Decluing, vigilence and chalis

Dec. 12th- Last day of class

2008-12-12T10:53:00.000-08:00

Final Exam: Thursday 8:00 a.m.

New criticism (Formalism) values technique. Stay inside of text. Unity. Structure.

Deconstruction
affirms and deviates from NC.
There is no absolute meaning to a text. No outside a text. Everything is text.
Counters idea of unity. Well Wrought Urn
"Everything is partly rhetorical and hence literary" (Frye)
Moves away from the notion of unified whole

Feminism
Reductive- Looking only at how women are treated.
Expansive- Looks at domination. bell hooks. What kind of literary work is this? Puts into perspective

Reader Response
You see yourself
Different spectacles
*You cannot make things mean whatever you want them to mean!!!

Psychoanalysts
Don't make fun of Freud
The truth is unseen-look at a glass darkly

Marxism
We do not see the world around us-Social truths
Hidden social hierarchies in texts
Class struggle

Test Questions

What is the difference between a complaint and criticism?
Bloom compares Edith Grossman the________ of translators (Glen Gould)
What secret enchanted thing does Don Antonio tell DQ about that will tell the truth? (The enchanted head)
What is the English translation of Don Quixote (Of the Stains) (Stain glass windows) (Deconstruction)
What happened to DQ in the Cave of Montesinos? (A certain genre of literature)
What was the name of the night that defeated DQ (Knight of the White Moon)
Who really was The Knight of the Mirrors, The knight of the Wood, and The Knight of the White Moon? (Bachelor Carrasco)
Pg. 804 "To believe...is to believe_____" (The impossible)
Frye wears spectacles...the end result is to see something that you haven't seen. Pg. 346 "The culture of the past...things that have been buried...recognition...not our past lives but..."

Group 5 and 6 -Presentations

2008-12-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

Blogs due at 5:00 on Friday!

Group Six: Psychoanalyst

Freudian Phallic Hour

Host: Freud.

Guests:

Oedipus (Sad because whole life has been a lie)

Maybe you really wanted to kill your dad?

Hamlet (Melancholy because dad died and uncle took dad's place. Now is just killing.)

Are you mad because uncle did what you wanted to do?

Dreams are sensitive and coherent but hidden under a cloak of...

Don Quixote

Could it be that your adventures are reality?

Reality principle

Miguel De Cervantes (Served in Army with Turks and was injured. Five years in captivity)

Story of the Captive

Wrote self into own story. Look at how author's life effects work.

Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale with symbols of sexuality) (Seduction of wolf)

Original version oral.

Color red.

Little girl walking through wood wearing suggestive clothing.

Main Points: Subconscious desires, intertextuality, dreams, sexuality, childhood

Freud just systematized what was already going on with the poets and novelists

Group Five: Marxists

Kill Your TV Film...think for yourself...question authority

Negative Capability

Social class. Class consciousness. Capitalism

Activists who believe that revolution will cause social change.

Social Hierarchy. Life is a series of tests.

Systems of power. Bourgeois and proletarians.

George Lucas (critic who confronts objective reality in the world)

Samuel Coleridge is not a Marxist (critic who believes imagination is central in text)

Marxist looks at a text for which class's values should be upheld.
Has to do with time periods. What is going on n the world?
Not about artistic quality.
DQ becomes more sympathetic to the class while Sancho becomes more sympathetic to the aristocratic elements of Aristocracy.

Group 3 and 4- Presentations

2008-12-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

Group Three: Feminist Theory

Hollywood Squares.

Famoust feminist critics: Mary Wollenstonecraft, Rosie The Rivetor, bell hooks, Pat (?)

Four phases of the Feminism Movement:

(Phase One) 1880's-1928 Women's suffrage in the UK and the US.

(Phase Two) 1960's-1980's issues of equality and ending discrimination. (After WWII) Tends to leave out the poor and minorities.

(Phase Three) 1990's Response to perceived failures of second wave feminism. (Sexual harassment issues). (After Anita Hill lost the court battle) (inclusion of all women in all countries with all different types of status)

(Phase Four) Is currently being constructed.

Hello and welcome to English 300 squares- We have some special quest appearances for you this evening- Critical as they may seem outside our studio I’d like you to help me inquire about their knowledge with Feminist Literary Criticism- ….I’ll come up with a few more introductory phrases before introductions begin-

Pat- I have on my card here the number four- so I’m going to use this quantity in a question- What are or have been the four phases of feminism?

