on English 300

I really enjoyed this class. It's refreshing to occasionally take a class that reminds me why I chose to be a Lit major. The texts and discusssions renewed my interest, and Dr. Sexson has the ability to make you excited about literature. Moreover, I actually learned quite a bit. I thought we were just going to spend a few weeks on each school of criticism and I'm so glad we didn't because going through texts like Arnold, Keats, and Plato, using the poem, and reading Don Quixote helped me learn much more about criticism because we looked at the foundations of literary criticism. Very well done, I enjoyed it immensely.

on Don Quixote 13

I have finished the book. It was long and arduous, but possibly the most worthwhile read of my life. I absolutely loved it, Ive been telling almost everybody I know (who reads) about it. Even though Dr. Sexson read the ending in class awhile ago, i was still rather sad when i read it again, I have invested months into this book so it was sad to see Don Quixote die. Here's some final thoughts on the book.

- the second part is better than the first. The windmill story is the most famous (probably because lots of people dont read the whole book), but I found others like the wooden horse, the puppet show and the the talking bust at the end to be just as comical. There's a lot more in the way of literary criticism in the second half I think too, because there are so many little stories that can be taken so many different ways.

- I found it interesting that Cervantes made so much mention of the fake Don Quixote by Avellaneda. He missed no opportunity to refute it and call it crap. He even let it become part of the story because it persuaded DQ to not go to Zaragoza just so he could prove the story wrong. You can definately see Cervantes' feelings coming through DQ whenever the book is mentioned. It's mentioned alot too, when the two gentlemen are reading it in the inn, when DQ goes to the printing house in Barcelona, and when Altisadora says the devils are playing with it in hell. It's kind of a backhand way form of intertexuality, because Cervantes made the fake DQ part of his book.

- Sancho having to whip himself and get slapped by the duennas was one of the funniest things in the whole book I thought.

- I was disappointed that DQ's defeat, which should be one of the biggest events in the story, takes roughly 2 pages. Some stories like the Roque Guinart, or the noble people acting like shepherds take up much more space. Even the preparation for his staged fight against the footman in front of the duke took longer and they didnt even end up fighting. The Knight of the White Moon shows up and defeats DQ in much less time than it deserved. I wish Cervantes would have made a bigger spectacle out of it or at least didn't make it seem so sudden.

- If I ever own a horse I'm going to name it Rocinante.

on Don Quixote 12

This entry is basically just to say how Don Quixote has infiltrated almost every facet of my life.
1) I was driving the other day and this 1980's beat-up Volvo passes me and it has "Rocinante" written on the back. I started laughing but my passenger just thought I was weird.

2) My father was talking the other day and he used a proverb about something, I can't remember what it was exactly, but then I said, "you're like Sancho Panza" or something to that effect. Luckily my dad has read Don Quixote so he got it, but still, it's weird that my first comment is about DQ.

3) At the risk of sounding creepy, i have this minor infatuation with a random girl. I've never spoke to her or even know her name, but I see her all over campus. I saw her at a restaurant I was at with some of my friends and I tried to express my feelings more eloquently than just saying "I like this girl" so I tried using all sorts of phrases like holy grail, unicorn, paramour (although that is completely incorrect) and muse, but the only one that I thought really worked was "She's my Dulcinea" which made no sense to my friends of course. Unlike DQ i have actually seen this woman, but its still seemed appropriate and it was actually one of the first things I thought of. Weird.

So basically I find DQ coming up in the oddest places throughout my day, and I continue to find new ways that references fit into my day to day speech.

on Don Quixote 11

on page 771, Dona Rodriguez is telling DQ about the issues that the duchess has on her legs and she says that "all that glitters is not gold". This is interesting for several reasons. One: if you wikipedia the phrase, it attributes its origin to Portia in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. That play was written in 1598ish almost 20 years before this second half of DQ. From what I've read, Cervantes was never even aware of Shakespeare, which makes one wonder if that is true and if maybe he stole a line, or if great minds do really think alike and they both came up with the same line independent of each other. That would be really cool if the latter was the case. Two: it is more probable that, since this is an English translation, Edith Grossman was familiar with Shakespeare's phrase and found that it would work nicely for Cervantes' similar one. Since it could maybe be translated differently it would cease to be the exact same phrase. In this case, Edith Grossman is a victim of intertextuality since she could not escape the similarities that the two works shared. Either way, I found it interesting that there was another connection, albeit a small one between the two great writers.

on New Criticim and Reader Response

Apparently I agree with Stanley Fish because i think it is impossible to look at a text without bringing in your personal feelings or meanings. No reader can totally seperate themselves from their own knowledge and background and other readings that they have done. This is why new Criticism sucks, because I don't think someone can truly do it. Some New Critic might read a text a certain way and say they got the meaning completely from the text, but in some instances they wouldn't be able to get that meaning without reading other texts or relying on their own experiences. For example, T.S. Eliot intersperses so many latin phrases and allusions to other classical works in his poems, one cannot understand the poem simply by itself without understanding those other works, which completely debunks New Criticism in my opinion.

I was under the impression that Dr. Sexson quoted that Donne poem in its entirety today, which was why I was so confused that it could be about a dissolving marriage based on those short lines. Incorrect. I looked it up and there's a lot more to the poem and after reading more of it it does become apparent that it is about a couple splitting up. However, if we truly don't believe that an author's intent should matter, why can't it be about death or something else besides desertion? A few posts ago I mentioned that we can discover the author's intent because it is often times the most obvious one. This poem proves my point. Donne intended for it to be about a break up. By saying that it isn't about death and that it's about a break up, we have unintentionally proved my point.

on Don Quixote 10

I just noticed that in an earlier blog I said that I'm a psychoanalysis. That really ruins my credibility when I write dumb things.

