If you take up this link, you will be able to
look at various attitudes towards higher education and the way
they relate to the study of the Middle Ages.
Gerald Graff, who teaches at the University of
Chicago, notes that many scholars believe that influential
teachers in previous decades sought to instill national pride and
moral values as means of creating cultural uniformity. That is,
they saw education as a way to level difference.
This view is nearly reversed today, it seems;
education emphasizes difference rather than similarities in
cultural formation. In Professing Literaturee
(and see LINK 6),
Graff shows how the discipline of English studies
was formed by scholars with essentially upper-class ideas about
literature and life. Allen J. Frantzen's Desire for Origins
discusses the impact of such attitudes on Old English studies in
particular. (Introduction and Chapter 1.) Graff doubts that these
efforts by early scholars to unify cultural classes succeeded;
indeed, he claims that these efforts defeated their own ambitions
and ultimately disempowered the academy, making it a center for
activities largely irrelevant to modern life.
Do you agree? What are your thoughts here
regarding SEAFARER in particular? Has SEAFARER had an impact on
your ideas about the modern world, or has it merely given you
some information about the Middle Ages?
Some of the ideas we use in SEAFARER, regarding
class structure, attitudes towards labor, and attitudes towards
women, are aimed directly at connections between medieval and
modern life. These ideas involve critical thinking and critical
theory--looking at how texts are produced, not only at what they
say or "mean"--and are trying to make your thinking
more complicated. Theory seeks to lead to self-conscious
examination of scholarly methods and practices.
What kinds of contemporary criticism--one kind
(really many kinds) is feminist criticism--are you learning about
here?
Do such theories really change the hierarchies
of social rank and class? Do they incline you to modify your
views, or to reaffirm them?
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