Another Touchstone

While reading for another class, I came across a passage that stopped me in my tracks. I read over the passage many times not because it was confusing, but because it was beautiful. It is from Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and here it is:

"On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved. Such a sacrifice must be the result of love. . . or is it that the life itself was already worn out? I had finished with that life, perhaps, and could not admit it, being stubborn or afraid, or perhaps did not know it, habit being a great binder.

I think it is often so that those most in need of change choose to fall in love and then throw up their hands and blame it all on fate. But it is not fate, at least not if fate is something outside of us; it is a choice made in secret after nights of longing."

"I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams. And perhaps such a thing is enough. To be a muse is enough. The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must. Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you. The truth is, you never understood yourself."

This passage is a bit cynical, but the language is so rich and the ideas are so engaging. Everytime I read it, it puts me in a better mood and forces me to analyze my own relationships, past and present.

Apology Works Cited

I forgot to include a works cited page with my apology, so here it is:

De Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York, NY: HarperCollins,
2005.

"John F. Kennedy Quotes." Brainy Quote. 2008. 10 Dec. 2008 .

Pater, Walter. "Conclusion from The Renaissence." (1873).


Aristotle. "Poetics."

I am continually in awe of the people in my major. So far I have seen close to ten apologies, and no two of them have been even the least bit alike. A class full of English undergrads can take a simple paper assignment in a mulititude of different directions. I doubt a class of engineering undergrads can do that. I am already excited for Monday's class so we can experience the insight of another set of students.

Literature Can. (My Apology)

Literature is the greatest thing in the world. I use the term great in two ways: the first being the most common, meaning that literature is a wonderful thing. The other way in which I use it to describe literature is that it is vast. Literature encompasses everything in the world. There is nothing that has ever been talked about that was not in a book, play, or poem. Literature has started wars, divided families, and showed this generation the mistakes made in the past. Nothing else in this world can contain commentary on or accounts of everything in the world, but literature can. So why on earth do I have to defend one of the most powerful entities in the world? Not only does literature teach us something, it also brings everyone that experiences it to a higher level of existence. Even with that said, apologizing for being a dreamy bookworm is really not that new to me. For some reason, we dreamers are hard to come by and, therefore, sometimes misunderstood. People tend to think that I am unrealistic and idealistic. They think that it is pointless to read all day and that literature serves no real purpose. I find that a bit humorous, as I find most things not pertaining to literature entirely pointless. There is no aesthetic purpose to numbers. Numbers cannot inspire. They cannot create a world with merely ink on a page. Literature can.
Literary analysis can be described as a pointless school of thinking, but it is in fact the most useful and infinite type of analysis. Economists can analyze numbers and risk variables, but the entire idea of analysis takes on a myriad of new levels when it relates to literature. Numbers can be analyzed once, but a book will never stop revealing its secrets to a reader and critic, teaching that person more than a grouping of numbers ever could.
In Don Quixote, the canon echoes Plato’s view that all literature must be didactic. Walter Pater argued for art for art’s sake. I argue for both. In my world of literature, Plato and Pater can get along like school buddies, because I argue that all literature and art teaches us something. Aristotle had it right when he said that literature must entertain and teach. I think that all literature entertains and teaches. I have never experienced a piece of literature that has not taught me something about myself or the world around me. Everything I read sparks a light inside my brain and soul and somehow permanently changes me. Hamlet taught me about guilt, Beowulf taught me about bravery, Holden Caulfield taught me about teenage angst and showed my sixteen-year-old self that I am not alone in the melodramatic emotions I felt at the time. Every time I experience a new piece of literature or revisit an old favorite, I am forever changed just a little bit. Nothing else in the world can cause a constant metamorphosis in the person experiencing it, but literature can.
Literature and poetry do not have to be literal to teach us not to get crushed by carts. A true critic will read between the literal words of poetry and find a way to dig out the magic, the message and the lesson. Don Quixote, for example, is not just a satire of chivalric novels, but it is a beacon that shows dreamers just like me that we really can live in the world of our imaginations if we truly want it. Windmills can become giants. Whores can become princesses because they are seen through the eyes of a person that wants them to be those things. Don Quixote and I both see the world through these poetic rose-colored glasses. Don Quixote was inspired to become a knight errant. Don Quixote, in turn, inspired me to remain a dreamer and to cast off perceptions that everything in life must have a practical purpose. I am a self-proclaimed romantic and idealist, and I have literature to thank for that. Literature allows me not to escape this reality, but to travel to a completely different (but still real) universe. In these worlds, animals speak, I travel through time, and the prince may either save the princess or kill everyone. In the reality that literature allows me to experience, anything is possible. The real world, or the low mimetic as defined by Northrop Frye, is boring! I refuse to allow myself to only experience the so-called “real world”. I much prefer to dive into the realm of the high-mimetic, the romantic, or even the mythic. Only with the aid of literature can a person, if even only for a few minutes or hours, count herself among the Gods.
For my final claim, I want to use one of my favorite quotes from John F. Kennedy: "When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." This quote shows the scope and power of poetry. It can bring even the most practical and power-hungry man into an existential level of thinking and remind him of his place in the world. Kennedy explains the importance of the immense scope of poetry to people most likely concerned with other things. Poetry can connect people to the beauty of the world and help them cast off unimportant concerns.
Without literature and poetry, the world would have one dimension and level. Literature gives it an infinite amount. When life makes our world look bleak and dull, literature shows us the omnipresent possibilities.

