Any current or former English majors out there? I'm driving poor Jeremy nuts, and I need a support group.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Answers

Former English major. Though what I actually read/studied was mostly post 1850's stuff. The exception being the Romantics. Love that Romantic poetry.

I'm a freak.

Congrats. I admire your plunge-taking.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Another former English major here. (Class of 89) Amazingly enough, I can still remember the first 18 lines of the Canterbury Tales from having to recite them to the professor.

Whan that April with his shoures soute...

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I have an English degree, Beth, as well as a copy of Cliffs Notes for pretty much every major work! Moll Flanders? Tom Jones? Macbeth? Perhaps I shouldn't be so proud of this...

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I was an English major as an undergraduate and I'm getting my Masters in English and I've just finished a Masters in English Education. Whew. Graduate school English course are, for the most part, all kinds of fun. Where else can you write a paper on modern masculinity as seen "Fight Club"?

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Oh yes.

1996-1999 BA English, University of Exeter

2000-2001 MA in Romantic and Sentimental Literature 1770-1830, University of York

I remember reading the Wife's Prologue and Tale at school. I can't remember any of it well enough to quote, though.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I'm in a Creative Writing programme. I should have been graduating by now, but I went part time, while working full time. I've reversed that now. I am one of those weirdos who have never read the 'classics.' I have just read Kafka's The Metamorphosis and will be writing a paper on it for this term. Good luck Beth!

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I was an English major as an undergrad (1992-1996), though I sort of stumbled into it after giving up on pre-veterinary school and journalism. I gave up too easily. I've always loved writing, but my reading tastes are a bit lowbrow and I was just a touch less than thrilled with a degree in reading old books. I did learn to appreciate Shakespeare and Chaucer and a handful of others, but I immediately staggered into a teaching certification program that was all wrong and gave up. Now I'm wishing I'd become a librarian like I really wanted but hadn't realized in the first place. I'm working at a university library now, eyeing an eventual MLS, though I wonder with my little 3.48 GPA (in English, for crying out loud, and I'm not *stupid* -- I was a National Merit scholar, yadda yadda.. just lazy and depressed at the wrong times) if I'd get in anywhere. Much less UCLA, the closest choice.

I recently read Pamela Dean's _Tam Lin_ and got very sad about how I hadn't gotten nearly as much as I should've out of my English education (it's a modernization set at a liberal arts college among the literature majors). I want to go back and have an experience like * that*.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Double major here. Theatre and English, which means I get to do more reading than your average bear. Or average English major. Or whatever.

In the past year and a half I've read about 20 plays and nearly 30 novels, not to mention a plethera of poetry and short fiction.

I've written papers on Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, Chicano Teatros, the nature of monologues and Anne Sexton's "To My Lover Returning To His Wife." I've written a play and a collection of 20 poems. All classwork.

I honestly love every second of it.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

All you people and your quest for knowledge. If you was really kewl you'd not be bound by traditional rulez of languages. All safe and snuggled in the comfort of your triply mortgaged nests, waiting on momma bird to regurgitate age old literary paradigms into your little feathered bellies. Spread your wings. Spread your wings and fly.

(Yes, as a matter of facts not in evidence, I am jealous. I want to be erudite too. No man was born to debug fuckin' machines all his life! I want to fly too dambit! Take me under your wing. Let me into your nest. Let the chunky vomit of knowledge saturate my tortured, hungry soul.)

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Graduated from UCD in 1991. I'd won a bunch of writing awards.

What happened? :P

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Now a graduate student in an English department, but on the linguistics side. I've never read any Shakespeare except under duress, and I think I can live a long and happy life without ever reading most of those depressing novels about Fallen Women. I'm trying to fill in the other gaps before they find me out, though.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Now see, I'm old fashioned. I love certain aspects of pop culture, but I have no desire to study it.

If I could outline my ideal educational experience, it would go something like this: acquire a reading knowledge of Latin, French, and Italian. Read the classics (i.e., those old Greek and Roman guys). Spend the rest of my life studying world history and world literature, until I know everything there is to know. And I don't care if I never read a thing written after 1950.

