/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6317556]

>take a class on John Milton
>spend weeks talking about the sexism aimed at Eve

"Education" amirite?

[Anonymous No.6317571]

No sexism talk in my Milton class

maybe your professor is just shit

[Anonymous No.6317574]

>>6317571
He probably doesn't even go to school dude don't reply

[Anonymous No.6317581]

>>6317574
Wow. You caught me.

Well done, mate :^)

[Anonymous No.6317752]

>take a class on Shakespeare
>spend weeks talking about the anti-semitism aimed at Shylock

"Education" amirite?

[Anonymous No.6317808]

>>6317556
All aboard the shitty education train

Literally all we talked about on Beowulf is gender roles.

[Anonymous No.6317825]

>>6317808
>all we talked about on Beowulf is gender roles.

[Anonymous No.6317840]

>>6317808
>>6317825
Welcome to the next step in education.

[Anonymous No.6317848]

>introductory history class on WW1
>half of the semester was on woman's rights from the book All Quiet on the Western Front

How does one even even do that...

[Anonymous No.6317852]

>British Literature class
>Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman on syllabus
>okay
>Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman on syllabus again
>Wait a minute...
>flip the page back over and again
>yeah it's on there twice

I just dismissed it as a mistake, like maybe it was a copy-paste error, or the prof meant Vindication of the Rights of Man in one instance, but no, we actually read the same thing twice.

Just imagine what the rest of the syllabus was like.

Fuck school was torture.

[Anonymous No.6317856]

>>6317808
>implying there is anything else of worth

[Anonymous No.6317860]

>>6317852
>mfw british anything

you guys got a Nietzsche group permanently at a university banned because the ideas they discuss may offend people

[Anonymous No.6317870]

>>6317856

[Anonymous No.6317871]

>>6317860
I was taking a class to study British Literature, not a class actually in Britain. I can't imagine how awful that would be.

[Anonymous No.6317892]

>>6317581
>then tucked into their chests. A thing
seen once, then everywhere—

the top of the gazebo, the little cracked statue,
along the barbed fence. Noticed because

I know first with my eyes, then followed
their several songs braiding the trees.

[Anonymous No.6317934]

If you honestly can not understand how gender is one of the major themes in the work of Milton then you are fucking retarded. This is coming from someone who detests critical theory having taken over the arts as well btw

[Anonymous No.6317941]

>>6317934
Obviously they would have approached it from a strictly feminist perspective, which you have to admit is tedious as hell and annoying at times for anyone who doesn't share that perspective.

[Anonymous No.6317978]

>>6317556
>take a class on the Revolutions in Modern history
>nearly the whole course was about empowerment of women, how they FINALLY get their own jobs, livelihood, and independence through emergent technology and political systems
>"these were fundamental turning points in history, where women were beginning to break free from the shackles of the patriarchy and expected gender roles"
>we also had to learn about the mid 20th century 'sexual revolution'
>I was mysteriously too sick to partake in those lectures and classes
>By the way, my teacher was an Italian-Aboriginal feminist who was studying her masters degree on "Women, prejudice, and the Stolen Generation"

She was actually correct in what she was saying, but she just blew it way out of proportion. I just wanted to learn about wars and steam trains and shit.

[Anonymous No.6318013]

>>6317556
To be fair Adam would still be alive to this very day if it wasn't for Eve.

She dun goofed pretty good

[Anonymous No.6318105]

>took a class in geometry
>literally all we discussed was which shape best represented a strong, independent woman
>and which angles were the most sexist

[Anonymous No.6318174]

>>6318105
"Education" amirite?

[Anonymous No.6318221]

>Reading Tempest in class
>Miranda almost raped by Caliban
>But Caliban is black
>Professor scrambles to come up with an argument on how it wasn't really rape
>Intersectionality in action

[Anonymous No.6318265]

>auditing a physics class
>professor waddles in
>talks about how mass is a property which privileges certain atomic configurations over others

dropped

[Anonymous No.6318889]

>>6317556
Sorry you guys didn't all hug it out and suck Milton's cock.

>muh canon

[Anonymous No.6318912]

>take a class on Shelley's Frankenstein
>spend weeks talking about how Frankenstein was a misogynist trying to circumvent women's role in reproduction

"Education" amirite?

