I studied English Literature at Exeter and I 100% agree it can ruin your love for reading, because you have no time to sit with any of the texts for long enough. You get a superficial impression of many many writers, and it becomes a game of bullshitting rather than following your interests deeply. I think Id have a much better enjoyment and understanding of English Literature if Id read as a hobby
It’s quite similar to what happens in Film Studies. I love watching movies. That’s te best part of my day. But don’t pull the old one: oh, that’s a spoiler. Darling, all my favourite movies were painfully analysed during first semester. I chose to analyse Shrek 2 for my Film Theory class. Lost count of how many times I saw it in one semester, stopped counting after 16. Haven’t seen the movie since.
That’s really interesting! I really enjoyed this video (and your confirmation!) , and it gives me hope of being well read even if I’m not necessarily well educated!
Although I agree all the materials and raw text is freely available, the conversations and opportunities to speak and be critically reviewed with literature experts is what makes the education valuable. You are entering the chain of knowledge that largely passes from person to person.
There is a big true to what you say but another true is that we have access to various discussion and brilliant opinions of others through internet. Thing is not to only read and forget but to reach to other people, watch youtube, discuss etc.
I studied Fine Art in Oxford (the other University) and I think that destroyed a lot of peoples love of art. I had a breakdown in year 2. Sometimes I think Universites are designed to cause mental health crisis! Glad to say I regained my love of art.
@@bambabamba1033 Nah, Brookes. I don't think it's a problem exclusive to them though, and at least you can get counselling right away rather than being added to a 5-year waiting list.
I have never been to university, but now approaching 60 and always having a love of reading and studying, I do not feel I have missed out in educational terms.
Yaaye! Good for you. I didn't finish. But moved from a small town to LA to work in creative / design fields, successfully. I'm 60 also, my mate has an MBA...guess who has a better vocabulary, better writing and communication skills, and grasp of world history and events...all from consuming the written word voraciously for decades. Here's to the uncredentialled drop outs who taught themselves! Love your comment.
Thank you so much for this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I’ve always been a voracious reader and went to a local university (not an elite one) for literature. I couldn’t make it work and failed out, and have spent the last ten years amassing student loans with The Open University. Your video has literally just now made me fully realise the vicious cycle I’m in. I genuinely thought that I couldn’t love and understand literature without a BA at least. But I can read and obsess over and discuss books without any objective, expensive education. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough.
I am reading Pulp by Charles Bukowski, and that book gives me so much enjoyment, but it is a bit bawdy. It is brilliant, down and dirty noir fiction where he is a rough bum of a detective who charges $6 an hour. It is easy to read. I think it is up to the author to make his writing delicious. One of my recent favorite bits is "I decided to go back to the office. I had work to do. My eyes were blue and nobody loved me but myself". Not War and Peace, but it is a continual feast of crazy dames, his toxic masculinity and inner thought that i enjoy. It sparks the imagination, and that is what counts.
@Jack-wu3hr I'm just reading your comment and can totally relate on so many levels, thanks Benjamin for this video, it keeps literature real and grounded and not up there for the elites of Oxford and other Uni's. Just get on and read is the message I'm hearing!!
This is so great. I studied Literature at uni but flubbed it a bit, so have always wanted a second chance to properly engage with texts. I’ve just started reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte so might start there, and then dip into the mentioned lists. Would love a video on world literature!
That's amazing stuff, Candy. I'd love to hear what you think about Villette, as I'm thinking of doing some podcasts on the Brontë Sisters. Great idea for a video! I think I'll call it 'Where to Start with World Literature'. :)
This video is like a dream come true, thank you so much! I decided to start with English Literature in the Middle Ages. A few months ago, I began studying an anthology, just to get situated in time and context, then went straight to Beowulf. Guess what? Had to jump to some older works (like Gilgamesh and Plato) before going back to medieval times. What I love about literature is the way everything connects, regardless of the order you tackle the big classics. I'm having the time of my life!!!
I am on a similar journey, and for the most part now working through the Great Books of the Western World series. It is the best thing I have ever done.
Great stuff! It's especially sad to think of being rushed through an author's work, especially if it's your first time. It's so wonderful to have the freedom to pursue my own interests and loves and really get time to savor what I'm reading. Being out of university doesn't mean I have to stop reading and learning. I've always kind of romanticized an Oxford education. Thanks for this dose of perspective.
Everything you said about an English degree completely resonates! I thought speed-reading was a violation of all the hard work and energy writers put into their life work, and I naturally take a few weeks to get through a novel - also because one page alone can make me stop and think about a lot (ie: the sign of a great terrific writer) and want to write things down - which is exactly the kind of response you recommend, and I can't hestitate to second that if any young people are reading this. If you want to be a lawyer etc, the degree's great, but if you truly love literature, go on a module course at least to slow the degree down and take it part time. especially if you're from a low economic background and are self-supportive - I can't emphasise this enough from experience: the 3 year crash degree is for comfortable youngsters as was always traditionally so after the colleges stopped being charitable institutions, um, for the poor who were boarded and fed. So places like Oxford are living a fantasy life at the moment in continuing such an assumption. Otherwise this could destroy you morally and physically. Or, as Benjamin says, don't do it at all and practice writing responses and doing your own research - esp. as with the internet now you can ask any question you want. And then a blog is a great idea. Even paying for a mentor is going to be cheaper than student debt. We also live in an exciting time where these old all white male reading lists can be compared to other vibrant overlooked literature , so if that depresses you, you can strike up a conversation with it in your notes and blog. eg: a;lso Shakespeare etc is of his time, but it's a lie to pretend as modern readers we're not going to be having an engaged connection with his work without relating in our own current issues: discuss!
I have always loved literature, and tried an English Literature course after school, but I hated it. It ruined literature for me while I was doing it. You learn that there's a right and a wrong 'way' to read, interpret and understand a book, and it takes away the joy and most of the meaning you can pull out of it. but I've always gotten so much more out of books by coming to an understanding of it through my own personal lens and getting what I can out of it in my own unique way, applying the lessons within to my own personal experience of the world. For instance, I didn't really understand Kafka, until I became embroiled in battle with a system that was the embodiment of the term 'Kafkaesque', a battle that lasted years and exhausted all my mental and emotional resources. Now he is one of my favourite authors, because I can truly understand where he is coming from and I feel the frustration and hopelessness of his characters, and having read him helped me get through that hellish time. I felt stronger and less alone because of his books. He taught me that I wasn't crazy or stupid, the system was. Seeing Kafka through the lens of my own experience rather than a dry, academic, often pretentious interpretation made reading his novels a much deeper, richer and more meaningful experience for me. I realised that all I want to do is enjoy books, and get what I can from them, while listening to reviews now and then for a different perspective that might lead me to new insights.
Where did you study? I studied English at UCSB and never felt constricted by the education system. I felt, instead, that my education was a benefit to me and a lot of fun. All the classes I took really expanded my mind. Maybe whether or not someone has a good time depends on which university they attended and the approach the professors have to those classes.
You had the same experience as I did at university. I was a fine arts student (in the states) and they drained the life out of my passion. I graduated but did not create anything for five years until I rediscovered my love of rendering life drawings, illustration and painting. Now I consider myself a professional artist who is obsessed with literature. 😊
I think the thing which separates a reading list from a university education is the focus on writing, deadlines, and other aspects of academic procedure. There is something to be gained by the pressure and intensity of the experience and in the people you meet, the lectures, etc. Those aspects also come with a whole bunch of problems but the university English experience does offer you a lot. You get to see the cutting room floor of one of the biggest literary institutions running today. That said, the benefit of reading through the Canon for pleasure is that reading remains a pure act of love not tainted by the neuroses of the academy.
Well, writing essays on a regular basis was part of what was recommended here. The pressure would come in the form of feedback from the wider world, too, which feels more legitimate and less arbitrary to me than the grading system of an insular institution. Yes, pressure and deadlines can be valuable, but not everyone finds them to be so, and if it creates anxiety strong enough to kill your passion for the thing you are studying, then I don't think that's a worthwhile trade-off.
My husband who will soon be 70 and I who will soon be 65 and taking on this on as a challenge. We are both extremely excited. Thanks for posting the reading suggestions.
The Oxford education involves contact with some extraordinary peers and academics. That is difficult to replicate. I do understand, however, that the cost is something to be sneezed at. In my day, although I studied Biochemistry, I also went to Eng Lit lectures, some of which were inspirational events. Val Cunningham was memorable. By the way there is a short cut for reading English: the Oxford Anthology in two big volumes edited by people like Trilling, Bloom and Kermode is very good (I imagine the Norton Anthology would be similar).
Norton's many anthologies for both world and american and english lit. are definitely shortcuts, but the problem is that there are many abridged texts, particularly when it comes to the prose. However, what you said here is of an even deeper level. Studying literature at the university is not simply a book list from the library, where is the focus on academic research and more importantly, engaging in the literary and academic milieu that engagement with those extraordinary peers and academics bring about? The video takes a very simplistic view of an entire academic discipline and trivilialises it imho.
Although I didn't study literature I can definitely relate to the reading burnout that befalls anyone studying a topic with "reading lists" in Britain. I studied Philosophy and that's a special way of mistreating the brain, especially if you go my favourite route of focusing on Continental Philosophy - a lot of weird French and German stuff that makes your brain hurt because they obfuscate their ideas intentionally (French) or unintentionally by simply being bad writers (German). Hilariously, although I'm a native German speaker I only started to understand the German philosophers by reading them in English translation first! During that time I envied my friends who studied English Lit, because at least they got to read well written stuff and not this highly conceptual jargon salad! And of course nobody on the course could manage to get through even the core reading, let alone the recommended reading on the side. Apart from being very hard to understand and often badly written it was also way too much and unlike Literature students we didn't get Reading Week either! For about 2 years after graduating from my BA I couldn't really face any proper "reading" so I did an MSc where I only had to read scientific journal papers and technical manuals. At the time when I had to decide about my graduate studies it felt like another year or two of reading at this speed would have totally broken my brain for good! I only started reading again for pleasure after I was done with my MSc. What makes these courses hard isn't really the content, it's the breakneck speed at which we were meant to process all this information. I would have loved to study literature, but not at this pace!