On page 738 and 754 we find out that the Countess Trifaldi and the enchanted Dulcinea who appeared in the forest before DQ and Sancho were both played by men. When I first read this I thought there was an accident and that they meant that the man had played her squire Trifaldin, but Sancho notices that he looks the same as the duenna too. When i realized that it wasn't a mistake I found it hilarious because it is just one more extreme that the duke and duchess went to while tricking DQ. It might also be Cervantes nod to theater at the time, since all the parts were played by men (at least in English drama, is the same true for Spanish?).

on good literature

How about this: Good literature is a combination of good writing and good storytelling.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, debating what makes good literature and what makes more low level romance novel trash. I can even divide it up into a Frye-like graph

bad writing/ bad storytelling: the prose is terrible, simple, unintelligent writing. The story sucks, meaning numerous things; the plot is underdeveloped or there is no plot, characters are flat, themes suck, etc.
EX: romance novels

bad writing/ good storytelling: The story is inventive and engaging, but the writing is elementary, language is bland, etc.
EX: Tom Clancy novels, Twilight series.

good writing/ bad storytelling: Writing is exceptional, smart, clever, educated, but story is not at all interesting, and/or especially difficult to the point of confusion and loss of interest.
EX: I know this is heresy, but I want to put Portrait of the Artist in here. I think Joyce is a brilliant man and his writing is far superior to most people, but this book was so boring and uninspiring (in my opinion) that it really wasn't that a good story. Joyce's earlier stuff in the Dubliners was much better I thought because those were actually some decent stories. I would like to put henry James in this mode as well. good writer, but not that good of stories.

good writing/ good storytelling: writing is intellectual and challenging, etc., story is engaging, engrossing, enjoyable, etc.
EX: Don Quixote, Shakespeare.

I came up with this groundbreaking theory in my capstone class where we are looking at non-Shakespearian renaissance drama. There were many other good playwrights in Shakespeare's time, and some of their plays were just as engaging and inventive as Shakespeare's, but it is easy to notice a difference between Shakespeare and his counterparts and it lies in the one-liners and soliloquoys and the way someone can say they're in love. In essence, the writing is was seperates Shakespeare. So then I got to thinking that this combination of good writing and good storytelling could be the key to defining good literature. Obviously much of this rests on reader's opinion still, but all attempts to place value on literature has to do that to some extent. My theory is not perfected but it's getting there.

On first presentations

The first presentations went really well i thought. I thought both groups were very creative in their presentations, although i must admit that the new criticism group might have slightly stole some of my group's thunder since there are some similarities. For this reason I feel I must make it clear that any similarities are purely coincidental and that the script for our presentation was completely written before they presented. Great minds think alike.

I do not like New Criticism. It might be because I have been wading through it all semester in my 371 class. In my estimation of New Criticism (at least what we do in 371, perhaps there are other methods of new criticism that are ok), you miss the forest for the trees. You are so focused on stupid little things like how the color black works throughout the story or why the word splurge comes up so frequently that you miss the big picture. New criticism has the potential to suck any and all enjoyment out of a text, which it has done without fail in 371. Literature should be enjoyed, not ripped apart and analyzed under a microscope, especially when a lot of that analysis tends to be so far fetched and unimportant. I hate it.

I think I'm a psychoanalysis maybe. It seems coincidental that my critic, Julia Kristeva, was a psychoanalyst, and my group presentation is on psychoanalysis, yet in my research I discovered, to my delight, that psychoanalysts get to look at the author and not just discard him like so many other schools of literary criticism. I like this because I still refuse to say that authorial intent has no bearing on a work. new critics will say that we don't know what an author meant, and I say bull, and then they say that we can't ask them so we don't know for sure. We as English majors are not so stupid and infantile that we need an author to come forward in an interview and say "I meant such an such when i wrote this", because if we truly know how to read a work we should be able to figure this out on our own. An author shouldnt insult our intelligence by outlining their intention in a biography. I'm not saying that we can always specifically know what an author meant all the time, but we can usually get close, and often there are several meanings, and often, God forbid, it is just meant to entertain. I would say that more often than not, the most obvious meaning of a work is the one that the author's intent. Thats all for now.

on Don Quixote 9

I laughed out loud when Sancho was leaving to his governorship and DQ was giving him advice on how to be a good governor. DQ had just finished scolding Sancho for using proverbs in his speech so often, but then in the next paragraph he himself says, "Be moderate in sleeping, for the man who does not get up with the sun does not possess the day; and remember, Sancho, that dilligence is the mother of good fortune, and sloth, her opposite, never reached the conclusion demanded by good intentions" (734). I thought this was a perfect example of how Sancho and DQ switch roles from time to time. Another part where this happens is when Sancho is governor and he speaks very wisely when deciding cases and such. He speaks like Don Quixote sometimes, then reverts back to his old speech with a proverb every other phrase. Cervantes dose such a good job of gradually making Sancho and Don Quixote rub off on each other.

on 3rd round of apologies

I was in the second and there were very few people there so I don't feel the need to blog on it, those who were there know what the rest of the class missed.

