...oh, wait, Britten wrote a "Turn of the Screw" opera. No wonder you're defending it. :P
You've got me there. I did come to the story through the opera--and honestly I still prefer the opera because, well, it has music, and Henry James' prose strikes me as oddly impenetrable--but having read a couple of books on each since then, I think both the book and the opera have a lot to say.
(You have a very good point about the portrayal of children, which I need to think more about. The children in Britten's opera seem more real to me, in part because they get to speak with their own voices whereas in the story they're mediated by the governess and how she chooses to tell their tale. But Britten was probably even more obsessed by innocence than James, so, yeah...)
When it comes to the literary canon, I guess I dislike the notion that it operates on a one-in-one-out model. While the gates of the canon need to be opened much wider, I prefer to think of it as being extended rather than moved completely. Because I have gotten quite a bit out of the dead white men even though I'm neither dead nor a man.
(Obviously there are limits in terms of how much you can teach in a typical class, but this just means that teachers will have more options to choose from.)
no subject
You've got me there. I did come to the story through the opera--and honestly I still prefer the opera because, well, it has music, and Henry James' prose strikes me as oddly impenetrable--but having read a couple of books on each since then, I think both the book and the opera have a lot to say.
(You have a very good point about the portrayal of children, which I need to think more about. The children in Britten's opera seem more real to me, in part because they get to speak with their own voices whereas in the story they're mediated by the governess and how she chooses to tell their tale. But Britten was probably even more obsessed by innocence than James, so, yeah...)
When it comes to the literary canon, I guess I dislike the notion that it operates on a one-in-one-out model. While the gates of the canon need to be opened much wider, I prefer to think of it as being extended rather than moved completely. Because I have gotten quite a bit out of the dead white men even though I'm neither dead nor a man.
(Obviously there are limits in terms of how much you can teach in a typical class, but this just means that teachers will have more options to choose from.)