The bar was set pretty high

To be completely honest, I came into class on Monday expecting to be a little bit bored listening to presentations for the entire class period. After having experiencedeveryone's presentations on their critics, I should have known better. Every presentation was different, and furthermore every presentation was fascinating! It amazed me to realize how many different directions one assignment can go in if given to an intelligent person. I obviously know about the connection between literature and culture, but Doug took it to another level. Jessica and Kelsey both took the idea of the love of literature beyond just books and poems into the realm of movies and song lyrics, which can serve just as important a purpose in literature. I completely agree with Lisa that literature takes us everywhere in the world and beyond, an idea I actually plan to touch on in my own apology. I also agree with Kyle's affinity for touchstones. Heather cracked me up with the idea that people offended by literature have only offended the literature itself. Willing suspension of disbelief, one of Claire's topics, is something that I believe sets literary-minded people apart from the more practical literal minds surrounding us, and willing suspension of disbelief allows us to catapult ourselves into any world we wish. How lucky are we? And what a perfect finish, a presentation completely based on the lovable Don Quixote by Carly. All in all, I was very entertained and enlightened (as well as even more nervous for my presentation) by the speeches on Monday.

Apology Ponderings

As I think more about my apology for literature, I am trying to pin down exactly why I love my major. I began to form a list of the reasons why I love English. I actually found it harder than I would imagine. I don't know exactly why I bacame an English major, other than the fact that I love to read and talk about books. When asked why I am an English major by other people, I usually answered with just that. When people pushed the question, which was rarely, was when I had to dig a little bit deeper. Why do I love to read and talk about books? What do they do to me, where do they take me that after almost twenty years of being a bona fide reader am I still so enchanted by these pages bound together to form a book?

I think a lot of it would go back to the fact that I am just a dreamer by nature. Books transform my world and take me to lands beyond my imagination. If I had to go an entire day without being catapulted into a different world by literature, I may go insane.

Literature does not only take me to another world, being exposed to so many different ways to live a life has opened the world in which I live. I have never lived outside of Montana (though I have traveled), but my view of the world and the people of the world is drastically different than that of some of my peers. I have met some bizarre, complex people just in my readings. I am by no means an expert on any world culture, but I do feel more accepting of the people surrounding me. The fact that I am more accepting may also stem from the diversity of my peers in this major. Everyone is different, and everyone has had a different literary background. No two English students have read all of the same literature, which makes discussions almost always fascinating.

These were just a couple of ideas I have been tossing around.

What a Bubble Birst

Here is where I admit my painfully slow progress on Don Quixote. I was very surprised when I found out that Don Quixote dies at the end of the novel for a few reasons. Probably the biggest reason the idea that he dies at the end never crossed my mind is because the idea that the hero dies never crosses my mind. I, even at age twenty, still habitate the fairy tale world of happy endings (or at least I wish I did). I am a self-proclaimed romantic, and in my ideal story the hero always lives. This romantic, idealistic view on life is probably what made me ao mad at Don Quixote during his last speech when he apparently "comes to his senses" realizes that silly novels about knights are not worth reading. Don Quixote doesn't come to his senses when he realizes this, he loses his senses. He loses the spirit that makes him a hero of such a classic novel. I identified with him more when he was a dreamer. That is when he had the most sense! Who cares if literature teaches us something?

The best literature will speak to our soul and spark a fire that inspires us to be something great. Don Quixote was inspired to become a knight errant. Don Q., in turn, has inspired me to remain a dreamer and to cast off perceptions that everything in life must have a practical purpose. Don Q. had it right the first time. The world is full of possibility and vitality. Without literature, we would forget that.

What made me become an English major?

In her blog, Rosanna discussed the "touchstones" that made her want to become an English major. That made me start thinking about the motivations that prompted me to want to be an English teacher. The truth is, there is no moment or work that definitively made me want to major in English. My thoughts wandered to my high school English classes and what inspired me there. Holden Caulfield and his wanderings of course related to my melodramatic high school self. The free-spirited Gatsby was always one of my favorites, and I was enchanted immediately by Beowulf and his heroic deeds, as well as the foreboding alliteration of each line. I was also immediately pulled into the world of Shakespeare through the language of Julius Caesar. By the time I got through Romeo and Juliet in the junior year and Hamlet in my senior year, I was instantly hooked. Maybe it was not a single thing that made me love English and want to make it my career. Maybe it was everything. Looks like I am going to have to revisit some of my old favorites.

One of my Favorite Quotes

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitaions. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses"
- John F. Kennedy

This a quote that I love by Kohn F. Kennedy. Not only do I really like what it says, I think one of the things I have always liked about it is that is a short apology for poetry written by a politician, not a literary critic. He is somewhat removed from the literary world but still understands the power of poetry. It explains the importance and scope of poetry to people more concerned by other things. Poetry is one of the very few entities in the world that is all-encompassing and infinitely possible. It opens the mind to a world in which everything is possible and beautiful. Poetry is the purest form of language and thought. It shows the world at the peak of its potential. If more people took time to experience it, they would be much better off.

On the movie

In my effort to amend my blog deliquency and catch up a bit, I am FINALLY blogging about My Book and Heart Shall Never Part. I would first of all just like to say that the Sexons did an incredible job on the film, and it was a joy to experience. I thought it was wonderful to see those books brought to life through a child's eyes. I was fascinated by the world brought to life by these books from so long ago. I thought the music was incredible (I forget the name of the composer) as well. Music and literature always seem to compliment each and raise the other to an even higher level of enjoyment (as mentioned this past week in class). All in all, I loved the journey I had the privilege of embarking on with My Book and Heart Shall Never Part.

Some Foucault Quotes

Here are some quotes by Michel Foucault. Perhaps they will give a sense of his voice and philosophy.

'Basically, I have only one object of historical study, that is the threshold of modernity. Who are we, we who speak a language such that it has powers that are imposed on us in our society as well as on other societies? What is this language which can be turned against us which we can turn against ourselves? What is this incredible obsession with the passage to the universal in Western discourse? That is my historical problem.'

'It was not a question of a an initially timid, technical, and medical breach of a taboo of discourse, speech or expression that had weighed on sexuality from the depths of time and certainly since the seventeenth or eighteenth century. What I think took place around 1850 ... was not at all a metamorphosis of a practice of censorship, repression, or hypocrisy, but the metamorphosis of a quite positive practice of forced and obligatory confession. I would say that in the West, sexuality is not generally something about which people are silent and that must be kept secret; it is something one has to confess.'

'For centuries, let's say since Plato, the status of knowledge has been to have an essence which is fundamentally different from that of power. If you become king , you will be mad, enraged and blind. Renounce power, renounce ambition and then you will be able to contemplate truth ... Knowledge appears to be profoundly linked to a whole series of power effects. Archaeology is essentially this detection.'

'It is hard for me to classify a form of research like my own within philosophy or within the human sciences. I could define it as an analysis of the cultural facts characterising our culture... I do in fact seek to place myself outside the culture to which we belong, to analyse its formal conditions in order to make a critique of it, not in the sense of reducing its values, but in order to see how it was actually constituted.'

'My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being. The way he thinks is related to society, politics, economics, and history and is also related to very general and universal categories and formal structures. But thought is something other than societal relations. The way people really think is not adequately analyzed by the universal categories of logic. Between social history and formal analyses of thought there is a path, a lane - maybe very narrow - which is the path of the historian of thought.'

A little more about Michel

Michel Foucault was a french historian and philosopher. He was often associated with structuralist criticism. Structuralism, by very rough definition, is a field of social criticism which states that everything consists of many interlinked parts. These parts all work together to help the greater whole function properly. Along with structuralism, Michel was associated with post-modernism and Maoism, but he disliked any labels and never committed to any of these groups, structuralism included.

He studied many facets of society. He did work on power and its effect and relationship with a modern society. He researched a lot in prisons, which ultimately led to his book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Along with social institutions, Foucault could be argued as one of the greatest philosophers of sexuality of the century. His History of Sexuality vol. I-III all but revolutionized the way a modern society views sex and an individual's sexuality. His biggest claim the the history is his refute of the Repression Hypothesis. The Repression Hypothesis states that the history of sexuality has been a history of repressed feelings and desires. Foucault argues that, instead of being repressed, sexuality has been making its way to the forefront of our lives over the past few hundred years. In, my opinion, we can all thank Foucault for the open sexuality in media and everyday life that we see today.

If you are dying to read some of Foucault's work, these are probably some of his best titles:
The History of Sexuality vol I-III
The Archaeology of Knowledge
Madness and Civilization
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

However, unless you speak fluent French, you will be unable to experience the full scope of Foucault's work. Sadly, all of his English translations are abridged.

Fallacy of Reduction

Frye speaks of the fallacy of reduction in his essay on anagogy in the Theory of Symbols. Fallacy of Reduction, shortly defined, is the tendency to group things or works together which do not necessarily fit. in other words, to reduce these works into a single category. I think it is human nature (at least it is my nature), to want to group things together and most certainly to try and explain things in the least amount of words in an effort to gain a more simple understanding. By doing this, as Frye says, "we should cut off a third and most important source of supply for archetypal criticism" (117). This is obviously an idea that Frye attempts to negate in Anatomy of Criticism. An example that came to mind was an example used often in class, especially during the Theory of Modes, and that is Death of a Salesman. By asking high school students if this would be considered "tragedy", we wind up lumping all tragedy into one category. However, we know that tragedy is not just tragedy, but in fact tragedy can then be turned around into six different modes. By trying to call Willy Lowman only tragic, one would commit fallacy of reduction. Instead, we all know that Willy belongs to the tragic low mimetic box. Hopefully soon I will be able to squelch my own tendency towards reduction. I will definitely practice.

Michel Foucault

Her I am, Michel Foucault... Good lookin' guy ;)



I am a french philospher, historian and critic who studied social interaction in everyday life and focused within the prison system, as well as human sexuality. Some would describe me as a postmodernist critic, but I personally do not like labels.

More to come... =)

Abrams Theories in Key West

One assignment from Friday was to discuss how "The Idea of Order at Key West" incorporates M.A. Abram's four elements of literary theory.

