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It's a tricky one. The trouble is that Shakespeare is one of the two great anchors of modern English, the other being the King James Version bible. You can't be
by davidgerard 10y ago
It's a tricky one. The trouble is that Shakespeare is one of the two great anchors of modern English, the other being the King James Version bible. You can't be highly literate in English without knowing both, because so much common phrasing and allusion is straight out of them.
(The trouble with the KJV is that it's hardly ever taught as a literary source, only as a religious one, but that's a separate rant. And if I wanted to fix it I should become an English professor and teach it for a year to prove my point.)
- mrkstu 10y agoThe only time in High School that the Bible was mentioned was my AP English class, when we studied the Book of Job. It was a bit of a shock, after all that time learning English, to suddenly be confronted with Scripture at school... but refreshing. The KJV was definitely THE source of common culture in America, up until the last ~30 years or so. It has been sad to see the rapid decline in Biblical scholarship by the average American. Having a common touchstone of such breadth/depth/complexity being replaced by Disney/Marvel as the common lexicon has been disheartening (despite my love of all things Marvel.)
- davidgerard 10y agoIt's still the source for many of the sources. So many phrases are straight from there, much as they are from Shakespeare. Martin Luther King leaned heavily on Exodus, and the theme of "let my people go".