In this article, “The English Professor’s Tale,” Tom Shippey reviews the recent book The Yale Companion to Chaucer in Books & Culture, March/April 2007, page 11. If you enjoy Chaucer’s book, The Canterbury Tales, then some of the discussion in this article might appeal to you.
What I thought was illuminating has little to do with Chaucer and more to do with modern academics, especially English Studies. Shippey notes that 25 years ago there were 65,000 undergraduate majors in English Studies in the United States. Since then, the population has doubled but five years ago there were only 49,000 undergraduate majors in English Studies. English Studies have lost nearly one third of their market share. Since one would have expected 130,000 with the doubling of the population, this is even a greater loss.
Shippey wryly suggests that perhaps the reason is that English Studies professors are churning out politicized treatments in books and lectures like they have in this poorly produced group of essays. Who wants to waste their life churning out politicized garbage?
You can read the article at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/5.11.html.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment