Hirsch

Hirsch hesitantly stipulates that "literature includes any text worthy to be taught to students by teachers of literature, when these texts are not being taught to students in other departments of a school or university" (50). I understand that Hirsch is attempting to provide a definition that does not "confine and constrict the subject [of literature] in a way that makes the teaching and study of literature more narrow and one-sided" (48) (as he thinks all other definitions of literature have done), but I find this definition aggravatingly vague and unhelpful.

My first problem with this definition is that it discourages departmental overlap of subject matter. Because the Philosophy department teaches Plato's "Republic", it is unworthy for a literature professor to teach. This element of Hirsch's definition seems to be causing the very sort of constricting definition he's trying so hard to avoid. Literature is not confined to the English classroom.

Secondly, I wonder which literature is "worthy to be taught." I am unclear as to who decides the worthiness of the literature. I suppose that Hirsch is suggesting that "teachers of literature" decide worthiness, but do they each decide individually, or is there an annual meeting of the literature teachers where they collectively decide which literature is or is not worthy? (Perhaps this conference of literature teachers could be the same weekend as an educated native speakers conference, wherein all ENS decide on a set of grammar rules. Majority vote rules.) It seems far too subjective to allow literature to be whatever one teacher declares it to be. Also, why are the literature teachers the go-to authority here? What about writers, scholars, copy editors?

Grammar

Hirsch contends that "All sophisticated linguists know that their job is to formulate explicit rules for what is implicitly known by every native speaker. The native speaker is the court of last resort; he can never be wrong; only the grammarian can be" (47). With this as a basic premise, he decides that "every attempt to make [a single definition of literature], without exception, has ended up being a stipulative definition...which stipulates how the world literature ought to be used, but entirely fails to define how it actually is used by great numbers of educated native speakers" (49).

I love grammar and think it's invaluable to conveying a message through language, but I also understand that part of the beauty of language is the way native speakers bend the rules and evolve the language. I think, however, that Hirsch places too much emphasis on how much sway educated native speakers ought to have on a language (Side note -- Why are they educated native speakers? It seems to me that undereducated native speakers may have even more ability to change a language). Hirsch leaves unanswered what percentage of educated native speakers have to use grammar in a certain way. Since a native speaker "can never be wrong," it seems that a problem would arise when two native speakers disagreed about language usage. Do we need/ought we to have separate sets of language/grammar? Do we already have these multiple sets?