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The Work of Teaching Literature in the Age of Mechanical Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Raphael Dalleo
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Extract

Working for More Than Fifteen Years in Public Universities—First as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, then as a Nontenure-track full-timer, finally making my way onto the tenure track—taught me a great deal about how public education works and literature's place in a world where the concepts of the public and education are devalued if not attacked. J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace stages some of the challenges of teaching literature in the contemporary university. The novel's protagonist, David Lurie, is a Romanticist struggling to connect with his students: “[H]e does not expect them to know about fallen angels or where Byron might have read of them. What he does expect is a round of goodnatured guesses which, with luck, he can guide toward the mark.” He is disappointed by the virtual impossibility of this task: “[H]e has long ceased to be surprised at the range of ignorance of his students. Post-Christian, posthistorical, postliterate, they might as well have been hatched from eggs yesterday” (32). In this context, he thinks—and readers probably agree—that he is “no great shakes as a teacher” (63).

Type
the changing profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 5: Special Topic: Literature in the World , October 2016 , pp. 1471 - 1479
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

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