{"id":376,"date":"2016-03-31T22:17:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T21:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hilarymoriarty.co.uk\/blog\/?p=376"},"modified":"2016-03-31T22:17:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T21:17:27","slug":"heres-the-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"Here's the thing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you old enough to remember context questions? Popular in RS or Eng lit exams, they gave you a pesky little quotation and asked you detailed questions about it, what did it mean, who said it and why \u2013 how minimalist was that? Candidates even had to translate key phrases\/sentences into good modern English, as if the original were written in a foreign language. And of course it sometimes felt as if it was, which was one reason why reading a Shakespeare play aloud around the class was a recipe for total incomprehension and complete allergy to Shakespeare evermore. How many of us eventually discovered Shakespeare in a theatre, open-mouthed at how crystal clear was the meaning of every line \u2013 \u201cOMG! So that\u2019s what it meant! And that\u2019s what actors are for!\u201d
\nTeachers \u2013 OK, my teachers, but there were two of them \u2013 were manacled to the need to make sure we could tackle those compulsory context questions. Classes, hours, terms disappeared into line by line explication, word by blessed word. Chopping at the wood and missing the trees comes to mind. Looking back \u2013 and I begin to think I should stop doing this \u2013 there was very little overviewing of the whole text, themes, ideas, style. No time. Too busy going line by line. Maybe the teacher with whom I toiled through \u2018Ant and Cleo\u2019 thought if we only knew the meaning of every word, we could work out the rest for ourselves. Simples.
\n
\nWhat we could not have worked out \u2013 bless us \u2013 was the social and historical context of the whole play, not without suddenly becoming historians as well as infant students of Eng lit. University was not much better: whatever was said about \u2018Ant and Cleo\u2019 was probably said in a single lecture, and I swear nobody mentioned the fact that the play was written a year after the Gunpowder Plot. Not a word. Who knew?
\nI was still in the classroom but the other side of the desk when the exam world moved on and suddenly historical context seemed to be more important than the text itself. Never mind the greatness of Webster\u2019s \u2018Duchess of Malfi\u2019, now exam boards summoned teachers \u2013 and I was one of them \u2013 to be trained for the new style papers and in particular a new focus on the historical context of our texts. So, if the Duchess had two horrible brothers, the Cardinal would of course be more sinister and vicious than the Duke because this was a play written half a dozen years after the Gunpowder Plot, so for an English audience, the really bad guys were the Catholics. Of course. We were told that candidates who managed to work this detail into their responses would earn ticks, and ticks meant marks, and that was lovely, because for once Eng lit was heading in the direction of identifiable (and therefore teachable) things to be said which would earn marks, instead of the old vague territory of some candidates writing as if they really knew what they were talking about \u2013 earning As \u2013 and others just not sounding so convincing. Somehow. So probably getting Cs. Or less. All of which used to be the problem with opinion-type subjects like Eng lit and history. And not a problem in maths, where answers were wonderfully real and true and verifiable and not a matter of opinion at all.
\nWhile it was nice that candidates now had some anchors to hold on to \u2013 \u201cI said X, and I know that gets a mark!\u201d \u2013 it felt at the time as if Eng lit was actually being reduced, if not completely ad absurdum, then very close. A fellow trainee that afternoon wailed: \u201cI am a well-qualified teacher of English literature and you are asking me to be a Ladybird history teacher!\u201d That was exactly how it felt. My class that year included an American student who believed Bonfire Night was invented in early-twentieth-century USA, like Hallowe\u2019en, and not remotely concerned with blowing up parliament. Getting the context right seemed to be many-layered and risky: historical rabbit holes everywhere, diving down for the use of \u2013 \u201cBut why was everyone so scared of Roman Catholics?\u201d \u201cWhere shall I start?\u201d \u2013 while the Duchess herself sort of languished on the table.
\nBut if I did not like the changes in the A level syllabus, I began to realise quite how thin the diet of my own degree course had been. A four-year course, with three years of Anglo Saxon \u2013 mostly translation, not evaluation \u2013 and three of Middle English \u2013 more translations. No wonder A level Latin was an essential for entry to the honours English course. The whole course was much about the words and the work, and virtually zero about the world crucible in which the works were forged.
\nOur Shakespeare course lasted a year, one lecture a week, and covered the tragedies, comedies and histories in a galloping term each. At least it was a whole year for one author; the whole of American Literature was done in one year also \u2013 a term each on drama, poetry and prose. And that was fairly mainstream stuff \u2013 not until a master\u2019s course in modern English and American lit did I discover the joys of \u2018Trout Fishing in America\u2019. Friends doing science subjects lamented their long days in laboratories \u2013 we arts students spent the same hours in the library, but in all fairness, much of the time was ill-directed if not completely random. You could be a real swot, but still doing the wrong things.
\nAnd, probably, much of what we now find interesting had not even been written. It was a consolation, as I turned the pages of \u20181599\u2019 and \u20181606\u2019, the two texts in which James Shapiro gives us the real low-down on the years in which Shakespeare wrote \u2018Henry V\u2019, \u2018Julius Caesar\u2019 and \u2018Hamlet\u2019, then \u2018King Lear\u2019, \u2018Macbeth\u2019 and \u2018Antony and Cleopatra\u2019 respectively, to find his bibliographies are packed with texts written since I left university. I had turned the pages thinking, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t anyone tell me that?\u201d Then I thought, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I go and find that out for myself?\u201d
\nToday\u2019s students have access to all the libraries of the world \u2013 so to speak \u2013 via the device in their hands and without having to leave the room. You might ask do they need teachers at all or could they make do with TED talks? My teachers tried to ensure I could understand the words on the page; I in my turn tried to bring to my students the scholarship of others to broaden their responses to their texts. Surely no one, now, would go into a classroom to teach \u2018King Lear\u2019 without bringing James Shapiro\u2019s research to the party \u2013 never mind the father\/daughter business, look at the division of the kingdom, look at James I fighting for Scotland\/England union, look at the Gunpowder Plot, look at the context!!
\nThen go back to the text and take it line by glorious line. Nudged by Shapiro, I have just re-read both \u2018King Lear\u2019 and \u2018Antony and Cleopatra\u2019. And you know what? In the end, honestly, the play is the thing.
\nThis article first appeared at http:\/\/ie-today.co.uk\/Article\/heres-the-thing<\/a> on 31 March 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you old enough to remember context questions? Popular in RS or Eng lit exams, they gave you a pesky little quotation and asked you detailed questions about it, what did it mean, who said it and why \u2013 how minimalist was that? Candidates even had to translate key phrases\/sentences into good modern English, as\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[67,128,201,214],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ie-today","category-independent-education-today","tag-context-questions","tag-literature","tag-standards","tag-ted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}