Ji-won made a great point that I had never really considered before. She said how lucky we are because almost everything is translated into English. I had never thought of this but it is so true. We are completely spoiled, we have such a selection of books to read, regardless of what language they were originally written in. I began to consider some of my favorite books and they contain DQ, 100 years of solitude, love in the time of cholera, crime and punishment, and obviously the Bible. all of these are translations, and I doubt all of them are available in Korean or many other languages, yet I have access to all of them. That really surprised me to think about that, I suppose I have always just taken it for granted that so many books are translated to English.
P.s.- Ji-won speaks much better english than many of my friends, good work, bravo

on Don Quixote 8

I WILL FINISH THIS BOOK. I'm still going to blog on Don Quixote because I'm still reading it and I find it relates to just about everything, not just stuff we've talked about in class. On page 708 the Countess Trifaldi says "I have believed that from virtuous and harmonious republics poets must be banished, as Plato advised" and when I read that I was like, "WOW". It was so cool to see how something we specifically talked about in class without even mentioning its connection to DQ could come up in the book too. Tons of things went through my head-- how its almost creepy it is that some of things we've discussed in class are coming up in almost everything i read now, how it gets more and more obvious everytime i read DQ why we chose to read this book in a literary criticism class, how intertextuality is alive and well, etc. I definately agree that the second half of the book is better, but it almost might be because Im reading it with a better understanding than I did the first part. I bet if I went back and read part 1 again I would catch a lot more things.

paper

and here's my paper

Apology for Literature

In a consumer-driven world, we feel the need to constantly assign values to everything. Nothing is allowed to just stand alone as its own reward. So whether it is money, possessions, or status, the material gain you can get from something is usually what determines its value. Sancho Panza, ever the realist, subscribed to this notion by saying, “nowadays, wealth is better than wisdom: an ass covered in gold seems better than a saddled horse” (589). This idea is applied to fields of study just like everything else. Unless a major can guarantee you a high salary, your choice of job-offers and the promises of “success”, it is generally considered to be useless. English Literature happens to be one of these disparaged degrees, which forces us to constantly be defending it. Sidney wrote his apology for poetry as a defense against historians and philosophers, but today those two schools would be lumped together with Literature in the humanities. Nowadays we must defend our studies against our Engineering, Architecture, and Business counterparts. While some may find this a hard thing to do, I find it a rather simple task, given that the benefits of studying literature are so glaringly obvious to me.
For one, the study of literature teaches one how to think. It could be said that majors like math, engineering, and chemistry are basically the perfection and memorization of formulas, equations and tests. In no way is that a bad thing, but it constrains the mind in a way that prohibits creative and analytical thought. In literature there are no set rules; no equations to follow; no absolute truth or ways to prove something one way or another. Literature is not bounded by scientific reasoning. For this reason, those who study it learn to think in a way that cannot be achieved by studying the sciences or business. One must learn to think for oneself to be a Literature major. Literature students cannot follow a pattern of proofs to come to conclusions; they must use their minds to discover their own meanings. Studying literature teaches us how to think on our own, a skill that is invaluable in almost any profession, English-related or not.
Secondly, studying literature is the best way to develop decent communication skills. Articulation and proper use of language are skills whose values are limitless. What good is an idea if it cannot be properly communicated? Misunderstandings have been the downfalls of civilizations and the causes of war. Literature teaches expression and rhetoric. Without literature, we would have a 1984-style language, with words removed and the language simplified, rendering Earth a boring and expressionless place to live.
Thirdly, literature is one of the most powerful things in the world. Look at the billions of people whose religious beliefs are based on the study of a Holy Book. Look at the effect of Hitler’s propaganda. Look at Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the hastening to civil war that it brought on. Literature can persuade, direct, convince and teach when it is used properly, so it makes sense that we should study this powerful tool to understand how we can employ it in a beneficial manner.
Finally, and most importantly, literature gives insight into the human condition that no other study can. If engineering and business are the practical side of life, literature is the passionate side. Ask someone what makes life worth living, and the answer rarely settles on money or a job, but can usually be traced back to an emotion. The love of family. The joy of skiing. The pride in an accomplishment. Ask them what were the worst times of their life and once again it goes back to an emotion. The pain of death or of a break-up. Guilt from a mistake. Depression. Fear. If the heights and depths of human existence are marked by emotions, why is the one field of study that explores these emotions so often disparaged? We can read a history book and know that we declared independence in 1776, yet we can not understand the fervor and passion of patriotism without the writings of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. We are told that the Civil War was fought to end the cruelty of slavery, but cruelty is just a word until we see the suffering of the slaves through the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglas to tell us. We know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but we can’t imagine the fear they had without the writings of Anne Frank. Literature lets us understand each other; allows us to empathize with each other in a way that could not be possible with other studies.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, John Steinbeck said:
The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication, nor any membership in literature.

The study of Literature is the study of what is truly important. It can give hope. It can teach. It can create compassion. It can make us laugh. It can make us cry. It makes us understand why we do certain things. So, as long as there are humans and human emotions, literature will be necessary, and the study of it invaluable.

speech

here's the speech in my class, it's slightly different than my paper and didn't touch on everything the paper did

