:
> > > > Pardon my posting here, but just saw this job announcement for
> > creative
> > > writing at Pueblo Col.? They're paying $25,000 for TWO semesters of
> > teaching
> > > and committee work?? Are they delusional? 12 units of teaching per
> > semester
> > > at $12,000 a semester??? I am aghast.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Thank you. I am now cured:-).
> > >
> > > ken
> > >
> > > ------------------
> > > Kenneth Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
> > >
> > > "I agree with the Chekhov character who, when in a crisis, he is
> > > reminded that 'this, too, shall pass,' responds 'Nothing
> > > passes.'"--Philip Roth
> > >
> >
>
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