Jaques Derrida and Deconstruction

-Derrida is known as the father of Deconstruction

-recognized that writing has both advantages and disadvantages - like good and evil, you cannot have one without the other

-believed that through writing, the work can make an author present without the author being physically present

-all about interpretation...what does the author really mean? (varies from person to person)

-the absence of the author means that we are left with only the text and texts are understood in different ways

-texts are read in various ways AND on multiple levels

-promoted careful reading of texts

-thought that a person's commentary about the texts (their criticism of it) was personal interpretation

-considered "liberal" compared to Hans Georg Gadamer

-thought that Westernized ideas of thinking were embedded in our minds

-thought Gadamer too positive about tradition - was more contemporary in his thought

-thought that readers have sole control over texts

-ALWAYS rethink your interpretations, play with texts you read, be willing to hear what it is saying and above all, QUESTION it - for this is when understanding (deconstruction) takes place.

Apology Paper

A Sudden Manifestation of the Divine

“Okay, so today we will begin our unit on the dissection of fetal pigs,” the balding science teacher said to his class of advanced biology students. “I know that some of you have applied for college already and that many of you are interested in the medical field – nursing, pre-med…”
He began listing off majors in science as Gabby eagerly looked to the back of the room where the fun would begin. She couldn’t wait to put on her nerdy goggles, the smelly plastic apron and the blue latex gloves to eviscerate the smelly dead animal which awaited her presence, scalpel in hand. Unable to wait to get to college to observe cadavers and take all of the required nursing courses, she had decided that the fetal pig was her chance – her chance to show her biology teacher what she was capable of – that she would someday make a great nurse. Maybe then he would consider writing her a letter of recommendation so that she could receive that hefty scholarship and have four years of nursing school paid for. Oh, if only…
“Alright, let’s get started,” he stated, motioning them to the back of the room. Gabby shot up out of her desk, immediately beginning to put on her gear. As soon as it was all on, she raced to the back table and began setting up the tray that would soon hold her dead pig – her future. Nervous anticipation grew within her as her science teacher began to pass around Bag o’ Pig to her fellow classmates, who did not look nearly as enthused as she did. She twiddled her thumbs, eyes darting around with excitement, as she watched the others grimace as they opened the bags that contained the unborn swine.
What a bunch of sissies, she thought to herself. Why were they incapable of just sucking it up and dissecting this damn pig? It wasn’t a daunting task, especially compared to things that she would have to endure as a registered nurse - oooh, which would be happening in the Spring of 2008 – of course she would graduate in as little as four years. She would not be like those losers who stayed in school for 10 years and never received a degree. She thought of one of her favorite touchstones from William Blake’s Proverbs of Heaven and Hell that kept her inspired – kept her on the right track: “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” She was not the fool, and would strive, seek, find and never yield. Oh, nice reference to Tennyson, she thought to herself.
It was her time. Her science teacher approached her table with Pig-in-a-Bag – a quite grotesque Pig-in-a-Bag as a matter of fact, she thought as she eyed the contorted specimen, which was soaking in a dirty orange liquid. She wrinkled her nose as he threw it down upon the table; it gave a little bounce and then laid there flat – dead – static.
Suck it up, she thought to herself, knowing that what she would have to endure as a nurse would be far worse than that of a dead fetal pig. She apprehensively took the scissors and began to slice the top of the bag open as the smell of formaldehyde filled her nostrils – stung her eyes, burned her nose, dirtied her once-clean glove. She shut her eyes, gripped the table and tried to breathe evenly. After a moment, she opened them to find that the fetal pig was staring at her with serious eyes – eyes that meant business. To her disbelief, it then began to move its mouth to speak to her!
At this point, Gabby gasped and wondered why none of her other classmates had witnessed the pig move. Why weren’t they freaking out too?! As her eyes widened in terror, the pig spoke: “Gabby, you must know that all structures in words are partly rhetorical, and hence literary, and the notion of scientific or philosophical or verbal structure free of rhetorical elements is an illusion.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!” she shouted loudly at the pig who eyed her intently. The room became silent and all of her classmates turned to look at her, confused. She didn’t even notice their smirks and giggles because the pig continued to speak:
“Gabby, you may get a whole liberal education simply by picking up one unconventional poem and following its archetypes as they stretch out into the rest of literature,” it stated, now attempting to wriggle out of the plastic bag.
Gabby took a step back, and then felt her hands grow sweaty and her knees wobbly and weak. Her vision blurred and her speech became slurred. The pig eyed her intently as her body weakened and fell to the floor, her head smashing against a hard pipe below the hand sink. And then – darkness.

She awoke in the darkness. She awoke in the damp, cold darkness; the darkness of a cave. She groped around frantically, but there was nothing for her to hold onto; no walls - just the hard ground below her. Her head turned desperately in every which way, attempting to find a light, a light to escape from her blindness.
Just as she began to lose all hope and felt the tears welling in her eyes, she looked up straight in front of her. A light bulb. What? She thought to herself. A light bulb has randomly turned on in…a cave? She shook her head in disbelief, but then realized this light bulb was her only hope – her escape from this terrible dark place.
With that she crawled toward this light bulb, desperate to reach it, to see what it meant – to be freed. The rocks ripped and tore the flesh of her hands and knees as she frantically crawled toward the light; she didn’t care. She had to reach the light no matter what. It was her ticket out of this dark place, a place where she had no future, no pleasure, no life.
When she approached the light bulb, she stood up, marveling at its beauty in the darkness; she could feel the warmth it let off and let it caress the tears from her saddened face. “This is why I’m here,” she whispered to herself, understanding it all a little more clearly now.
And suddenly, just as if her words had triggered it, Gabby stood in a field, a beautiful field full of golden flowers of every shape and size. Everything around her seemed to be surrounded by a celestial light, and all she could do was smile and marvel at the wonder that was before her. She was truly happy. She had left the darkness of the cave and had escaped the dull brazen world she had once lived. Where she stood now was where she wanted to be.
Suddenly, an older gentleman in rusted armor rode up to her on his…steed? It startled Gabby when he swiftly jumped off of the horse and fell straight to the ground, armor clanking and scraping against itself.
“My fair lady,” he began, attempting to pull himself from the ground as he groveled at her feet. His eager face looked up at her as she stood before him. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He staggered to his feet, quickly took her hand and kissed it overzealously.
She giggled as he spoke the words, but allowed it. “Yes, you may,” she replied.
“Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. And summer’s lease hath all to short a date…”
As he said the words, he meant the words. Anyone could see that having looked into his honest eyes. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” he continued, and then Gabby realized something. Through this poem, this piece of literature, these words that were once scribbled on a page, she would be immortalized; she would live forever.
As the man finished his sonnet, he looked upon her glowing face. She was awed.
“Come with me and be my love?” he asked softly, his gaze never leaving hers.
Gabby smiled and nodded, captivated by this passionate man who stood baring his heart and soul to her. Yes, he was a bit silly, but then again…he was true.
After the old knight and the fair maiden mounted their horse, they rode through the forest and into the sunset to live happily ever after in their house made of books. As they rode, the words of God filled their eager minds: “Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the center and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life.”

“Gabby, Gabby, are you okay? Wake up, please wake up,” a voice said in the distance.
Her eyes fluttered open to see many young faces standing above her - faces of her fellow classmates. A future psychologist, an engineer, a future philosopher, a great mathematician; their faces looked downtrodden, as if something huge was missing from each of their lives, as if they were all incomplete.
“How long was I out?” Gabby asked, lifting her head to look around the room, ignoring the throbbing in her head.
“About thirty seconds,” someone replied.
She scoffed and then giggled at how absurd they sounded. “But I was in a cave, and there was this light bulb, and I followed it. And then I got to it and then suddenly I was in this beautiful field full of these golden flowers, and I met a knight who recited some Shakespeare to me…” she trailed off as the skeptics eyed her as if she was insane.
“Yeaah,” one of the students said, the future engineer. “I think you hit your head a little hard.”
Unphased, she smiled up at her classmates. “It’s okay,” she stated. “You guys don’t get it…and you probably never will.”

Hello. My Name is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

My name is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I was born in Massachusetts in 1803. Perhaps you’ve heard of me or my work such as Nature or Self-Reliance? Or maybe you’ve heard of my famous speech entitled “The American Scholar”, of which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said to be “America’s Declaration of Independence for Intellectuals”.

My education was between Boston’s Latin School and private tutoring; I later went on to study at Harvard on scholarship and struggled with the curriculum due to being the innovative genius of my time.

I followed in my family’s footsteps and entered Harvard Divinity School to become a preacher. Six years after my ordination, I resigned because I thought that formal Christianity only focused on past traditions, and I was more interested in contemporary issues. Have I mentioned that my work ridiculously ground-breaking?

I later educated myself on poetry and writing, and am often referred to as the “Father of American Literature” and one of the first American writers to be recognized by European literary establishments. Not a big deal or anything.

I was a poet, preacher, orator and an essayist; my work was considered controversial in its day, and I articulated our new nation’s prospects and needs through my speeches and through my writing.

I helped many authors get their start; just a few are Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglas, Robert Frost and Louisa May Alcott.

I worked well into my seventies and had my daughter organize my lectures (that moved many) and my journals that inspired new American writers. Work was indeed my life and I kept over 182 journals over my career.

My initial fame came from my critiques of literary, religious and educational establishments. I was known as an experimenter who urged my fellow Americans to reject their regard to old ideas and values to outdated traditions.

Did I mention that I am the leader in the Transcendentalist movement, which is a movement concerning new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy? Yes, the leader.

In closing, I will leave you with a quote from Joel Porte: “Emerson’s fate, somewhat like Shakespeare’s, was that he came to be treated as an almost purely allegorical personage whose real character and work got submerged in his function as a touchstone of critical opinion.”

The Removal of the Veil

So, I have been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it has deep apocalyptic themes. By saying that, I just want to laugh at the statement because if one has read it, by saying it has "deep apocalyptic themes", it is the understatement of the century. It is one of the darkest, most sordid and dismal and bleak things I have ever read. Granted, I am not finished with it, and I don't know the outcome, but it cannot possibly end well, and what I have read so far has made me want to cry, to vomit, to throw the book down in disgust - but I just can't stop reading. Oh, and they're making a film out of it, by the way. Can't wait to go to that one! It makes me want to commit suicide just reading it; I don't know how I'll react when I actually watch it.

Anyway, the term "apocalypse" was mentioned in class made me think of this book. And the literal meaning of apocalypse is "the removal of the veil." Dr. Sexson mentioned that everything is indeed an illusion. The world that has ended in the apocalypse is the world that we thought was real, when in all actuality, the curtain has been drawn, and we see now what was underneath - what has always been there but we have failed to see. McCarthy's world is terrifying; it leaves his readers desperate to see this man and his child live to see the next day - a day with no sunlight, with ash falling from the sky, with no food, no shelter, no hope. Is this how he sees our world now? Is McCarthy capable of removing the veil to see all of the ugliness underneath the facade we have created that is our world? I think he views the human race as we are, not as what we perceive ourselves to be. It is all about illusion, isn't it? Without illusion, we would see what is really there, and no one wants that - no one wants to see the truth. It's all a front - it's just an illusion...