In a consumer-driven world, we feel the need to constantly assign values to everything, usually based on material gain. Something is not worthwhile if it doesn’t lead to money, careers, possessions, or status. Obviously this applies to college as well. If a major does not guarantee multiple job offers and a high salary, it is supposedly worthless and unpractical, which is usually where literature falls. Sidney defended his poetry against historians and philosophers, but today we must defend ourselves against Engineers, Businessmen, and Architects, those “practical” majors. But I say this, if engineering and business are the practical side, then Literature is the passionate side. Ask any reasonable person what makes their life worth living, and their answer undoubtedly reverts back to an emotion. The love of family, the joy of skiing, the pride of an accomplishment. Ask them what makes their life miserable, and again the answer revolves around emotions. The pain of a death or break-up, the guilt of a mistake, depression, fear. Intangible things, not material possessions. So if the heights and depths of human existence are demarked by emotions, why are studies that deal with bridges and drain fields and math (the practical) so highly-valued, while literature is not? Literature IS emotion. History tells us that we declared independence in 1776, but we can’t understand the fervor and passion of patriotism without reading Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry. The Civil War was fought to end the cruelty of slavery, but cruelty is just a word until we see the suffering of the slaves through the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe or Frederick Douglas. We know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but we can’t imagine their fears, or their hopes, without the insight of the Diary of Anne Frank. Literature gives insight to the human condition like nothing else. It teaches us compassion. It makes us laugh. It makes us cry. It makes us understand the world around us. It gives us hope. And all of these are worth far more than a job at Boeing, or an internship at the Gap.
So, as long as there is laughter, we need literature.
As long as there is adventure, we need literature.
As long as there is suffering, we need literature.
And as long as there is love, we need literature.

on first round of apologies

we had the first round of apologies today and I thought overall they were pretty good. However, I think there is obviously some confusion on what an apology is and what exactly we are defending I think. I thought we had established that this is not an apology like we are sorry for something but rather that we are defending something (apologetics for anyone familiar with high school Bible classes). The presenters were right in saying that we shouldn't apologize for being English majors because there is no reason to. Most of them apologized for literature by saying that it was entertaining and that it was inspiring. That is all well, but I think someone needs to establish a concrete answer for why the study of literature (not just literature in general) is worthwhile. Why it is important to read and look at literature and why that is just as important if not more so than more "practical" field like architecture or engineering. I found even Sidney's apology didn't do this because he was defending poetry against philosphy and history, two fields now considered to be just as worthless as literature because they all fall into the humanities. I'm trying to come up with a defense that can be given to business majors or engineers because those are the type of people I find myself trying to defend myself against. I haven't totally formed it yet, but I have a few ideas, mainly relying on the fact that these other fields look at how we live our lives (careers, money, "success") while literature can teach us why we live our lives (emotions mainly). Anyone who answers the why with the answers for the how is a pathetic dolt. I find one way to explain this is that when you ask people what makes their life worth living, the answers usually can be traced back to some emotion (love of family, joy of skiing, comradery of friendship, etc.). So once it is established that non-tangible things like emotions make life worth living, doesn't it make sense then that the most valuable field of study would be the one that deals with these things? Engineering can't explain love. Business can't teach us about the joys of adventure. Architecture doesn't teach us morals. Chemistry doesn't instill compassion for those around us. Literature does all of these.

Not to sound too idealogical, but:
People are too caught up in material things. Possessions, money, "success" can all be had with a business major but we all know those things are not what are really important. If studying literature isn't important, then what is?

on Philip Pullman, part deux

I feel I must backtrack slightly on Mr. Pullman. Dr. Sexson's (and Frye's) explanation of the negative god has made me look at Pullman a little differently. They have enlightented me about the myth of a negative god which liberates people from ignorance. I believe the term "demiurge" was used, at least that's what I have in my notes. Much like a demiurge or Nobadaddy, Frye (confirming my earlier suspicions of his being a devil of sorts) has liberated me from my ignorance and shown me that Philip Pullman isn't quite the hack I took him for. Apparently he has actually done some sort of mythical studies and based his works on those, even going so far as to use daemone in his books. Clever. I mistook his poor writing for lack of knowledge. My bad. This kind of takes the wind of my "uninformed about Christian myth" sails because he was writing about a different myth apparently, so I am left with only the quality of his writing as a reason to dislike him. There is still our obvious theological disagreement, but, much like my demiurge Frye, I don't believe that should be used as a basis for determining the quality of a book. My apologies to Mr. Pullman

on Don Quixote 7

I googled "Don Quixote: illusion and reality" just like I was supposed to but I'm not sure what exactly I was supposed to come up with. I didn't find anything specific but I found one article that talked about DQ and Sancho representing illusion and reality. That is the interpretation many people can easily come up with, based on Sancho's ability to see things for what they are while DQ sees fanciful illusions. Anyone with a brain will see that this reading really isn't that accurate though. Sancho may be able to see that windmills are wind mills or be able to trick DQ about Dulcinea, but his loyalty and belief in DQ shows us that he really isn't that with it either. Even though he knows that DQ is mad, he somehow believes that he will still get an insular to govern. In many ways this makes him almost as mad as DQ, because he knowingly puts his faith in a lunatic. The article kind of confirmed this, but I think it's such an obvious assertion that an article wasn't really even necessary.... which leads me to believe that it was not the target of our assignment to google "Don Quixote: illusoin and reality" and that I have failed. The rest of the stuff was even more worthless though. I shall investigate more.

on Don Quixote 6

On page 476 Sanson the bachelor says, "That is true, but it is one thing to write as a poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth."

This is almost the exact same thing Sidney said in his defense, except he mentioned how a philosopher tries to moralize but fails because no one can understand him. The poet can write about how things should be and make it so people can understand it.

Talk about intertextuality!

on Don Quixote 5

I swear i'm further than this, I'm on 600ish, but I sometimes forget to blog on something I find interesting. On pages 414 and 415 I found some passages that made me think. It is the canon speaking about quality in literature and he says "it is better to be praised by a few wise men than and mocked by many fools." and then he says "as far as authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with crowd than a reputation with the elite." This brought to mind the idea of popular and elitist literature and how we define the two. I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to this question because I can defend either side I think. I try not to be an english snob but I admit that when someone tells me they really love Tom Clancy novels or Stephenie Meyer I make a sour face. Yet I must also admit that I happen to like Mitch Albom books like Tuesday's with Morrie even though those could never be considered exceptional literature. So where do we draw the line? how do we decide what is quality and what is fotter for the masses?