[Anonymous No.6318924]

>>6318912
>this happened
yeah right kiddo

[Anonymous No.6318946]

Wow man, I'm really sorry.

I was lucky enough to learn Milton from Paul Stevens, who is a bit of an academic celeb when it comes to Milton. Prof at U of T. He spoke out against feminist readings of Milton for a whole hour one day.

Here's a great lecture on Milton. The best one of the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Dr9JnBGJk

[Anonymous No.6318947]

>>6318912
>take a class on Frankenstein
>feminist professor refuses to admit that textual scholarship proves that Percy wrote most of it

[Anonymous No.6318956]

>>6318946
skip the first bit, there's a bullshit panel at the beginning

[Anonymous No.6319035]

>>6317556
How on fucking earth is that objectionable?

Milton spends entire chapters on the relation between the sexes. It's one of the major themes and the cause of the Fall. If you can't talk about feminist issues in Paradise Lost, what fucking work CAN you analyse?

Ironically enough, you are letting your own political beliefs intrude into how the poem should be discussed while accusing others of doing the same (they're not).

[Anonymous No.6319051]

>>6319035
>female detected

[Anonymous No.6319055]

>>6319035
>Milton spends entire chapters on the relation between the sexes. It's one of the major themes and the cause of the Fall. If you can't talk about feminist issues in Paradise Lost, what fucking work CAN you analyse?
Feminism is a contemporary political ideology which has fuck all to do with Milton's analysis of gender. To discuss his approach to gender through the lense of feminism is completely anachronistic and does nothing but reduce the text to a trigger for another boring, obnoxious feminist intellectual setpiece.

[Anonymous No.6319059]

>>6318265
>was in a lab
>teacher wanted us to use amplitude discriminator
>got him fired for oppressing those waves

[Anonymous No.6319062]

>mfw you're all lying

I'm getting my BFA in 6 months and I guess I've heard the word "feminist" or anything related less than 10 times during the whole course

[Anonymous No.6319064]

>>6319055
Check your privilege shitlord.

[Anonymous No.6319080]

>>6319055
It is completely anachronistic to read 350 year old poems and pretend they were written yesterday. If you can't apply the centuries of thought since they were composed you may as well not read them.

[Anonymous No.6319087]

>>6319080
>It is completely anachronistic to read 350 year old poems and pretend they were written yesterday.

Do you know what the word "anachronistic" means?

>centuries of thought
>feminism

O I am laffin.

[Anonymous No.6319094]

Avoid female professors at all costs. They'll turn everything into a monologue about their cunts and ignore everything of value.

[Anonymous No.6319095]

>>6319080
retard pls go

[Anonymous No.6319101]

>>6319059
>in French class
>teacher says that english is inferior because its constructions unfairly favor the object which is sexist because our syntax paints the object as male and the subject as female, and that romance languages' subject centered structure is more equitable
>into the trash it goes

[Anonymous No.6319104]

>>6319055
>Feminism is a contemporary political ideology which has fuck all to do with Milton's analysis of gender.

Uhhhhh what?
Milton is making various statements on the relationship between men and women.
Apparently you think we should avoid any discussion of Milton's beliefs on this issue because that would be 'anachronistic'. As if readers in the 17th century skipped the chapter with the creation of Eve.
Can you see how retarded you sound?

[Anonymous No.6319120]

>be me
>studying Odyssey
>female professor
>says odysseus is homosexual because he presents his sword to someone else
>says men are happy when they see a lesbian porn but not gay porn
>says odysseus's shield is representing a female's pregnany belly
>somewhere in the text odysseus burns down his house
>says there are pyromaniacs, they are aroused when they see something burning and they love to masturbate to it
>be me after class
>catch the professor and ask her aren't we overreading a little?
>says no, they are all in the text
>mfw

[Anonymous No.6319126]

>>6319104
>Apparently you think we should avoid any discussion of Milton's beliefs on this issue because that would be 'anachronistic'. As if readers in the 17th century skipped the chapter with the creation of Eve.
The concept of "feminism" and all of its ideological baggage is entirely foreign to Milton and the seventeenth century. You're distorting his work if you project the concerns of modern feminism onto it.