"By an apocalypse I mean primarily the imaginative conception of the whole of nature as the content of an infinite and external living body which, if not human, is closer to being human than to being inanimate." -Frye

Here is an excerpt from the book (READ IT - YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED):

http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307387899&view=excerpt

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I like the thought of being immortalized in poem. Shakespeare notes in many of his sonnets that by him writing them, the person who he speaks of will be remembered forever. Her beauty, her mind, her soul may fade, but through a poem, she will live on forever. What an idea. This is why literature is superior to history and to philosophy. This is why one would much rather (I know I would) read a sonnet rather than a dry account of history from one perspective. In history it seems as if only one person is right; in philosophy, it seems as if no one is right. In literature, however, we are capable of seeing many perspectives, and rather than being right or wrong, we are enlightened with new thought, new knowledge that encompasses our lives - literature connects everything. Give me many perspectives! Give me a rebuttal, such as Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" to Christopher Marlowe's "A Passionate Shepherd to his Love". Neither one of these sonnets is wrong; neither one is right. But they both offer the author's perspective - the author's voice - the author's rebuttal to something they find to not connect with what they perceive the situation to be. Where else can one find such thinking than that of literature? Not history. And not philosophy. Literature is where it's at. Literature is where one will live forever.

Go Vote! (But know what you're voting for).

So, I was doing some research last night to update myself on the issues that will be posted on the ballots today, and I thought that sharing this information would be helpful to some. The site has information on ballot issues, registration, absentee voting, etc. Check it out:

http://www.montanavotes.net/

And if you are unsure of where you should be going to vote, just go to this web site, type in your address, and it will give you the place where you should be voting as well as directions of how to get there! Get off of your asses and go vote, people! You have absolutely no excuse now!

http://www.voteforchange.com/?polling=MT&source=sem-fo-gotv-google-mt-vo-launch3&gclid=CNPioumB3JYCFQ89awodixtL4g

Touchstones

"Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."

-Tennyson

"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." -Yeats

"Without contraries is no progression." -Blake

So, for the audio and visual portion of this post, I have the one man I can listen to and the rest of the world disappears; no stress, no worries - just his lovely voice. If chocolate could sing, it would sound like Josh Groban. The song is also paired with some lovely imagery of the grandeur of nature - winter, spring, summer, fall - our circle of phases...it's all connected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNdjML2kquc

My Book and Heart Shall Never Part

What a fascinating concept: the idea that as we learn to read, as we learn to write about what we read, that our innocence is lost. This theory ties in perfectly to our literary criticism class; as we grow and learn and gain the precious knowledge of literature, of writing, of rhetoric, we become critics. We become cynical and knowledgeable and critical of the works that we read. Does this begin in childhood? Of course it does. We don't think of six year olds walking around speaking of literature and metaphors and archetypes, syntax and allegory, but they do! In a way, they do. They are little critics; we all are. By saying that they didn't like a story or a book "because...", they are beginning to lose the innocence they once possessed, yet never knew they possessed, for the transition into experience is purely natural and involuntary. Their opinions are being formed, their minds are being altered, and literature is responsible for making them the people they will eventually become.
Thinking back on discussions from my British Literature class with Kimberly Meyers, we discussed when it was that children began to lose their innocence - their nature of innocence. It was argued that children lose their innocence when they hit puberty; when they first have sex; when they first intentionally lie; when they begin to rebel; when they take their first sip of alcohol. Never did we think that the instant a child picks up a book and learns their alphabet and inevitably learns the beauty of reading that their innocence is lost. What an appalling thought! But is that thought true? I think that it is.
I am a believer that everything literary can somehow be traced back to William Blake. He was phenomenal; he is phenomenal. His concept of the transition between innocence and experience can be applied to all of literature, to all characters. We are all born, and we are all born innocent - tabula rasa - a clean slate. As we grow (as we read and become knowledgeable), our innocence ceases to exist; it fades; it is inevitably ephemeral. Our naive little natures become beautifully enlightened; our mask of ignorance is stripped of us, and we reveal the power of knowledge; our innocence makes the glorious transition into the abyss of experience. Our beings are not marred or jaded or damaged; we transform, as all things in nature do. A seed into an apple. A tag-along puppy into a loyal guardian. A fragile egg into a majestic eagle. A silken cocoon into a beautiful butterfly. We make the transition of Spring to Summer to Autumn to Winter and back again as we watch our offspring grow and learn and experience life as life should be experienced. Gaining knowledge is learning; learning is growing; growing is experiencing.
This all reminds me of Blake's The Book of Thel. In this poem, a young girl rejects the idea of making the transition from innocence to experience; she feels that she needs and will stay in the stage of innocence forever, which we all know is impossible and unnatural. She speaks to the Lilly, the Cloud, the Worm and the Clay (all phallic and yoni symbols), and rejects what each of them has to say. By doing this, by never removing her "white veil", she walks through "valleys dark" and finds her own grave. She sits down and hears the voice of sorrow, and this is what it says:

'Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?

Or the glist'ning Eye to the poison of a smile?

Why are Eyelids stor'd with arrows ready drawn,

Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?

Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits and coined gold?

Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?

Why an Ear a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?

Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling & affright?

Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?

Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?'

In these lines, Blake states that it is impossible for anyone to remain innocent. We are all going to enter the realm of experience; it is a natural occurrence that must take place. Yes, one can argue that there are a number of factors that help to determine the extent of our experience, but after the film we watched tonight, I think that it all begins with an A B C...

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

I had every intention of writing a meaningful and insightful blog this evening; however, I got home from work and I got a movie from Netflix that I haven't seen in AGES. Needless to say, I must watch it. I MUST! Perhaps it will give me some divine inspiration for my next blog. Until then, here is some Wordsworth - it reminds me of my British Literature II class with Kimberly Meyers. That woman was amazing; fearsome, but amazing. I wish I would have sucked the bone marrow out of that class. Not that I didn't enjoy it thoroughly, but I didn't get all that I could have out of it. Aaaah, I love the Romantics. They make me see things in a celestial light...
(Thanks to Heather and Ben as well ~ I needed to be reminded of this fabulous poem...).

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,--
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng.
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;--
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning
This sweet May-morning;
And the children are culling
On every side
In a thousand valleys far and wide
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
--But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,--
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
0 joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
--Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither--
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We, in thought, will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

-William Wordsworth

Test #1 Study Guide

Just got back from an invigorating experience at the cardio room on campus. Now exhausted and sweaty as all hell, I will post some important information for our test TOMORROW!

1. DH Lawrence said: "Trust the TALE, not the TELLER."
2. Know definitions for CENTRIPETAL (inside of the text - formal) and CENTRIFUGAL (outside of the text).
3. In which of Frye's boxes does PHARMAKOS (scapegoat) exist?: IRONIC COMEDY
4. Baseball umpire in Frye (pg. 46) - deals with the umpire being a scapegoat - the person we, as fans, turn to to verbally abuse and want to kill (the scapegoat).
5. Frye in a nutshell: "All of literature is displaced MYTH."
6. Aristotle's definition of TRAGEDY: "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is SERIOUS, COMPLETE and OF A CERTAIN MAGNITUDE."
7. Dromenon - something that is done (Aristotle thought that imitation was action, so it was literally (letterarily) done.
8. Don Quixote (pg. 427) - What does the cannon believe about literature?: It should be DIDACTIC and have a moral. Didactic meaning: teaching or intending to teach a moral lesson (thanks to dictionary.com)
9. LOGOS - power to create through the agency of the word (Idea of Order at Key West - based on the Creation myth)
10. The sense of REALITY is higher in tragedy than in comedy.
11. All comedy is directed at AN INFLEXIBLE PERSON.
12. Sidney's thoughts on nature: "Nature only gives us a BRAZEN world, whereas poetry gives us a GOLDEN world."
13. Abram's "Grid" that's not really a grid:
World - Ancient
Audience - Neoclassical
Work - Modern
Artist - Romance
14. According to Frye, all structures of words are partly rhetorical and hence literary. Quotation from pg. 350 - "...all structures in words are partly rhetorical, and hence literary, and that the notion of a scientific or philosophical verbal structure free of rhetorical elements is an illusion." Meaning: ALL THINGS ARE LITERARY. ALL THINGS ARE LITERATURE. IT IS EVERYWHERE. IT IS EVERYTHING.
15. Plato banishes poets in Book X of The Republic - why?: He thinks they are USELESS and DERANGED and LIARS
16. Which box does PATHOS belong?: LOW MIMETIC (tear-jerkers)
17. Mythos - Plot (story)
Ethos - Character
Dianoia - Theme
18. Repeat the last line of Shelley's Defense of Poetry: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
19. We live in the DESCRIPTIVE PHASE or the LOW MIMETIC MODE. We need to get out of it and use our imaginations, eh?
20. Sidney's idea that THE POET NEVER AFFIRMS ANYTHING THEREFORE THEY NEVER LIE.
21. INTENTIONAL PHALLACY - what the poet meant; according to Frye, what the poet meant is THE POEM.
22. TAUTOLOGY -
1.needless repetition of an idea, esp. in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness, as in “widow woman.”
2.an instance of such repetition.
SPEAKING IN CIRCLES! (Plain Palin).
23. Shelley argues that IMAGINATION IS SUPERIOR TO LOGIC AND REASON. This reminds me of a quote from Einstein (paraphrased) - "Imagination is more important than knowledge for knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world." He must have stolen from Shelley.
24. What is an epiphany?: LIGHTBULB!
Sudden MANIFESTATION of the DIVINE
Anagogical
25. Frye (pg. 100) - Lycidas - "In short, we can get a whole liberal education simply by picking up one conventional poem and following its archetypes as they stretch out into the rest of literature."
26. ALAZON - meaning IMPOSTER (2 Types): the Pedant (Professor-esque Obama)
the Soldier ("Respect-me-I'm-a-POW-McCain)
27. METONOMY - something that stands for something else (Frye's opening words in the Symbols chapter): "The other matter concerns the use of the word 'symbol,' which in this essay means any unit of literary structure that can be isolated from critical attention. A word, a phrase, or an image used with some kind of special reference (which is usually what a symbol is taken to mean) are all symbols when they are distinguishable elements in critical analyses (71).

Best of luck to all! See you tomorrow at noon!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

So, being the nerd that I am, I recently was watching movie trailers on apple.com and found this one - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is based on a very short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It doesn't look like it follows the story very well, but it looks fabulous, nonetheless.
In the story, Benjamin (Brad Pitt!) is born an old man with the knowledge and mannerisms of an old man (ie - asking for a cigar right out of the womb). In the film (as it seems), he is born an old man yet with the mind of a child. So rather than being born an old man with the mind of an old man and dying as an infant with the mind of an infant, the film portrays him as being born an old man with the mental capacity of a child, yet he dies an infant (perhaps?) with the mind of someone who has lived a full life. How many of you have I confused thus far? I confused myself, so probably a great many of you are thinking, "Gabby...what the fu...?" Anyway, I have been doing homework all day (as I'm sure most of you have), so here. Take a little break and enjoy the trailer to this wonderful-looking film. I hope it wins Oscars. That would make my day. And it comes out this Christmas! Hurrah! Yet another reason to avoid staying at my family's house ALL DAY LONG.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thecuriouscaseofbenjaminbutton/ (There are two trailers - both make it look cinematically stunning...).

Super Fun Facts on Emerson

-Emerson was born in 1803

-He is often referred to as the "Father" of American Literature

-Was a poet, preacher, orator and essayist

-Articulated the new nation's prospects and needs through speech and writing

-Helped authors such as Rebecca Harding Davis, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Hart Crane, Robert Frost and A.R. Ammons "exploit" their work

-One of the first American writers to be recognized by the British and European literary establishments

-Writers such as Thoreau, Alcott and Stuart Phelps describe their emergence onto the literary scene in relationship to Emerson, to his influence as a teacher or writer or a speaker or an austere presence

-Joel Porte argues that "Emerson's fate, somewhat like Shakespeare's, was that he came to be treated as an almost purely allegorical personage whose real character and work got submerged in his function as a touchstone of critical opinion."

-He became the founder of Transcendentalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

-Often described as a person who did not understand the world's evil or pain it brought

-His father William, a minister, died when he was 8 years old

-His mother, Ruth Haskins Emerson, supported he and his 4 other siblings (3 others died when they were quite young)

-Emerson's education was between Boston's Latin School and private tutoring by his aunt Mary Moody Emerson

-He attended Harvard on scholarship and struggled with the curriculum, indecisive about becoming a minister or a teacher

-He somewhat educated himself about writing and poetry

-In 1825, he entered Harvard Divinity School, following 9 generations of ministry in his family. Six years after his ordination, he resigned the ministry because he thought that formal Christianity only looked at "past traditions and words of the dead." Emerson was more interested in contemporary issues.

-Married Ellen Tucker in 1829, but lost her to tuberculosis, which also affected him

-Tucker left him with a substantial inheritance, which enabled him to buy and write books, later enabling him to gain more money from his publications and lecture tours

-He cared for his mentally-handicapped brother for twenty years

-In 1835, he married Lidian Jackson and moved to Concord where they had 4 children - Waldo, Ellen (named after Emerson's first wife, suggested by Lidian), Edith and Edward, who later edited his father's works and journals. Young Waldo died at 5 of scarlet fever.

-Emerson continued to work well into his seventies, relying on his daughter Ellen to help organize his lectures and journals

-He died in 1882 from pneumonia and was buried in Concord near Thoreau and Hawthorne

-He loaned Thoreau his property at Walden Pond

-He raised money to support the Alcott family, despite his belief that a philosopher should earn his own keep

-Emerson's initial fame came from his critique of the literary, religious and educational establishments of his day; known as an experimenter who urged Americans to reject their deference to old modes and values to continental traditions

-His work is characterized by a "combination of homely metaphors and grandiose goals, by his insistence on the present and his expectations of the future

-He kept 182 journals and notebooks over his career

-A critic of his first book entitled Nature, was offended by language that is sometimes "coarse and blunt"

-"Emerson's aim as a writer was less to originate a tradition than to produce active readers who would then refashion themselves and their culture"

*all info taken from Jean Ferguson Carr (University of Pittsburgh) - Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume B, 5th Edition

A Defense of Poetry

I just finished reading Shelley's A Defense of Poetry (as well as its history in then Norton anthology), and I was overwhelmed with all of the wonderful quotes that pertain to our class; it is almost as if our class was based on this very piece of writing - which in a way, it probably is. All of the wonderful quotes that I furiously underlined made up the whole: Shelley's argument that the Poet and their Poetry do indeed matter, that they do indeed form the base of all things in life, of all things that we consider to be intellectual, to have meaning - the sciences, histories, philosophies, all of it is formed by the mind of the poet and the beauty of literature and the metaphors that make it up.

I found it interesting in reading the history that A Defense of Poetry was intended to be written in three different parts, but the last two were never written. I wonder what more Shelley had to argue in his short life about the importance of the arts. It is also interesting to note that this was written in 1821, yet was never published until 1840, eighteen years after Shelley had died. What a pity that he never saw this work published for the public to see, yet he probably would not have cared because of his thoughts on the work of the Poet. He argues that in the poet's lifetime, their work is not taken seriously or analyzed in the way it should be; instead, it is only in the poet's death that the work is appreciated as it should be. On one final note, I enjoyed that this piece of writing served as somewhat of a rebuttal to Plato's rigid ideas on poetry. Someone needed to stand up to that bastard.

Onto some wonderful quotations:


"In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, int he motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order, has been called taste, by modern writers."

"In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good that exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception and secondly between perception and expression."

"It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure itself."

"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life."

"All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. "The mind is it's own place and of itself we can make a heaven of a hell, a hell of heaven" (Satan's speech in Paradise Lost). But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being."

"A Poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let Time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other instituter of human life be comparable to that of a poet."

*I will have some responses to these quotes in later entries. I must go do some other reading at the moment. Hope these quotations help all who have not read this yet. Enjoy your Sunday.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

"Give all to love; obey thy heart."

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could."

"Every sweet has it's sour; every evil it's good."

"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm."

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"Colleges hate geniuses, just as covents hate saints."

"Character is higher than intellect...a great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think."

"Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old."

"As we grow old...the beauty steals inward."

"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver for five minutes longer."

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson/

Linkage.

How does one add links? I know not. Sometimes I hate technology because I am completely inept...

Amber - http://engl300amberwilliams.blogspot.com/
Ben - http://bmcycleski.tripod.com/english300bm/
Brielle - http://briellethinks.blogspot.com/
Chris - http://operoper.blogspot.com/
Claire - http://eng300cn.blogspot.com/
Doug - http://dougs-eng300blog.blogspot.com/
Dustin - http://critlitdc.blogspot.com/
Erica - http://www.engl300ek.blogspot.com/
Heather - http://heatherparso.wordpress.com/
Jake - http://jakeenglish300.blogspot.com/
Jessica - http://niennasayyadina.blogspot.com/
Jiwon - http://engl300jw.blogspot.com/
Joan - http://msueng300jg.blogspot.com/
Judson - http://readerresponderjsh.blogspot.com/
Kayla - http://klkitchens.wordpress.com/
Kelsey - http://www.kelseynicolestavnes.blogspot.com/
Lisa - http://engl300-blog.blogspot.com/
Matt - http://mattseng300.blogspot.com/
Megan - http://english300fall08.blogspot.com/
Rosanna - http://decluingvigilenceandchalis.blogspot.com/
Sarah - http://sarahchristine-eng300.blogspot.com/

Quite possibly I will figure this link thing out eventually. Where is MY nerd?

10 Things We Think About Movie Critics by Kathleen Murphy

MSN's homepage today had this article on why movie critics are so evil and how they need to stop being so nit-picky about superhero films and other terrible films (in my opinion) that we waste money to make.
To me, Kathleen Murphy, the woman who wrote this article, sounds like a teenage boy with her terrible grammar, her use of slang and warped taste in what "good" cinema is. She thinks that she is "stickin' it to the man" when in reality, she just sounds ignorant. I realize that she is attempting to relate to the "everyman", but come on; these guys (the critics) have been around so long and are so "ancient" because they know what they are doing - simple as that. Do they put kindergartner's' finger paintings in the New Yorker? I don't think so. The critics are the polished educated ones (and they are dwindling in this country), the "elite" as she calls them, because they don't relate to the stereotypical image of what the "everyman" is watching. If we wanted a review that related to general society's perception of what a good film is, I'd ask my eleven year old little brother to write it - and he could probably do a better job than someone of her "Dude, like Tropic Thunder was a waaay good flick" mentality would.
Maybe I'm on a high horse, but I loathe stupid movies - I don't dare call them films - because they are not. They are a waste of time and money, and I'm really quite angered by the fact that she belittled films (that are masterpieces!) like Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men. I have one final thing to say and that is this (it was a bumper sticker I saw one day): "Read a fucking book."

"Not everybody has to go up Brokeback Mountain or into some country that's not for old men to get all sad and soulful. I mean, Batman's parents got murdered, his girl's blown to smithereens, and now the Joker's all up in his face with, "You complete me." How heavy is that?"

"You gotta realize you aren't writing about Shakespeare or Picasso here -- just consumer reports on what lots and lots of regular folk use to kill time over the weekend. Some of you write so dead-serious it's like you think someone's grading you, or civilization as we know it hangs on your every word."

"Why waste my time showing off how much you know about the film's director or what genre it's in and how it measures up to the last 40-something examples of that genre or how the movie fits into the grand scheme of things cinematic?"

"Mostly we don't pay much attention to you anyway -- we already pretty much know what's hot and what's not, from ad raves and RottenTomatoes.com blurbs and "Entertainment Tonight" reports. Jacked directly into the action, we don't need snobby critics for middlemen."

"Some critics are frustrated teachers, looking for a captive class. They claim we need them because they're more educated, more informed, about movies -- as if we care. They go all gaga about "the sensual and aesthetic joys of movies -- the interplay of light and shadow, composition, movement, faces, color, sound, music, language, acting"! Is this dude trippin' or what?"

http://movies.msn.com/movies/moviesfeature/dvd/critics/?GT1=28101

Frye Fries my Brain

I must remind myself that unlike Frye, I have not read every piece of literature known to man; I do not have his extensive knowledge on...well, everything; I am not a literary genius. I must accept these harsh facts and take what I can from this frighteningly intelligent man who seems to be an encyclopedia for all knowledge pertaining to literature. I must get something from the Theory of Modes chapter in Anatomy of Criticism. Here is my feeble attempt...

"Me with a head full of words but not one useful expression." - The Wailin' Jennys - I am listening to them right now and they are fabulous. I also thought that this line from their lyrics was quite appropriate with how I'm feeling right now. Here is a link (or two):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00dWtcTds24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx9VTFXMsRg

1. Myth - the hero is superior in kind to other men and superior to the environment of other men; the hero is a divine being; the hero is a god or godlike; myths live in the realm outside of "normal literary categories" (33).

2. Romance - the hero is superior in degree to other men, to his environment; his actions are marvelous, but is identified as a human; prodigies of courage and endurance unnatural to us are quite natural to him - enchanted weapons, talking animals, witches, etc; also called a legend or folk tale.

3. High Mimetic - the hero is superior in degree to other men but not his natural environment; the hero is a leader; what he does is subject to both social criticism and the order of nature; epic and tragic.

4. Low Mimetic - the hero is superior neither to men or his environment - the hero is one of us; readers respond to his sense of common humanity and "demand from the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our own experience" (34); constitutes most comedy and realistic fiction. The film Imaginary Heroes reminds me of an example that would constitute the low mimetic mode. If you haven't seen it, you should. These characters are us; a major theme in the film is having realistic expectations of what a hero should be - wonderful movie. Here is the trailer because I couldn't find the clip I wanted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUgMUYD8olU

5. Ironic - the hero has inferior power or intelligence to us, so that we, as readers, look down upon the character who finds himself in some form of bondage, frustration or absurdity; readers may feel as if they too could be in the character's situation that is being judged by the "norms of greater freedom" (34).

There seem to be so many different elements to each of these modes, leaving me unable to differentiate the characteristics of each from another. Frye admits that they blend and blur together and at times may be difficult to comprehend which mode a piece of literature constitutes, which makes me feel a wee bit better - not so stupid. He says, "...it is hardly possible to separate the mythical, romantic and high mimetic strands completely" (35); this tells me that he indeed does not know absolutely everything, which brings a :) to my still-confused face. Dammit, I'm an intelligent woman; why am I struggling so with this old dead bastard who liked to flaunt his literary genius?
Let us face it: despite each of the modes' rank or status in literature (#1 being myth, #2 being romance, etc), the modes are all connected. There is no piece of literature that can fall easily and completely into one of these categories - the lines will blur - confusion will rear it's ugly head. And even Frye says, "Irony descends from the low mimetic: it begins in realism and dispassionate observation. But as it does so, it moves steadily toward myth, and dim outlines of sacrificial rituals and dying gods begin to reappear in it. Our five modes evidently go round in a circle" (42). Each mode descends from another; each mode is connected to another; each mode blurs into another; they are all intertwined. Finally. I have made sense of something.

What Comes after the Irony?

Class Notes from Friday September 12th:

Low Mimetic - realistic

Alazon - the "imposter"; comes in 2 forms:
a. The soldier (who brags a lot) AKA John McCain
b. The Pedant (Professor-esque) AKA Barack Obama
*According to Dr. Sexson, Shakespeare writes the alazons the best in all literature.

Frye's "Quest Myth"
Wikipedia link to Frye's Anatomy of Criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism (includes summaries of each chapter and the "Fictional and Thematic Types by Mode" chart - and it's filled out!).

Finnegan's Wake's Vico:
- a historian who thought civilization arose with thunder
- not literal history, but poetic history
- said that the human race is in a stage of decline; the order of the decline ------>
a. The gods (hieroglyphics)
b. The Heroes (language of the epics)
c. The Men (language of commerce)
d. The Chaos (language of unintelligible gibberish - "Like, dude, that's totally excellent".)*
*We are a part of the language of chaos. An example - we are incapable of going up to a person of the opposite sex in the SUB and say, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...?" Oh, if only...

We start with MYTH then move to ROMANCE then to HIGH MIMETIC MODE and then to LOW MIMETIC MODE and lastly to IRONIC MODE. Sexson says that we are living in the last two modes, which are the lowest on the totem pole; as we move from Myth mode downward, their value gradually decreases. So where are we going to go from Ironic Mode? Terrifying, isn't it?

You Don't Know What You Think Until You Write It

Frye: "Our first step, therefore, is to recognize and get rid of meaningless criticism: that is, talking about literature in a way that cannot help build up a systematic structure of knowledge. Casual value-judgements belong not to criticism but to the history of taste, and reflect, at best, only the social and psychological compulsions which prompted their utterance" (Anatomy of Criticism, 700).



Frye strongly feels that we should have a "systematic structure" of criticizing the arts, a universal standard, if you will, when we speak about literature, film, art and music. I think that he is all about order when going about criticism; if there is no structure, one has no case. If there is no research or deeper thought on a subject, one has no case. If we cannot compare the art to something done previously, one has no case. Therefore, my peers, we must educate ourselves on this systematic structure that Frye speaks so highly of.
But I have to ask myself: once one is tainted with the criticism portion of literary criticism, will we ever read a poem again and truly enjoy it? Will we ever be able to watch a film without mocking it? Can we listen to an album or look at a piece of art and appreciate it for exactly what it is? I would like to think that criticism will enrich our views of the arts, but at this point, I am weary that it may jade my vision of what the arts are or should be. That old saying "Ignorance is bliss" could pertain to this situation. If we take art at face value with no knowledge of who the artist or writer is, where they came from, what they were trying to do by creating it, would we appreciate it more...or less? Once we are cynical critics, won't we just look at everything with disdain because it's juuuust not quite good enough? I'm not answering any of these questions, you see, because I don't know.
What I do know is that being a literature major has enlightened me in many ways, and for that, I will never watch a film in the way my roommate (who is finishing her nursing degree) may watch a film; when I speak of a film in Lit-Nerd-Speak (meaning eloquently and insightfully), she looks at me as if I'm insane. She'd rather look at the biological aspect of something. Another one of my best friends just graduated with a degree in psychology and environmental studies; she looks at everything psychologically and how people's decisions affect the environment with their bad choices. She also looks at me in a manner that says to me: "WTF?" Another one of my friends is business-minded, another adds historical insight to all we watch, and another likes to look at architecture and interior design in films. We indeed all bring something to the table while watching a film, but being the literary snob that I am, I feel that I can appreciate its content more than they can; I pick up on the beauty of metaphors and know what foreshadowing is. I can analyze a character and determine why they belong in the plot. I detect the irony in the film. And when one of my friends says, "Oh, that movie was great!" And I reply, "Actually, it was quite terrible", I am hated and looked at as a cynical bitter pessimist who hates life and likes to watch small animals die in horrible ways. BUT, I am being a critic, and the difference between a good critic and a bad critic is this: a good critic can explain to you why something is so bad; a bad critic cannot - they are the ones who look at art at face value. The good critics take that deeper, more appreciative look at something.
So here I have it: through writing this blog today, I have answered all of my questions that I had previously. I have had an epiphany, if you will. Criticism will not taint my appreciation for the arts, but rather, it will enlighten me and make my knowledge of the art deeper and richer. So what we don't know may be blissful, but what we do makes us knowledgeable...and it makes us all literary snobs - which I love being. Maybe Frye isn't the nutcase we all made him out to be.

Groups:
#1 - The New Criticism
#2 - Deconstructors
#3 - Feminists
#4 - Reader Response
#5 - Marxists
#6 - Psychoanalysts

Fabulous Flyting

flyte (or flite - spelled either way):
Strife; dispute; abusive or upbraiding talk, as in fliting; wrangling.

In Dr. Sexson's words, flyte is an insult that provokes in a colorful and comical way.

Being quite intrigued with the fact that there is a web site that has Shakespearean insults, I figured that I would search a bit more and find some of my favorite insults from several films (and ones that I didn't know were my favorites) to share with all of you. How this pertains to Literary Criticism, I don't know quite yet, but perhaps I will make a valid point at the end of this blog. We were speaking of flyting in class, so this must have something to do with something...right?

The Princess Bride: "You miserable, vomitous mass." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUee1WvtQZU
O, Brother Where Art Thou: "You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers."
Wayne's World: "Benjamin is nobody's friend. If Benjamin were an ice cream flavor, he'd be pralines and dick."
Anchorman: "You are a smelly pirate hooker. Why don't you just go back to your home on Whore Island?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag8g96qsdaI

Ooooh, look what I've found in my searching. Youtube has it all. Check it out; they even have a Volume II if one desires more cinematic insulting. There is even my favorite scene from 2005's Pride and Prejudice. Love-ly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESEafXDiCMs&feature=related

Okay, so no epiphanies came from these clips; just some laughs. Perhaps I'll be a good student and post some of my notes from Monday, September 8th:

Important Dates:
October 17th - Test #1
November 14th - Test #2
December 18th (8 am) - Final Exam

Amazon.com has Charles Kaplan and William Anderson's book Criticism: Major Statements, which Dr. Sexson recommends reading.

Rhetoric vs. Poetics: What is the difference?

Articles to look up:
Aristotle's "Poetics": http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Aristotle/Poetics.html
Dante's "Letter to Can Grande": http://www.english.udel.edu/dean/cangrand.html
Sir Philip Sidney's "An Apology for Poetry"
Shelley's "Defense of Poetry"

A Blustery Sunday

"...we can get a whole liberal education simply by picking up one unconventional poem and following its archetypes as they stretch out into the rest of literature" (100).

It's amazing that everything in literature is derived from something else written previously, a mere copy of another work. Wouldn't it have been amazing to be one of the first to write a story or orally tell a story that was thought as somewhat original? The groundbreakers didn't even know they were paving a path for authors today or breaking ground; they were just telling stories - stories that we know by heart to this very day. Today we are fed and refed the same story over and over again that uses the same plot and the same archetypes.
As I read Frye's Archetypes of Literature, I was reminded of Joseph Campbell's idea of The Hero's Journey (which Frye refers to as "the quest of the hero") and the criteria for such a story - a story that has been told and retold with the very same elements and will continue to be retold until humanity ceases to exist. It is the reason why modern stories (I don't dare call them "novels") like Harry Potter are so widely popular. Having never read the series myself, I cannot make specific literary notes on the books, but I have watched the movies (and I have two incredibly obsessed adult roommates), and can safely say that the phenomenon is so widely read because it follows a recipe, a formula, if you will; it is the same formula that has been used since Greek mythology, and we, as readers, cannot seem to get enough of it even though we know the events to come. Here is a link on Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the place in which the components to "The Hero's Journey" can be found. The formula and analyzation of this "quest" or "journey" that we have seen a thousand times is remarkably dead-on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces (Thank you, Wikipedia).

Vocab terms from class on Friday September 5th:

trope
–noun
1. Rhetoric (there's that word again!).
a. any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense.
2. a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.
3. (in the philosophy of Santayana) the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

monad
–noun
1. Biology.
a. any simple, single-celled organism.
b. any of various small, flagellate, colorless ameboids with one to three flagella, esp. of the genus Monas.
2. Chemistry. an element, atom, or group having a valence of one. Compare
3. Philosophy.
a. (in the metaphysics of Leibniz) an unextended, indivisible, and indestructible entity that is the basic or ultimate constituent of the universe and a microcosm of it.
b. (in the philosophy of Giordano Bruno) a basic and irreducible metaphysical unit that is spatially and psychically individuated.
c. any basic metaphysical entity, esp. having an autonomous life.
4. a single unit or entity.

*Thanks to dictionary.com

Aaah, the First Day.

The Idea of Order at Key West
by Wallace Stevens
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Stevens/The_Idea_of_Order_at_Key_West.html


Frye: "...all structures in words are partly rhetorical, and hence literary, and that the notion of a scientific or philosophical verbal structure free of rhetorical elements is an illusion" (350).

Whenever I hear or read the word "rhetoric" or "rhetorical", I am taken back to my first semester of my freshman year of college to ENGL121 with Joshua Lenart. I think he was a grad student who was teaching the course, and on the very first day of class he asked us what we thought rhetoric was - the definition, in our own words. Most of the males in the classroom sat there with blank stares because the class was an early one and they really didn't care to be there or understand what rhetoric really was (that was a broad generalization; I apologize). And most of the females sat there with blank stares because Josh was absolutely gorgeous and whether anyone knew the definition or not, we were all unable to speak in his oh-so-perfect presence (at least I was - not ashamed!). In short, none of us could come up with a definition for the word "rhetoric" for varying reasons.
I felt my face grow hot as he eyed each of us. The room got even more silent than it was before; one could hear the clock ticking - it was so utterly painful. I had to look away for fear of him thinking that I was an incompetent moron, and I just knew that he knew that I had a huge Freshman year crush on him while he stood at the front of the room in his gray button-up shirt with his sun-kissed skin, probably just as nervous teaching the course as I was sitting in that dreaded room that actually made me think. Because we were unable to come up with anything, Josh mercifully helped us out. He explained to us that rhetoric was a way of using language effectively - influentially - persuasively. Each person strives to get their point across to another by using language, whether they are an English major, a biology major, a history major, etc, etc, etc. What Frye means (completely dumbed down and totally inarticulate on my part - but with the help of Mr. Josh Lenart) is that each of us use language as a way to communicate with one another. We are constantly using rhetoric to persuade, influence and add our two cents to a conversation or through correspondence, and we do it in ways that are considered literary. So no matter what is being discussed and by whom, everything we say can be taken literarily (is this even a word?)...and in the words of Dr. Sexson, "Not literally - lit-er-ar-il-y". Rhetoric is everywhere, therefore everything that we say and write and the ways in which we communicate with one another is literary. Whew. Thank you, Josh, for explaining rhetoric to me and helping me to understand Frye a few years down my educational road.