Claire- Is the novel Don Quixote a work that is encompassed of fair gender roles?

Mary Wollstonecraft- In youth we learn how to respond to the world in a male or female way- Hence the certain way we live out daily lives is signified by these responses- One of the American Philosopher Judith Butler’s favorite words is re-signification- a term that challenges these daily rhetorical responses- The question is –what particular daily activity do you believe needs to be re-signified for gender equality?

Rosie The Riveter- Are there any strong or “actual” women in Don Quixote? No- sparks argument between-….

Pat- we don’t know where you came from or how you are developing in life- but I speak for most with this question- Are you aware of any proper representative creation stories that promote feminist ideals?-

Bell Hooks- It seems Don Quixote is a great book for feminist ideals because it largely contributes to the idea of chivalry- How can or can this not be considered a feminist mode?

Bell- since you are basically a third wave feminist, could you still describe for us how to describe the emergent fourth wave?

“Feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure than women have equal rights with men. It is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels--sex, race, and class, to name a few---and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

Pat- What are you- a boy or girl? Sparks argument- (sex vs. gender)

What needs to change, if anything, for Don Quixote to be a gender fair novel?

Which 1963 author, and founder of NOW or National Organization for Women, wrote The Feminine Mystique, which was the first literary landmark for feminism?
-Betty Friedan

Which 1970 radical feminist organization, influenced by Marxism, held the view that the male had to give up his supremacy instead of the woman changing herself, and also published the journal Feminist Revolution?
-The Redstockings
Who was the first American feminist author and what was her work that was published in 1845?
-Margret Fuller and Woman in the Nineteenth Century which was a novel expanded from an 1843 essay: The Great Lawsuit. Man Verses Man. Woman Verses Woman.

Group Three: Reader Response Theory

Telephone.

Poem: The Flea (John Donne)

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Difference between New Critics and Deconstrucionists.

NC: Stay inside the text.
D: There is no outside the text.
Reader Response (bigger umbrella)
Feminism and RR reactions to the exclusiveness of former criticism.

Groups 1 and 2-Presentations

2008-12-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Group one: New Criticism

Dominant mid twentieth century.

Close reading

Rejects all elements outside of text

Key concept: Intentional Fallacy

History: Strucuralism and deconstruction replaced new criticism

Cliches: come hell or High Water

History: Intentional Fallacy Essay- 1954

Works: Birth of new criticism 1922-1925 The Fugative Essay.

Works: Foundational work- Tradition and the Individual Talent

Critics: Allen Tate's work...rejection of abstractionism...

Cliches: Costs a pretty penny

Key Concepts- Exclusion of Advertisement and Propaganda

Cliches: Joe Six Pack

Key Concepts:Studying a passage of prose or poetry in NC style requires Careful Scrutiny from the reader.

Works: "The Well-Wrought Urn" written by Cleanth Brooks

Key Concepts: Rhyme, meter, setting and plot are used to help identify theme.

History: New criticism 1920's -1960's

Critics: "Lemin squeezer school of criticism" The Wasteland T.S. Elliot

History: Godfather of New Criticism- William Blake

Final Jeopardy: (Everything is on handout)

Answer: "The Intentional Fallacy" William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley

Potent Potables, Cliche, People, Key Concepts, The Works, History

(Keanu Reaves, Burt Renolds, Sarah Palin, Sean Oconnery)

"Well Wrought Urn"

Unity in poetry. How do all these things add up to a "Well Wrought Urn"

Group two: Deconstruction

The People have accused William Blake of obscenity in this poem.

The Sick Rose

Oh Rose Thou Art Sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed

of crimson joy

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy

Authors intent does not apply to deconstruction.

Freud/psychoanalyst: sex everywhere. (rose female-reproductive organ, worm-penis) (rape)

Derrida: Only text as source of reading (close reading) No fixed meaning. Always rethink your interpretations. Question your beliefs. To read is to experience...

Diversity among people: divesity among interpretations.

Hans George Gatamer. Deconstruction: Continual exploration. One can make a word anything he wants it to mean.

Words are ambiguous.

Deconstruction: school of wide range thinking. No authorial intent. Many meanings/levels. Metaphorical.

Follows New Criticism, but deconstruction believes that there is no outside the text, because all things are text. (Pandora's Box) Meaning is subjective.