If we're to go by what the canon says on pg. 412, perfection in writing is constituted by using both versimilitude and mimesis. He says that chivalric books don't do this because they don't contain any truth and aren't realistic and "are totally lacking in intelligent artifice." Applying this to today's literature, I can easily use this to justfy why I think Stephen King novels suck, because they fit the same bill as chivalric literature. But if it's mimesis and verisimilitude that we're relying on, why is Alice in Wonderland considered good literature? or Kafka's Metamorphoses? So there must be more than just truth and realism that determine good literature. Perhaps it is the canon's later comment about intelligent artifice. If literature doesn't contain some intelligence in its structure, in its story, in its motifs and themes, then it can't be considered good. Not only that, but we should have to work a little bit to enjoy this literature. Most great books are not easy reads, and one must work to understand them. But that raises the point of whether or not difficulty is a valid reason to hail the author as a genius and the work as quality. Just because Henry James uses long sentences and buries his psychological musings so deep that one must work especially hard to understand him doesn't mean his writing is that incredible. I admit that he is very smart and some of his stuff I like, but most of it I find way over the top and almost like he's trying to show off. What good is a story if only highly-educated people can understand it? Wouldn't it be better if everyone could understand it?

I haven't really figured anything out. I guess there's no set rules on what makes quality literature but it's interesting to think about.

on seasons woo woo, though not literature

Frye's writings on seasonal patterns gave me a real woo woo moment because I immediately thought about a movie called "Requiem for a Dream". Apparently it's adapted from a book of the same name so I guess my woo woo is kind of related to literature, but I've only seen the movie. The movie follows the story of Harry, his girlfriend, his friend and his mother. The movie is split into 3 seasons (leaving out spring for some reason, although i think it's kind of combined into summer) and the trajectory of the movie follows the patterns of Frye almost exactly!

Summer: Harry and his friend begin to deal drugs and start making lots of money. They dream of the better life they are working towards. Harry's girlfriend dreams of being a fashion designer with all the money they'll make. Harry's mother, a lonely widow, gets a letter saying she might get to be on TV so she begins to take pills to lose weight for her appearance. All is well, and everyboby is excited about their prospects. Jubilation.

Fall: Harry, his girlfriend, and friend all begin to become severely addicted to heroin, and they begin to focus on that more than their business aspirations. Harry's mother becomes addicted to the pills she's taking and it becomes increasingly obvious that she won't be on tv. Harry's friend gets arrested and they lose all their money so Harry's girlfriend sleeps with a guy for some money so they can buy more drugs. harry's mother begins to hallucinate. Mortification. Descending into chaos.

Winter: Harry and his friend get arrested and Harry ends up getting his arm amputated because it's so infected from shooting up. His friend remains in jail. His girlfriend begins prostituting herself to get heroin. His mother goes crazy in the streets and ends up in a mental hospital where she receives electro-shock treatment. Purgation.

I wouldn't say the characters reach atonement or purification; the movie ends on a very depressing note showing them each in a different bed in their respective places (hospital, asylum, prison, dirty apartment) in the fetal position crying. But, we could say that they are on the path to purification, or at least purging I guess. I don't know, I found that interesting though that this pattern can be found in movies as well as literature.

touchstone

As far as I am able to understand, a touchstone is a passage that is particularly enlightening or leads us to the sublime. From talking in class I thought maybe it had to have some relevance to literature (like it had to comment on literature) as well but I don't really see why that would be necessary. In that case one touchstone of mine would be from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh where Aurora says,

"All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes."

Another one would be from Steinbeck's East of Eden where he says,

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected."

Those are two that I can think of right now, if I think of anymore and can find them I will report back

on Philip Pullman

I thought the name sounded familiar and when I googled him I immediately remembered him because I read "the Golden Compass" in my children's lit class a few years ago. I remember him particularly because I gave a very impassioned speech to my peers expressing my distaste for Pullman and his book. I enjoyed the first part of his book and I thought it was a creative story and I particularly liked the notion of the daemon that he had in it. Then I got the second half of his book and began to really dislike it, mainly based on his apparent misunderstanding of Christianity. As a Christian, I am accumstomed to a constant barrage of disparaging remarks and negative ideas about Christianity, in books, newspapers, magazines, movies, etc., so I took Pullman's attack on Christianity in stride. However, my religous disagreement with him is not the main reason I disliked the book. I didn't like the book for several reasons. 1) I thought his interjection of religous ideas was very abrupt. I felt like he started writing his book and then halfway through he realized that the popularity of C.S. Lewis's books had alot to do with their religious undertones, so then he decided to throw in some religion to try to drum up sales. I don't think I'm far off considering there's no moral/religous inkling in the first at least half of the book and after that he jsut throws it in there. So basically I just thought it was poor writing. 2) I don't think people should try to disprove/attack things that they don't fully understand, or in their argument they should at least offer up a sufficient replacement for the thing they are arguing against. Pullman does neither in his book. I don't think he fully understands Christianity even though Wikipedia tells me he is an associate of the National Secular Society which you'd think would warrant an understanding of religion since the foundation truly only exists to dispute the religions it is against. If he had an understanding of Christianity, specifically the Christian view of sin, he wouldn't say that original sin is the source of knowledge like he does in his book. The tree that many people associate with original sin is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Pullman and others simply shorten this to knowledge and therein lies his problem. The Bible never says there was not knowledge before original sin, only that humans did not know the difference between good and evil. This is mainly because there actually was no evil in the world yet. After original sin there was evil and therefore Adam and Eve were able to distinguish between the two. If Pullman is "undermining the basis of Christian belief" like he claims, is it too much to ask for him to offer a sufficient belief system in its stead? Ok, so original sin is actually good because it gave us knowledge, then what gives us pain and suffering? death? Since he's an atheist he will presumably say those are just part of life, which is fine, but since his book is critiquing Christianity not just promoting atheism he should have to contest all points of Christianity, not just one. I haven't read the other books in the series and perhaps I should but these are questions that I had just from reading the first, and from what Ive heard from other people, he doesn't answer them in the other two books.

