Thoughts on Reading
Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 1:46 am
The Benefits of Developing Cultural Contexts when Learning English
One of the most effective ways of communicating is a rhetorical device called allusion. In literature or art, allusion is the act of making an indirect reference to another usually famous work. Famous examples of allusion in literature include Ulysses by James Joyce, the retelling of the Homeric epic set in Dublin, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the retelling of the story of Genesis set in Northern California.
One of the most lucid examples in the field of philosophy is Machiavelli’s allusion to Plato’s Republic in his 16th century treatise on government, The Prince. Machiavelli composes a clear-cut evolution, mirroring Plato’s themes in true renaissant manner. I.e. using an ancient classical text as a means of creating something more modern and appropriate for the times in which it was written. To the reader of both, they become all the more enjoyable because you are already familiar with the references and thus both works benefit. Take for example the Star Wars saga; one would not truly appreciate the full power of the movies by watching one of the films on its own, out of context to the rest, whereas watching the full series in its entirety benefits the viewers’ experience immensely. It creates a synergy for the viewer, and this synergy is a form of intertextuality - a new or improved meaning derived from two or more related works.
Allusion can of course be much simpler than whole works of classic literature. Princess Diana was once referred to as “the face that launched a thousand tabloids”, an allusion to the beauty of Helen of Troy from the line in Marlowe’s Faust: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” This nugget of wisdom by Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, is another good example: “I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does.” For allusions to work, the reader must have some shared cultural knowledge with the writer. Readers unfamiliar with these two famous references would be completely in the dark as to the true weight of the expression as an allusion.
That’s why allusion is such a useful device – it allows the writer to save a lot of effort by making a shortcut, appealing to our emotions and drawing on our ready stock of ideas and cultural knowledge. For the reader, intertextuality is the covert meaning that is construed through common connotations and cultural references. This concept was expounded by the philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes who, in his famous essay on structuralist linguistics The Death of the Author, argued that the meaning of an artistic work does not reside in that work, but in the viewers.
This background of cultural literacy serves to enhance the enjoyment for the reader, which is why it’s good for students to read industriously and immerse themselves in diverse aspects of western culture so that previously odd references in writing or other media like TV, films and the internet, eventually link-up like a jigsaw into a much clearer cultural ‘landscape’. The dividend of this strategy is again synergetic; the more you learn, the easier it gets. Increased knowledge, especially in the form of increased cultural exposure, creates exponentially beneficial returns to language learners. In other words, it’s a learning curve which is surmounted by students developing a technique for predicting what formerly obscure words and references mean by their context and roots.
Through the pursuit of knowledge, the interdependency of all things cultural and linguistic becomes all the more obvious. Thus by developing cultural literacy students learn all the more quickly, inherently and relevantly and the complexities and ambiguities of meaning become clearer for the student through intertextuality.
Intertextuality gives things relevance - here and now relevance, and if graded correctly to the students’ level, it facilitates our teaching through a modernist context. The student draws his / her own conclusions without having to be explicitly taught things, meaning the teacher’s job is made a lot easier – they already know where you’re coming from. Students infer things for themselves. Students learn to enjoy a behaviour that makes them more independent learners. They can learn to stand on their own two feet didactically which means if they ever go to live and work in a foreign country, adjustment will be a lot easier for them.
Reading is the best but most time-consuming way for anyone to acquire his / her own English language bank of references. I always recommend that students should start by reading things that they themselves are interested in, not something that they have heard is supposed to be of quality. From time to time, students imbued with a kind of campy anglophilia tell me they want to read things like Jane Austen. Now, although I’m impressed with their enthusiasm and I believe that students should have a high degree of freedom to read whatever they want, I'm tempted to tell them - don't bother, it’s outdated and irrelevant and you would really struggle with it. Why not read a biography of someone famous instead, like Princess Diana or George Washington?
I’m not saying that the classics should be ignored. On the contrary, it can be highly beneficial to read them. I just believe that you cannot run before you can walk and the extrinsic value of so called ‘great works’ of literature can be overstated. If we use the earlier analogy of culture being a landscape, let’s say an 18th century watercolour depicting an Austenian English countryside, then we could extend this metaphor by adding the great works of literature as monuments – perhaps even ozymandian obelisks, dotted across the landscape. My point is that it can be extremely counterproductive for a student of English to get bogged down in Charles *beep* when they could be reading something more relevant and fun like Wikipedia - which allows readers to explore intertextuality to the maximum.
This is the beauty of the internet. We are living in a new renaissance where the internet has created a proliferation of knowledge on a scale not seen since Da Vinci’s days. The impact is akin to the effect of Gutenberg’s printing press on 15th century Europe, bringing about the end of the Middle Ages. It is now possible for a huge proportion of the world’s population to access the western cannon of literature and a bottomless pit of scientific, historical and cultural information. As a human race we are moving out of the era of specialisation into a new dawn; the era of the amateur, the dilettante, Nietzsche’s Überman.
The benefits of the internet for learning are obvious. In his excellent essay On Education, Bertrand Russell states the importance of students directing their own learning with a high degree of freedom. According to Russell, in this way “they learn twice as quickly with only half the effort.” If students lead themselves in learning, they build up their own cultural universe perceived from their own point of view which means they are true to themselves and being true to oneself, according to Plato, is an essential quality if one is to lead a fulfilling life. Through extensive reading, students build up a network of principles and experiences with which to make inferences, conclusions and judgements just as a child perceives and learns to reason; i.e. primarily alone, via experience and analogy. This is the true essence of learning.
