The Historical Perspective

At the meeting. Dr Tyre did explain the lack of substantial courses in modern literature. According to him its difficult to analyse modern literature because there hasn't yet been time to assess the modern writers place in the body of literature. This brought complaints from the floor that the department need not always use an historical perspective in its teaching. Another department member hastened to reply that the department has never claimed that the historical approach has greater merit than any other.

But even if we ignore Dr Tyre's comments, anyone who has had any experience of English courses can recognise the emphasis given to this mode of analysis, which describes the characteristics of a genre, and then traces their historical evolution. There is, for example, almost no attempt to analyse in terms of themes. Themes are treated as secondary to genre and history, and emerge only, if you're lucky, at the end of the analysis.

In many areas they should be the starting point. But Dr Tye feels you can't analyse modern novels because you can't judge their historical worth. Well, Jesus Freaks aside, no-one's yet passed the final word cither on the 20th Century itself. Yet we have to live with it. And so too do we have to live with modern literature. And to do this fully we have to understand it, and if this can't yet be done in terms of historical categories, it can surely be done in terms of themes like "Alienation and the Modern Novel" or "Existcntical Themes in 20th Century prose."