Lines up with existentialism. We are always in the process

NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESES

Dec. 1st class- Threnody

2008-12-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

Judson's Threnody: A song of lamentation. Romantics...true definition. You are the cultural council. Mortification phase. Lamentation for dying gods.

Joan's book: Good Omen. Apocalyptic.

Andrew Arvelle: To His Coy Mistress

Catcher in the Rye: Descent narrative. Archetypal elements.

Apology: A defense. A proud explanation.

The Defense of Little Hood Goody

2008-11-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

The Defense of Little Hood Goody

By Rosanna Mecklenburg

Until the dawn of words mirror howling

Illuminations of enmeshed melodies and blessed bays

Rhapsodic urges,

Psalms of life.

Laconic, righteous singsong.

The notes of tragic sacrifice renewing,

Accepting, and allowing sweet delights of poetry

Of marriage and triumph.

Stories of birth, mockingbird tales

Of isolation and lust, chaotic and sinful

Of mankind, flawed and godlike

Of godkind nearly.

Until notes and golden voice

Glisten bare in the virgin pool,

And mother, maiden and maker,

Siren, father and bride,

Child and savior

Emerge as ghostly demarcations of the soul

But of one body, wholly body,

Mythical and rhythmic,

Alive.

Until then, her hymn will decompose.

Pungent and festered, arisen,

She spoke.

Disconsolate over what was once

Commanded

To be seen and not heard

A mound in the dirt.

Pregnant with fruit seed

Little Hood Goody read to Riding Shoes.

She sang to the

Children, the mask, the man behind the curtain,

The melody that made their hearts soar because she loved

Them for they were simple.

She praised the sunlight that warmed

The cherished brown soil and the soft and

Gentle touch of rebirth.

Little hood goody looked and knew

That the darkness had accrued her bounty

In the magic breeze

Her invigorating joy was the only need

Eternity caught in a minute

As they listened to the sweet honey sound

Of a daughter’s innocent grace

In an abundant heaven

Displaced.

The song transformed enchantment

Romantically

And with speed

Young boys danced around their

Handsome steeds.

One hundred fair Dulcineas

Cried gleefully

As the shepherds kept watch over

Triumphal ceremony and

Tears of Frye ecstasy showered on donkeys.

Rejoice, lift your hands into the air and sing

The sweet melody song

Of salvation and chastity, hand-shaking

Celebration’s illuminating,

Jubilation,

Deviation from the beginning

Of wanting to get a head, not an apple

Sang the Ideal matchmaker’s protégée,

Little Hood goody.

And in an exacting melodic moment

A strange new key betrayed

A faint relief

To the madness.

Soundly in the fiddling tune

A note of terror

Resumed and mimed to overtake the

Festive mood.

The arrangement between

Father and groom not wholly completed

Doth made her song the Blues.

Hood Goody turned to the crowd,

Her Siren head hung,

Aged beauty to all good

Wilting in puddles of ice.

Sharp came the insightful notes

From the mournful Lady of flight.

The children, the mask, the man behind the curtain

Took heed to Riding Shoes plight

Asking, dissecting, demanding to

Right

Little Hood Goody.

For they had heard her sing.

Or was it more than that?

Had she sung of them

Late at night, did she cry tears,

Alphabetical smeared elegies,

Goddess-less dirges of iniquitous play?

Violent death and sacrificial bays?

They questioned the traitorous hymns and tragic games.

They shattered her mirror

And the sound went away.

Under white floods

Little Hood Goody turned from the fall

Of the life she loved most and

She laughed with them in the retelling of

The passion and the betrayal.

Corpus Christi she could have named herself while

Forever intertwining

The flesh of fishnet stockings in an erotic embrace

In Sisyphus-like glee turned tragedy, now irony.

It was a dance of unspoken communication

It was a wordless,

Sorrowful sound echoing

Down

In cold darkness, hood goody returned.

It was the dance of war and heartache,

Of weapon dissipation

And human elevation into the spirit

She heard the song of her epic beginning

When she first heard the beat that stole her being

And the purgation of her soul.

Finalizing the final phase of her ritual.

Where meaning is slaughtered

And remains the empty possibility

Of hope.

Nov. 21st class- Hazelnuts and mustard seeds

2008-11-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Blooms introduction:

DQ is at war with Freud's reality principle
DQ has double vision. neither fool nor madman
Sees something else also. (Baffle us when we try to share their knowledge)

Pg. 725 Magical horse sequence: read out loud. What is there to say?!