[Anonymous No.6319129]

>>6319101
That's a lie and you know it, romance language departments all say the germanic languages are more egalitarian due to having less gender-distinctive articles

[Anonymous No.6319133]

>>6319126
So is the concept of critical theory (some could argue of critic as a whole, at least in any way we use it), so you might as well quit the class

[Anonymous No.6319137]

>>6319104
>>6319133

You are such a girl it's not even funny. Post feet pls.

[Anonymous No.6319143]

>>6319137
That other person isn't me, and I'm not a girl, sorry m7 :^)

[Anonymous No.6319148]

>>6319126
You're using a fallacy here.
No-one is projecting the concerns of modern feminism onto Milton.
Readers are engaging in a dialogue with Milton and the text from a feminist perspective. As every single reader does from their own perspective.

The role of literary criticism is not to uncritically absorb the views of the author without any attempt at analysis.

[Anonymous No.6319149]

>>6319126
The role of women in society has been discussed for centuries, it didn't get invented when they invented the word feminism.

[Anonymous No.6319150]

>>6319143
>implying

[Anonymous No.6319158]

>>6319148
>No-one is projecting the concerns of modern feminism onto Milton.
>Readers are engaging in a dialogue with Milton and the text from a feminist perspective.

The fact that you can write both of these sentences next to each other is incredible to me. . .

[Anonymous No.6319161]

>>6319055
>thinks feminism is "contemporary"
>hasn't read Plato, Wollstonecraft, or Mills

[Anonymous No.6319166]

>attend conservative boys highschool
>put up with a little religion outside of class
>actually educated

The worst possible incident I can think of was when I was in a mathematics class and the teacher came in asking us to cut out cardboard floppy disks for a play she was doing.

This was final year, yet she threatened myself and another student when we continued with our work. I can't remember why I didn't see the headmaster, I probably didn't think it was worth it.

[Anonymous No.6319167]

>>6319161
Define "feminism" plox.

[Anonymous No.6319169]

>>6319158
When you say "critics are projecting the concerns of feminism ONTO Milton" you are committing the fallacy I mentioned above.

"Distorting" Milton would be saying he believed things he did not believe. If there was a class discussing how Milton was a Catholic, that would be distortion.
Disagreeing with and finding Milton's approach to sex and gender problematic is not 'distortion'. It's a debate every reader has with every text. And it's not anachronistic to have one.

[Anonymous No.6319175]

>>6319169
>Disagreeing with and finding Milton's approach to sex and gender problematic is not 'distortion'. It's a debate every reader has with every text. And it's not anachronistic to have one.
It certainly isn't scholarship, and political evaluative procedures like that have no place in a university classroom.

[Anonymous No.6319179]

>>6319169
IF YOU ARE "ENGAGING IN A DIALOGUE WITH MILTON AND THE TEXT FROM A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE" YOU ARE "PROJECTING THE CONCERNS OF FEMINISM ONTO MILTON."

[Anonymous No.6319185]

>>6319175
>It certainly isn't scholarship

schol·ar·ship
ˈskälərˌSHip/Submit
noun
1.
academic study or achievement; learning of a high level.

It's scholarship by definition. What you mean to say is: "it's not GOOD scholarship [i.e. I disagree with it therefore it's bad]".

>political evaluative procedures like that have no place in a university classroom

You are the one politicising literary studies by advocating the exclusion of certain themes and perspectives you find politically objectionable.

[Anonymous No.6319188]

>>6319179
I AM NOT SAYING THAT MILTON WAS A FEMINIST. I AM SAYING THAT "FEMINISM" WAS UTTERLY FOREIGN TO MILTON BUT MODERN ACADEMICS CRITICIZE HIS WORK FROM A FEMINIST POSITION WHICH IS ANACHRONISTIC BECAUSE AGAIN MILTON PREDATES "FEMINISM."

[Anonymous No.6319190]

>>6319179
Duhhh no.
"projecting the concerns of feminism onto Milton" would be to say that Milton was a feminist. AFAIK no-one actually teaches that at universities.

[Anonymous No.6319193]

>>6319185
Arbitrary "dialogue" with Milton doesn't involve any study or achievement whatsoever. It's pure politics. The only serious scholarship that can be done with Milton's text is the historical task of factually excavating his meaning by reconstructing the contexts in which he wrote and the discourses within which he was intervening.