I did philosophy intro course, I'm so mad at them for not teaching me critical thinking and logical falacies first! I thought it was all false premises and verbal gymnastics to score points. Allaine de Botton said that philosophers should write simply and not use complicated and highbrow terminology. I'd love to pick up philosophy again, I got stuck on Aristotle and all his classification mathematical theories. Yeah it makes my brain hurt LOL Perhaps all German philosophers agreed with Nietzsche that you have to work hard and suffer if you want to achieve anything worth while. No pain no gain. Pff I'll take the fun easy route every time. Learning should be fun.
Before I burnt out, sometimes I read more than a book a day. I have slowed to a crawl, and now much more Indian advaita philosophy, but agonizingly slowly, since extended over-focus produces a state of deep sleep, shortly thereafter. I just came upon you today. Thank you for what you do.
I'm so glad I came across your channel! I'm also glad you mentioned those of us who love world literature as well; right now I am having trouble finding a thesis advisor for my master's -- my writer is Thomas Mann -- simply because he wasn't an English writer. As far as reading goes, I find C. S. Lewis' advice useful: for every three modern (or postmodern or contemporary) work you read, read one classic.
This is what I do when I started my booktube channel back up. I started it in 2014 and I just used to talk about what I liked and didn’t like. But for me I really wasn’t getting much out of those books and my viewers weren’t either, so it was a failure. But last year I started my channel back up and I write an analysis for each book I review and I’m getting so much more out of the reading. I’m enjoying it so much more. I love it. I would love to do a literature degree but it’s too expensive in my opinion. This video is great. Thank you.
100% your insight into whether university is the right path is what I came to realize only AFTER taking on massive student debt. I realized too late that I could have gotten an even better education without spending a dime, and about a quarter of the time. Study and travel would have been a much better education.
In my country (italy) a degree is sometimes the basis to get a job (and isn't as expensive as massive unis like Harvard or in the US) It depends a lot, sometimes it can make a difference between 600 euros a month and 1000.
@@crios8307 of course. That's the reality of life most places. Also if you wanted to teach English lit at school, you can't just say I read a lot... it doesn't work like that. However, I do believe it's wise to think hard and long before spending so much money just because you "love" literature.
@@moonhunter9993 i get your message, and I realise i live in a very different reality than the typical US/UK. I merely want to show another way through which education is gained: jobs and traveling surely help develop ourselves, but when the costs of Uni lower (such as in my case, where taxes are fairly low and you can get second hand books and student help for transportation), the advantages of a degree become much more brighter. And even if you study Lit, the world is already a much more accessible place than before.
As a musician, having a degree in Oxford would not be a lot useful to me, but as a giant literary nerd this sounds incredibly fun to me. I would love to dwell into the world of writing but I just feel so preoccupied with music that I don't think a career in that would ever happen. However I did like your idea of having a personal website where you just write about books you like and what you thought about them and potentially making money doing that, that sounds nice to me.
Hi Benjamin! Thank you so much for this video. It is really striking to hear how an “educational” system can turn off someone’s motivation for such a pleasant activity as reading. It is easy to tell how passionate you are about literature, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience in Oxford as well as that wonderful list of recommended readings. I already bookmarked the online article related to this video, and will certainly listen to your podcast and explore your other videos. Thanks for providing valuable content for people to follow their self-education and/or passion for literature.
Great intro 😅 I applied to Oxford for physics because I was enamored with the UK and with “the smell of old stone” as they say in History Boys…I didn’t get in and I’m actually really happy about that today. I studied in Germany instead so have zero student debt yet still got 5 years at Manchester and Warwick through Erasmus and a phd program.
I should add that Warwick also destroyed my passion for my subject so I didn’t end up in research the way I had planned. The soulless corporate-ness of that uni and a bad supervisor did the job.
@@gutenbird well, it all worked out in the end just not the way I expected. Even quitting Warwick lead to a career that I actually prefer over doing research 💁♀️ Can’t quite tell if you’re being sarcastic or what you’re trying to tell me.
I studied English at a university in America. I love Oxford. Had I been born and raised in Europe I would have studied at Oxford or King,s College London. Excellent video.
I did an overview of English Lit, in my last year of high school in a summer program in England (via Canada) called "British Civilization). We actually used the Oxford Anthology of English Literature, two rather large volumes and were required to read Tom ones before we left. Thank you for your recommendations! I'm too old to go back to formal school, but have maintained my love of reading. So many books, so little time...
I love this video. I focused on horses and agricultural science at university, but that was only because my parents thought a literature degree was a waste. I have always been a voracious and eclectic reader, and now I am an author so books are my life. But I love the idea of a more focused and directed approach and I am definitely borrowing from your reading list!! Several years ago I began making it a priority to read at least 12 classics and 12 nonfiction titles along with the other books I would otherwise choose. I have been intending to reread all of Shakespeare, but right now I am concentrating on some slightly obscure titles and world lit. I also have some big books on my TBR: Sigrid Undset's KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER, Boccacio's THE DECAMERON, all of Hugo and Dumas, and Eugene Sue's MYSTERIES OF PARIS (which just looks so intriguing). And I have personal reasons for focusing on ancient Greek myths and tragedies- a passion of mine - so I will be reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey this week.
Thank you, Jennifer. That sounds like a fascinating path to pursue at university. I'd love to hear about what kind of books you're writing. I tried my hand at YA a few years back, but decided my long-term love would be writing for the stage. Love the 12 classics and 12 non-fiction book idea. I used to demand at least a classic a month of myself, though it took me half a year to get through Anna Karenina - moving onto Hugo's Les Mis myself now. I'm also a huge classic myths fan. I've got Emily Wilson's translation staring back from my shelf as we speak, and I'm very excited to read it. Once I've got through The Iliad, I'll be moving onto that one!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy I look forward to hearing what you think of her translation when you get to it! As far as writing, I have two MG fantasies coming out, but my current project is an adult feminist retelling of a Greek myth. It's a heart project... I have been researching it for nearly a decade. My ultimate goal is to build a writing career that would let me create original fairytales for MG audiences and complex historical fantasies for adults, too. But we'll see. I think writing for the stage is fascinating! So much great stuff you can do with visual, nonverbal elements. I love the interplay of language and gesture and expression. (I was very involved in ballet for many, many years, so I am fascinated by the idea of nonverbal, physical language and telling stories through movement.) I wish you all the luck!!
@@jenniferadam2258 I'll do a review once I've read it :) I have a feeling it will be an epic project. Your writing career sounds wonderful, and sounds similar to the kinds of books I was drawn to when I was writing every day. I'd love to check out your work when it's ready, so please let me know :)
ok where have you been all my life?!?? i can’t get enough of your videos and podcasts. i’ve literally gotten a library. on ibooks so many of these classics are free!!!! took a college class on shakespeare and drank up quite a bit especially the english history around the kings and such. will plan to join at the proust level (as soon as i…). was encouraged (forced) to major in the business college where i finished in a burnt out state in the ‘90s when american corporations were downsizing, leaning and meaning. so trying to compete with the upper 10% of the accounting class-i was a solid c student in acctg-i actually hated it. wanted to major in eng lit. so here’s my opportunity, right? actually quite excited about the thought. have sort of sidled into art-drawing and painting-since quarantine. loving that, too. ❤❤❤
I've never been to university, but I love reading then talking and writing about what I've read. In a way I think studying English literature sounds great because you then also have people to discuss things with, but I also like to read and study whatever the subject is at my own pace.
I just discovered my love for reading this year at age 24. Before this, I had only read 3 books in my life (I know, appalling. Unfortunately, my schools from kinder to college didn't require us to read literature lol). This was the video I needed to hear---to read what we enjoy and not just institutionalize the way we consume literature! So far, I'm 10 books in and I'm starting to develop my taste in reading. Soooo excited for this journey of building my own literary canon. I'm so glad I found your channel!
I earned a BA in English Lit from -- wait for it -- Metropolitan State University of Denver (Colorado). It was Metro State College back then, but there it is. Wonderful time. Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Melville, Kerouac, and the Raymonds: Chandler and Carver -- we went to a lot of places. My favorite course was one on James Joyce taught by the late Dr. Paul Farkus. A revelation! I wish I could take his course all over again. To this day, Ulysses is at my bedstead, like other folks have the Bible (my KJV is there too, BTW). Sorry for my annoying biographical digression but, truth is, if not for MSUD-English and Dr. Farkus, I wouldn't be here. Finally, Thank you Ben! You're great!
Thank you for this reading list! There are some excellent suggestions, some of which I've actually not yet read, and I look forward to adding them to my TBR. As a working librarian, I appreciated your advice to slow down and give books their due. It took me six months to read Clarissa, but I'm glad I did it. Also, when it comes to reading secondary sources, university libraries really have the best databases. My advice would be to get a community membership to your local university's library and then use their computers in their library to access those databases. Those memberships are usually cheap, and they really do open up a world of material. I find it interesting that you included Austen, Fielding, and Sterne with the Romantics, but put Richardson in with the Restoration. I would actually group those authors with the pre-Romantic era. Fielding and Richardson sometimes offer direct criticism to one another and I think that Tom Jones had a definite influence on Austen in Pride and Prejudice. I always felt like the Romantics came along and ruined the nice, orderly, kinda cheeky, kinda bawdy, sort of subversive and experimental vibe that the Enlightenment era writers had going on. Similarly, if you are going to read Northanger Abbey, you more or less must read The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe first. A lot of the humor of Northanger Abbey will be lost on you unless you read Udolpho.