(The Game genre)

hazelnuts and mustard seeds

If they cannot be knights, then shepherds.

How PS got away without lashes on the buttocks.

Metafiction chapter:

DQ repents for reading storybooks. But now he would read the BIBLE!

"When I was mad, I would have given him the governorship of an...but now a kingdom!"

In will: Fake copy of Don Quixote...

"For he alone was DQ born, And I of him..." I can write and he can act...

Cervantes wrote to execrate and vilify books of chivalry...Is that the only reading?

Nov 19th class-Enchanted Dulcinea

2008-11-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

*Apology Presentations (be quixotic)

Monday Nov. 24th:

Sarah

Kelsy

Jessica

Gabby

Heather

Carly

Jon

Kyle 2

(Claire)

Nov. 26th

Ben

Lisa

Rosanna

Kevin

Jiwon

Kyle 1

Jake

Kayla

(Erica)

Dec. 1st (After Thanksgiving Vacation)

Danielle

Judson

Victoria

Derek

Joan

Doug

Alex

Last session

Everyone else

Metafiction- writing about writing.

Tangents-frame stories-Where did we start from? Tangents just as important as central theme...circumference...

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

Mr. Miogi. Business of learning karate...

Ten years later, we should evaluate class.

Ramon says what? Not content, but form. Lights, zones, poles..schematic. Having an order that wasn't seen before.

DQ Pg. 518

Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Enchanted Dulcinea

Three homely peasants...Sancho uses DQ rhetoric of chivalry...

Imitation of the way people speak

DQ and SP use no irony in their speeches.

Low-born and ugly and garlicky Dulcinea mounted the donkey as only Sarah Palin would have dreamed of.

DQ blames everything on the enchanters.

DQ and SP change by talking to eachother

We change by reading IOKW

*Extra credit: Impersonate DQ and SP in bOZman!

Nov 17th class- Cave of Montesinos

2008-11-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Cave of Montesinos (Pg 604)

DQ tells grisly story to old knight.
Sancho questions DQ's "Theme of descent"
Woman carrying human heart
Sees Dulcinea El Toboso who asks for money!!!
Pg 610 central literary apology metaphor..."The hour that seems like an eternity"
DQ believed he was in the underworld for three days (Christ archetype)
The two (illusionist and realist) trade places

Life Imitates art

2008-11-17T10:45:00.000-08:00

I googled DQ illusion and reality, not knowing what I was supposed to do, when I found the following written by Dale Wasserman:

In self-defense I should like it noted that I am not, nor ever have been, an Hispanic scholar. I am a playwright, one of whose works,Man of La Mancha, is enjoying performances in some forty languages, and which seems to have gone into theatrical history as the first truly successful adaptation of the novel Don Quixote. I consider this an unfortunate impression. Man of La Mancha, strictly speaking, is not an adaptation of Don Quixote at all. It is a play about Miguel de Cervantes. I do claim to know a little about Cervantes. That's a fairly safe claim, as there is no one who knows a great deal about him.
For those interested in beginnings, Man of La Mancha was born not by design but by accident. The year was 1959. I was in Spain writing a movie when I read in a newspaper that my purpose there was research for a dramatization of Don Quixote. That was nonsense, of course, for like the great majority of people who claim to know Don Quixote, I had never read it. Spain was a logical place to repair that omission, so I waded in, emerging on the other side of its half-million words convinced that there was no way to dramatize this amazing compendium of the good, the bad, and the brilliant.
I was aware that there had been dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such attempts —plays, opera, ballet, puppet shows, movies— every dramatic form possible. I was also aware that they had one thing in common: they failed. Having now read the book, I wasn't at a loss.

Wow! Look what I found...a true case of life (or nature) imitating art. Cool!

Nov-14th class-DQ Part II (Test day)

2008-11-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

DQ part II

Cave of Montesinos
Puppet show
Wooden Horse
Sancho's governorship
DQ's defeat by knight of moon
Homecoming and death

Google: Don Quixote: Illusion and reality

Some of my tochstone moments

2008-11-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

To Kill a Mockingbird spoke to me when I was a sophomore in high school, and I fell in love with literature. Then, when I did my paraprofessional experience, I taught the book to a sophomore class and I had the same experience again. This book is truly amazing.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 12

The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me - he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 7

The book that inspired me to get my degree in English Literature is Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Here is the touchstone quote that causes me .... I just cannot explain it...words cannot describe...but I need to find my book, first. I could say that the whole book is a touchstone.

