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.