Cultural capital

In the midst of the recent crisis I completed two units which I loved but was unable to complete to my satisfaction. These were the LTR units through Griffith, in which we were supposed to read ten classics. These were:

• The Odyssey by Homer;
• Medea by Euripides;
  
• Beowolf [anonymous];
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [anonymous];
• The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer;
• Macbeth by Shakespeare;
• Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare;
• Gulliver's Travels by Swift;
• Anna Karenina by Tolstoy; and
  
• Wuthering Heights by Bronte.

I was not able to read all of these texts. Therefore, it is with some . . . pride (no, wrong word) . . . perhaps sense of relief that I have just finished Wuthering Heights. Why? Well the answer to that is perhaps more complex than the one word which postulates the question.

I, I believe, was raised with a respect for, shall we call it, high culture - literature, classical music, and so-on. However, at the same time I was raised without access to high culture. Therefore, I respected it, but I did not know it, and it grew to intimidate me. I guess I feared that should I encounter it I would not "get" it, thus proving my base nature. Added to this was my oddness and literal-mindedness, which has oft given me a different point-of-view and less "arty-farty" outlook. Thus my fear that I would fail miserably in potential encounters with high culture.

However, I also knew that I was lacking, and felt that I was lacking, because I had not really tasted of "the classics". For this reason I stealed myself to do the LTR units, enboldened by the fact that I would be alone in my studies (as they are by correspondence) and thus if I should fail I could hide the shame of my uncultural soul within myself.

However, I did enjoy the LTR units, and while enjoy is perhaps not the best word to express how I experienced the texts, appreciate possibly is. Thus I was quite mortified when the recent crisis disenabled me from reading them all!

So, having now finished Wuthering Heights, almost being ashamed of how late I have come to it, especially with my literary pretensions, I will now get into some Shakespeare. I will start with Macbeth, which I have read some of before, and then go into Antony and Cleopatra. I will use the LTR study notes to kind of spring-board me into it, and try and keep the ball rolling with Othello, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Some literary studies books I have managed to appropriate will surely be of some assistance.

I suppose if anyone reads this they can perhaps learn this from me: If there is something that you feel you are missing, that is holding you back, don't not do it out of fear of failure, as that is guarateed failure, the very thing which you are fearful of. Avoidance of what you fear is not avoidance of fear, but rather a strengthening of that fear. Take a deep breath, find out how, and give it a try. You may fail, in which case your fear will be confirmed and you will be able to move on around or past it. However, you may not fail, in which case your fear will be denied and you will be one more step towards where you want to go.

Urgh. That was all a bit trite. Oh well, I guess it happens to the best of us.