I'm loving Chaucer this time around. I don't remember it being this much fun when I was 18. The only problem is, I'm starting to dream in Middle English, and I'm talking to the dogs in some language that is half Middle English, half Swedish Chef. I'm driving Jeremy nuts, I really am.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I'm an English minor, anthropology major, but if I had it to do over again I'd double major. I just spent the past week re-reading _The Great Gatsby_ and being thrilled by the beauty of it. I always liked English in high school but it wasn't until college that it really sunk in how amazing the power of words can be. Beth, I hope you keep us updated on what you're reading so we can discuss.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Nothing after 1950?

You're lucky! Ellison's _Invisible Man_ snuck in at 1947.

Now you have to read it.

Really. It's an amazing book.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Oh, I've read it! I read it in college, and it's also on my summer reading list this year.

I'm pretty embarrassed by how little Shakespeare I've read, though. This is the first time I've read Hamlet. I've only read Romeo and Juliet on my own, never in class. But I've read Coriolanus (the best argument ever for making English professors stick to a set curriculum -- who reads Coriolanus?) and of course, I've had MacBeth assigned three times.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Normally I don't plug my own pages, but how often will a timeline of the evolution of Middle English as it pertains to the works of Chaucer be relevant to anything?

Concise! Fun! See it all at http://www.geocities.com/igolder/middleenglish.html

I was originally an English major; does that count? I also speak it.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Ian, that is really cool. That's probably my favorite historical period, but it's nice to have it all set out like that.

And "mysterious circumstances" is so much more gentile than the bit about the hot poker.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Ooh. And now that I've read through your book club page, Ian, you go to the top of the list of people with whom I wish I could be in a book club. Except I haven't been able to get beyond the first ten pages of The God of Small Things.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I'm not an English major...I'm probably as far away from English as one can get. I'm currently a sophomore in college majoring in Mechanical Engineering, but I try to spend my free time reading. I've just finished "Beowulf" and decided to take a little break from reading since spring break is coming up so soon. After I get back, I plan on beginning Milton's "Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained". Recently I also finished __Pride and Prejudice__, and I also have __The Canterbury Tales__ on my desk, begging me to pick it up.

I have the largest wish list of books, but being a college student has a few drawbacks; ie, my textbooks for class easily cost $100 a piece and that pesky tuition thing. My list includes many of the classics, but I really want to collect all of Agatha Christie's works.

I think it's odd being a Mechanical Engineering major and reading so much, but everyone keeps telling me that I'm "well-rounded." I'll just have to see how far being well-rounded gets me in life.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

like jackie, i'm an english and theater double major. i'd have just gone with the theater, but by the time i decided that i wanted to be a theater major, i was too far along with the english major to give it up. besides, i'd never have gotten to take amazing upper level classes like victorian poetry (best class i've had in my three years in school) and viennese literature of the 20th century.

i'm in a jane austen class right now, and i'm loving it. that's another reason i stuck with the major - it makes me read things i wouldn't on my own and i end up digging them hardcore. plus, like jackie, i get to write fun papers like "Homosexual Drama and the AIDS Crisis in 20th Century Theater: An In-Depth Look at the Protagonists of Falsettos and Angels in America", "W.S. Gilbert and Satire in Victorian England", and "Creative is Smarter Than You Think: The Translation of Classic Texts Into Modern Entertainment".

i love my majors. i read too much.

(i also plan to get a Masters in Dramatic Literature and one in Education, so i can teach.)

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Aggie, any MA program in Literature worth its salt will give you plenty of opportunity to have teaching experience - you won't need an MAT to be a teacher, so long as you've set your sights on secondary school. If you want to be a college prof, part the first: good luck finding a job because they are rarer than white tigers; and part the second: you'll need a PhD.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Wanna-be English major. I've wanted to go to University for as long as I can remember - or at least for as long as I knew that kind of school (where all you had to do was read really great books and write essays) existed. *Sigh* Thanks to circumstances I haven't been able to go. I'm enjoying a period of unemployment right now, but because of the whole "health" thing being a priority financially and energy- wise... I can't go now either!!! Hopefully next year I can take some night classes and get started on a B.A. *Sigh*

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Ooooh, essays. I really did love to write essays. I recall C.S. Lewis saying, in one of the Narnia books, that nobody likes to read essays, and it made me very sad.