The Universe: The world is in the poem is the sea. Steven illustrates a lack of importance of the sea, calling it "inhuman" and describing the fact that it cannot form a voice like the singer's. "But it was she and not the sea we heard."
The Artist: The artist, obviously, is the singer. By singing, she becomes the creator, underlining the creation myth present throughout the poem. "It was her voice that made/ The sky acutest at its vanishing." By being an artist, she is, by default, also a creator.
The Work: The work of the poem is the song itself that she sings, the world that she was able to create with such a song. "Knew that there was never a world for her/ Except the one she sang and, singing, made."
The Audience: The last element would be the audience which is us, the readers. Wallace turns the I(me) into a "we". We are all together listening to the creation of the song by the sea. "Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew. . ."

Tragic Low Mimetic

I chose to take the joyous mode of tragic low mimetic to town. The most simple explanation of this mode would be pathos, which by bleak defintion means evoking of an emotion of pity, sorrow and compassion.

It refers to the death and downfall of the common man, perhaps a man like your high school teacher or neighbor growing up. The hero of the tragic mimetic mode possesses weaknesses that we, as humans can often relate to. Frye says that "Pathos presents its hero as isolated by a weakness which appeals to our sympathy because it is on our own level of experience" (38). My personal favorite example of this would be Hamlet, with his oh so relatable flaws of pride and immaturity, among others.

Tragic low mimetic can also present a person isolated from from a group or type of people to which they desire to belong. Some low mimetic study will explore the mind and its obsession with such groups. Frye describes it as "a mania or obsession about rising in the world, this being the central low mimetic counterpart of the fiction of the fall of the leader" (39).

The perspective of the sufferer in low mimetic tragedy does not always have to be through the perspective of that sufferer. In some tragedies, it is illustrated as a cruel ruler/employer, etc. who exploits those who are weak and in his power, like Ebineezar Scrooge and Tiny Tim.

Frye isn't so Ferocious

As I am reading Theory of Modes, I can't help but think of one of the first thoughts I had when I began "Archetypes of Literature": This isn't so bad after all. After everything Dr. Sexson said about this book being so horribly tedious and necessary of a hand-hold throughout the semester, I was a little intimidated and frightened to begin. I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading and realized that it was conquerable at worst. With words like "we" instead of "I" as personal pronouns, I often find myself feeling that I am simply sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture by Frye. I have learned that he is not verbose, but instead vastly thorough in his explanations and examples, which only serves to allow the reader an even better understanding of what he is saying. I am now less frightened of my time with "Anatomy of Criticism".

Northrop Frye, I may actually start to like you after all.

What Constitutes Waste?

As I picked up "Archetypes of Literature" tonight, I noticed one quote out of context that jumped at me: "Criticism, like nature, prefers a waste space to an empty one." As I tend to take things out of context frequently and I have been thinking about this topic from time to time, this quote got some of my gears turning. By Frye's defintion, all words are literature, so does that include literature that we will not be studying in a Literary Criticism class anytime soon? Would he rather it exist than not? perehaps the existence of bad literature serves the purpose of highlighting the quality of great literature. Or Mayb no literature can really be defined as bad. Have these past years of studying the classics just made me jaded toward literature? All summer, I was almost embarrassed to admit the books I was reading for fun, because some were far from Faulkner. They were all good enough to get published and become bestsellers in most cases, but not good enough for me to consider them great. Most of them I considered a waste of my time, though everything I read was very entertaining. lately I have been operating under the assumption that if i understand it on the first try, it must not be "good literature". But as I thought more deeply about my concept of good literature, I relized that my defintion is not nearly concrete enough to classify anything as good or bad. First I must decide what good or bad is. I would consider myself a slight critic of literature, hopefully this semester I will be able to hone those skills. Perhaps I will be able to stop reading books that embarrass me. Maybe I will just learn to stop being embarrassed about what i read for. Hmmm... this post makes little sense, exhausted ramblings.