English departments across the land have fallen into a swamp of ideological conformity. Moreover, lots of professors have decided to stop teaching great novels, replacing them with contemporary works that they think address society’s afflictions.
In today’s Martin Center article, D. P. Curtin argues for the teaching of great literature:
The greatest works of literature have done more than just entertain or experiment. . . . Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Austen, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy have endured the centuries . . . because they confront the permanent moral and, at times, bitter questions of human existence and our relationship to society. Some of these questions forge the perennial philosophy of our civilization: What is justice? What is courage? What is love? What destroys a soul? What will ultimately redeem one?
Curtin points out that today’s universities “deny literature’s valid moral influence while simultaneously policing older novels for political and social correctness. The contradiction is glaring and overtly hypocritical. If literature possesses no intended moral dimension, why demand ideological purity from authors at all?”
Academic leaders who want to revive flagging English departments ought to remember why we read literature at all and bring back reading lists that consider the great questions.