MartinCothran

Author: Traditional Logic, Classical Rhetoric. Editor: Classical Teacher magazine. Provost: Memoria College. Podcast: Classical, Et Cetera. Memoria Press

[UrsoBruto @urso_bruto]

I would add another important function of literature: it allows us to experience vicariously lives we could never otherwise live, circumstances we might never encounter, and moral dilemmas we might never face. Our own experience is necessarily limited. Literature enlarges it, giving us a richer, more finely contoured understanding of human reality.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

The Highlands Latin drama troupe has finished out its live, outdoor performances of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The witches, of course, were very evil, and Lady Macbeth was, well, pretty much a witch herself.

[Memoria College @MemoriaCollege]

"The ideas behind liberalism and democracy, thinks Eliot, result in a cultural vacuum and lead inevitably to a kind of pagan totalitarianism—unless it first escapes to the daylight of a Christian society." https://t.co/5hQBLC5TGT

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

One function of literature is to give us a vocabulary with which we can acknowledge and understand personal and social realities.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

https://t.co/Z4HruJjUP2

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Even when Bloom is wrong he is brilliant. His Shakespeare book is my second favorite Shakespeare commentary (after Harold Goddard's).

[The Book Land @the_book_land]

I've finished reading The Western Canon, my first time reading Harold Bloom.

Despite my many (often vehement) disagreements and my shock at some omissions, I am so amazed by Bloom's critical strength (and of course by his erudition) - that I couldn't help but get Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, which seems brilliant, and which I greatly look forward to starting.

Even where I think, or feel, too differently from Bloom, I am always tempted to reread the authors he's discussing, to reconsider my critical preferences, and to strengthen my own differing arguments. Reading Bloom, for those who truly love reading, is an extremely fruitful exercise, as well as immensely enjoyable. Of course, I believe much of this is possible because Bloom argues from a position of sanity. His conclusions and temperament may differ from those of many of his readers, but he manages to actually place the aesthetic value of literature above all other considerations, something which more universities should start doing again - though, in a world growing more politically correct by the hour, that seems unlikely.

Anyway, can't wait to keep reading him. (Very much looking forward to future disagreements as well!) I also know several of you hold some of his works in very high regard, so I would love recommendations!

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Excellent review of Guite's newest Arthur book. But I think the best answer to the question "Why retell Arthurian legends?" is that they are the great Christian myth of the English speaking people. https://t.co/N0lg8ZZ1bb

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

They have more things to say when they have more knowledge and less when they don't. And the older they are, the more knowledge they have, and the younger they are the less they have. So it's a little bit of sliding scale: they can do more creative writing later than early.

[Ralph Pantozzi @mathillustrated]

Imitation should be a part of writing instruction. Students should also express themselves; they have things to say.

[David Bulley @DavidBulley]

@MartinCothran The buzzwords in my district this year are student-to-student discourse. I'm like, okay, you want them to talk, but about what?

How about I teach them something first?

Um no! we want to see discourse!

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

RT @jacob_allee: This. A thousand times, this!

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

#CharacteristicsOfLiteraryModernism #3: Literary Modernism "moves toward an art severed from common life and experience...It yearns to shake off the burden of meaning, the allow of idea, the courseness of opinion: it hopes for sacrament without religion." [Irving Howe, The Idea of the Modern]

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

As a general rule, I highly recommend reading every word Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about raising children and educating them. And doing the opposite.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

I don't know what professional virtues you are referring to, but I prefer to deal with realities, not dreamy romanticist educational theories that overstate what young students are actually capable of and also denigrate content knowledge. Students need to actually know things before they are asked to express that knowledge. What imitation does is allow them to practice their writing skills while gaining the knowledge they need for later writing.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

So you are applying what you've learned from the practices you have used with adult students in college to young students? I would think the problem with that would be obvious.

[Ryōnen @RyonenGenso]

@filosonessie216 @MartinCothran I have been a professor for 30 years and have often found attitudes like your own among the snobs of academe. Usually as a result of joyless teaching and deep insecurity about their own value as humans and teachers. This type of thinking diminishes you both.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

They have no obligation to be knowledgeable. That's why they're in school. And it doesn't help them to base teaching practices on romanticist idealism.

[Ryōnen @RyonenGenso]

@MartinCothran How entirely disrespectful and condescending to your students.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

This is why, in the old progymnasmata of Aphthonius, young students were asked to take an existing Aesop's Fable and retell it in their own words. It relieved the student who did not have the requisite knowledge from having to compose a story on his own (which he could not reasonably be expected to do well) so that he could concentrate on the structure (and, not incidentally, gain a knowledge of storytelling by reconstructing an existing story).

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Much modern writing instruction urges young students to "express themselves." This assumes they have something to say, which they usually don't. This is why imitation has to be a major part of writing instruction: so they can not only learn how to write, but have something to say.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@RyonenGenso @filosonessie216 I have no idea what you're talking about.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Much modern writing instruction urges young students to "express themselves." This assumes they have something to say, which they usually don't. This is why imitation has to be a major part of writing instruction: so they can not only learn how to write, but have something to say.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

@RyonenGenso Some of them certainly do. But to implement practices for all students that assume knowledge that only some students have is a disservice to the other students.

[MartinCothran @MartinCothran]

Originality is overrated.