People don't always like the Literature requirement of taking Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and there isn't much official communication about why we have to take them. Here are some reasons that I've heard or thought about:
- They're a vestige of traditional Literature education — back thirty years ago, all you studied as a Lit major (or equivalent) was old white men. Now we study a much wider range of writing, but there's a little bit of that left.
- Robyn says that part of the reason we study those three is because they each changed the English language.
- Nobody knows, especially since our founder was not a fan of them: "we were asked (though perhaps not expected) to get through piles of Shakespeare (whom he called a misogynist), Chaucer ('just pretend it’s horribly misspelled'), and Milton (again, no favorite of Mudrick's)".
- They show that Lit is a "hard" major.
- For bragging rights.
- To inspire debate about the literary canon.
- To understand allusions and references (but then why not include the Greek and Roman epics or the King James Bible?).
- Because they're old white men.
- Because they're just that good.
- Because they're challenging.
- Because it'd be ridiculous to get a Lit degree without having read them.
- Because it sounded like a good idea at the time.
For one of the three, we used to be able to substitute a class about a significant author if taught in the original language; now we can substitute various single-author classes (ask your advisor for details).
