Curriculum is the surest way to immortality, one would think - that and a Nobel. Oddly, two of the great English-language Nobel winners of the last 100 years - one dead, one living - Yeats and Pinter (very much on opposite sides of the political and lyric spectrum) have just been axed from set text lists in the UK. In their place, some invaluable new voices have been added. But, surely, reading isn't such a zero-sum game as that?Yeats isn't just a poet - without him, Heaney doesn't make any sense, let alone Muldoon. And, while it is good to see Dylan Thomas properly ensconced, his own lightning was forked partially on the basis of the late-flowering fuse of romanticism that Yeats lit, surely. Yeats is - paradoxically - England's greatest 20th century poet (though they'd rather it was Eliot). Just as Wilde is their greatest playwright in 150 years. No doubt slightly hard to bear. These major Irish writers are, of course, first and foremost Irish - but their work transformed English culture, too.
Meanwhile, dropping Forster and Waugh makes no sense to me, since Forster paves the way for Zadie Smith and a whole stream of English post-war fiction (and film) and Waugh is quite simply the greatest English stylist of the 20th century, other than Auden. Have they dropped Auden, better check...
Byron the young can live without, perhaps. His sexual escapades have dated badly, making him more criminal offender and less pop star - but certainly his fame and youth are more relevant in this age of diminished celebrity.
But, really, to drop Yeats? A terrible idiocy.
But, really, to drop Yeats? A terrible idiocy.
Comments
You'd better not say that too loudly in Ireland ;)
I agree, with my kids in the thick of GCSEs I see exactly what they do and don't study, and it makes the heart sink. Not that I don't like Simon Armitage; but instead of Blake?
One thing that has always amused me is how the US and England both try to claim Eliot as their own.
And anyway, isn't Auden England's most important C20 poet?