Some students are complaining about all that "Old English" language in the reading assignment for Sports Literature class. All those old-timey words slow them down. Can't they read something more, like, modern?
I know what you're wondering: What are Old English texts doing in a Sports Literature class? Did someone declare dragon-killing a sport?
The problem, of course, is that students apply the phrase "Old English" to any word not in their everyday spoken vocabulary, like gossamer or spheroid or even converged. In this case, they're complaining about Bernard Malamud's The Natural, published in 1952.
That's right: 1952.
That's something like modern, but the students don't even know it.
3 comments:
After modern, even!
But oh, you SHOULD teach some early sporting literature! Dragons! Tilting! Don Quixote comes to mind!
WAY better than baseball!
Oh definitely! Although I'm not sure what you mean by "better than baseball." Is anything better than baseball?
We might have a slight disagreement there. Baseball is marginally better than NFL football, NHL hockey, and yacht racing. Other than that, certainly better than bear baiting or bull baiting.
Cycling! Now there's a sport!
Fencing! Yay!
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