Dear, I praise your love for literature. I myself am fond of literature. I have already listened to speeches you had about 1 year ago. Thank you so much for your help to make me more interested in this field.❤
What an enlightened attitude yours is, Benjamin. Absolutely. Learning resources are all around us, just waiting to be used. If you can't afford Oxford or are not qualified, just get a library ticket and get on with it! You can even do it in science. I took no science O levels and was scientifically almost completely uneducated, but now my home is stuffed with microscopes and equipment, I have published my own books and even made an important discovery. Another resource that is worth knowing about and which I have found very useful is ABE, (Advanced Book Exchange). It is actually a world-wide network of booksellers, many just secondhand items, but there are also specialist suppliers who sell out-of-the way new titles that you can't buy over the counter. It is also a huge learning resource and database. If you want to find a book about a subject that you know nothing about or can't find in your local library, enter the word(s) in the keywords window and something will come up, sometimes, literally hundreds and thousands of titles. You can easily find out from ABE when something was first published, how many editions there have been, etc. Many commonly used student textbooks are available for a pound or two.
This is fantastic. I’ve always wanted to look into this topic. Thank you for this video. I enjoyed Conrad I thought Heart of Darkness was very good obviously very dark as well. If I had to chose I’d probably want to pick between American because I’m a huge Faulkner fan. I’d also be extremely interested in Modernism or Victorianism. I also love Russian and Japanese literature. I’ve been studying Dostoevsky and Tolstoy for quite a few years on my own now.
Please keep making videos! This is one of the best and most informative videos I've ever watched, exactly what I look for but can't seem to find anywhere. If there's a place where I could send you video topic recommendations, I would love to know, I have quite a few ideas. Thank you for the free education! You've earned a new subscriber (any hopefully many more to come). Have a nice week!
I'm not an Oxford graduate and got my university years for free, so take this with a grain of salt: I studied History and if I were to start again I'd still do it. Getting access to the library and later to archives was great, but the greatest was interacting with people I could not have met otherwise: one lecturer who really read and actively helped fix the essays submitted for her class helped me understand the real point of writing, which is making yourself understood, not proving how smart you are or filling in pages. Then there were others who pointed me towards very technical books I would not have heard about otherwise. Two taught me about teaching. I think in all it makes less than 10 people, and it was worth the 5 years I wasted, including the last year which taught me I'm not cut out to become a professional historian ;-).
I took Western Literature in college in the 80s and I was surprised by some of the works I liked, Samuel Beckett comes to mind. On my own I've read _Dubliners_ by Joyce which was great and I recently read a short novel by Joseph Roth _Hotel Savoy_ which I thought was really good. I've read a several Graham Greene novels, but haven't got to _Brighton Rock,_ yet. I've read _Heart of Darkness_ several times and I think _The Secret Agent_ is really good, too. I read _On the Road, The Dharma Bums,_ and _Satori in Paris_ by Jack Kerouac. My BA is in Political Science and History.
When I first bought my copy of Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa I had to special order it from Borders because nobody carried it. It took almost 2 months to come in, but well worth the wait. A real masterpiece, I have the same copy on my shelf with its tissue-thin paper. Definitely recommend that being read in tandem, or contemporaneously with, the Book of Five Rings.
I am 42 yo and a geologist and work now for a long time as consultant. I wanna quit the work life and only educate myself and meditate! I am a german and have a British passport and work also as a translator. I think studying is the best thing one can do. Working sucks. Being educated and living from air and books must be a dream
I completely understand your feelings concerning university killing the passion. I was in Mechanical Engineering - I loved how things worked, I loved math, I loved working it all out. After 2.5 years I hated it, all of it. I intended to take a year off like your friends and I never went back. I used my university credit to towards a 2 year college course where I only had to go part time for a year, just to finish with something.
Thanks UA-cam for putting out this video and killing any regret I had over not studying English literature when I was going off to school… I love reading but I don’t think I would have survived some of these classes… turns out I like reading what I like to read.
Yessss this also massively helped me heal my regret for studying not studying english literature.. I always regretted it because I was forced by my mum to not change from law to english like I wanted.. but English would have been similarly hard.. law was just a lot of speed reading and rota learning which I hated.. I wouldve like to read literature more but ultimately they dont sound that dissimilar from each other.. not sure how anyone can fully develop critical skills when under so much pressure to learn fast 🤷♀️
Although 2 years have passed, I still had to write this. This video is totally what I was looking for. Although literature is my passion, dur to manu reasons, I decided not to get a degree in literature. But the one thing that made me feel unsettled was that if don't study literature academically, I can never look deeper into books and I cannot think as profoundly as literature students. But your video has given me hope. Though, I still am a bit doubtful. I have some vague ideas that students of literature discuss books, authors, their time and life, historical contexts and such things to amalyze the books, which I think gives a deeper insight. So can you please give me some specific resources for secondary reading that will let me analyze things deeply?
It's like you read my mind 😊 When I went to University, I learned one important thing. I could pretty much teach myself whatever subject that I'm interested in, I just need to know the course work they recommend and just read it myself, perhaps watch some tutorials and lectures on youtube. I understand if you do a PhD in the end you know more than your 'supervisor' don't know what they are called. I would be torn between Wilde and Dickens. All of shakespeare would be pretty heavy, I've read merchant of venice for A level lit and I've seen a few plays tv plays Othello, but then there's all boring stuff he wrote. Sounds doable. Thanks
I love you, man. It helps if you wallpaper a wall with a scene from Oxford. You want to feel like you are really there as much as possible. Lean toward the British diet. Fish-n-chips every week.
You are a man after my own heart. We share values. I did it ! got an (Oxford) education for free. No idea I was doing this. Started at six - reading reading reading. What I was drawn to: Thomas B Costain, cringe-cringe. I didn't yet care about form because my little brain had not yet learned. I cared about goodness and adventure - the Saints. We know they were scoundrels before saints. A natural love of adventure into foreign lands was born and nurtured. It informed my outer and inner lives. As one susceptible to the authority of teachers, it was a good thing I was not placed under their influence. What's being taught nowadays -- examining classic literature from various postures - does not recognize the crucial element of context and times, just as you say. It's a sort of mental-masturbation that fills class time and avoids the true depths of literature. Grateful to have been born post WWII, as my chances of becoming a Benjamin McE were slim. Can't wait to get to some of your favorites, a long and choice list.
Fantastic! I love great literature, but I have no knowledge what those authors or books are, in order to search for them. I'm so glad you told me all those authors, as I was only familiar with a few of them, and don't enjoy most modern books. Thank you! Your pure GOLD! And I am so relieved!
Oxford for me is the place, the ancient buildings, the gothic look & feel. The content I bring with me. Maybe I can find an old professor from before the Post-Modern era... But I think the last ones are only in movies
Thanks for this fascinating description of a frighteningly intensive course of study. It's also shocking because I thought Oxford was the opposite -- I'd read you worked on your own, only met your tutor once every month or so, and basically it was way less work than A-levels. Maybe that was an older model. This sounds frantic and I'm anxious just hearing about how much they expected you to read. (Who would choose Dickens for their deep dive? The page count of his output is staggering!)
From a financial perspective I don’t regret studying a science but from a personal perspective I really wish I’d gone into English or Classics. Thanks for letting me know that’s still doable. I know that you give lists of recommended books in the video, but if you wouldn’t mind, do you have all the books you recommend in a compiled list in suggested order? Would you also happen to have any recommendations for books to read to self-teach Classics?
It's not an easy comparison because US undergrad degrees are less specialized. Most people end up taking some math, some biology, some psychology, some history in addition to their major. Oxford English majors aren't also taking organic chemistry and calculus so they have more time to read.
This is exactly why I‘ve taken up reading the classics in my spare time. I read a few chapters a day of something really difficult (comparatively) and then have the rest of the day to mull it over. It’ll probably take me 10 years instead of 3, but at least I still like what I’m doing. The only thing I miss from a formal education is like minds to discuss with. I don’t know a single person who would like to casually discuss the ideas of Voltaire.
This is amazing advice! You’ve inspired me to start an English course. And you probably get this all the time, but your eyes are magical. All the best! 💛
All good advice. I will say, as another English lit graduate, If you think applying intersectional analytical frameworks to texts is done with purpose to find modern social values in historical texts, then I don’t think you quite understand what the point is of reading with those critical lenses. It’s not about decontextualizing messages of “authors of their time” it’s about seeing and documenting how they interact with broad social categories in their own cultural moment in an argumentative way, supportable by evidence in the text-The same way you would do to make any claim about a text.
Fantastic video. Thank you so much for going to the trouble. One concern I have is there isn't any mention of WH Auden... That's a pity... I think his poetry has so much to offer
I remember in the mid-1980s the prospectus actually said "Don't worry about the [posh] accent. You'll pick up the Oxford accent soon enough." I don't know about now, but back in 1990 when I applied to universities you could not mix oriental languages with a modern language or English (at Oxford or at Cambridge if I remember correctly). Which seemed needlessly restrictive to me. In fact the only East-West language combination at any of the top English universities was Arabic and French at SOAS in London. But I wanted to do Japanese and German. To cut a long story short I ended up doing a European literature course but I hadn't realised the approach would be so different to A Level, skating along the surface, talking more about themes, influences, literary and social movements and all that. Anyway I ended up dropping out. Not because of the course but because of bipolar depression. I was in no state to read a book when I left.
It's basically homeschooling. I have adored reading since I first could. I read Nightbirds on Nantucket, Little Women, Pilgrims Progress, Black Beauty, Forever Amber, Roninson Crusoe and loved Louie La'mour and Charles Dickens by 12. Sadly, in elementary school, I often felt lost in science and grammar, and history was purely memorization, which has always been a struggle for me. I loved literature, though and my parents didn't censore my reading. I didn't have teachers willing to help me to learn how to study and be a better student. Yes, beginning in junior high, I rusticated, but my love for reading and learning continued. I have read many of these but must keep reading because I also read Wallace Stegner, Janice Holt Giles, Mark Twain, etc., etc. I didn't go to college At 65, I am still learning and reading. The wonderful thing was when my children struggled I was able to get training and homeschool them. Thank you for this list and all your lists. I don't need a degree but I need to further my knowledge. I do need to get some John Donne. I continue building my library. I love listening to you.