I don't write a critique about Homer or Ovid or Bablylonian mythology because I don't fully understand it. Pullman makes this mistake in his books by misunderstanding the myth he was writing about. I think he did it just to stir up some controversy, boost his sales and maybe get people to talk about him. I've just written for half an hour on him so i guess he succeeded in that respect.

on Julia Kristeva again

I feel I have a better understanding of Julia Kristeva than I did in my original post about her. To reiterate what I said in class, the main things she is known for is her work with semiotics and intertextuality. Semiotics is how words get their meaning (signifier and signified). Saussure believed words pointed to a defined meaning. Kristeva disagrees, insisting instead that there is no absolute truth for a word, but the meaning lies instead in prosody (rhythm, stress) which comes from a person's feelings. An example of this is like the one I gave in class, you can answer yes to a question with its meaning actually meaning no depending on the stress put on it. This focus on a person's feelings in relation to meaning led to the coining of the phrase "semanalysis" which is a combination psychoanalysis and semiotics.
Intertextuality I think is a similar concept to semanalysis in the way that they both assert that there is no definite, absolute meaning. Intertextuality deals with the work as a whole and basically says that it "speaks" to other works and a full understanding is not possible without looking at the other texts as well. Structuralists say that the meaning of a work lies in the inherent structures it adheres to (similar to Frye's archetypal ideas). Kristeva and intertextuality disagree and instead say that the meaning exists outside of the text, in its relation to other texts. I hope this clears up a little what I said the other day, although I doubt it since I have only 4 people following my blog. I feel somewhat inadequate

on the movie

I know this is a little late, but i wanted to mention what i noticed about the movie last week. I found it interesting that old children's literature was so blatent with its message compared with children's literature today. The books that were shown in the movie had very obvious lessons, some practical (like not being crushed by a cart or burning yourself with a candle), some more religous. Even the way the ABCs were taught involved some moral, often relating to Christianity. Today's childrens literature either has no moral and is just for fun, or the moral is not as obvious. Undoubtably this difference stems from the changes in our culture. While we still profess to be a "Christian" nation, religion is often left behind when it comes simple things like teaching children. Obviously you can get Christian children books that still have a strong, clear message, but most children's lit these days seems to stray away from that. The same could be same about all literature in general. Compare some Puritan literature to what is popular today and you will see how marginalized religion has become.

on Don Quixote 3

The other day while reading Don Quixote I reached the part where Cardenio reenters the picture when he meets the priest and barber. I have already mentioned how the description of his song reminded me of Order at Key West, but as he began to finish the telling of his tale to the two men, I began to see other interesting things about his story. If one were to listen to the first part of his story it reads almost like a renaissance play. He is madly in love with a woman, they plan to marry, but then his close treacherous friend tricks him and steals the girl from him. If it were truly a renaissance play Lucinda actually would have killed herself and then Cardenio would have murdered Fernando and then killed himself as well. Unfortunately it doesn't happen that way. Later in the story you see a very similar plot in the novella of the Man who was Recklessly Curious, but I'm not done with that quite yet so I'm not sure how it ends. Cervantes' technique in writing this book allows him to incorporate pretty much every type of story imaginable. Already I can see that this is the frame narrative of all frame narratives, and he uses that to tell different stories in different ways. As I get further it becomes easier to not only connect the text to outside things, but also to connect elements within the text, and that's kind of cool I think.

on Don Quixote 2

I don't know why I called my last blog 4 because it was actually 2. Anyhoo, the passage that struck me recently was on 215 when the priest and the barber first hear Dorotea singing. She sings beautifully and they are both awestruck by listening to her. It says, "The hour, the weather, the solitude, the voice, and the skill of the one who was singing caused both wonder and pleasure in the two who were listening, and they remained quiet, hoping they would hear more." Immediately I thought of Idea of Order at Key West. Even though its a guy singing, I thought it sounded very similar to the poem because the audience is raptured by his song, and it mentions his solitude and voice. All these things are in the poem and the book. It may not be much of a connection, but it struck me almost immediately when I read it.

on Don Quixote 4

I'm further than this now, but one passage that struck me earlier in Don Quixote was on page 50 when the priest and DQ's niece are going through all his books and the priest says that there are some books they shouldn't burn. The niece objects and that they must burn them, otherwise he "will read these and want to beceome a shepherd adn wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease." I thought this was humorous when I first read it, but after some of our discussions in class I began to see a connection to other stuff we talked about. For one, this sounds like something Plato would say, given his attitude towards poets and how worseless he thought they were. Secondly, I think it's fits in with the attitude alot of people have against poets and by extension, English majors. People think being an English writer is worthless and is a truly bad thing, which necessitates people like Sidney and Shelley to write their apologies, and why we are asked to write apologies as well. I find it interesing that people have to continually be defending poetry/literature, from Plato's day til now. Some people just won't learn. tsk tsk