He closed his eyes and thought of the black men in Shalimar, Roanoke, Petersburg, Newport News, Danville, in the Blood bank, on Darling Street, in the pool halls, the barbershops. Their names. Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness. Macon Dead. Sing Byrd, Crowell Byrd, Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Magdalene, First Corinthians, Milkman, Guitar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State (he just stood around and swayed), Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Moon, Nero, Humpty-Dumpty, blue Boy, Scandinavia, Quack-Quack, Jericho, Spoonbread, Ice Man, Dough Belly… (330) (Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon)

And then there is the book that inspired me at the end of my education to go further in my education and apply to grad school: Margrett Atwood's Alias Grace.

"It says there were two different trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; but I believe there was only the one and that the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Good and Evil were the same. And if you ate of it you would die, but if you didn't eat of it you would die also; although if you did eat of it, you would be less bone-ignorant by the time you got around to your death...Such an arrangement would appear to me more the way life is."
-Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

"But it's not easy being quiet and good, it's like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you've already fallen over; you don't seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength."-Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

"People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also, they never fart."
-Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

I am just putting some of my all-time favorite passages on here, and I see that I clearly pick poetry for the message. But it is the way that the message is given that is attractive to me. This last poem I love because of the way it sounds. When I first found this poem, it was a recording on a CD. After listening to it, I went out and bought the book of poetry.

Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Nov. 12th- class-Test Review

2008-11-03T11:18:00.002-08:00

*Test on Friday

Frye 119, 136-141, 147, 148, 153, 156, 163, 165, 187, 214, 215, 223

3 apologists for poetry

Arnold: Poetry is substitution for religion. Touchstone.

Walter Pater: Art for arts sake.

Keats: 3 things:

negative capability
Remembrance
Veil of soul making

The movie: My Book and Heart

First half of DQ

9 specific critics:

Longinus- sublime

I. A. Richards- pseudo-statement (all literature is hypothetical)

Juila Kristeva- Intertextuality (books are about books)

Oscar Wilde- Life is an imitation of art (more than art is an imitation of life).

Stanley Fish- Poetry is that which one sees with poetry seeing eyes

William Blake- Imagination, Visionary

Bakhtin- Carnival (Literature is bawdy...human body)

Idea of Key West (Recite from Ramon Fernandez) What is he asking RF to say?!?

Class questions:

DQ slices _______ and not... (wineskins)
NF. (145) Anagogic level_____ is the _____ of nature. (Man, container)
Bloom's introduction...compares SP to ______ and _______ (Hamlet, Falstaff)
As myth moves to irony, metaphor is to _________ (simile)
B&H Literature moves us from (innocence to experience)
Who said that it is not the fruit of the experience but the experience itself (Pater)
Matthew Arnold wrote that we are suffering from (Crisis of Faith and criticism of life)
Frye (pg. 225) compares DQ to which Archetypal character? (The white knight of Alice in Wonderland)
According to Arnold, what power does the best poetry have? (Inform and delight as nothing else can)
Terms for filling up and emptying out are ( Plerosis, Kenosis)
Is Frye a half empty or half full guy? (Full. Comedy and Romance)
Who does DQ believe roamed free during the golden age? (virgins)
NF. Two great forms of undisplaced myths are the _____ and the _____ (apocalyptic and demonic)
four phases...(mortification, purgation, invigoration, and jubilation).
What does this saying mean: "What's the difference?" (deconstruction)
DQ is a mirror held up not to nature but to_________ (the reader)
187 NF 3 parts of the myth of Summer (conflict, death struggle, recovery).
148 NF Physical or the actual is opposed to the ________ (hypothetical- Literature isn't real)
Negative god appears in the section of the demonic. Ch. 3
Who is DQ's squire and what does his name mean? (Sancho Panzo, belly)
NF. Structural principles of literature are to be derived from (Archetypal-mythology and Anagogic-religion)
In what seasonal pattern does the sense of relief come when the New Year has become (Jubilation- lets party!)
162 NF Top half- romance...bottom half-realism
Keats believes that poetry should (Surprise In Excess)
The word demonic comes from (daemon) and what does it mean?
DQ is in all of the seasonal cycles.
Pg 119. In anagogy we are not in the center of things, we are in the_____(circumference)
Name the 4 master tropes (metaphor, metonomy, synecdoche, irony
Negative capability is when the artist becomes___ so the work becomes___(nothing, everything)
What mode would innocence be placed in? (Myth)

Gabby- critic: Ralf Waldo Emerson

Nature and Self Reliance

The American Scholar

"Father of American Literature"

Poet preacher orator

Inspirational writing

Journals. Critics of literary religious and educational...encouraged rejection of traditional values.

transadentialist movement

Carly- critic: William Blake

Very much like Frye

Anogogical phase

Visionary...creates in spiritual world

symbolism. Form and image are the same thing. 1000 realities.