[Anonymous No.6319197]

>>6319188
AN ANALOGY WOULD BE CRITICIZING CHAUCER FOR NOT INCLUDING MINORITIES IN THE CANTERBURY TALES OR ATTACKING SPENSER FOR BEING CLASSIST.

[Anonymous No.6319201]

>>6319188
Okay...so what? All of literary criticism is anachronistic. The point of the study of literature is not to construct perfectly historical renderings of what the author believes and nothing else...

Do you think it's possible to read the Iliad as a Dark Age Greek would have?

[Anonymous No.6319203]

>>6319190
Measuring Milton by the yardstick of contemporary feminism violates the cardinal rule of intellectual historical scholarship: see things their way. Anything other than the recovery of historical meaning from texts is intellectual masturbation and shouldn't be conducted in a school classroom - it should be confined to the dinner tables of the mindless chattering classes.

[Anonymous No.6319205]

>>6317556
>Studying physics in hs
>Teacher refuses to mention E=mc^2 because it is a sexed equation

[Anonymous No.6319209]

>>6319203
No you don't. Seeing things their way is simply one way to analyse their work. Asking what it means now is another useful approach.

[Anonymous No.6319210]

>>6319193
But that's what feminist literary criticism does. Milton's sexual politics, a key theme in the poem, was rather ignored until feminists started discussing it.

[Anonymous No.6319212]

>in Science
>teacher claims that we were unable to make clothes prior to machines

[Anonymous No.6319213]

>>6319188
>Literary criticism
>Anachronistic
no shit

[Anonymous No.6319217]

>>6319197

so the issue at hand is that your feelings get hurt

people point out the flaws in an author's world view and you get buttdevastated, and why is that

would you rather have people ignore it

[Anonymous No.6319218]

>>6319203
I hereby convict you of naive empricism. Your sentence is to spend months shitposting on /lit/ about how Hegel's discussion of Thersites from the Iliad is anachronistic and therefore evil.

[Anonymous No.6319221]

>>6319209
>>6319218
Read Wittgenstein and Austin you fucking spastics. Meaning comes from concrete speech acts within historically distinct language games. You fuckers need to get real.

[Anonymous No.6319229]

>>6319221
Lel, Wittgenstein would have agreed with me. Read more.

[Anonymous No.6319239]

>in blowjob instruction class
>professor says deep throating is sexist

[Anonymous No.6319272]

>>6319167
>a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment.

Feminist Theory aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and gender.

Taking that into consideration it's not unfair or incorrect to apply these theories to works of literature like Milton's Paradise Lost.

>>6319188
Milton predates feminism but it's not unfair to look at his work from a feminist perspective because the whole function of the feminist project is to uncover the ways in which gender roles and inequality are constructed, among other things.

The thing about Milton's sexual politics is that it would have consequences in its own society and would also have consequences in our own society. Art often informs people's view on certain issues.

What is this work saying? How does it function? Those are valid questions and it's naive to think its gender politics are irrelevant when we still praise this work as a great piece of literature and central to the Western canon and so on.

[Anonymous No.6319281]

>take class in feminist theory
>all we do is talk about the literary devices used in novels by dead white men

[Anonymous No.6319329]

>>6319120
>yfw

[Anonymous No.6319339]

>>6319217
>people point out the flaws in an author's world view
>flaws

[Anonymous No.6319370]

>class on Othello
>weeks after weeks talking about the feelings of some nigger and his interracial degenerate romance

Fucking sjws

[Anonymous No.6319381]

>>6317571
Yeah me neither. My professor actually made the point that by the standards of the time, Milton was quite lenient on Eve, blaming her and Adam equally.

[Anonymous No.6319390]

>>6317848
leling

[Anonymous No.6319417]

Is there a good edition of Paradise Lost that contains the Doré illustrations? I can't seem to find anything decent on Amazon.

[Anonymous No.6319419]

>>6319148
>Readers are engaging in a dialogue with Milton
oh, fuck off with your "dialogue"s. stop maintaining the cycle of shit in the humanities for god's sake

[Anonymous No.6319441]

>>6319419
The humanities need to finish their death spiral before they can be born anew. There's no point in trying to stop it. If anything it's our collective duty to inject bullshit more quickly.