One thing I like very much about going to school (I'm not, now, but I wish I were sometimes) is that they make you write. Without a stick to encourage me, I am very lazy. I write in my journal, but I don't Write; no focused pieces most of the time, no poetry at all. I loved poetry classes, regardless of the quality of instruction, because they'd make me write. With a real deadline, I'd really do it. On my own time, I give in far too much to my fears that nothing will come, that it won't be any good, blah blah. It also was great fun to read my peers' poetry, good and bad. I really miss it. A writing group might help, but without that sense of a *real* deadline, a grade to work for... I still probably wouldn't do it.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

About to graduate with a BA in English along with my other degree. It's kind of amazing when you think about it how my education has certain holes in it. I can't think of any required classes here that go up to even 1900. I haven't read any Hemingway or Joyce beyond short stories (but then again, given what I've heard about the novels I don't think I'd like any of them), but I've had to reread Emma twice for classes.

They're much more into old literature, preferably anything before 20th c Brit lit. I have a difficult time thinking of any required American literature classes I've had, though I'm sure I had at least one somewhere. The alternative lit classes (creative writing, short story, children's, Holocaust, Victorian, love poetry, journalism) are much more my speed, I'm afraid, than the classics.

Classics are okay, but they tend to burn me out faster at times, and certain subject matter covered drives me up the wall. Especially when said classics are done at breakneck speed out of the Norton. One of my 18th c. Brit lits tried to do a female-centered course, and all we ended up reading about were whores and rapists. Nobody liked that class.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I thought it was Edward II with the red hot poker up the bum. Wasn't Richard II deliberately starved to death?

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001

Yes, you're correct; Richard II was the one who ate pieces of his own arms and hands. Or so the story goes.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001

Another English major here. I was a double major -- English and history. My graduate degree is in history.

One of my favorite college classes was History and Structure of the English Language, where we learned to read Old and Middle English. Our papers were all translations. It was challenging and fun. I used to dream in Middle English all the time.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001

Old and Middle English become completely habit-forming. I was in a Beowulf reading group and a Chaucer reading group the same semester with most of my best friends from grad school, and we went around snarling "Hwaet!" at each other a lot, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the program.

Good times, good tymes.

(I still can't read or hear the word "knight" without thinking "kuh-ni-khh-t," but at least I don't say it out loud anymore.)

Then there is the thing where you start writing like the people you're reading...a special problem for those of us studying Henry James, say, or William Thackeray.

Sigh.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001

Ah, yes - my lovely English B.A. I left college exhausted and tired of fiction. The intervening years have seen me take up with non-fiction (especially history) like a wanton slut.

My best literature experience, hands down, was Great Books I & II in high school; from The Epic of Gilgamesh (required reading, that - fascinating) to A Canticle for Leibowitz. Those classes convinced me to major in English. The major convinced me how stupid I was for doing so. Reading the Tomato Nation piece was a flashback - my comps were just as annoying, the reading list just as broad and unsupported by the curriculum.

Other highlights, sporadic, were: reading the Aeneid aloud with hallmates for Humanities I, freshman year of college; Modern Literature, for D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001

It's only a matter of time before we get round to Guess That Manuscript. I have the entire Helsinki-Penn Corpus sitting right here any time you want to start.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Diana, wanna explain that Helsinki-Penn Corpus to the folks in the bleachers? Sounds like a rich dessert to me.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

My department got famous for putting Old English manuscripts on computer, you know, back in the days when mass storage consisted of stone tablets and knitted sweaters. That work grew into the Helsinki Corpus (aka ICAME), a time sampling of texts over 1000 years. Now they're working on Middle English, with Penn. That's the Helsinki- Penn Corpus. There's some information here.

I'm not corpus person, though. I do Marxist readings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Current undeclared English major at Nita's alma matter-- maybe I'll have some of her old profs. I'm working my way though the Norton Anthologies for British Lit this year. Once I get this requirement done, though, I'll take mostly American lit and modern poetry and writing classes. I appreciate Chaucer, but he doesn't do much for me. Joyce and Eliot, though, I love.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

I love Chaucer.

I always have so much trouble with Middle English because it's so Germanic and I end up pronouncing it very Germanically after five years of German. For my Chaucer class at UCD, we had to memorize the prologue to the Canterbury Tales and make an appointment with the prof to repeat it...with feeling. "Whan April with his shoures soote//the droghte of March hath perced to the roote..."

I miss school.

Work sucks.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Literary and Cultural Studies major here (Carnegie Mellon's answer to an English major). Was in the comparative literature program for my master's until I burned out, dropped out, and got a job at a scholarly publishing house. Now I rule over the puny academics! [Well, not really...they usually beat me down pretty quickly. You say you want your book to be an entire run-on sentence and you're willing to send me reams of e- mail explaining your rationale for doing so? Fine, whatever].