Great advice and reading list. Thank you! Re: reading Shakespeare at any point in your reading journey...Harold Bloom makes a compelling case that Shakespeare's influence is felt in all directions. Not only did he influence everyone who came after him, but he changed the way we read and understand everyone who came before. There is a funny insight in his chapter on Freud in The Western Canon, where Bloom makes the case that although Freud made it his life's goal to perform analysis on Shakespeare and all his characters, in fact, the opposite occurred; Once can read Shakespeare to get a good "Freudian" analysis of Freud. TS Eliot said that each new work of art instantly changes all art that preceded it. And Faulkner said the past is not dead...it's not even past. Great writers seem to understand the nature of time better than physicists. You might start helping those who want physics degrees to get an Oxford English Degree ;-)
Damn skippy. My sentiments, exactly. All you need is a library card. Addendum: the best profs I had in grad and undergrad seemed to be autodidacts and didn't take the ivory tower too seriously.
That insight about how reading critically can destroy your love for literature is so true. I only brushed up against it with English Language and Literature at A level (in the 70’s) and even that soured Shakespeare for me for a while :O.
This is brilliant. I barely got into University, and should have failed out. I still think studying Lit. at a place like MIT would be interesting because you would be a rebel.
Excellent discussion, thanks. It's certainly a good idea to have a structured reading plan. Qualifications are useful, but education (should) continues throughout life. As for time, the other problem is to read a book/ play for a 2/3d time, over the decades, but it's much more rewarding than binge watching a TV series!
I so do agree. I am a historian in Sweden where they study through several popular topical aspects which did not exist as such (in my case 1400 hundreds).
Thank you. I'm interested in what Oscar Wilde studied/read at Oxford University. I think it was a mix of Classics and English. He went to Magdalen College. One of his tutors was John Ruskin. I wanted to try to recreate what it was like at Oxford University during that time. The late Victorian era. There are many reasons why I like Oscar Wilde. I like that he was Irish/Celtic from the great city of Dublin. I like that he was different and had original thought. I like that he was an intellectual. I like that he was tall and seemed cool. I liked the way he dressed. He had interesting views on many topics. I like that he appreciated beauty. He had interesting views about religion. Oscar Wilde was super-bright he had a great mind. He had a double first from Oxford and he won a literary prize. I wish he was still alive. I know that is impossible. We could do with someone like that in this modern era. He also happens to be one of the greatest playwrights of all time and he was very witty. The way Oscar Wilde exposed the ridiculous class structure/system in Britain through his plays is amazing.
I recommend watching performances of Shakespeare. This seem obvious, he was after all a playwright... but we emphasize reading his work, which puts people off. Having seen most of his plays in person, or via other media (even in a truncated form), has made him a more understandable and pleasurable read. Knowing what the hell is going on is key to enjoyment, am I right? :) I also find reading his sonnets, or any poetry, out loud helpful. Anything to engage the senses. Yes to audio books!
I really like this. Multi sensory learning is immersive and highly effective, and seeing plays and hearing poems the way they were intended adds to the experience of the work.
Benjamin, do you have the complete reading list per year (and the recommended critical material) listed somewhere? And what was the study material for the Intro and English Language Modules at the start of Year 1 and 2?🙏
Good to hear this. I despise reading fast. Why do it...the whole point is surely to seed your own imagination. Fiction is not diction, it should push you to your liminal.
Thank you....Your thoughts, suggestions, and tips are appreciated. I'm Going to follow through with your suggested reading, note taking, and writing. . I love your channel
I love this video, and I’m going to start planning for a literary immersion project soon. One addendum I’d like to add to the Romantic list, is if you ever get tired of Romantic poetry, it might be rewarding to read a short story (or novella) called “Love and Friendship” by Jane Austen, which is a delightfully charming, funny, and relaxing parody of Romantic poetry of the time. It’s one of her earlier works, written before she was sixteen, I believe. I deeply enjoyed it when I read it for my Brit Lit 1 class two semesters ago at university. It strikes the right balance between genuine exasperated mockery and true appreciation of the subject, in my opinion. However, having not read any of her other works, I don’t know if it holds a candle to her novels.
Nursing school killed my reading for a bit. Especially having to.study for the boards. At the time I took them ( in US)test was 4 test over 2 days a total of almost 500 questions. It took me several years to get back to reading g as enjoyment.
Thank you for mentioning Mortimer Adler's book. It was a game-changer for me in my early twenties. People think it's a simplistic book. It's NOT. THE BOOK will arm you with an apparatus that will empower you to tackle any book. And you'll also have some fun by displaying it and watching people's reactions!
Hello, I respect your opinion, but I can't say the same about (other) best universities (e.g. Heidelberg in Germany)! I learned a lot there - from the highly learned professors - in a compact way, for which I personally would have needed a lot of time. So studying sometimes makes sense!
Here’s an idea for everyone. Get the list of books required for the class, then hire a private tutor so you can talk with . Never go to or pay for a class. Tutors are way cheaper than paying for all the “extra” fees you may not use (computer fees, classroom fees, school healthcare, technology fees, ...). Plus look at the time you get with a tutor. How much individual time are you going to get in a class of 20 people? With a tutor, save money and get 100% of your time.
When do they tell you to rusticate? After a bad grade, a series of bad grades, or do they just see you stressed out? I was academically suspended from my college. But it had the opposite effect of inspiring me to get into literature. I was a film major and hated the material. Still loved film, just hated theory. Didn't disagree with it. I saw the value of it. But hated that it was everything, that we interacted more with theory and criticism than films themselves. Similar to what you said, I wanted to learn how to write original thoughts. So in the nine months that I was out of college, I got into literature. After that I went back and graduated, but I see my reading as the real education.
I agree. I tell everyone that, if you need a degree to do your job such as JD, or Dr. Et cetera go to school. Otherwise, study at home. You now have access to so much information for free!!!
🧐For literary criticism, I would recommend How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. I loved hearing about the experience you had earning your degree. I suffered similar burn out in my undergraduate studies. I graduated from one of the cheapest universities in Texas and double majored in English and Spanish. Unlike Oxford, they allowed us to work while earning our degree, which didn't help. The English program consisted of reading so fast that you could scarcely retain or enjoy any of it. I took advantage of the pandemic lockdown and re-read everything at a slower pace and watched lectures on UA-cam. My writing took the form of journal entries. I really don't see the point of prescribing a huge cannon of literature for undergrads if they are not going to retain most of it and lose their love of literature in the process. I think delving into fewer works in more detail should supplant reading a large quantity fast and furiously. If literature students are really serious about that field of study, they will find methods like you talked about in this video or take advantage of their free time the way I did to complete the recommended list of great books. Stay safe.
Thank you so much for this video! I'm going to start choosing from Victorian literature and will follow your advice and write a review after each one, but probably just for myself, for now 😊 Thanks again for sharing!❤
Oh and I´d love a video on your positive and negative experiences at Oxford. I feel like everyone is hyping it up to be more than it actually is and no one is ever candidly summarizing their life at uni.
Since there was no slide for that section: Here are the recommended Books for English Language Portion at 20:12 - The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry - he Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson - The English Language: Structure and Development by Stanley Hussey - A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable
I studied English Literature at Exeter and I 100% agree it can ruin your love for reading, because you have no time to sit with any of the texts for long enough. You get a superficial impression of many many writers, and it becomes a game of bullshitting rather than following your interests deeply. I think Id have a much better enjoyment and understanding of English Literature if Id read as a hobby
It’s quite similar to what happens in Film Studies. I love watching movies. That’s te best part of my day. But don’t pull the old one: oh, that’s a spoiler. Darling, all my favourite movies were painfully analysed during first semester. I chose to analyse Shrek 2 for my Film Theory class. Lost count of how many times I saw it in one semester, stopped counting after 16. Haven’t seen the movie since.
That’s really interesting! I really enjoyed this video (and your confirmation!) , and it gives me hope of being well read even if I’m not necessarily well educated!
@@theculturedbumpkin remember, there's a difference between education and schooling...
Although I agree all the materials and raw text is freely available, the conversations and opportunities to speak and be critically reviewed with literature experts is what makes the education valuable. You are entering the chain of knowledge that largely passes from person to person.
That would have been true before the academy fell victim to “Theory” and ultimately woke/CRT rubbish.
@@TP-om8of May the Trumpa Lumpa have mercy on your soul!
@@kailashanand6 I’m more worried about the local constable visiting me for “hate speech”
There is a big true to what you say but another true is that we have access to various discussion and brilliant opinions of others through internet. Thing is not to only read and forget but to reach to other people, watch youtube, discuss etc.
@@TP-om8of I think you can stay tranquilo about this "danger". I am sure nobody of that sort will visit you. (constable? are you from UK?)
I studied Fine Art in Oxford (the other University) and I think that destroyed a lot of peoples love of art. I had a breakdown in year 2. Sometimes I think Universites are designed to cause mental health crisis! Glad to say I regained my love of art.
Fresher's week sees a lot of mental breakdowns, away from routine and normal surroundings, new stressors , stimulants
Beautiful man!. Love of art
@@matthewwilson3202 all the hype need be debunked. And a new education with real well meaning intelligent people (beyond their degree and stuff) is
Do you mean Ruskin?
I’m applying there this year, and am concerned a bit now. When did you go there, if you’re comfortable sharing?
@@bambabamba1033 Nah, Brookes. I don't think it's a problem exclusive to them though, and at least you can get counselling right away rather than being added to a 5-year waiting list.
I have never been to university, but now approaching 60 and always having a love of reading and studying, I do not feel I have missed out in educational terms.
