Cultural literacy, I likes it!

[blamebrampton]

I had a strange discussion with a person on the internet (god forbid!) over the concept of cultural literacy. Her thesis was that it wasn't important, that popular culture was more useful, and that no one could agree on what one needed to know to be culturally literate anyway.

We exchanged a number of comments, and she was a thoroughly decent person to argue with, but I can't help thinking that we come from opposing starting positions on this one. To start with, she's literally half my age. But she also went to school all through the period where one text was interchangeable with another, whereas I went to school in the days when you had to learn about great literature before they let you mess around with the other stuff.

And yeah, I do mean great and other. I know this will have some of you demanding I turn in my Credentialled Postmodernist badge, but some texts are better than others. They last longer, they impact more, they're Penicillin rather than Cialis, the Periodic Table as opposed to Phlogiston. To my mind, there are certain texts you should have a grounding in if you want to be a culturally literate person.

The problem is, of course, that the idea of their being 'certain texts', a canon, if you will, has become problematic. Harold 'Groper' Bloom's The Western Canon is often held up to ridicule by people who call it a roll-call of dead white men. But I think that's because they couldn't be arsed reading it. He talks positively about Austen and Woolf, Mary Shelley and not one but two Brontës (though how he could choose Emily over Anne is a mystery to me), among other women, and has a good set from the Ancient world as well as Persian and Asian sources. He is weaker on the Orient, I wanted The Tale of Genji at least, but when he sat down to think 'Who has influenced what we think about literature in the West', he genuinely seems to have done so on the basis of the works, not who wrote them.

To me, the idea that we should not privilege some texts over others is ridiculous. No one would argue that there is no difference between a Skoda Octavia and a Bugatti Veyron, or between salad cream and hand-made mayonnaise. It's fine to like and enjoy trashier texts, Skodas and salad cream, but to argue that they should be given the same weight as their opposing numbers is something I cannot agree with.

And the case is more certain with literature than with salad cream. If you only know salad cream, you don't know how delicious aioli is. But, to use an example given, if you are familiar with Harry Potter and not Hamlet, not only do you miss out on Hamlet, but you miss out on the myriad Shakespearean references and jokes within Harry Potter. And while I think it's certainly possible to enjoy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire if you have no classical education, I suspect it is not possible to do so without a constant feeling that there are certain levels of the text that are passing over your head. Without the cultural literacy that allows you to do so, some authors are wholly unapproachable: Laurence Sterne, Jasper Fforde and the entire Monty Python output, to start with.

Some people have absolutely no urge to cultural literacy, which I can see as a valid choice, but it cuts you off from a lot of reading. I would argue that you cannot say that you are a keen reader or keen consumer of film and television if you are also avowedly against cultural literacy, because it is like saying that you are a biochemist who doesn't believe in valences. However, this could all just be another sign of me becoming an old fogey.

What about you lot? Especially you young folk? Do you still have that frisson of glee I used to have when I uncovered secret references in texts as I read and learned more and more? Or is that so appallingly 20th century that I should just dig out a corset and start worrying about those commies?

On a final pomo note, Happy 50th Birthday, Severus, and Happy 75th Elvis! May you continue to bring joy to your fans for many years! And happy Real Birthday to tnumfive ! You're in good company ;-)

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

people decide, consciously and less consciously, what the canon will consist of, and there are many cultural pressures on these decisions

That's true, but the cultural pressures aren't, as your first comment discussed, those imposing a 'high' culture from a position of power. They're the general users of the language. As an example, most Shakespearean works were performed most authentically as puppet shows touring the provinces in the centuries after his death.

The verve of Shakespeare's storytelling and the richness of his language was recognised by these audiences, many of whom were illiterate, and his plays, with most of their big speeches intact, were popular entertainments. In what you would describe as the bastions of high culture, whole plays were revised by people like Nahum Tate as they were seen as being in 'poor taste'.

This is one of the things that irritates me about the imposition of philosophies like Bourdieu's onto English culture. There is no Academy jealously guarding our literary history. It has been produced by audiences and marketplaces, not by a small number of men personified by Satre and to be reacted against. The model does not fit. (British culture is a more difficult question, as it can be argued that there are Academy equivalents for Welsh culture at the very least.)

Admittedly, many of the competing lists that seek to define the English canon have some works on them that have not been popular with audiences for years, or were never so in this country, but they earn their place through either massive impact at the time of publication (in the case of someone like Smollett (big general readership) or Woolf (taken to the breast of early twentieth century women across the country)), or in the revolutionary effect on writing and language following (the Genji writer, and, one could argue, Marlowe and Kyd (though you could also argue that those two were the James Cameron and Martin Scorseses of their day).

And I disagree with your assertion that I am claiming the authority to say what people should read: I neither do this nor claim the authority to say that 2 must be the number after 1. People can read whatever they like! My argument is that, just as we have a common mathematical language we use if we want to be able to do mathematics in a comprehensive way, so we have a common literary language we use if we want to engage with literature deeply.

Do you need any of this to be a successful barrister, accountant, sociologist, doctor or footballer? No. But to be a good writer, literary theorist or critic? Yes. And why? Because these are professions that engage with the art of words and how they work. To suggest that this can be done well with a background only in trash (which, as I keep saying, can as easily be literary fiction as mass market, in fact I have often thought the former genre more prone to innate incoherence) is to expect your barrister to argue effectively with no experience in torts.

A side note, as I'm not certain on one point, if you were talking about me recommending books when you say 'claiming authority', yes I do that a lot, mostly for YA or speculative fiction, and on the grounds of everything from 'this was really enjoyable' to 'this writer redefines the genre'. I would disagree that this is me imposing any authority, more doing what every keen reader does.