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have laboured hard for.” Socrates
One of the most effective ways of communicating is a rhetorical device called allusion. In literature or art, allusion is the act of making an indirect reference to another usually famous work. Famous examples of allusion in literature include Ulysses by James Joyce, the retelling of the Homeric epic set in Dublin, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the retelling of the story of Genesis set in Northern California.
One of the most lucid examples in the field of philosophy is Machiavelli’s allusion to Plato’s Republic in his 16th century treatise on government, The Prince. Machiavelli composes a clear-cut evolution, mirroring Plato’s themes in true renaissant manner. I.e. using an ancient classical text as a means of creating something more modern and appropriate for the times in which it was written. To the reader of both, they become all the more enjoyable because you are already familiar with the references and thus both works benefit. Take for example the Star Wars saga; one would not truly appreciate the full power of the movies by watching one of the films on its own, out of context to the rest, whereas watching the full series in its entirety benefits the viewers’ experience immensely. It creates a synergy for the viewer, and this synergy is a form of intertextuality - a new or improved meaning derived from two or more related works.
Allusion can of course be much simpler than whole works of classic literature. Princess Diana was once referred to as “the face that launched a thousand tabloids”, an allusion to the beauty of Helen of Troy from the line in Marlowe’s Faust: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” This nugget of wisdom by Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, is another good example: “I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does.” For allusions to work, the reader must have some shared cultural knowledge with the writer. Readers unfamiliar with these two famous references would be completely in the dark as to the true weight of the expression as an allusion.
That’s why allusion is such a useful device – it allows the writer to save a lot of effort by making a shortcut, appealing to our emotions and drawing on our ready stock of ideas and cultural knowledge. For the reader, intertextuality is the covert meaning that is construed through common connotations and cultural references. This concept was expounded by the philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes who, in his famous essay on structuralist linguistics The Death of the Author, argued that the meaning of an artistic work does not reside in that work, but in the viewers.
This background of cultural literacy serves to enhance the enjoyment for the reader, which is why it’s good for students to read industriously and immerse themselves in diverse aspects of western culture so that previously odd references in writing or other media like TV, films and the internet, eventually link-up like a jigsaw into a much clearer cultural ‘landscape’. The dividend of this strategy is again synergetic; the more you learn, the easier it gets. Increased knowledge, especially in the form of increased cultural exposure, creates exponentially beneficial returns to language learners. In other words, it’s a learning curve which is surmounted by students developing a technique for predicting what formerly obscure words and references mean by their context and roots.
Through the pursuit of knowledge, the interdependency of all things cultural and linguistic becomes all the more obvious. Thus by developing cultural literacy students learn all the more quickly, inherently and relevantly and the complexities and ambiguities of meaning become clearer for the student through intertextuality.
Intertextuality gives things relevance - here and now relevance, and if graded correctly to the students’ level, it facilitates our teaching through a modernist context. The student draws his / her own conclusions without having to be explicitly taught things, meaning the teacher’s job is made a lot easier – they already know where you’re coming from. Students infer things for themselves. Students learn to enjoy a behaviour that makes them more independent learners. They can learn to stand on their own two feet didactically which means if they ever go to live and work in a foreign country, adjustment will be a lot easier for them.
Reading is the best but most time-consuming way for anyone to acquire his / her own English language bank of references. I always recommend that students should start by reading things that they themselves are interested in, not something that they have heard is supposed to be of quality. From time to time, students imbued with a kind of campy anglophilia tell me they want to read things like Jane Austen. Now, although I’m impressed with their enthusiasm and I believe that students should have a high degree of freedom to read whatever they want, I'm tempted to tell them - don't bother, it’s outdated and irrelevant and you would really struggle with it. Why not read a biography of someone famous instead, like Princess Diana or George Washington?
I’m not saying that the classics should be ignored. On the contrary, it can be highly beneficial to read them. I just believe that you cannot run before you can walk and the extrinsic value of so called ‘great works’ of literature can be overstated. If we use the earlier analogy of culture being a landscape, let’s say an 18th century watercolour depicting an Austenian English countryside, then we could extend this metaphor by adding the great works of literature as monuments – perhaps even ozymandian obelisks, dotted across the landscape. My point is that it can be extremely counterproductive for a student of English to get bogged down in Charles *beep* when they could be reading something more relevant and fun like Wikipedia - which allows readers to explore intertextuality to the maximum.
This is the beauty of the internet. We are living in a new renaissance where the internet has created a proliferation of knowledge on a scale not seen since Da Vinci’s days. The impact is akin to the effect of Gutenberg’s printing press on 15th century Europe, bringing about the end of the Middle Ages. It is now possible for a huge proportion of the world’s population to access the western cannon of literature and a bottomless pit of scientific, historical and cultural information. As a human race we are moving out of the era of specialisation into a new dawn; the era of the amateur, the dilettante, Nietzsche’s Überman.
The benefits of the internet for learning are obvious. In his excellent essay On Education, Bertrand Russell states the importance of students directing their own learning with a high degree of freedom. According to Russell, in this way “they learn twice as quickly with only half the effort.” If students lead themselves in learning, they build up their own cultural universe perceived from their own point of view which means they are true to themselves and being true to oneself, according to Plato, is an essential quality if one is to lead a fulfilling life. Through extensive reading, students build up a network of principles and experiences with which to make inferences, conclusions and judgements just as a child perceives and learns to reason; i.e. primarily alone, via experience and analogy. This is the true essence of learning.
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have laboured hard for.” Socrates