I enjoyed the movie (just came back from seeing it).
I mentioned the cartoon here to the friends I went to see it with and earned a rant on how "Beowulf wasn't English literature, the English didn't exist".
Which left me ranting back that most English departments that I knew of did begin Old English literature with Beowulf in translation and reuptable schools were not dumb enough to assume that literature only existed after Chaucer. But I was floundering. I probably could have come up with a better counterrant.
And both friends in question had been to college rather than university. College english courses apparently tend towards grammar and/or business English. And neither of their heigh schools even mentioned Beowulf. I remember a teacher in high school doing a little Beowulf with us, but only in passing.
Yeah, and there may not have been "English," but there were Anglo Saxons, and Old English is the direct ancestor of our English, so snooks.
And I teach college English, and our second year survey course begins with Beowulf. So did the English lit 12 course that I took in high school. And the English dept at UVic has a whole course on Old English literature. So snooks again.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I enjoyed the movie (just came back from seeing it).
I mentioned the cartoon here to the friends I went to see it with and earned a rant on how "Beowulf wasn't English literature, the English didn't exist".
Which left me ranting back that most English departments that I knew of did begin Old English literature with Beowulf in translation and reuptable schools were not dumb enough to assume that literature only existed after Chaucer. But I was floundering. I probably could have come up with a better counterrant.
And both friends in question had been to college rather than university. College english courses apparently tend towards grammar and/or business English. And neither of their heigh schools even mentioned Beowulf. I remember a teacher in high school doing a little Beowulf with us, but only in passing.
no subject
And I teach college English, and our second year survey course begins with Beowulf. So did the English lit 12 course that I took in high school. And the English dept at UVic has a whole course on Old English literature. So snooks again.