Fantastic.
In my first year at uni, we had a seminar in the English language module that included some brief analysis of Jay-Z's lyrics. I enjoyed it and I could see the value in it, but I remember thinking at the time that it did almost feel like a parody of everything the Daily Express probably thinks about modern snowflake Mickey Mouse PC gone mad degrees.
Wonder if the students are now analysing that corned beef poem.
Fantastic.
In my first year at uni, we had a seminar in the English language module that included some brief analysis of Jay-Z's lyrics. I enjoyed it and I could see the value in it, but I remember thinking at the time that it did almost feel like a parody of everything the Daily Express probably thinks about modern snowflake Mickey Mouse PC gone mad degrees.
Wonder if the students are now analysing that corned beef poem.
One of the popular anthologies used by students, Rivkin's 'Literary Theory' contains (in one edition) a huge scholarly discussion of Ice Cube's 'The Ni**a Ya Love to Hate" from Adam Krims "Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity". What's interesting here is just how much work it takes Rivkin to describe a dense, collage-like track and the way the vocals work within it before he can even begin to analyse the sense of the words. Even just talking about the words, there are questions about whether all the different voices on the track constitute part of the lyrics or not.
About the relationship between English Lit degrees and stuff outside of the traditional canon:
Ideally an English literature degree would give people a knowledge of the shape of the canon, some transcendent experiences with great art, some skills with which to make their own art, and a heightened ability to get what's going on with ALL the things people do with words. The skills students learn in moving from medieval Christian poetry to 18th century satirical magazine to modernist novels should in turn make them more adept at negotiating the contemporary supermarket of words and ideas. The student who's been paying attention should be able to get what's going on with rap lyrics, jokes, political speeches, shampoo adverts, newspaper opinion pieces, all of it. They should be able to spot rhetorical tricks like chiasmus a mile off. They should be better at thinking about whether an edgy, taboo-busting joke is actually a bit of reactionary lying in disguise.
There are obviously contradictions going on here, since the practical and necessarily debunking knowledge of what techniques writers in the past used, and why they wrote what they did doesn't necessarily sit easily with a conservative-canonical art worship. This is the point on which the Daily Express type journalism you're talking about is confused. There's an assumption that English department should exist just to maintain the great texts, but studying something isn't necessarily to revere it. In fact, I tend to think that people who get annoyed at students studying pop lyrics, or sitcoms for example haven't really ever considered how those things get made, that they even have authors.