I have to say, Beth, that I think your idea of going back and putting together an "English major" reading list is very cool. I may just have to copy it.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Former, at least. A dual English/History major in college. But I've always been interested. For instance, the summer before high school, I knew I'd get a lot of Shakespeare in high school, and knew I read half as well and twice as slowly if it's ASSIGNED, so I got down my parents' COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE and took a week and read it.

I still have a better memory for Shakespeare than, I think, most people who aren't in the theatre.

I sometimes wonder if I exposed myself to some things too early...Dostoevsky at sixteen, Hesse at fourteen, things like that. Yet oddly enough, I didn't read the Oz or Tarzan books until I was eighteen.

I don't read the ten books you do a week, though, Beth. I read four books a week, no more.

Al of NOVA NOTES.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

to answer two things above:

gabby, i want to teach high school. so no phd for me, thanks very much. and if i don't have to get two masters, so much the better.

and to judy, who mentioned tam lin, by pamela dean: that would be my college. and to the doubters who have read the book, yes, we talk like that. something in the water at carleton (blackstock) makes english and theater majors remember large numbers of quotes and very little else. dates, theories, anything remotely resembling math or science? bah. we scoff at them. recalling that robert browning wrote a poem entitled "caliban-upon-setebos" in the middle of a production of the tempest? we're your men. or women.

tam lin is a lovely and hysterical portrayal of english majors even if you didn't (don't) go to carleton. not the greatest writing in the world, but very funny and sometimes touching. i would recommend it to any and all english, theater or classics majors.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001

Beth... re: Chaucer when you were 18, I think the only reason I enjoyed it that time around is because I had a teacher (AP English - Sr. year of HS) who was a PhD dropout. His dissertation was to be on Canterbury Tales before he quit.

He had this big booming voice (was also a baritone singer) and he'd read us the tales in Middle English, complete with accent. He was absolutely inspiring. I, too, memorized the "Whan that Aprille..." stanza - and 10 years later I'm thrilled I still remember it. Useless cocktail party knowledge.

I seriously don't think the classics would have been as enjoyable for me if I didn't have such a wonderful teacher. He made all the difference in the world.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

Grace hit an excellent point. Sometimes teachers can really make a world of difference. I thought i hated Shakespeare because the first two i ever read were taught to me by bored teachers who didn't make it the least bit interesting. I did remarkably well with Macbeth related essays thanks to Coles Notes.

However, i accidentally (don't ask) took a very Shakespeare-laden course when i did some independent study at University. When i saw the amount of Shakespeare on the class reading list i groaned. But the teacher was just so indescribably enthused about it, that i was surprised at how much i enjoyed it. A good teacher can change anything.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

It was a toss up between fingerpainting my way to a degree, or reading-and-writing. And I became an english major because it was amazing to me that you could just write about stuff you liked to read, and then you'd get good grades for it.

Even though I feel as if I missed reading all the important things I should have read at some point, somewhere. How could I have been an english major, and never have read The Scarlet Letter? Why did I have to start reading Jane Austen when I was in backpacking Spain, and desperate for something english? Stupid curriculum.

I still, to a really big extent, identify as an english major. And not because I think it gives me some sort of authority in grammar arguments, or because it makes me sound smart and well-read and geeky. It's because - I don't know why. Honestly. Because it's the most concrete manifestation of my love of reading?

Dunno.

And I was an anthro double major, too! Because it was so cool. Really. I love evolution.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

I'm an English/Psych double major. Pretty much done with the English major, though. My English advisor told me I'd have to graduate early if I didn't add on another major. Psych is okay, but I'm really an English major at heart.

I'm not a Chaucer fan. I liked the Wife of Bath's tale and that was about it. My favorites are Faulkner, Eliot, Joyce, and Updike. Throw in some Kurt Vonnegut, Frank O'Hara, Thomas Hardy, and Elizabeth Bishop and I'll be in heaven.

I generally like my English department (University of Georgia. Any alumni out there?), except they *really* need a course in something other than American and British literature. I suppose that's what the Comparative Lit department is for, but I hate that all the English majors are deprived of Russian and French and German stuff unless they (gasp) go to the library and read it for themselves.

Within the year, I'm going to be applying to doctoral programs in English. I'm so much of a literature geek now. Can I get any geekier? We shall see.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001