[Anonymous No.6319512]

>go to catholic college to avoid cancer leftism
>there is indeed no leftism
>instead half the classes are about elementary school theist arguments
>psychology prof is a vatican exorcist who talks about demons

I guess I had it coming. There are some cool classes though

>go to catholic college to avoid cancer leftism
>there is indeed no leftism
>instead half the classes are about elementary school theist arguments
>psychology prof is a vatican exorcist who talks about demons

I guess I had it coming. There are some cool classes though

[Anonymous No.6319526]

>>6319512
>psychology prof is a vatican exorcist who talks about demons

This sounds like the best psych class ever tbh.

[Anonymous No.6319529]

>>6319512

[Anonymous No.6319557]

>>6317848
good lord

[Anonymous No.6319580]

OMG THE POL SHILLS IN THIS OMG LIKE OMG THE POL SHILLS ANTISEMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

[Anonymous No.6319602]

>>6319526
It's really not though, since he talks like he's adressing a bunch of old ladies. really shit prof in general
I get the impression Jesuits are just shit at thelogy and it's all about muh feels. There's a dominican priest and nun who teach aquinas and ancient phil. And they are based. What can ya do

[Anonymous No.6319614]

>>6319602
>Jesuits

Well there's your problem.

[Anonymous No.6319628]

>>6319602
Jesuits are very strong in theology. They study for 11 years or more.

[Anonymous No.6319882]

>>6318912
>this isn't a perfectly valid reading of frankenstein

I mean, not to the extent of outright calling franky a mysoginist, just a character whose relationships with women are straight weird nigga

[Anonymous No.6319935]

>>6318946
University of Tennessee? Neat, I also go to college in TN

[Anonymous No.6319950]

>>6317556

Where are you studying at?

If it's not a private or Catholic university chances are your professors are all left-wing SJW special snowflake types.

[Anonymous No.6320016]

That sucks, when I took my Milton class, we essentially broke him up into four sections:

Nativity Ode/Lycidas
Comus
Areopagitica
Paradise Lost

and it was literally the best, most enlightening class I've taken in my life.

[Anonymous No.6320129]

>>6317978
>>6317556

I get the feeling that sometimes these topics are interesting to cover, but sometimes the prof goes into tunnel vision mode and zooms in on one aspect. It almost happened with one prof i had, but they managed to reel it in and move the discussion to other areas.

>>6318947
Load of clap trap by spotlight seeking 'academics', Mary's other works prove her place in the romanticist canon, and a worthy scholar. Percy was a contributing editor but nothing more. And Lauritsen is a hack that was rightfully called out by Robinson.

>>6319120
There is homosexuality in odyssey, read book 3. The interpretations of your professor though are strenuous.

[Anonymous No.6320540]

>>6319129
lol wut?

[Anonymous No.6320547]

Go to a real Christian college if you want to appreciate Christian works taught by great professors.

[Anonymous No.6320594]

>>6320547
>basically feminism without the "fem"

both ideologies suck terribly.

[Anonymous No.6320597]

>>6320594
fug off gommie :-D

[Anonymous No.6320610]

>>6319281
Marx/Engels from which feminism branched out of? xD

[Anonymous No.6320629]

Colleges are all run by intergalactic space monsters anyways.
They have been here since America was invented by Benjamin Franklin, they came down in their space ships and made nests deep within the earth.
Columbia University was the first college to be wholly owned by them, and ever since the Vietnam war, not a single college has been founded without being possessed by the beasts.
At colleges, no matter what they teach, they spread highly sophisticated messages that turn students into galactic mindslaves.
Within 50 years, every thing on Earth will be part of one giant organism, that will be raped for for food and energy until the universe grows cold.

[Anonymous No.6320785]

>chemistry class
>learning about periodic table
>we discuss why so many heavy elements are named after men and not women
>its because men are pigs
>class agrees the noble gasses are the most feminine elements because they strong, independant, and dont need no covalent bond
>we create our own periodic table, revised to be more inclusive (eg. Hydrogen becomes Sarkezium with an atomic weight of rape)
>in 2089 America's first feminist nuclear power plant melts down on its inception day

[Anonymous No.6320791]

>>6320785
WOW, EIPC
def finna post this r/4chan, get dat dank karma