The Battle Of The Titans

By Julian Sudre

Pitting Amy Winehouse against Shakespeare is certainly at odds in the literary world, but now an illustrious university is using the singer’s lyrics against the works of Raleigh in an exam.

The main thrust of the exam was not to compare the incomparable but to distinctively pore over the specific resemblances of the Elizabethan-age poet and contemporary drug-addled pop star. And it’s not the first time that students are required to apply their analytical skills to such eyebrow-raising exam questions.

Both individuals pertain to an artistic background that wants expressing itself by conjuring words of cathartic importance. While Sir Raleigh calls forth imagery of religious undertones with the tactful pen of a genius, Winehouse relates to her troubles with less philosophical obscurity but nevertheless punches her words with mellifluous catchiness.

So when Cambridge University surprised its students with Winehouse prose during an exam, clamour and outcry resounded as a result. As it was noted by one student, no one could have expected and well, cheated the final exam questions. But a spokesperson from Cambridge University added that it was not unusual to compare pieces by different writers. "Love Is A Losing Game" by Amy Winehouse and "As You Came From The Holy Land" by Sir Walter Raleigh were not meant to be eye-rollers or to dumb down savagely the elitist capacity of the school that reflects an air of rigidity. Tactfully, Cambridge knows when to doff his rigid PC straitjacket and pepper his exams with a pinch of coolness.

A kind of subliminal message that conveys it is getting "with it" and understands its students better than we would think. But at the other end of the spectrum, the eeyorish vision of pop star that can barely handle herself sends a Dantean shiver of discomfort down the education panel's spine.

Having Ms Winehouse on the literary throne may perform erroneously a second-rate publicity stunt and without attempting to raise her standard from half-baked writer to class-act prima dona, it should be sensibly added that, on the whole, the main focus here is on the lyrics of her song not on the person. Taking into context her talent as a singer leaving aside the ambiguous correlation between her persona and Cambridge simply proves that it is possible to peruse diametrically opposed artists which perhaps, in a way, are not that different. Of course, Winehouse won't begin to be a patch on the likes of Raleigh, but what she does well, and so does Cambridge is the connection with a wide public. Both have the ability to provoke mixed feelings of mockery and honour.

Cambridge is smart. It retains the faculty to bait and titillate the spectators and its selective appetite adorns its idiosyncratic intelligence. There is no denying that it knows fully well it can't afford to make a mistake. The Winehouse tack is a disguised way to preen itself.

After all, Oxford university - its competitor - is watching every single move and it would be too delicious a victory if it had the opportunity to checkmate it.