Opinion: We Must Save English Literature Degrees [2]

 

English literature is not a luxury subject, but an essential one that allows us to explore what it is to be human. As the novelist Elizabeth Bowen once wrote: “The process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader’s mind.”

There are reports that up to 400 staff across Canterbury Christ Church University face redundancy. The dispersal of so much valuable knowledge will create a gigantic vacuum.

Kent has been a highly fertile ground for writers over the centuries, and not just Chaucer and Marlowe. Canterbury Christ Church University collaborated with Jstor Labs to create Kent Maps online, a website devoted to writers who are associated with the county in some way, and has brought to light the neglected fiction of female writers through the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers. To close the English literature department now is to close the door on this heritage.

In extremis, humanity turns to the arts: for example, the poets of the first world war and the inmates of Nazi concentration camps in the second world war. We need the arts, including literature, to nurture ourselves – particularly at times of personal hardship and international conflict. It is a national problem that needs to be addressed urgently. Where is today’s Jennie Lee?

Author: Dr Diana Hirst (Rye, East Sussex)

- The Guardian