Why I Love Teaching, part 94.

Last week, I walked out of this class because the vast majority hadn't read the novel. Today - though a few still didn't have a copy, the class was intellectually stimulating, virtually everyone had something to say, they took the theoretical ball and ran with it to interesting places - everything went swimmingly.

The core text was Geoffrey Trease's Bows Against The Barons, a 1930s Marxist take - for kids - on the Robin Hood story. It's quite a good adventure novel in its own right, but we talked about all sorts of aspects: whether the novel form itself cannot be leftwing, how much political commentary can a narrative bear before it generates reader resistance, potential audiences, whether all children's literature is propagandist, and how more modern texts communicate class anxiety. We ended up discussing TOWIE and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding as examples of disciplinary texts, i.e. work which mark out Others to make you aware of what you shouldn't be/do.

There's no adaptation of Bows Against The Barons, but here's a clip from the children's comedy Maid Marian and her Merry Men, spoofing amusing adventure game The Crystal Maze

And so to bed…

Well, I feel like going to bed. It's been a long day. I will say though that I really enjoyed my seminar with the 3rd-years. We did Munday's conservative, poor-but-interesting The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington from 1599 (crudely hacked into two not very good plays) in which Robin is a thoroughly good aristocratic chap and never poses any sort of threat to feudal society, and Geoffrey Trease's 1930 socialist propagandist take on Robin, Bows Against The Barons.

The class really enjoyed the Trease: he's pretty realistic and writes characters and plots with considerable facility. And of course, he's completely right. It's a fascinating negotiation of 1930s debates about socialism: the relationship of vanguard parties to the proletariat, the dangers of Strong Leaders, the need to reject racial division, monarchy, religion and hierarchies. Highly recommended.

Next week it's a pair of plays on the thorny subjects of class and money: Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts and Carryl Churchill's Serious Money.