A Life Beyond Boundaries

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Benedict Anderson. A Life Beyond Boundaries

A Life Beyond. Boundaries. Benedict Anderson

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Shifting Youth

Chapter 2. Area Studies

Chapter 3. Fieldwork

Chapter 4. Frameworks of Comparison

Chapter 5. Interdisciplinary

Chapter 6. Retirement and Liberation

Afterword

On the Typeface

Index

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Preface

1 Shifting Youth

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I remember only two teachers. One was Raef Payne, a young man who taught English literature and had the temerity to introduce us to T. S. Eliot (by then an old man, and a Nobel Prize winner). This was our only taste of post-Edwardian literature at all. The usual English literature syllabus mainly covered up to the late nineteenth century, and the teaching of poetry in class stuck to certain set patterns like rhyme with limited length. It was highly unusual then to be taught the poetry of Eliot, which did not follow the standard conventions. The young English teacher also managed the annual school play, usually Shakespeare, and handled well the whistles and screams that always came when a boy was assigned to play any of the female roles. ‘Don’t be idiots,’ he would say. ‘In Shakespeare’s time all actors of female parts were boys like you.’

The other memorable teacher was our intimidating Head Master, Sir Robert Birley, who, surprisingly, taught an excellent class on poetry that greatly increased my appreciation of verse. Rather than simply comparing several poems and analyzing their different lengths or rhyming styles, he would pick a poem by Kipling, for example, analyse its composition and explain its historical background. It was also he who taught me that beauty and virtue need not be the same and that poets who wrote splendid poems were not necessarily wonderful people.

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