Yaaye! Good for you. I didn't finish. But moved from a small town to LA to work in creative / design fields, successfully. I'm 60 also, my mate has an MBA...guess who has a better vocabulary, better writing and communication skills, and grasp of world history and events...all from consuming the written word voraciously for decades. Here's to the uncredentialled drop outs who taught themselves! Love your comment.
Thank you so much for this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I’ve always been a voracious reader and went to a local university (not an elite one) for literature. I couldn’t make it work and failed out, and have spent the last ten years amassing student loans with The Open University. Your video has literally just now made me fully realise the vicious cycle I’m in. I genuinely thought that I couldn’t love and understand literature without a BA at least. But I can read and obsess over and discuss books without any objective, expensive education.
Honestly, I can’t thank you enough.
I am reading Pulp by Charles Bukowski, and that book gives me so much enjoyment, but it is a bit bawdy. It is brilliant, down and dirty noir fiction where he is a rough bum of a detective who charges $6 an hour. It is easy to read. I think it is up to the author to make his writing delicious. One of my recent favorite bits is "I decided to go back to the office. I had work to do. My eyes were blue and nobody loved me but myself". Not War and Peace, but it is a continual feast of crazy dames, his toxic masculinity and inner thought that i enjoy. It sparks the imagination, and that is what counts.
The whole world can be your University.
@Jack-wu3hr I'm just reading your comment and can totally relate on so many levels, thanks Benjamin for this video, it keeps literature real and grounded and not up there for the elites of Oxford and other Uni's. Just get on and read is the message I'm hearing!!
This is so great. I studied Literature at uni but flubbed it a bit, so have always wanted a second chance to properly engage with texts. I’ve just started reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte so might start there, and then dip into the mentioned lists. Would love a video on world literature!
That's amazing stuff, Candy. I'd love to hear what you think about Villette, as I'm thinking of doing some podcasts on the Brontë Sisters. Great idea for a video! I think I'll call it 'Where to Start with World Literature'. :)
This video is like a dream come true, thank you so much! I decided to start with English Literature in the Middle Ages. A few months ago, I began studying an anthology, just to get situated in time and context, then went straight to Beowulf. Guess what? Had to jump to some older works (like Gilgamesh and Plato) before going back to medieval times. What I love about literature is the way everything connects, regardless of the order you tackle the big classics. I'm having the time of my life!!!
I am on a similar journey, and for the most part now working through the Great Books of the Western World series. It is the best thing I have ever done.
@@Roland96351 Yes, it's a delight!
That so great😊😊😊
@@Roland96351 😊😊
Great stuff! It's especially sad to think of being rushed through an author's work, especially if it's your first time. It's so wonderful to have the freedom to pursue my own interests and loves and really get time to savor what I'm reading. Being out of university doesn't mean I have to stop reading and learning. I've always kind of romanticized an Oxford education. Thanks for this dose of perspective.
The Literary Life podcast is a great support for doing this, self-educating in literature. Highly recommend it!
this is late but do you have other podcast recommendations for literature?
Everything you said about an English degree completely resonates! I thought speed-reading was a violation of all the hard work and energy writers put into their life work, and I naturally take a few weeks to get through a novel - also because one page alone can make me stop and think about a lot (ie: the sign of a great terrific writer) and want to write things down - which is exactly the kind of response you recommend, and I can't hestitate to second that if any young people are reading this. If you want to be a lawyer etc, the degree's great, but if you truly love literature, go on a module course at least to slow the degree down and take it part time. especially if you're from a low economic background and are self-supportive - I can't emphasise this enough from experience: the 3 year crash degree is for comfortable youngsters as was always traditionally so after the colleges stopped being charitable institutions, um, for the poor who were boarded and fed. So places like Oxford are living a fantasy life at the moment in continuing such an assumption. Otherwise this could destroy you morally and physically. Or, as Benjamin says, don't do it at all and practice writing responses and doing your own research - esp. as with the internet now you can ask any question you want. And then a blog is a great idea. Even paying for a mentor is going to be cheaper than student debt. We also live in an exciting time where these old all white male reading lists can be compared to other vibrant overlooked literature , so if that depresses you, you can strike up a conversation with it in your notes and blog. eg: a;lso Shakespeare etc is of his time, but it's a lie to pretend as modern readers we're not going to be having an engaged connection with his work without relating in our own current issues: discuss!
I have always loved literature, and tried an English Literature course after school, but I hated it. It ruined literature for me while I was doing it. You learn that there's a right and a wrong 'way' to read, interpret and understand a book, and it takes away the joy and most of the meaning you can pull out of it. but I've always gotten so much more out of books by coming to an understanding of it through my own personal lens and getting what I can out of it in my own unique way, applying the lessons within to my own personal experience of the world. For instance, I didn't really understand Kafka, until I became embroiled in battle with a system that was the embodiment of the term 'Kafkaesque', a battle that lasted years and exhausted all my mental and emotional resources. Now he is one of my favourite authors, because I can truly understand where he is coming from and I feel the frustration and hopelessness of his characters, and having read him helped me get through that hellish time. I felt stronger and less alone because of his books. He taught me that I wasn't crazy or stupid, the system was. Seeing Kafka through the lens of my own experience rather than a dry, academic, often pretentious interpretation made reading his novels a much deeper, richer and more meaningful experience for me. I realised that all I want to do is enjoy books, and get what I can from them, while listening to reviews now and then for a different perspective that might lead me to new insights.
Beautifully said. Thank you for sharing. Kafka is so deep.
Where did you study? I studied English at UCSB and never felt constricted by the education system. I felt, instead, that my education was a benefit to me and a lot of fun. All the classes I took really expanded my mind. Maybe whether or not someone has a good time depends on which university they attended and the approach the professors have to those classes.
I love this comment so much. Kafka really nailed the dread particular to certain bureaucracies.
You had the same experience as I did at university. I was a fine arts student (in the states) and they drained the life out of my passion. I graduated but did not create anything for five years until I rediscovered my love of rendering life drawings, illustration and painting. Now I consider myself a professional artist who is obsessed with literature. 😊
I can relate.
Dude, I'm so happy I found your channel. You have ignited a passion in me to read books and write about them.
I think the thing which separates a reading list from a university education is the focus on writing, deadlines, and other aspects of academic procedure. There is something to be gained by the pressure and intensity of the experience and in the people you meet, the lectures, etc. Those aspects also come with a whole bunch of problems but the university English experience does offer you a lot. You get to see the cutting room floor of one of the biggest literary institutions running today.
That said, the benefit of reading through the Canon for pleasure is that reading remains a pure act of love not tainted by the neuroses of the academy.
Well Stated !
Well, writing essays on a regular basis was part of what was recommended here. The pressure would come in the form of feedback from the wider world, too, which feels more legitimate and less arbitrary to me than the grading system of an insular institution.
Yes, pressure and deadlines can be valuable, but not everyone finds them to be so, and if it creates anxiety strong enough to kill your passion for the thing you are studying, then I don't think that's a worthwhile trade-off.
4:28
6:50
14:21 modern literature recommended reading list
16:06 criticism
16:40 old literature
17:13 middle english
My husband who will soon be 70 and I who will soon be 65 and taking on this on as a challenge. We are both extremely excited. Thanks for posting the reading suggestions.
The Oxford education involves contact with some extraordinary peers and academics. That is difficult to replicate. I do understand, however, that the cost is something to be sneezed at.
In my day, although I studied Biochemistry, I also went to Eng Lit lectures, some of which were inspirational events. Val Cunningham was memorable.
By the way there is a short cut for reading English: the Oxford Anthology in two big volumes edited by people like Trilling, Bloom and Kermode is very good (I imagine the Norton Anthology would be similar).
Norton's many anthologies for both world and american and english lit. are definitely shortcuts, but the problem is that there are many abridged texts, particularly when it comes to the prose.
However, what you said here is of an even deeper level. Studying literature at the university is not simply a book list from the library, where is the focus on academic research and more importantly, engaging in the literary and academic milieu that engagement with those extraordinary peers and academics bring about?
The video takes a very simplistic view of an entire academic discipline and trivilialises it imho.
Although I didn't study literature I can definitely relate to the reading burnout that befalls anyone studying a topic with "reading lists" in Britain. I studied Philosophy and that's a special way of mistreating the brain, especially if you go my favourite route of focusing on Continental Philosophy - a lot of weird French and German stuff that makes your brain hurt because they obfuscate their ideas intentionally (French) or unintentionally by simply being bad writers (German). Hilariously, although I'm a native German speaker I only started to understand the German philosophers by reading them in English translation first! During that time I envied my friends who studied English Lit, because at least they got to read well written stuff and not this highly conceptual jargon salad! And of course nobody on the course could manage to get through even the core reading, let alone the recommended reading on the side. Apart from being very hard to understand and often badly written it was also way too much and unlike Literature students we didn't get Reading Week either! For about 2 years after graduating from my BA I couldn't really face any proper "reading" so I did an MSc where I only had to read scientific journal papers and technical manuals. At the time when I had to decide about my graduate studies it felt like another year or two of reading at this speed would have totally broken my brain for good! I only started reading again for pleasure after I was done with my MSc. What makes these courses hard isn't really the content, it's the breakneck speed at which we were meant to process all this information. I would have loved to study literature, but not at this pace!
Thanks for your comment. I'm about to start a religion and philosophy degree, so I can relate to you
I am a student of literature doing bachelor in it, now I want to have master in philosophy. So do you think I should go there?
I did philosophy intro course, I'm so mad at them for not teaching me critical thinking and logical falacies first! I thought it was all false premises and verbal gymnastics to score points. Allaine de Botton said that philosophers should write simply and not use complicated and highbrow terminology. I'd love to pick up philosophy again, I got stuck on Aristotle and all his classification mathematical theories. Yeah it makes my brain hurt LOL Perhaps all German philosophers agreed with Nietzsche that you have to work hard and suffer if you want to achieve anything worth while. No pain no gain. Pff I'll take the fun easy route every time. Learning should be fun.
