Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity Theodore L

SUNY Geneseo KnightScholar Open SUNY Textbooks Open Educational Resources 2014 Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity Theodore L. Steinberg SUNY Fredonia Follow this and additional works at: https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost Part of the Classics Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Steinberg, Theodore L., "Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity" (2014). Open SUNY Textbooks. 17. https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost/17 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Educational Resources at KnightScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open SUNY Textbooks by an authorized administrator of KnightScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg SUNY Fredonia Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg 2013 Open SUNY Textbooks 2013 Theodore L. Steinberg This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Published by Open SUNY Textbooks, Milne Library (IITG PI) State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo, NY 14454 Cover design by William Jones To Phyllis Marsha Kenshur Steinberg—“Many women have done well, but you surpass them all” (Proverbs 31:29) About this Textbook Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their test- ability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers. About the Author Theodore L. Steinberg, Ph.D., Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of English, SUNY Fredonia Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg serves as Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English Department at SUNY Fredonia, where he specializes in medieval and Renaissance literatures, though he teaches in a wide variety of areas. His publications include studies of medieval and Renaissance English literature, medieval Judaica, modern epic, and Yiddish literature. He encourages students to see the contemporary relevance of older literatures and the importance of the humanities, particularly literature, in the development of civilized life. Reviewer’s Notes This is a book for college students and adult learners who think they ought to know something about literature, but don’t actually enjoy reading it. This is also a book for teachers: for new teachers who have just been assigned an introductory course; and for old teachers who want to remind themselves why they became teachers in the first place. The author, Theo- dore L. Steinberg, is himself the kind of teacher who makes other teachers jealous: smart and learned (of course), but also warm, likable, and funny. Steinberg puts the pleasure back into literature, not by dumbing the books down, but raising us up to their level. His enthusiasm for books and their authors is unembarrassed and undefensive. His own pages read quickly be- cause he has learned, from many years of experience, what students need to know and where they need help. In particular, he knows where students are likely to get bogged down, and he’s an expert at clearing away the obstacles and misunderstandings that make reading a duty instead of a delight. David Scott Wilson-Okamura Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University About Open SUNY Textbooks Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This initiative publishes high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing infrastructure. The pilot launched in 2012, providing an editorial framework and service to authors, students and faculty, and establishing a community of practice among libraries. The first pilot is publishing 15 titles in 2013, with a second pilot to follow that will add more textbooks and participating libraries. Participating libraries in the 2012-2013 pilot include SUNY Geneseo, College at Brockport, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Fredonia, Upstate Medical University, and University at Buffalo, with support from other SUNY libraries and SUNY Press. For more information, please see: http://opensuny.org Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Homer, The Iliad 26 Chapter 3 Homer, The Odyssey and Virgil, The Aeneid 55 Chapter 4 Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella 78 Chapter 5 Shakespeare 100 Chapter 6 Pope, “The Rape of the Lock” 134 Chapter 7 Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews 147 Chapter 8 Jane Austen 165 Chapter 9 Charles Dickens, Bleak House 186 Chapter 10 George Eliot, Middlemarch 205 Afterword 223 Selected Bibliography 225 Introduction There are many reasons that a book like this has become necessary, but all of those reasons can be reduced to this point: we as a society seem to have forgotten that reading classic literature is supposed to be both enjoyable and beneficial. The Roman poet Horace made this point some two thousand years ago and the English Renaissance poet Sir Philip Sidney expanded on it some four hundred years ago. Sid- ney’s point was that the enjoyment of reading literature encouraged people to continue reading and therefore made them more likely to profit from the instruction that was contained in the literature. This formulation sounds a lot like “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down,” and anyone who has ever tried to give a child medicine hidden in some favorite treat knows that the process never works quite so simply. But Sidney does have a point. Classic literature is enjoyable to read, and it does have a great deal to teach us about what it means to be human and to live in this world. Literature teaches and it delights, and these functions are related. Unfortunately, we have forgotten that literature is enjoyable and I fear that too often we distort it when we teach it. Thus the state of New York pays me a comfortable salary to be a professor of literature, but I wonder whether either the legislators or the taxpayers really un- derstand why. I hope that this little book will help to explain why, at least in part by showing how literature delights and how it instructs. I hope, too, that it will inspire other teachers to emphasize the value and delight of reading literature without watering it down, without cheapening it. On the Humanities One idea that requires immediate emphasis is the importance of the humanities in general. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said: “Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity Introduction demands of a high-tech economy. We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math—the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.” While that statement presents a laudable goal, it also totally ignores the value of the humanities. In fact, at a time when we see an increasing dehumanization in society, a greater focus on economics, more reli- ance on technology, and ever more attachment to material goods, the humanities are increasingly vital to our individual and collective well- being. The humanities can help us learn how to manage, how to use properly, those skills that the President emphasized. Now let me correct the oversimplifications of that last paragraph. A focus on the economy is not evil, so long as the economy is used to better people’s lives. Technology is certainly not evil. I owe my life to technological advances. But less dramatically, technology also allows me to communicate with my children, who have chosen to live four hundred miles distant. And the humanities surely do not have an un- blemished record. One of my favorite poets, Edmund Spenser, played a shameful role in the Elizabethan suppression of Ireland. T.S. Eliot, like so many others, was anti-Semitic; and the Nazis and the Soviets both manipulated the humanities to further their enterprises. So it is not enough to say that we need to study the humanities. We also need to study how to study the humanities, which is itself, paradoxically, part of the humanities. If we simply make the humanities into another example of unthinking, rote learning, then we transform them into a means of oppression rather than liberation. The humanities, after all, are among the things that make us human. The concept of the humanities presents a number of problems, which are evident in our vague notion of what we mean by the term.

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