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.