Oh, The Humanities!

I recently downloaded to my iPod an episode from TVO featuring an award-winning lecturer speaking on W.B. Yeats.

I'll grant that the talk was entertaining, but this guy did not know his stuff. Is this the best we get in university Humanities departments these days?

For example: he referred to Michael Collins as President of Ireland. He was Minister of Finance. He spoke of Padraic Pearse being strapped to a board because of injuries in order to be shot. Pearse survived the Easter Uprising without major injuries; the lecturer is probably thinking of John Connolly, who was tied to a chair. Then he claimed that the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by Crusaders; it was overthrown by the Turks in 1453.

Okay, so history is not his field—even history directly related to his field.

But he also asserted that Yeats' poem “Down by the Salley Gardens” was autobiographical, and referred to an island be used to enjoy visiting. Yeats himself pointed out that the poem was a reconstruction of an old Irish poem, “Ye Rambling Boys of Pleasure,” in which the “salley gardens” already appear.

The universities have somehow become isolated, stagnant pools of misinformation, rumour, and urban legend. Truth is more likely to be found on the Internet. I chalk this up to the free exchange of ideas and information.