I think you're talking past one another
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I think this focus comes at the expense of understanding the text as a text. For instance, at my university (which was not a bad one) almost nobody knew what iambic pentameter was by the second year of or studies. We had, however, been exposed to a good deal of ...
... poststructuralist criticism, feminism, marxism and race studies in our first year. These things are all well and good, but when they come at the expense of basic knowledge of meter, form, etc. then the study of literature suffers - (okay, I'm finished)