I can’t begin to describe how happy I am that I stumbled upon this video. Thank you, thank you, thank you 🙏🏻
That's so kind of you, Cami :) Thank you so much for being here!
Before I burnt out, sometimes I read more than a book a day. I have slowed to a crawl, and now much more Indian advaita philosophy, but agonizingly slowly, since extended over-focus produces a state of deep sleep, shortly thereafter.
I just came upon you today. Thank you for what you do.
Thank you, and happy reading - I relate to the sense of burn-out. Slowing to a crawl is often what we need most!
I know how you felt. When i finished my English degree I couldn't face reading for about a year. But thankfully, like you, the appetite came back.
You too, Jack? Thank goodness it came back for you as well! :)
I'm so glad I came across your channel! I'm also glad you mentioned those of us who love world literature as well; right now I am having trouble finding a thesis advisor for my master's -- my writer is Thomas Mann -- simply because he wasn't an English writer. As far as reading goes, I find C. S. Lewis' advice useful: for every three modern (or postmodern or contemporary) work you read, read one classic.
This is what I do when I started my booktube channel back up. I started it in 2014 and I just used to talk about what I liked and didn’t like. But for me I really wasn’t getting much out of those books and my viewers weren’t either, so it was a failure. But last year I started my channel back up and I write an analysis for each book I review and I’m getting so much more out of the reading. I’m enjoying it so much more. I love it. I would love to do a literature degree but it’s too expensive in my opinion. This video is great. Thank you.
100% your insight into whether university is the right path is what I came to realize only AFTER taking on massive student debt. I realized too late that I could have gotten an even better education without spending a dime, and about a quarter of the time. Study and travel would have been a much better education.
I agree. In many cases that's true.
In my country (italy) a degree is sometimes the basis to get a job (and isn't as expensive as massive unis like Harvard or in the US)
It depends a lot, sometimes it can make a difference between 600 euros a month and 1000.
@@crios8307 of course. That's the reality of life most places. Also if you wanted to teach English lit at school, you can't just say I read a lot... it doesn't work like that. However, I do believe it's wise to think hard and long before spending so much money just because you "love" literature.
@@moonhunter9993 i get your message, and I realise i live in a very different reality than the typical US/UK.
I merely want to show another way through which education is gained: jobs and traveling surely help develop ourselves, but when the costs of Uni lower (such as in my case, where taxes are fairly low and you can get second hand books and student help for transportation), the advantages of a degree become much more brighter.
And even if you study Lit, the world is already a much more accessible place than before.
As a musician, having a degree in Oxford would not be a lot useful to me, but as a giant literary nerd this sounds incredibly fun to me.
I would love to dwell into the world of writing but I just feel so preoccupied with music that I don't think a career in that would ever happen. However I did like your idea of having a personal website where you just write about books you like and what you thought about them and potentially making money doing that, that sounds nice to me.
Hi Benjamin! Thank you so much for this video. It is really striking to hear how an “educational” system can turn off someone’s motivation for such a pleasant activity as reading. It is easy to tell how passionate you are about literature, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience in Oxford as well as that wonderful list of recommended readings.
I already bookmarked the online article related to this video, and will certainly listen to your podcast and explore your other videos. Thanks for providing valuable content for people to follow their self-education and/or passion for literature.
Great intro 😅 I applied to Oxford for physics because I was enamored with the UK and with “the smell of old stone” as they say in History Boys…I didn’t get in and I’m actually really happy about that today. I studied in Germany instead so have zero student debt yet still got 5 years at Manchester and Warwick through Erasmus and a phd program.
I should add that Warwick also destroyed my passion for my subject so I didn’t end up in research the way I had planned. The soulless corporate-ness of that uni and a bad supervisor did the job.
Wow. Nice outcome.
@@gutenbird well, it all worked out in the end just not the way I expected. Even quitting Warwick lead to a career that I actually prefer over doing research 💁♀️ Can’t quite tell if you’re being sarcastic or what you’re trying to tell me.
@@ratioetscientia no sarcasm. I meant that you made a good decision and aren’t burdened with all that debt.
@@gutenbird haha, I guess I‘m just conditioned to only ever expect nastiness on the internet 😅 cheers
I studied English at a university in America. I love Oxford. Had I been born and raised in Europe I would have studied at Oxford or King,s College London. Excellent video.
I did an overview of English Lit, in my last year of high school in a summer program in England (via Canada) called "British Civilization). We actually used the Oxford Anthology of English Literature, two rather large volumes and were required to read Tom ones before we left. Thank you for your recommendations! I'm too old to go back to formal school, but have maintained my love of reading. So many books, so little time...
You’re never too old to go back to school, if that’s what you want. 🙂
I love this video. I focused on horses and agricultural science at university, but that was only because my parents thought a literature degree was a waste. I have always been a voracious and eclectic reader, and now I am an author so books are my life. But I love the idea of a more focused and directed approach and I am definitely borrowing from your reading list!! Several years ago I began making it a priority to read at least 12 classics and 12 nonfiction titles along with the other books I would otherwise choose. I have been intending to reread all of Shakespeare, but right now I am concentrating on some slightly obscure titles and world lit. I also have some big books on my TBR: Sigrid Undset's KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER, Boccacio's THE DECAMERON, all of Hugo and Dumas, and Eugene Sue's MYSTERIES OF PARIS (which just looks so intriguing). And I have personal reasons for focusing on ancient Greek myths and tragedies- a passion of mine - so I will be reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey this week.
Thank you, Jennifer. That sounds like a fascinating path to pursue at university. I'd love to hear about what kind of books you're writing. I tried my hand at YA a few years back, but decided my long-term love would be writing for the stage. Love the 12 classics and 12 non-fiction book idea. I used to demand at least a classic a month of myself, though it took me half a year to get through Anna Karenina - moving onto Hugo's Les Mis myself now. I'm also a huge classic myths fan. I've got Emily Wilson's translation staring back from my shelf as we speak, and I'm very excited to read it. Once I've got through The Iliad, I'll be moving onto that one!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy I look forward to hearing what you think of her translation when you get to it! As far as writing, I have two MG fantasies coming out, but my current project is an adult feminist retelling of a Greek myth. It's a heart project... I have been researching it for nearly a decade. My ultimate goal is to build a writing career that would let me create original fairytales for MG audiences and complex historical fantasies for adults, too. But we'll see. I think writing for the stage is fascinating! So much great stuff you can do with visual, nonverbal elements. I love the interplay of language and gesture and expression. (I was very involved in ballet for many, many years, so I am fascinated by the idea of nonverbal, physical language and telling stories through movement.) I wish you all the luck!!
@@jenniferadam2258 I'll do a review once I've read it :) I have a feeling it will be an epic project. Your writing career sounds wonderful, and sounds similar to the kinds of books I was drawn to when I was writing every day. I'd love to check out your work when it's ready, so please let me know :)
ok where have you been all my life?!?? i can’t get enough of your videos and podcasts. i’ve literally gotten a library. on ibooks so many of these classics are free!!!! took a college class on shakespeare and drank up quite a bit especially the english history around the kings and such. will plan to join at the proust level (as soon as i…). was encouraged (forced) to major in the business college where i finished in a burnt out state in the ‘90s when american corporations were downsizing, leaning and meaning. so trying to compete with the upper 10% of the accounting class-i was a solid c student in acctg-i actually hated it. wanted to major in eng lit. so here’s my opportunity, right? actually quite excited about the thought. have sort of sidled into art-drawing and painting-since quarantine. loving that, too. ❤❤❤
I've never been to university, but I love reading then talking and writing about what I've read. In a way I think studying English literature sounds great because you then also have people to discuss things with, but I also like to read and study whatever the subject is at my own pace.
I just discovered my love for reading this year at age 24. Before this, I had only read 3 books in my life (I know, appalling. Unfortunately, my schools from kinder to college didn't require us to read literature lol). This was the video I needed to hear---to read what we enjoy and not just institutionalize the way we consume literature! So far, I'm 10 books in and I'm starting to develop my taste in reading. Soooo excited for this journey of building my own literary canon. I'm so glad I found your channel!
I earned a BA in English Lit from -- wait for it -- Metropolitan State University of Denver (Colorado). It was Metro State College back then, but there it is. Wonderful time. Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Melville, Kerouac, and the Raymonds: Chandler and Carver -- we went to a lot of places. My favorite course was one on James Joyce taught by the late Dr. Paul Farkus. A revelation! I wish I could take his course all over again. To this day, Ulysses is at my bedstead, like other folks have the Bible (my KJV is there too, BTW). Sorry for my annoying biographical digression but, truth is, if not for MSUD-English and Dr. Farkus, I wouldn't be here. Finally, Thank you Ben! You're great!
Thank you for this reading list! There are some excellent suggestions, some of which I've actually not yet read, and I look forward to adding them to my TBR. As a working librarian, I appreciated your advice to slow down and give books their due. It took me six months to read Clarissa, but I'm glad I did it. Also, when it comes to reading secondary sources, university libraries really have the best databases. My advice would be to get a community membership to your local university's library and then use their computers in their library to access those databases. Those memberships are usually cheap, and they really do open up a world of material.
I find it interesting that you included Austen, Fielding, and Sterne with the Romantics, but put Richardson in with the Restoration. I would actually group those authors with the pre-Romantic era. Fielding and Richardson sometimes offer direct criticism to one another and I think that Tom Jones had a definite influence on Austen in Pride and Prejudice. I always felt like the Romantics came along and ruined the nice, orderly, kinda cheeky, kinda bawdy, sort of subversive and experimental vibe that the Enlightenment era writers had going on. Similarly, if you are going to read Northanger Abbey, you more or less must read The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe first. A lot of the humor of Northanger Abbey will be lost on you unless you read Udolpho.
You're hitting 35k sub Ben! Proud of ya! Love your work! Very helpful, very insightful!
