Shakespeare's Politics [antikvár]

Political Philosophy and Poetry <«1 INTRODUCTION ^ i The most striking fact about contemporary university students is that there is no longer any canon of books which forms their taste and their imagination. In general, they do not look at all to books when they meet problems in life or try to think about their goals; there are no literary models for their conceptions of virtue and vice. This state of affairs itself reflects the deeper fact of the decay of the common understanding of—and agreement on—first principles that is characteristic of our times. The role once played by the Bible and Shakespeare in the education of the English-speaking peoples is now largely played by popular journalism or the works of ephemeral authors. This does not mean that the classic authors are no longer read; they are perhaps read more and in greater variety than ever before. But they do not move; they do not seem to speak to the situation of the modem young; they are not a part of the furniture of the student's mind, once he is out of the academic atmosphere.