![Erato,_Muse_of_Poetry[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3t2KUeO.jpg "Erato,_Muse_of_Poetry[1].jpg")
When and why did it stop being normal for educated English-speakers to recognize allusions to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton? What happened to the idea of the classical tradition?
Honestly, does it matter?
thank STEM
>>788694
This. When uni started to be about educating you for a niche profession.
>>788689
Greco-Roman allusions are superboring. Makes you sound like a pretentious 19th century snob.
>>788690
Hmm, think about internet memes; one essential part of their function is that they are often referencing something (with more memetic mutation it can build up several layers of references in one go).
If such things had no matter to folks, youed hardly see like on the chans. But really they do, so you do. Making references is just a plain fun form of intellectual play.
>>788689
teach your kids whatever you want op
Who gives a shit about pretentious dead poets besides stuffy english professors and the fedoras at the front of the class?
>>788689
We had a massive cringelord classmate who unironically uses "methinks" and "thou."
>>788690
It matters if we want to understand what counted as 'high culture' for centuries in Britain and in Western Europe generally.
>>788689
The use of Greco-Roman allusions and insertion of Latin Phrases without translation is not only snob as fuck, but the European version of WE WUZ phenomena as fuck.
>>788689
Plebs took over the education.
>>788703
The Internet took its other role, by virtue of being both better and cheaper. If you want to read Homer or Milton you can download them for free, rather than looking for rare physical copies at expensive university archives.
>>788769
>Using the universal language is the same as using ebonics
The US and American culture happened
>>789200
Wasn't talking about language you git.
Was talking about using Greco-Roman allusions and utilizing untranslated Latin Expressions to form a bridge between British Protestant culture with Greco-Roman. Which is pretty WEWUZ as fuck.
Without sounding too /pol/ I think it started in the 70's when the new left started to become an influence in academia. Wheras before there was a Canon of stuff that was considered Important and Great, they started to deconstruct those ideas, who is deciding what is Important and why.
Don't get me wrong, I think Homer and Virgil et Al, are the best, but these days it's considered more important to study the discourse of why I think they're the best from a political side rather than an artistic side. Eg have dastardly white supremacist hegemonic professors brainwashed me into thinking the western Canon is good.
>>789230
>The US and American culture
Arent those the same thing?
>>788689
It depends who you have regular discourse with. Highly educated, often higher or upper social class status people (but not always) still make and recognise allusions to the classics. However, with literacy and general education amongst the general population much higher and of better quality than previously, popular culture replaced classical tradition as a form of social belonging and recognition.
In short, quoting a meme is the new quoting Homer.
>>789245
>Implying that British Protestant culture is not descended from Greco-Roman culture.
>>788689
I was reading Phaeton's Chariot Ride in Book 2 of Metamorphoses on the way to work one day. Later that day, I crashed the company car. Then on the way home I recognized my allusion to Ovid.
>>788689
The nationalist belief that only material sciences matter led to the humanities being underfunded and ignored
Right-wing politicians also often fear the humanities due to its left-wing nature
>>789299
>The right wing fear classical tradition
Do you even know what right wing means, where the term comes from.
Now we have more relevant references. Until the advent of mass media, people could only reference the little they had in common. Often, this was very old texts.
Something like Paradise Lost isn't at all relevant to modern Americans, so why should we remember it?
>>789289
Not any more than Arab culture is
>>789247
It's quite the opposite. The old left led to right-wing fears of subversion, so literature and philosophy were defunded in favor of Good Christian Positivist studies like engineering and chemistry.
This phenomenon occurred soon after the war, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
>>789316
No shit
>>789308
The modern right has no concern for any traditions preceding the early 20th century. Monarchism is dead, as is any belief in a return to tradition ideological paradigms.
The only major right-wing advocate for the classical tradition is not a politician but instead an obscure theologian from Hertfordshire who teaches at Nottingham.
>>789289
>Protestants
>Le FUCK USING LATIN people
>Descended from Greco-Roman culture.
>>789340
Bastard Fuedalism was a great idea. We should get it going again.
>>788690
no cultural continuity of high classical western art = no true culture
it isn't a matter of disparaging antiquated works; this is endemic to our sexular civilization, and ultimately ties into the lie of "progress." why does any knowledge of past matter?
>>789723
*secular
>>788689
There is nothing wrong abot focusing on contemporary works of art.
>>789728
Honestfam I prefer Sexular civilization.
>>789340
Scruton? Dalrymple? Amis?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebfjuk2fHJo
Secularization of education. That is, for instance, when learning at least one classical language ceased to be part of a standard education.
>>789340
What 'modern right' are we talking here? If you mean a political party and those associated with them that seek to win democratic elections, those are leftist by definition.
(Ps the american revolution was a masonic plot).
>>788689
Memes. That's literally what they are, and when that historical pop culture ceased to be popular it was replaced with Star Wars and Casablanca and John Wayne references and so on and so forth.
>>788726
ebin, whats your twitter
>>788689
Liberalism, marxism and other revolutionary ideologies, with their vicious assaults on everything traditional and great.
There is the fact the majority of people couldn't recognise references anyway at any given point. Literacy levels may have risen but I doubt very much proportionally the same thing has happened to recognition of the classics.
Mass media has lowered the bar of entry to public life. You don't need to reference a classic now for recognition, just have popular appeal.
And the idea of classics has fallen out of favour in the west generally for political reasons. First are egalitarian education reforms that silently attacked standards so everyone could reach a minimum. Second, it's increasingly politically unpopular to say "the classics are best" because you get accused of chauvinism or worse. In Europe, the church fell out of favour in huge swathes of countries because they were part of the state and encouraged people to go to war. The devastation to communities caused by the world wars made people lost faith in the institutions and establishment like never before. Classical, rigorous education gets lumped in with this and has slowly disappeared replaced by a far more ideological, abstract and lazy type of education
>>789230
>tfw culture victory soon
>>789230
They were still very important up until the last century or so. James Garfield was regarded as one of the best orators of his day and his speeches were regularly full of classical allusions, Latin phrases and such.
>>788689
Tradition got more subtle I'd say
Plus, have you read much older English poetry?
The allusions are so forced it just becomes a trapping of artifice.
