School Days

[stoutfellow]

Back when I was in eleventh grade, I took a course titled "Advanced American Literature". I'm not sure why it was called "Advanced"; as far as I recall, it was the only course in USAn literature offered at old Crawford High. In retrospect, I don't think I got a great deal out of that course. I seem to remember that the instructor talked a great deal about symbolism, but I came away with the impression that symbolism was some kind of sekrit code that the author artificially superimposed on the story. It wasn't until a few years later, in college, that I got a glimmering of what literary symbolism really is.

In any event, I'm trying to recall what-all we read in that class. I know that we read The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. As it happens, I've just reread both of those, and, thinking back, I have to say that I doubt any seventeen-year-old - or, at any rate, I - could really comprehend either story. The Scarlet Letter is meatier, I think; though it is a moral tale, I don't judge it to be a moralizing one - Hawthorne presents the temptations that Hester and Rev. Dimmesdale faced toward the end fairly and realistically. The climax might be a little pat, but not excessively so.

The Great Gatsby... There's something about Fitzgerald that puts me off. The society he describes is brittle and shallow, and I have a hard time empathizing. Nonetheless, I do see (what I think I missed the first time, so many years ago) how pathetic a character Jay Gatsby actually is - how much of his appearance was façade, and how much of his life was built on an illusion.

I wish I could remember what other books we read in AdvAmLit. (DG, if you're reading this, you were in that class; do you remember anything else?)

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, you've read more English literature than I've read Swedish. (If you extend to all of Scandinavia, I've read Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and Master of Hestviken, the Kalevala, and Burnt Njal's Saga. Not a very long list.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I'd not consider Kalevala Scandinavian, but I guess that only shortens the list. ,-)

Admittedly my English teacher (who I also had in Swedish and Swedish Literature) was kind of extreme in the amount of Anglo-lit we had to read, but it mostly meant we didn't read them in translation in Swedish, as one did with say Russian and French literature.

Of course, English wasn't an electable. Swedish school systems and in particular the science-oriented line believe in lots of "must read" subjects - there was a considerable fear that natural scientists, doctors and engineers would end up professional "idiots" - and a low number of electable ones. I think just about 1/10 of the time was in some way open to choice, and usually only an either/or choice. (French, German or Spanish. Visual Art or Music. Philosophy or Psychology)

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I hesitated briefly before including Kalevala, but I decided to go with the broadest plausible definition.

I took four years of Spanish and three of French in high school, but didn't read much literature proper in either class. (Camus' The Stranger in French; nothing that I recall in Spanish.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

It is too short a time, I think. We didn't read anything noteworthy in German as I remember, and I took that for five years.

But in Year 11, the Swedish student had (then) already had seven or eight years of English. Nowadays, ten.