David Laurence
@davidlaurence.bsky.social
The unchanging light. The changing sound. There is still. There is time.
December 10, 2025 at 2:53 AM
The unchanging light. The changing sound. There is still. There is time.
The problem boils down to this: how people learn to receive, or is it to fish for?, the knowledge to be found in books, or more broadly in the documentary record of artistic expression, truth-seeking, error, self-deception, and mendacious lying that humanity leaves in its wake.
December 10, 2025 at 1:41 AM
The problem boils down to this: how people learn to receive, or is it to fish for?, the knowledge to be found in books, or more broadly in the documentary record of artistic expression, truth-seeking, error, self-deception, and mendacious lying that humanity leaves in its wake.
Why retain the term “canon” to name this necessary functional selection, unshakably freighted as the term apparently is with the metaphorical baggage of its theological source? Why not a term that dispenses with the dim suggestion of a divine origin, like “knowledge base.”
December 6, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Why retain the term “canon” to name this necessary functional selection, unshakably freighted as the term apparently is with the metaphorical baggage of its theological source? Why not a term that dispenses with the dim suggestion of a divine origin, like “knowledge base.”
Tough choice between stoking outrage toward the undeserving poor and stoking outrage toward the undeserving rich.
December 3, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Tough choice between stoking outrage toward the undeserving poor and stoking outrage toward the undeserving rich.
It is one thing to claim that art approved as great approves our virtue in turn through our (real or pretended) appreciation of it. It is quite another thing to ask what our judgments of art reveal about our judgment, for good or for ill; and how reflection about art might educate our judgment.
December 3, 2025 at 1:54 AM
It is one thing to claim that art approved as great approves our virtue in turn through our (real or pretended) appreciation of it. It is quite another thing to ask what our judgments of art reveal about our judgment, for good or for ill; and how reflection about art might educate our judgment.
Ha ha. Or maybe Ho, ho, ho? Recalling this little item from the College English archives.
Coursen, Herbert R. “The Ghost of Christmas Past: ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’” College English, vol. 24, no. 3, 1962, pp. 236–38. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/373298. Accessed 28 Nov. 2025.
Coursen, Herbert R. “The Ghost of Christmas Past: ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’” College English, vol. 24, no. 3, 1962, pp. 236–38. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/373298. Accessed 28 Nov. 2025.
The Ghost of Christmas past: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" on JSTOR
Herbert R. Coursen, Jr., The Ghost of Christmas past: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", College English, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Dec., 1962), pp. 236-238
doi.org
November 28, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Ha ha. Or maybe Ho, ho, ho? Recalling this little item from the College English archives.
Coursen, Herbert R. “The Ghost of Christmas Past: ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’” College English, vol. 24, no. 3, 1962, pp. 236–38. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/373298. Accessed 28 Nov. 2025.
Coursen, Herbert R. “The Ghost of Christmas Past: ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’” College English, vol. 24, no. 3, 1962, pp. 236–38. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/373298. Accessed 28 Nov. 2025.
Enact PhD population control or expand employment horizons beyond academia? A problem for English and other modern languages since 1969, and a debate, still unresolved, from that day to this.
profession.mla.org/outside-the-...
profession.mla.org/outside-the-...
November 26, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Enact PhD population control or expand employment horizons beyond academia? A problem for English and other modern languages since 1969, and a debate, still unresolved, from that day to this.
profession.mla.org/outside-the-...
profession.mla.org/outside-the-...
I wager that where there is a comp/rhet program for freshmen there is a rhet/comp doctoral program. And for historical reasons rhet/comp doctoral programs emerged in public universities, often in Land Grant institutions in the Midwest, often in intense conflict with literary studies and faculty.
November 26, 2025 at 2:57 AM
I wager that where there is a comp/rhet program for freshmen there is a rhet/comp doctoral program. And for historical reasons rhet/comp doctoral programs emerged in public universities, often in Land Grant institutions in the Midwest, often in intense conflict with literary studies and faculty.
Another exemplary figure here who should receive attention is Richard “Jix” Lloyd-Jones, chair of English at the University of Iowa and one of the founders of CCCC.
November 25, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Another exemplary figure here who should receive attention is Richard “Jix” Lloyd-Jones, chair of English at the University of Iowa and one of the founders of CCCC.
A more tendentious account might query how and why “mystification” emerged as a term as literary study struggled and departments battled over study focused on the fascination specific works of literature exert versus general questions of what literature is and does.
November 25, 2025 at 2:35 PM
A more tendentious account might query how and why “mystification” emerged as a term as literary study struggled and departments battled over study focused on the fascination specific works of literature exert versus general questions of what literature is and does.
