Intimately Conjoined

But I must be fair. This course does indeed go a long way towards achieving these two aims. A lecturer with a certain rudimentary knowledge of some of the political and social movements of the period under study is able to give the books some kind of historical perspective, though when I did English 3 the Romantic poets were considered without a thought for the philosophies of Rousseau, Goethe and Schiller that made such an impact on the later stages of the movement, and scarcely a glance at the large political movement led by Godwin with which they were intimately conjoined. People who have studied no history can never understand the tremendous social upheaval that gave Dickens so much material. The class is taught a great deal of the "expressions of a society"; they are not made aware of the society that is being expressed.

The lecturers prefer a safe course under a lee shore, rather than floundering out of their depth (pardon me). So they revert to the old Eeyore useful pot game that I mentioned before. This is what Professor MacKenzie calls "particularity". Here is where the confusion of aims is felt. No student can devote enough time to a detailed analysis of individual texts in a course which at the same time attempts give adequate coverage of an entire period. No lecturer can spend more than three of four lectures on each individual page 11 work. We are left with the same superficial treatment of works as in the 'A' course, except that here they vaguely related to the continuity of a tradition.