English literature as an academic discipline is in danger. Recent reports show that in the United States the number of students majoring in English has decreased by 25.5% since the 2008 recession. The situation is more bleak in England where their universities lost over a third of their English students between 2012 to 2021. The reasons for this decline are too numerous for one to possibly analyze, but there are two glaring faults within the modern English major program that are too great to be ignored. The two faults are a utilitarian impulse towards skills learned and the lack of objective meaning in interpreting literature.
Americans want college majors that directly lead to jobs after college. The fields with the greatest number of majors in 2018 were business (386,000 graduates), health science (245,000), with social sciences trailing behind in third place (160,000). Parents want their kids to major in something practical that leads to a viable career after graduation. The study of great literature does not fall into this realm of practicality. As such, virtually every college English program is forced to turn the major into something it is not: utility.
The essence of studying literature has changed. Prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, and a multitude of other universities now emphasize skills learned rather than authors read in their literature programs. The purpose of literature has become the means to hone critical thinking and editing. With this line of defense, it is a wonder the major is not dead yet. A student who majors in English to develop his critical thinking and writing skills misses the point of literature entirely.
The English major shouldonly have two jobs: to step inside the great work and see the world through the author’s eyes, and then to ask whether or not what the author sees conforms to reality. C.S Lewis writes in his work An Experiment in Criticism that “[e]ach of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and selectiveness peculiar to himself.” Literature, however, expands the student’s perspective.. Lewis continues, “We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as our own.”
Reading books and writing papers might very well lead to stronger writing skills and critical thinking, but those skills acquired must not become the student’s primary focus. Doing so charges the English major with a utilitarian purpose that effectively churns out dull people who can edit a sentence.
Allan Bloom, the author of the classic The Closing of the American Mind, predicted in 1987 the second fault that plagues English programs today: deconstructionism that leads to relativism. Bloom writes that in literature “[t]he interpreter’s creative activity is more important than the text; there is no text, only interpretation.” These words remain true for the English major thirty years later. The modern interpreter reads into the work a myriad of meanings based on standards that did not exist at the time and would not exist for centuries. For instance, Shakespeare, according to variousmodern interpreters, is Anti-Semitic, Socialistic, Catholic, Atheist, Queer, and on and on. These conflicting interpretations are based on shreds of evidence and an iron will to force the Bard to support whatever the interpreter wishes.
English faculty at universities cannot claim ignorance regarding relativism in their programs. Lewis, and later Bloom, voiced their concerns that the study of English literature might lead to unintended consequences. Once more drawing from his work An Experiment in Criticism Lewis writes, “Forced to talk incessantly about books, what can they do but try to make books into the sort of things they can talk about? Hence literature becomes for them a religion, a philosophy, a school of ethics …. anything rather than a collection of works of art.”
What Lewis predicted in 1961, Bloom noticed in 1987. Bloom writes that in the university “practically no one ever tries to read them [great books] as they were once read – for the sake of finding out whether they are true.” The new style of interpretation ignores the critical fact that the authors had a specific vision in mind when they wrote their great works. Only a world that suffers from this lethal subjectivism could believe that Madeline Miller’s A Song of Achilles is anything more than fanfiction compared to Homer’s The Illiad.
The English major will likely continue to decline. Even if the above two problems are remedied, the job market still desires technical skills over literary ones. Still, it is better to be a part of an English program that asks the student to become small in order to contemplate the greatness of a work of literature than one that insists that the work somehow has a direct correlation to the student’s narrow life.
Chesterton writes about what it is like to step outside of oneself. His words apply to literature equally so:
How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they are not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.
The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the values and beliefs of Cogitare Magazine, nor of Grove City College.
