The Tragedy of English Literature (Curriculum) ?

 I seem to be afflicted with the curse of the scribe. I condemn those who read on, with further reinforcing what is already beneath. To further bring it to the surface. Yet the childlike arrogance compels me to write on. Potential critics might stumble upon this, add more value, or dispel it entirely as senseless verbiage. Either way, my work would be done, arbitrary though at times it might seem. Words are elusive and potent: they can make gashes in the fabric of reality, yet can never truly do justice to themselves, even as they might be all-encompassing containers of meaning. Knowledge can be toxic, if haphazardly chronicled.  

It is ironic indeed, that the baseline of the most erudite texts to follow is the foundational 'tragedy' and (to a much lesser extent) comedy. Aristotle and many others provided comprehensive criticism on the refinement in tragedy. In fact, let us then assume that tragedy forms the most poignant theoretical framework to our real life happenings. Even comedy for all its potential for timeless social commentary, has to inevitably be colored with a tragic hue; i.e. in tragicomedy.

The significant and lasting impact that the field of English Literature has imparted man is the introduction of the 'liminal space'. It is the in-between that one must ground themselves to forever perceive the de-mystifying horizon of the universe and the vast tapestry of human experience forever documented and kept preserved, to eventually have a bearing upon truth itself. It is the liminal space, that is thus backed up by human experience to culminate in the reality that the pillars of rigid constructs, made to stand erect through staunch beliefs, must melt into fluidity, given the gradual encroachment of the very 'human' flaws that are the true underscoring reality. Once firmly lodged in the confines of the liminal space, it is very difficult to hope for transcendence. It becomes very difficult to hope for hope.

It is to be concluded that all human sin, once illustrated under the shades of hamartia, must also aspire to the condition of art. For it is in art that one is left with no choice but to reconcile with the notion of perpetual discomfort, except for those who already find themselves on the fringes, as they find solace in it. As this portrait is filled into with more color and vibrancy by aforesaid documentation of experience so indeed then do the fringes begin to encroach upon the majority and begin to assert a forceful monopoly upon the norm. This usually happens first by the most innocent question posed in a throwaway fashion, then capitalizing on the chronic lack of intuitive discernment, better and more refined questions follow, until everything is called into question, embedding the liminal space much more firmly into the foundations of the collective human lived experience. The yearning for more becomes all but a distant illusion. The hyper-awareness of tragic flaws as well as their hypocritical aesthetic aggrandizement reaches overflowing point, to the sheer extent of hollowing out human natures, bringing out only the primal and base. Such is the fate of those bound to the liminal spaces.

 "The world's still the same. There's just less in it." 

                                                                          (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) 

The English literature curriculum has essentially always been beset with tragedy. 

Initially, it takes its sweet time gauging the naivete of those seeking to learn. It provides them with only the appropriate sense of wonder before the project of dismantling begins to take effect. As it moves forward, it gradually and albeit insidiously, begins to ask the innocent questions. Until these questions become the rock upon which the church of criticism is built in order to judge and regard the depth of creativity which produces the literature. Come the Romantics, there is a last-ditch effort to preserve the guilt of exaltation of English Literature. But it is by the advent of Modernism, that the English Lit curriculum manifests its inward hubris and goes on to embrace the 'profane joy' of fragmentation. It is thus that the learners are punished with a most cruel fate, the culmination point of all their effort, that they shall never be whole again. Habermas tells them that much, it is by now, that those of you clinging to the wonder of education, come now, fall into the pit of reality, into the liminal space of incomplete-ness. This is thus your reward, what you sought to be ennobling only ends up crippling.

It is by this point that the machinations of literary theory have also caught up and wrought about their wanton destruction having imbued the aforesaid learners with the Promethean fire of awareness regarding the repository of human experience, following swiftly on the heels of literary criticism. The author, like the true humanist's god, is dead and buried. The reader has won, though at an almighty cost. Now the way forward is laden with uncertainty as meaning possesses no external agency. It is in a bog somewhere in the wasteland of disjoined text. The only recourse is to go back, angry and confused. Go back with a warped perception and call into question the very wonder that led you to embark on such a cumbersome pursuit, one that has changed, and disoriented, and left you wanting and adrift. 

The once-firm belief of being blissfully exalted has long been renounced. The profane joy has taken a lot more more than it has given. Regret at egregious indulgence has come too late. Yet, it is in the wasteland, that the new gods emerge, the false gods that come bearing the new gift: the gift of post-everything. Even post-truth. The warped prisoners find themselves in the liminality of an uncertain new belief. And so the tragic hubris of literature remains. But now there is no guiding light, only the bleak, blasted hearth of the post-meaning wasteland that leaves the fresh heretics to fend for themselves, forever condemned to a ruin of their own making, where nothing new can be forged, where they can more than easily bite the hand that ever so reluctantly feeds them scraps.