4 ms·

Personally I love literature and art, my bedroom is lined with poetry books in several languages, and for that very reason, I dislike much of the modern humanit

• BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  > I dislike much of the modern humanities with their pious, dreary approach As someone who recovered from a mild case of being a STEMlord in college, grandiose claims of unearned self-importance are what turned me off from literature classes. I was always down to take a class in history, philosophy, or music if my schedule had an opening for that semester, but I took the minimum I could get away with in languages & literature. Part of the problem is that English departments insist they are important because they “teach you how to be fully human”, which induces eye rolls: it’s like how the Quality Inn having the word “quality” in its name is unintentionally ironic. I still don’t know if the Dead Poets Society was meant as a satire of self-important literature classes or as a genuine homage to them. At least the way it was taught when I was in high school, poetry was either cheesy rhymes or was the literary equivalent of debugging someone else’s code golf. It wasn’t until I discovered the authors Mark Danielewski and Christian Bök that I understood the joy in playing with language for its own sake.
  • quartesixte 5y ago
    History based English departments might have been more up your alley. Took a class on Shakespeare centered around recreating the plays as they were meant to be played, and the historical context they were played in. Fascinating stuff, and a lot less susceptible to pure rhetorical analysis nonsense.