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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 32, No. 16. July 16, 1969

English literature

English literature

I Should like to make certain criticisms of the leaching of English literature in this University These criticisms are not so much concerned at the curriculum content but with several important literary matters which have been ignored.

The first criticism is that at no stage is there any consideration of what are literary values. Students simply ore not given any criteria which they may apply when choosing books for themselves or children.

The poetry paper of English IB is optimistically labelled "Practical Celticism". Certainly it may be so, but in general any literary criticism taught is pedantic and not transferable. At no undergraduate level are students ever presented with any concept of what makes great literature. Instead students are given a list of set-texts which presumably must be pearls of literature because the department says so. Usually act terns are literary pearls but the student will not spend his later reading life procuring set texts. Students must be given the tools to cull for themselves, and at present in both school and university. They are not.

The second criticism is that the literature or New Zealand is, by and large, ignored in undergraduate courses. Only at honours level does it emerge as a full paper. Surely it is more important for New Zealanders to know their own literature (and thus themselves) than it is to know some branch of centuries old European literature.

The third criticism is that there is too much emphasis on the literature of bygone ages, which may evoke nostalgia but is hardly relevant to life in this century. There must be more attention given to contemporary writing, especially in the fields of new drama and sciencefiction.

Ian Rush.