Unlike engineering, the whole English literature curriculum in high school is built around reading particular works by particular historical writers. The highlights of nineteenth-century literature should have been well covered in high school (and beyond - some of these people are seniors in college!). An English major who cannot remember any works or authors from the nineteenth century would be equivalent to engineering major who can't remember any algebra.
Random funny story (presented with a devious agenda of course)—I tutored folks in an “math for non-stem majors” sort of math class in college. I was pretty good at it generally (I think as an engineering student I was closer to their material than the math students, who’d all long ago moved on to the big-brain stuff). But at some point they started asking about foils, which was pretty confusing (they weren’t looking for anachronistically named projector slides, challenging me to a duel, or preserving their lunch). It turns out FOIL is a mnemonic for applying the distributive property twice, which I’d never seen, having just remembered the underlying thing directly.
I wonder if these college English students have similarly forgotten some names? I guess that’s sort of a long shot. I do think memorization of facts should be avoided, though, whenever it is possible to instead integrate the underlying principle into your mental model instead.
I guess it depends on how much you honour those who lit the way before you.
As the joke goes, 'I want some of what he's smoking.' Just. Wow.
Names are trivia, imo. The memorization of trivia is… it happens of course, but it is just a symptom of learning.