Dear, I praise your love for literature. I myself am fond of literature. I have already listened to speeches you had about 1 year ago. Thank you so much for your help to make me more interested in this field.❤
What an enlightened attitude yours is, Benjamin. Absolutely. Learning resources are all around us, just waiting to be used. If you can't afford Oxford or are not qualified, just get a library ticket and get on with it! You can even do it in science. I took no science O levels and was scientifically almost completely uneducated, but now my home is stuffed with microscopes and equipment, I have published my own books and even made an important discovery. Another resource that is worth knowing about and which I have found very useful is ABE, (Advanced Book Exchange). It is actually a world-wide network of booksellers, many just secondhand items, but there are also specialist suppliers who sell out-of-the way new titles that you can't buy over the counter. It is also a huge learning resource and database. If you want to find a book about a subject that you know nothing about or can't find in your local library, enter the word(s) in the keywords window and something will come up, sometimes, literally hundreds and thousands of titles. You can easily find out from ABE when something was first published, how many editions there have been, etc. Many commonly used student textbooks are available for a pound or two.
This is fantastic. I’ve always wanted to look into this topic. Thank you for this video. I enjoyed Conrad I thought Heart of Darkness was very good obviously very dark as well. If I had to chose I’d probably want to pick between American because I’m a huge Faulkner fan. I’d also be extremely interested in Modernism or Victorianism. I also love Russian and Japanese literature. I’ve been studying Dostoevsky and Tolstoy for quite a few years on my own now.
Please keep making videos! This is one of the best and most informative videos I've ever watched, exactly what I look for but can't seem to find anywhere. If there's a place where I could send you video topic recommendations, I would love to know, I have quite a few ideas. Thank you for the free education! You've earned a new subscriber (any hopefully many more to come).
Have a nice week!
List your suggestions under Benjamin's videos; get in early on one, and he's sure to see your suggestions.
@@rubynibs Doesn’t have to be “free!” He’s happy yo take paying subscribers! 😉
I'm not an Oxford graduate and got my university years for free, so take this with a grain of salt: I studied History and if I were to start again I'd still do it. Getting access to the library and later to archives was great, but the greatest was interacting with people I could not have met otherwise: one lecturer who really read and actively helped fix the essays submitted for her class helped me understand the real point of writing, which is making yourself understood, not proving how smart you are or filling in pages. Then there were others who pointed me towards very technical books I would not have heard about otherwise. Two taught me about teaching. I think in all it makes less than 10 people, and it was worth the 5 years I wasted, including the last year which taught me I'm not cut out to become a professional historian ;-).
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14:21 modern literature recommended reading list
I took Western Literature in college in the 80s and I was surprised by some of the works I liked, Samuel Beckett comes to mind.
On my own I've read _Dubliners_ by Joyce which was great and I recently read a short novel by Joseph Roth _Hotel Savoy_ which I thought was really good. I've read a several Graham Greene novels, but haven't got to _Brighton Rock,_ yet. I've read _Heart of Darkness_ several times and I think _The Secret Agent_ is really good, too. I read _On the Road, The Dharma Bums,_ and _Satori in Paris_ by Jack Kerouac. My BA is in Political Science and History.
When I first bought my copy of Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa I had to special order it from Borders because nobody carried it. It took almost 2 months to come in, but well worth the wait. A real masterpiece, I have the same copy on my shelf with its tissue-thin paper. Definitely recommend that being read in tandem, or contemporaneously with, the Book of Five Rings.
Great video Benjamin. Three years after making it, it’s relevancy is still spot on 🙌
I am 42 yo and a geologist and work now for a long time as consultant. I wanna quit the work life and only educate myself and meditate! I am a german and have a British passport and work also as a translator. I think studying is the best thing one can do. Working sucks. Being educated and living from air and books must be a dream
The rest of the time i would listen to heavy metal, plant Mary Jane and have fun with nice girls (if the latter wish to have fun with me, that is)
I completely understand your feelings concerning university killing the passion.
I was in Mechanical Engineering - I loved how things worked, I loved math, I loved working it all out. After 2.5 years I hated it, all of it. I intended to take a year off like your friends and I never went back.
I used my university credit to towards a 2 year college course where I only had to go part time for a year, just to finish with something.
This was so helpful! Thank you very much! I am new to your channel and will be spending a lot of time viewing your catalogue of videos.
Thank you, Carol :) I'm so happy to have you watching!
Thanks UA-cam for putting out this video and killing any regret I had over not studying English literature when I was going off to school… I love reading but I don’t think I would have survived some of these classes… turns out I like reading what I like to read.
Yessss this also massively helped me heal my regret for studying not studying english literature.. I always regretted it because I was forced by my mum to not change from law to english like I wanted.. but English would have been similarly hard.. law was just a lot of speed reading and rota learning which I hated.. I wouldve like to read literature more but ultimately they dont sound that dissimilar from each other.. not sure how anyone can fully develop critical skills when under so much pressure to learn fast 🤷♀️
Although 2 years have passed, I still had to write this. This video is totally what I was looking for. Although literature is my passion, dur to manu reasons, I decided not to get a degree in literature. But the one thing that made me feel unsettled was that if don't study literature academically, I can never look deeper into books and I cannot think as profoundly as literature students.
But your video has given me hope.
Though, I still am a bit doubtful. I have some vague ideas that students of literature discuss books, authors, their time and life, historical contexts and such things to amalyze the books, which I think gives a deeper insight. So can you please give me some specific resources for secondary reading that will let me analyze things deeply?
It's like you read my mind 😊 When I went to University, I learned one important thing. I could pretty much teach myself whatever subject that I'm interested in, I just need to know the course work they recommend and just read it myself, perhaps watch some tutorials and lectures on youtube. I understand if you do a PhD in the end you know more than your 'supervisor' don't know what they are called. I would be torn between Wilde and Dickens. All of shakespeare would be pretty heavy, I've read merchant of venice for A level lit and I've seen a few plays tv plays Othello, but then there's all boring stuff he wrote. Sounds doable. Thanks
I love you, man.
It helps if you wallpaper a wall with a scene from Oxford.
You want to feel like you are really there as much as possible.
Lean toward the British diet.
Fish-n-chips every week.
You are a man after my own heart. We share values.
I did it ! got an (Oxford) education for free. No idea I was doing this. Started at six - reading reading reading.
What I was drawn to: Thomas B Costain, cringe-cringe. I didn't yet care about form because my little brain had not
yet learned. I cared about goodness and adventure - the Saints. We know they were scoundrels before saints. A natural love of adventure into foreign lands was born and nurtured. It informed my outer and inner lives. As one susceptible to the authority of teachers, it was a good thing I was not placed under their influence.
What's being taught nowadays -- examining classic literature from various postures - does not recognize the crucial element of context and times, just as you say. It's a sort of mental-masturbation that fills class time and avoids the true depths of literature.
Grateful to have been born post WWII, as my chances of becoming a Benjamin McE were slim. Can't wait to get to some of your favorites, a long and choice list.
Outstanding. Love the straight bat talk, and I especially loved the recommendations on how to read and why to write!
Fantastic! I love great literature, but I have no knowledge what those authors or books are, in order to search for them. I'm so glad you told me all those authors, as I was only familiar with a few of them, and don't enjoy most modern books. Thank you! Your pure GOLD! And I am so relieved!
Oxford for me is the place, the ancient buildings, the gothic look & feel. The content I bring with me. Maybe I can find an old professor from before the Post-Modern era... But I think the last ones are only in movies
Yes! I'd have loved to read English in Oxford before the postmodern madness set in.
Thanks for this fascinating description of a frighteningly intensive course of study. It's also shocking because I thought Oxford was the opposite -- I'd read you worked on your own, only met your tutor once every month or so, and basically it was way less work than A-levels. Maybe that was an older model. This sounds frantic and I'm anxious just hearing about how much they expected you to read. (Who would choose Dickens for their deep dive? The page count of his output is staggering!)
From a financial perspective I don’t regret studying a science but from a personal perspective I really wish I’d gone into English or Classics. Thanks for letting me know that’s still doable.
I know that you give lists of recommended books in the video, but if you wouldn’t mind, do you have all the books you recommend in a compiled list in suggested order?
Would you also happen to have any recommendations for books to read to self-teach Classics?
I got an English Lit degree from a state school in the US and this is jaw dropping. They'd have no students left if there were this much reading lol
It's not an easy comparison because US undergrad degrees are less specialized. Most people end up taking some math, some biology, some psychology, some history in addition to their major. Oxford English majors aren't also taking organic chemistry and calculus so they have more time to read.
I mean, I read 35 books in one quarter. I do not know what school you went to.
This is exactly why I‘ve taken up reading the classics in my spare time. I read a few chapters a day of something really difficult (comparatively) and then have the rest of the day to mull it over. It’ll probably take me 10 years instead of 3, but at least I still like what I’m doing. The only thing I miss from a formal education is like minds to discuss with. I don’t know a single person who would like to casually discuss the ideas of Voltaire.
I really appreciate your honesty and humility.
Thank you! :)
This is amazing advice! You’ve inspired me to start an English course. And you probably get this all the time, but your eyes are magical. All the best! 💛
I'm so happy to hear that! And that's so lovely of you to say :) Thank you so much!
All good advice. I will say, as another English lit graduate, If you think applying intersectional analytical frameworks to texts is done with purpose to find modern social values in historical texts, then I don’t think you quite understand what the point is of reading with those critical lenses.
It’s not about decontextualizing messages of “authors of their time” it’s about seeing and documenting how they interact with broad social categories in their own cultural moment in an argumentative way, supportable by evidence in the text-The same way you would do to make any claim about a text.
Sounds like a load of crap.
Fantastic video. Thank you so much for going to the trouble. One concern I have is there isn't any mention of WH Auden... That's a pity... I think his poetry has so much to offer
Thank you! I love W. H. Auden with a passion - definitely isn't representative of every great writer, with many of my favourites left out!