on don quixote 1

One thing I keep noticing while reading don Quixote is that Cervantes continually steps out of the text to remind us that we're reading a book. He will often times mention another "historian" whose records Cervantes used to tell his story. He also will say that a specific story will be finished in the next chapter. I know in theaters it's called metatheatricality when the audience is reminded that they are watching a play, but I don't know if there is one for non theater literature. If there is, the term would definately apply to Don Quixote

on psychoanalysis and my hatred of crash

In another english class which shall remain unnamed I just started reading this book called Crash. I find it to be one of the largest pieces of literary excrement that I have ever come in contact with. It's elementary, revolting, stupid, lame, and worthless. While I was wading through this crap the other night it struck me that despite its immense trashiness, the stupid author (who should be psychoanalysed himself) was using psychoanalysis in his story. He draws this connection between car crashes and sex and how erotic car crashes are, all the attempting to use as many different terms for genitalia and sexual functions as possible. He basically degrades humans to the level of animals by making it seem that sexual desires are the only things driving our lives. He removes any notion of love, compassion, care, etc. from humans and makes everyone objects. He mentions planes, gear shifters and a variety of other things as fallic symbols. This guy obviously read Freud once and took everything to heart.
My critic for this class is a psychoanalyst and I'm also in the psychoanalysis group so I noticed this pattern in the book fairly quickly. I'm sure if I went to the romance section of a bookstore and picked up some other trash i could find fallic symbols all over too. This book is much worse than romance novels though, I hate it.

intentional fallacy pertaining to the test

I'm pretty sure I didn't do that well on the test, I drew several blanks on things I should have known. This however can be looked at a different way: just because I didn't know exactly the answer that Professor Sexson had in mind, does that mean that I was wrong? Keeping in mind that Profesor Sexson is the author of the test, shouldn't we then disregard his intentions? What the author meant is not important, it's how it's interpretted that is important, and each student might have interpretted it differently. I know for a fact I interpretted a lot of questions differently than Professor Sexson might have intended, so by his standards I might be incorrect, but thats assuming that his intention should really have a bearing on how I read the test. In this vein, I think leniancy should definately be in order when the tests are graded because to mark certain answers wrong would mean that they were wrong by Professor Sexson's standards, and that goes against what we've been learning in class, which is obviously counter-productive. :)

on anagogical lightbulb

I had several lightbulb moments while reading the anagogic section. Actually its really only one lightbulb but I found a couple different passages pertaining to it. On page 119 Frye says that, "In the anagogic phase, literature imitates the total dream of man, and so imitates the thought of a human mind which is at the circumference and not at the center of its reality." I read this to mean that the poet is commenting from far away, from the edges of reality rather than from the center of it. On page 122 he later describes "the function of the poet as revealing a perspective of reality like that of an angel, containing all time and space, who is blind and looking into himself." This is kind of the same idea of detachment, that the poet's commentary is from the sidelines. He says that literature exists in its own universe and contains life and reality in a system of verbal relationships. I really don't know what thats supposed to mean exactly. I think it kind of goes with that other quote about nature going from being the container to being the thing contained. The poet is the creator and by doing it from the margins, from the circumference rather than the center he can encompass the whole universe. maybe.?

on symbols

I had a lightbulb moment while reading Frye's chapter on symbols. It happened on pages 95-96. We have said in class several times how art imitates life. Frye goes a step further and says it also imitates other art; that a poem is not just imitating nature, it is also imitating other poems. I found this interesting because I think you could tie this in to Frye's archetypal chart and how he thinks everything is cyclical and returns back to where it started. The idea that poems imitate other earlier poems suggests a cyclical pattern as well because the same ideas, emotions, and stories would continually be told. Knowing that poems are connected makes us look at them as a whole (poetry), rather than as individual units (a poem). This is why we can use blanket words like "poetry" adn "literature", because it is all interconnected. sort of a bunch of trees make a forest type of thing. I dunno, just found that kind of interesting

on Order of Key West

The Order of Key West has obvious relations to the chart thingy we talked about in class.

Acient world- focus on universe

the sea and the sky is the universe, an understandable symbol since it only makes up about 3/4 of our planet. the woman exists in the sea, in the world. Even though it is mentioned that her song affected the universe (... made the sky acutest at its vanishing), I think its meant more in the sense that it changed the audience's perception, not that she actually changed the sky.

neo-classical- focus on audience

The audience is the "we" and "our" that is referred to throughout. It's never clear exactly who the we is, but regardless, it establishes a definite audience. It also possibly changes the poem because it means that we are seeing the woman through someone's eyes and getting their perspective on it, as opposed to a totally objective outside viewpoint. As the reader, we are also the audience since we are seeing the scene through the eyes of the poet.

Romantics- focus on artist

Obviously the woman is the artist. She is the creator of the song. Through her song she creates a whole scene that the audience sees where the sea and sky seem to change as a result of her song. So really she is creating more than just a work or text, she is creating an, I don't know, experience I guess.

Modern- focus on work

You can interchange work with text. In that case it is the song she sang because that is what she created. As mentioned before though, her creation really isn't limited to just her song, because the poet focuses on how her song affects all her surroundings. So really she is creating more than just a song.

The work is the song she sang.

julia kristeva

My critic is Julia Kristeva. She is a bulgarian born critic best known for her work on feminism and cultural theory. She is also considered one of the leading structuralists today. She was trained in psychoanalysis and has applied that knowledge to post-structuralist thought to form a theory she calls the "semiotic". The semiotic is an emotional field tied to our instincts that dwells within the "fissures and prosody of language" rather than the meanings of words. Prosody is the study of rhythm, stress and other related elements of speech. So as far as I can tell, she deals with how our psyche and subconscious deal with the parts and sounds of speech. Easy enough. I'm not sure how I'm going to channel this into a presentation in class. Here is a picture of her. I'd like to thank wikipedia.

