Myersiana

Speranza

Myersian: related to Myers.

 

Cfr.

 

Uthaiwan, K., P. Pakkong, N. Noparatnaraporn, L. Vilarinho & J. Machado, 2003. Studies on the plasma composition of fish host of the freshwater mussel, Hyriopsis myersiana, with implications for improvement of the medium for culture of glochidia. Invertebrate Reproduction & Development 44(1): 53–61.

 

 

 

"What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?" -- Roman Jakobson

 

 

 

When Vladimir Nabokov was up for a chair in literature at Harvard, the linguist Roman Jakobson protested: “What’s next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?”

A variant of course of this is Myers's book, "When elephants teach".

There may be variant implicatures (I), though.

More about Myers's book under (II)

 

Cheers,

 

Speranza

 

I.

 

(1) Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?

 

-- rhetorical question, aimed at "No." Implicature: Nabokov's appointment at Harvard as Chair of Literature (is there such a Department?) is controversial.

 

Further implicature:

 

(2) Elephants don't know about zoology.

 

Entailment-cum-implicature:

 

(3) Elephants, which are animals, do not know about zoology, the science of animals.

 

(4) Only some men (so-called zoologists), which are animals, MAY know about zoology.

 

Further implicature:

 

(5) Who is the chair of Zoology at Harvard? (Is there such a Department?)

 

II.

 

Myers, "When Elephants Teach".

From amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Teach-Creative-Writing-Since/dp/0226554546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423417571&sr=8-1&keywords=David+Gershom+Myers

"When Vladimir Nabokov was up for a chair in literature at Harvard, the linguist Roman Jakobson protested."

 

"What’s next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?"

 

"That anecdote, with which D. G. Myers begins "The Elephants Teach", perfectly frames the issues [Myers's essay] tackles. 

"Myers explores more than a century of debate over how writing should be taught and whether it can or should be taught in a classroom at all."

 

On the other hand, a child may learn about zoology by visiting the elephant cage at the zoo. The elephant would be 'teaching', if not 'learning' (For a misuse of 'learn' to mean 'teach' vide "The wind in the willows").

 

"Along the way, Myers incorporates insights from a host of poets and teachers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, John Berryman, John Dewey, Lionel Trilling, Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Saul Bellow."

 

"And from his exhaustive research, Myers extracts relevant background information on nineteenth-century educational theory; shifts in technology, publishing, and marketing; the growth of critical theory in this country; and the politics of higher education."

 

"While he shows how creative writing has become a machine for creating more creative writing programs, Myers also suggests that its history supplies a precedent for something different—a way for creativity and criticism, poetry and scholarship, to join together to produce not just writing programs but good writers."

 

Of course a good writer has to be contrasted from a 'famous writer', as per Noel Coward:

 

Our famous writers in swarms do it,
 Somerset and all the Maughams do it,
 Let's do it, let's fall in love.
 The Brontes felt that they must do it,
 Ernest Hemingway could-just-do it,
 Let's do it, let's fall in love.
 E. Allan Poe-ho! ho! ho!-did it,
 But he did it in verse.
 H. Beecher Stowe did it,
 But she had to rehearse.
 Tennessee Williams self-taught does it,
 Kinsey with a deafening report does it.
 Let's do it, let's fall in love.

 

J. Barzun writes in the "Preface" to "The Elephants Teach":

 

"[This] is an astonishing piece of work. . . . Under the author’s magic it becomes the story of a great part of our culture since the turn of the century."

 

"First Things": "In clear prose and careful scholarship, [Myers]. . . tells the story of how what was supposed to free English literature from the trap of academic disciplines became itself an academic discipline."

 

Or, in other words, how elephants who COULD teach zoology, perhaps better in the wild (vide "Safari"), algo GOT trapped?

R. Mitchell in "History of Education Quarterly":

"Myers is thorough, his writing is clear, and the history he has to tell will be to most, if not all, current teachers of creative writing little short of a revelation. . . . This is a book all teachers of creative writing should read."

 

which seems to implicate that not all _will_? (Cancellable!)

 

Patrick Bizzarro,College Composition and Communication:

"This material I think should be required for anyone who intends to teach creative writing on the college or university level."

 

From Prentice Hall:

 

""The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880" traces the development of "creative" writing as

 

(1) a classroom subject, the teaching of fiction- and verse-writing; and

 

(2) a national system for the employment of fiction writers and poets to teach the subject."

 

"[Myers's essay] answers the questions,

 

(a) "Why has fiction and verse writing come to be called creative?" and

 

-- cfr. when have elephants come to be called zoological?

 

(b) "When and why was this term first used?"

 

"[Myers's essay] surveys the study and teaching of language and literature, from the beginnings of philology early in the 19th century to the split of its province and the ending of its use, when science made its entry into life and education."

 

I like the idea: 'the ending of its use'.

 

"D. G. Myers is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University. He is coeditor of the anthology "Unrelenting Readers: The New Poet-Critics."

"Updated with fresh commentary on what’s happened to creative writing in the academy since the first edition was published ten years ago, The Elephants Teach will be indispensable for students and teachers of writing, literature, and literary history."