I remember in the mid-1980s the prospectus actually said "Don't worry about the [posh] accent. You'll pick up the Oxford accent soon enough."
I don't know about now, but back in 1990 when I applied to universities you could not mix oriental languages with a modern language or English (at Oxford or at Cambridge if I remember correctly). Which seemed needlessly restrictive to me. In fact the only East-West language combination at any of the top English universities was Arabic and French at SOAS in London. But I wanted to do Japanese and German.
To cut a long story short I ended up doing a European literature course but I hadn't realised the approach would be so different to A Level, skating along the surface, talking more about themes, influences, literary and social movements and all that. Anyway I ended up dropping out. Not because of the course but because of bipolar depression. I was in no state to read a book when I left.
It's basically homeschooling. I have adored reading since I first could. I read Nightbirds on Nantucket, Little Women, Pilgrims Progress, Black Beauty, Forever Amber, Roninson Crusoe and loved Louie La'mour and Charles Dickens by 12.
Sadly, in elementary school, I often felt lost in science and grammar, and history was purely memorization, which has always been a struggle for me. I loved literature, though and my parents didn't censore my reading.
I didn't have teachers willing to help me to learn how to study and be a better student.
Yes, beginning in junior high, I rusticated, but my love for reading and learning continued.
I have read many of these but must keep reading because I also read Wallace Stegner, Janice Holt Giles, Mark Twain, etc., etc.
I didn't go to college
At 65, I am still learning and reading.
The wonderful thing was when my children struggled I was able to get training and homeschool them.
Thank you for this list and all your lists.
I don't need a degree but I need to further my knowledge.
I do need to get some John Donne. I continue building my library.
I love listening to you.
Thank you! I truly appreciate your comments on how to read
Thank you so much for watching :)
Great advice and reading list. Thank you! Re: reading Shakespeare at any point in your reading journey...Harold Bloom makes a compelling case that Shakespeare's influence is felt in all directions. Not only did he influence everyone who came after him, but he changed the way we read and understand everyone who came before.
There is a funny insight in his chapter on Freud in The Western Canon, where Bloom makes the case that although Freud made it his life's goal to perform analysis on Shakespeare and all his characters, in fact, the opposite occurred; Once can read Shakespeare to get a good "Freudian" analysis of Freud.
TS Eliot said that each new work of art instantly changes all art that preceded it. And Faulkner said the past is not dead...it's not even past.
Great writers seem to understand the nature of time better than physicists. You might start helping those who want physics degrees to get an Oxford English Degree ;-)
Damn skippy. My sentiments, exactly. All you need is a library card. Addendum: the best profs I had in grad and undergrad seemed to be autodidacts and didn't take the ivory tower too seriously.
That insight about how reading critically can destroy your love for literature is so true. I only brushed up against it with English Language and Literature at A level (in the 70’s) and even that soured Shakespeare for me for a while :O.
Visited Oxford years ago. It was wonderfully sunny and warm. I did not attend. Very full of tourists and an astounding amount of traffic.
I've been back quite a bit since graduating, and the city typically exhausts me... Definitely overcrowded and a bit too tourist heavy!
This is brilliant. I barely got into University, and should have failed out. I still think studying Lit. at a place like MIT would be interesting because you would be a rebel.
Excellent discussion, thanks.
It's certainly a good idea to have a structured reading plan.
Qualifications are useful, but education (should) continues throughout life.
As for time, the other problem is to read a book/ play for a 2/3d time, over the decades, but it's much more rewarding than binge watching a TV series!
Thanks for the lists!
I so do agree. I am a historian in Sweden where they study through several popular topical aspects which did not exist as such (in my case 1400 hundreds).
Thank you. I'm interested in what Oscar Wilde studied/read at Oxford University. I think it was a mix of Classics and English. He went to Magdalen College. One of his tutors was John Ruskin. I wanted to try to recreate what it was like at Oxford University during that time. The late Victorian era. There are many reasons why I like Oscar Wilde. I like that he was Irish/Celtic from the great city of Dublin. I like that he was different and had original thought. I like that he was an intellectual. I like that he was tall and seemed cool. I liked the way he dressed. He had interesting views on many topics. I like that he appreciated beauty. He had interesting views about religion. Oscar Wilde was super-bright he had a great mind. He had a double first from Oxford and he won a literary prize. I wish he was still alive. I know that is impossible. We could do with someone like that in this modern era. He also happens to be one of the greatest playwrights of all time and he was very witty. The way Oscar Wilde exposed the ridiculous class structure/system in Britain through his plays is amazing.
I recommend watching performances of Shakespeare. This seem obvious, he was after all a playwright... but we emphasize reading his work, which puts people off. Having seen most of his plays in person, or via other media (even in a truncated form), has made him a more understandable and pleasurable read. Knowing what the hell is going on is key to enjoyment, am I right? :) I also find reading his sonnets, or any poetry, out loud helpful. Anything to engage the senses. Yes to audio books!
I really like this. Multi sensory learning is immersive and highly effective, and seeing plays and hearing poems the way they were intended adds to the experience of the work.
Great video. I would love to see a video where you talk about literary theory and choosing the lens through which to see the work.
Benjamin, do you have the complete reading list per year (and the recommended critical material) listed somewhere? And what was the study material for the Intro and English Language Modules at the start of Year 1 and 2?🙏
Good to hear this. I despise reading fast. Why do it...the whole point is surely to seed your own imagination. Fiction is not diction, it should push you to your liminal.
This video was perfectly made and the timing of its occurrence in my algorithm, impeccable!
I'm happy to hear that :) Thank you so much for watching!
Thank you....Your thoughts, suggestions, and tips are appreciated. I'm Going to follow through with your suggested reading, note taking, and writing.
.
I love your channel
I love this video, and I’m going to start planning for a literary immersion project soon. One addendum I’d like to add to the Romantic list, is if you ever get tired of Romantic poetry, it might be rewarding to read a short story (or novella) called “Love and Friendship” by Jane Austen, which is a delightfully charming, funny, and relaxing parody of Romantic poetry of the time. It’s one of her earlier works, written before she was sixteen, I believe. I deeply enjoyed it when I read it for my Brit Lit 1 class two semesters ago at university. It strikes the right balance between genuine exasperated mockery and true appreciation of the subject, in my opinion. However, having not read any of her other works, I don’t know if it holds a candle to her novels.
That introduction 🤣🤣🤣 oh man. Thank you for this video, what an amazing resource!
Nursing school killed my reading for a bit. Especially having to.study for the boards. At the time I took them ( in US)test was 4 test over 2 days a total of almost 500 questions. It took me several years to get back to reading g as enjoyment.
Thank you for mentioning Mortimer Adler's book. It was a game-changer for me in my early twenties. People think it's a simplistic book. It's NOT.
THE BOOK will arm you with an apparatus that will empower you to tackle any book. And you'll also have some fun by displaying it and watching people's reactions!
Hello,
I respect your opinion, but I can't say the same about (other) best universities (e.g. Heidelberg in Germany)! I learned a lot there - from the highly learned professors - in a compact way, for which I personally would have needed a lot of time. So studying sometimes makes sense!
I love your sense of humour! Must be aware though henceforth not to break into inappropriate giggle when I see a bust of the master in public!
I would add, for the criticism list: Francine Prose’s “Reading Like a Writer”
Here’s an idea for everyone. Get the list of books required for the class, then hire a private tutor so you can talk with . Never go to or pay for a class. Tutors are way cheaper than paying for all the “extra” fees you may not use (computer fees, classroom fees, school healthcare, technology fees, ...). Plus look at the time you get with a tutor. How much individual time are you going to get in a class of 20 people? With a tutor, save money and get 100% of your time.
I pray you keep making more videos ! Thank you!
Thank you for saying this. Really good for people to know.
When do they tell you to rusticate? After a bad grade, a series of bad grades, or do they just see you stressed out?
I was academically suspended from my college. But it had the opposite effect of inspiring me to get into literature. I was a film major and hated the material. Still loved film, just hated theory. Didn't disagree with it. I saw the value of it. But hated that it was everything, that we interacted more with theory and criticism than films themselves. Similar to what you said, I wanted to learn how to write original thoughts.
So in the nine months that I was out of college, I got into literature. After that I went back and graduated, but I see my reading as the real education.
I agree. I tell everyone that, if you need a degree to do your job such as JD, or Dr. Et cetera go to school. Otherwise, study at home. You now have access to so much information for free!!!
🧐For literary criticism, I would recommend How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. I loved hearing about the experience you had earning your degree. I suffered similar burn out in my undergraduate studies. I graduated from one of the cheapest universities in Texas and double majored in English and Spanish. Unlike Oxford, they allowed us to work while earning our degree, which didn't help. The English program consisted of reading so fast that you could scarcely retain or enjoy any of it. I took advantage of the pandemic lockdown and re-read everything at a slower pace and watched lectures on UA-cam. My writing took the form of journal entries. I really don't see the point of prescribing a huge cannon of literature for undergrads if they are not going to retain most of it and lose their love of literature in the process. I think delving into fewer works in more detail should supplant reading a large quantity fast and furiously. If literature students are really serious about that field of study, they will find methods like you talked about in this video or take advantage of their free time the way I did to complete the recommended list of great books. Stay safe.
Thank you so much for this video! I'm going to start choosing from Victorian literature and will follow your advice and write a review after each one, but probably just for myself, for now 😊
Thanks again for sharing!❤
Oh and I´d love a video on your positive and negative experiences at Oxford.
I feel like everyone is hyping it up to be more than it actually is and no one is ever candidly summarizing their life at uni.
Thank you so much! So happy to have stumbled upon this video at this specific time. ♥
I enjoy your videos. I always feel smarter after watching them. Thank you for the time you put into them. Adam
Since there was no slide for that section:
Here are the recommended Books for English Language Portion at 20:12
- The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry
- he Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
- The English Language: Structure and Development by Stanley Hussey
- A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable