Literary Festival 2015: High Culture and the Western Canon: has the fightback begun?

Speaker(s): Professor Sarah Churchwell, Jonty Claypole, Maya Jaggi, Frederic Raphael
Chair: Professor Maurice Fraser
Recorded on 27 February 2015.
With the BBC having announced a remake of Kenneth Clark's TV series Civilisation, and Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual cornucopia on Radio 4, In Our Time, now in its 17th year, we will be asking whether the mission of Lord Reith 'to educate, inform and entertain' is alive and well. Can Matthew Arnold, TS Eliot and FR Leavis sleep well in their graves? Has the era of dumbing down to ' widen access ' run its course? Why shouldn't ALL schoolchildren be asked to grapple with the 'difficult' texts, rich canvases or musical scores of our western inheritance? Why shouldn't everyone have the chance to join the 'elite'?
Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at UEA. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and her literary journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, New York Times Book Review, and the Spectator, among others. She comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for UK television and radio, has judged many literary prizes, including the Bailey’s (Orange) Prize for Fiction and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she is the 2015 Eccles Centre Writer in Residence at the British Library.
Jonty Claypole is Director of Arts at the BBC. He works across television, radio and online, ensuring the BBC succeeds in its mission of "Arts for Everyone". As a director then executive producer, he has made over 100 television documentaries for BBC Television, including landmark series like Seven Ages of Britain, A History of Art in Three Colours, A Very British Renaissance and Andrew Marr's Great Scotts. He has created strands like What Do Artists Do All Day, Secret Knowledge and In Their Own Words. He also runs BBC Television's in-house arts department with production teams right across the country.
Maya Jaggi is a cultural journalist and critic who has reported from five continents, and was contracted as one of Guardian Review’s leading profile writers for a decade.She has also written for the FT, Independent, Sunday Times Culture, Daily Telegraph, Economist and Newsweek; and was writer-presenter of the BBC4 TV documentary Isabel Allende: The Art of Reinvention. Her conversations with cultural theorist Stuart Hall were made into a four-hour film by Mike Dibb. She has judged literary awards including the Dublin Impac and Orange, and chaired the jury of the Man Asian in Hong Kong. Educated at Oxford and LSE, she was described as “one of Britain’s most respected arts journalists” by the Open University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2012.
Frederic Raphael, a major scholar in classics at St John's College, Cambridge, has written over twenty-five novels and volumes of short stories, as well as essays, biographies, translations and many reviews. His most recent book on the ancient world is A Jew Among the Romans about Flavius Josephus. His second volume of autobiography, Going Up, will be published next year. So will his novel Private Views. Among his many film and television scripts are Darling, Two for the Road, the Glittering Prizes and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. His most recent script, This Man This Woman is due to be shot next year.
The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.
This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

[@Ax18NY]

I'm a fan of Raphael. Always a treat to hear him and even more, to read him.

[@LiberaLib]

Interesting. I like the opening guy, I agree that the exploding of the canon was overall worthwhile but western civilization did pay a price in terms of the loss of the notion of ideological stability. Even if that perception of stability was illusory or unjust, it did allow for a certain collective investment in the goal of human progress, and i feel we've lost much of that in the identity politics/postmodern era. it's a loss we should at least try to acknowledge and better understand, and that is probably largely a historical project.

[@TheIrishfitter]

''Strength can only match itself to strength'' - Nietzsche

[@juliemcgrath6710]

Western canon is the heart of western man. Defile that and conceal it in guilt and he will die. Reading western canon is a way of stepping back and appreciating the heights of what man has accomplished. The heights he can attain at his best. Reading western classics leaves me inspired. It's now a requisite for any academic that they apologize to every savage under the sun for the history of western man and assure all non-westerners that they are just as capable as our greatest minds.

[@justinw1806]

Marry me! Please!

[@AminTheMystic]

You are just a standard issue twonk. One who over simplifies a complex debate... to make irrelevant points. People like you are part of the problem. And I really doubt you actually read. Your type never do.

[@petermonicid6053]

American moral leadership !!! Moral ??? you are kiding

[@sattarabus]

Frederic was in his elements, swinging in the singular anecdotal cradle. He supplied the salutary additive of whimsy, humour and self-deprecation the tenor of the discussion lacked. Maurice was speaking in an inaudibly soft voice. We missed the nuggets, or the flakes thereof, that fell from his lips.

[@philnewton3096]

how can the public participate when premises are closed ? 2019

[@sticksman1979]

The question at 1:06:00 was ridiculous. Churchwell is 100% right.

[@sattarabus]

Rich food for thought, with cognitive additives ensuring eupepsia rather than flatulence.

[@Vivita257]

Why no subtitles option!? In this day and age!

[@joeruf6526]

What on earth is a "global perspective"?

[@philnewton3096]

now about pensioners free licences -in 2019?

[@spicerc1244]

We must expand the canon because populations who don’t read the canon are underrepresented in the canon lol

[@Jorhanbear]

Did the Alt-Right start here?

[@spicerc1244]

Let’s expand the canon because one male peer didn’t like your syllabus lol

[@mysticmouse7261]

Sappy pc destroys excellence. Political criteria and values are not aesthetic ones.

[@nancymohass4891]

…still no quotation from non westerner thinkers,!!

[@cvetislavstoyanov4367]

It's the "Western canon". You imbecile.

[@ozowen904]

So typical about postmodernist and their apologist to start talking about different meaning of words, other people’s impressions, different connotations, etc. and so trite and not to the point. Always about everything other than the fucking point.

[@johnnythunder196]

Good Lord - this Churchwell woman is insufferable. I empathize with any & all bright students who've had to endure her nonsense.

[@sticksman1979]

Are you threatened by her by chance?

[@AminTheMystic]

If pushed I doubt you could state three things she said that were wrong.

[@shabanahfazal6512]

Johnny Thunder She was superb - passionate, rigorous and nuanced. We’re lucky to have public academics like her in this country.

[@Jonmad17]

@@sticksman1979 I love how critiquing a man's masculinity has become the go-to defense of anyone criticizing a woman online for anything. So dishonest.

[@Jengaaa21]

@@AminTheMystic That evisceration @1:07:31 was enough.

[@regmunday8354]

Re Frederic Raphael: I have never heard anyone talk so eoloquently out of their own arse.