Teaching English in the Far East

William Empson

I am afraid this may prove rather a gossipy Inaugural Lecture but I feel it is the main thing I have to offer on this occasion. I could talk, instead, about my theoretical books, which have been mainly about double meanings in literature, and the mechanics of how they have a literary effect: but I haven’t found that that has much to do with teaching literature, in my experience so far, so it is perhaps not very relevant here. In fact, I have generally tried to put off my Far Eastern students from reading my books, which I thought would only worry and distract them. They have sometimes taught me something theoretical, or so I thought, when I had to consider why they found something difficult to learn; but that is another matter.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions

[*] According to one account, Empson’s students discovered an unwonted ambiguity in the last stanza of Housman’s ‘On the Idle Hill of Summer’:

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

‘If you’re bored with women,’ the students apparently responded, ‘you might as well join the army.’