For me, a lot is prefigured in the collision between Cleanth Brooks (and the push to define literature as a disciplinary object of study more precisely as high art) and Kenneth Burke (and a push to an expansive anthropological study of culture and human language use).
November 25, 2025 at 2:21 PM
For me, a lot is prefigured in the collision between Cleanth Brooks (and the push to define literature as a disciplinary object of study more precisely as high art) and Kenneth Burke (and a push to an expansive anthropological study of culture and human language use).
Scholes, also Wayne Booth, were two of a vanishing kind of exemplary eminences active in both MLA and NCTE. Why? Battles over the use of literature in the first-year writing course—intro to English? or to writing across the university? Battles over “literature” narrowly or “text” expansively.
November 25, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Scholes, also Wayne Booth, were two of a vanishing kind of exemplary eminences active in both MLA and NCTE. Why? Battles over the use of literature in the first-year writing course—intro to English? or to writing across the university? Battles over “literature” narrowly or “text” expansively.
It doesn’t have to. It has, however.
November 17, 2025 at 1:17 AM
It doesn’t have to. It has, however.
Absolutely, there is a tension. And reading is absolutely many things, especially outside the school. The issue is, beyond learning how to read as the acquisition of literacy, what is reading as the disciplined study of an object—literature—in the school?
November 17, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Absolutely, there is a tension. And reading is absolutely many things, especially outside the school. The issue is, beyond learning how to read as the acquisition of literacy, what is reading as the disciplined study of an object—literature—in the school?
Summation material of whatever kind or source marks the school’s effort to discipline and objectify reading, whether as memory for quizzable details or as testable comprehension. It’s a legitimate purpose, if one often pursued through questionable or counterproductive methods or tools.
November 16, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Summation material of whatever kind or source marks the school’s effort to discipline and objectify reading, whether as memory for quizzable details or as testable comprehension. It’s a legitimate purpose, if one often pursued through questionable or counterproductive methods or tools.
The question, or narrow problem, of what minutiae matter and why they matter (or matter to me as teacher but not to you as student or vice versa) points to the general problem of how reading as subjective cognitive event is to be disciplined, subjected to the supervision and control of the school.
November 16, 2025 at 1:21 AM
The question, or narrow problem, of what minutiae matter and why they matter (or matter to me as teacher but not to you as student or vice versa) points to the general problem of how reading as subjective cognitive event is to be disciplined, subjected to the supervision and control of the school.
The aversion seems to me unavoidable for a study that operates institutionally as a discipline yet grounds itself pragmatically in the reading individual works—a constant struggle with the problem of immanence, with reading as an act “that can never be observed or in any way prescribed or verified.”
November 15, 2025 at 3:43 PM
The aversion seems to me unavoidable for a study that operates institutionally as a discipline yet grounds itself pragmatically in the reading individual works—a constant struggle with the problem of immanence, with reading as an act “that can never be observed or in any way prescribed or verified.”
The repair looked toward in Matt’s concluding sentence has to start from the reader side, in exercises of judgment, undertaken mutually and jointly by the instructor and the students in any given class, aimed toward the collective task of evaluation, of figuring out what makes “good work.”
November 6, 2025 at 4:54 PM
The repair looked toward in Matt’s concluding sentence has to start from the reader side, in exercises of judgment, undertaken mutually and jointly by the instructor and the students in any given class, aimed toward the collective task of evaluation, of figuring out what makes “good work.”
“If anyone imagines this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.”
October 14, 2025 at 8:13 PM
“If anyone imagines this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.”
Twain finally had no or next to no idea where his book could possibly take Huck and Jim, where in his historical social world freedom could possibly be found. Everett knows exactly where. And how.
September 26, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Twain finally had no or next to no idea where his book could possibly take Huck and Jim, where in his historical social world freedom could possibly be found. Everett knows exactly where. And how.
One question I ask myself: does the book talk to, talk at, talk up, or talk down to its reader, or to different categories of imagined readers, in different textual portions or places? Also: how the narrative transposes a convention familiar from action movies—the chase—to a world pre-automobile.
September 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
One question I ask myself: does the book talk to, talk at, talk up, or talk down to its reader, or to different categories of imagined readers, in different textual portions or places? Also: how the narrative transposes a convention familiar from action movies—the chase—to a world pre-automobile.
I don’t know that I have ever read a book quite so explicitly didactic, so intent on schooling its (imagined) reader, on taking its reader to school.
September 26, 2025 at 5:19 PM
I don’t know that I have ever read a book quite so explicitly didactic, so intent on schooling its (imagined) reader, on taking its reader to school.