Who was that Shakespeare guy again?
I’ve just read a scary story about literary ignorance in Britain. Published at Ananova, some of the most frightening results of a survey of 3000 people are:
- One third of people didn’t know Shakespeare wrote plays (many thought he’d been a king!)
- A quarter didn’t know John Keats was a poet
- And for me, the most shocking, is that more than two thirds didn’t know A A Milne was a writer. Hello?! Winnie the Pooh
?!
The scariest part is that I suspect the results might be even worse here in Australia - both if the survey asked about British writers, and perhaps worse if it asked about Australian writers, who don’t get anywhere near enough air time here.
I don’t want to be a big literary snob, but when people like - well, I don’t even want to mention their names in my blog, but typical celebrities of today who make the headlines despite having no skills or personality - are the names everybody knows, and people in Britain don’t know who Shakespeare was - well, I think that’s a pretty sad state of affairs. I’m not saying everyone should memorise a Keats poem or read the complete works of Shakespeare, but is just a little bit of awareness too much to ask for?
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Yes I agree. We should love culture. We should explore the poetic and literary dimension that we have sleeping inside us.
Greetings from an unlnowledgelly poor writer of Barcelona.