Tragic Ironic

I'm focusing on the tragic ironic square of the archetypes chart. Tragic Ironic usually deals with the death of a weak protagonist. This person is seen as very low in society; a misfit or outcast. Jesus is one example Frye gives because he was outcast from society, the irony being that He is obviously not weak at all. Another example I thought of was Lennie Smalls in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Lennie was mentally handicapped and therefore a weak member of society. His death is tragic, given that his crime was an accident and a result of his being handicapped. Frye calls tragic irony the "study of tragic isolation." The victim is also seen as someone unlucky, and his tragedy is that what happens to him was not at all expected or deserved for his character. This implies that the person is innocent and just a tragic casualty of life and society. All of this is true for Jesus or Job, another Frye example. Lennie isn't technically innocent because he did something wrong, yet he fits the tragic ironic mold because his fate was not expected for his character and seems to be an unfortunate victim of circumstances.

chart

this looks truly awful, i made it in paint, it looked better there

yeah so I basically can't figure out how to make a table or upload a table to this stupid thing, I do have a one made though, its really really good too.

on charts

By doing the archetype chart I actually got more out of Frye than I normally do. He makes some valid points about the intersecting themes and genres that we find in literature. I didn't quite get how he figures that the entire process comes full circle; that thematic ironic brings us back to tragic mythic. From the descriptions he gives I think they sound completely different. I also think that to fully understand Frye you have to read a lot of mythology because he makes so many references to different mythological stories. I spent as much time wikiing mythological characters as I did actually making my chart. Perhaps my lack of mythological understanding is why I have a hard time agreeing with or caring about most of what Frye says.

on literature as myth

In Archetypes of Literature, Frye asserts that all literature can be boiled down to several fairly obvious symbolic systems and myths. I call them obvious because I really don't think it takes that much critical ability to recognize the patterns that Frye talks about. He's definately read more mythology than me so I can't say much about the connections he draws between literature and myth, but I can comment on his claim that "all literature is displaced myth." Literature, like all art, is a representation of human experience. Music, painting, and literature all try to capture human emotions and life in a way that people can relate to. The thing is, try as they may, no artist, composer or writer can touch on an emotion that hasn't already been evoked by someone else in their field. They might be able to display the emotion in a different way, but by no means can they create a new emotion or experience. Picasso's cubistic (word?) representation of a man and Da Vinci's ,uh, normal painting of a man are extremely different, but they are still of the same thing; a man. Shakespeare's plays and Passion's Promise II: The Reluctant Iberian Mistress (thats made-up, don't go searching for it) are essentially both about love, if you can call what happens in romance novels love. You get the idea. The point is that OF COURSE all books contain many of the same symbols, because those symbols are universally understood by humans. Plants die during the fall and grow back in the spring, hence the coinciding symbols in literature. We can't see in the dark and terrible carnivorous creatures come out at night so obviously we understand that darkness is a symbol for danger or evil. These symbols stem from our experiences of watching our petunias die and stubbing our toe in the dark. Frye says he can trace all literature back to mythology, but I think I can do him one better and trace it back to human nature. The human experience can be reduced to a handful of emotions and a short list of stories, though they may vary in intensity and appearance. These emotions and experiences existed before mythology, and will continue to exist even if nothing was ever written again. Therefore, I say all literature is displaced human experience, not myth. The myth is that you need to read Northrop Frye to figure that out.

On intentional fallacy

The idea that an author's intent should hold no bearing on the interpretation of his/her work is a reckless concept that leaves way too much room for unreasonable readings. Many critics assert that only what's written in the text can be taken into account when critically examining a work. External evidence, like supplementary notes or an author's explicit declaration of his intent should not be considered in criticism. I couldn't disagree more. I concede that an author's intent should not be the driving force behind getting meaning from a work, but it should not be cast aside either. The beauty of all literature is that it can be interpreted differently by everyone who reads it (the notion of reader-response; I see a red wheelbarrow with chickens, you see a dichotomy of the human spirit, whatever). However, I do think that if people are given too much latitude in their interpretations of a work that it can often be completely transformed into something it's not or lose the meaning it was intended to have. This is where author's intent should come into play, as a sort of guard against people forming outlandish opinions or missing the point completely. For example, a few years ago I overheard a young girl talking to her friend about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie, and she said that, "Yeah, like I guess the whole thing is, like, symbolic of the Bible. I did NOT get that when I read it." Ignoring for a moment the epic failure of this girl's teacher or her apparent inability to comprehend written english beyond the Berenstein Bears, we have to consider what a shame it is to have a book's meaning (a fairly obvious one in this case) lost because the reader was not aware of the author's intention. Similar misunderstandings have happened elsewhere. Huckleberry Finn has been banned numerous times throughout its history and panned as racist because of its use of the word "nigger". Anyone who has any knowledge of Mark Twain knows that he actually opposed slavery and the book was a comment against the racism he saw present during that period. Granted, these examples involve some severely ignorant people (not, persay, English majors), yet one needs only to read the paper or turn on the TV to discover that the number of ignorant people in the world is increasing at an ever alarming rate. To allow everyone who picks up a book to attach their own meaning to it means that a text runs the risk of losing its vision. Robert Frost once said that poetry without meter was like tennis without a net. I think that is how an author's intent should affect the interpretation of a work; like a net, preventing the interpretation from getting totally out of hand and ridiculous. Acting as a guard against the absurd, an author's intent can be one of many factors that help the reader to come to a reasonable interpretation.

working?

is this working