Senses go directly to imagination

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Nov.10th- class- Seasons

2008-11-03T11:18:00.001-08:00

*Questions on Wed (test review). Use: is this relevant? Online critics

*Write a 3-5 page apology paper reflecting previous apologists. At least one reference to DQ.

*Make paper into a three minute oral presentation. Paper is due day of presentation

*post paper to blog.

*After test, we will focus on DQ until 3 minute presentations. We will go backwards alphabetically (nine names per day).

*Groups 1 and 2 will start first.

Joan- critic: Eve Sedgwick

Born in 1950. Yale

paranoid reading. Automatic responses to changes. We need to remain aware and objective.

Normal/abnormal...legal/illegal...paranoid reading.

Kevin- critic: Stanley Fish

Teaches English and law. Milton scholar.

Reader response critic. Interpretive communities.

Accused of relativist arguments, but believes that literary interpretations should be specific.

"Bit of a maverick"

"humanities are their own good"

"A poem is what one sees when one is looking with poetry seeing eyes"

Chris- critic: Susan Gubar/ Sandra Gilbert

Susan Professor of English and women's studies.

Sandra Professor of English

wrote together: The Madwoman in the Attic

About angels and monsters...but not literally.

Dichotomy of woman as pure or crazy.

Derek- critic: homi k. Bhabba

Born in India

Post colonial theory. Post Structuralism

criticized for too much jargon in prose.

cultural identity

signifier and signified inseparable but not unified.

Bobby-critic: Virginia Woolf

not crazy just a little mad. Bipolar disorder...visions...voices...

Book: A Room of Her Own

feminist publisher critic

stream of consciousness.

A founder of the modernist movement

Drowned herself.

Class:

"what's the point?" Arnold's discussion of touchstones...no meaning, just image.

haiku

Pullman's book list...Wallace Stevens (Northern Lights)...Auroras of Autumn...Art of Memory

NF Pg. 158 rythms of nature (kenosis and plerosis) we are in the season of kenosis.

New Years- rid self and re-born. Mort(death)ification. mourning for god who is going to the underworld.

Autumn-elogy-carpe diem

Scapegoat rites. Irony. Tyrany, anarchy, blood...T.S. Eliot's Wasteland.

Partying until you loose consciousness. Blackout. End of a cycle.

Next phase is called invigoration.

Theory of mythos and production

Pg. 160 cyclical phases. seasons.

Nov. 7th class-Daemons

2008-11-03T11:16:00.001-08:00

Exam on Friday-

Only responsible for the first half of the book!!! (wow!) Thank you Dr. Sexson.
Intro to NF by Bloom.
Words or phrases that we think the class should know about our critics

Kayla- critic: Annett Kol0dny

Literary Journals.

Radical eco-feminist

Domestic fictioness.

Challenged wilderness of Adam. Land and women, what we have done to both.

Book: The Lay of the Lamb

Maggie- critic: Louis Gates JR

Middle Age African American man

forum: the roots.com (what not to do if you are white or black in celebration of elect Obama)

Born in W. Virginia in 1950

History, English Lit

Norton anthology of African American lit

Jessie- critic: William Wordsmith

Born in 1770 orphaned. Long walks- nature is healing.

Cambridge University

Poetry should not be confusing. Common life in common language. Show how much nature effects people.

Read sister's diary.

Douglas- critic: T.S. Eliot

American poet, playwright, and lit critic

Learned crank. Schooled throughout the world. well-read. Classics. was a modernist.

Contemporary issues of the time combined with past issues.

Poetry begins with what are you previously existed.

Hamlet and His Problems (Shakespeare was flawed)

Objective correlative. Look at each words meaning.

Class:

Frye understands literature as arising from rituals.

Rituals of Kenosis and plerosis.

Pullman's book: The Dark Materials. cannot look at things dualistically.

Tolken and Lewis...Academic Christians

Why is Jesus a Lion instead of a lamb? Because the story requires a lion.

Right or wrong? Imagination working itself out.

The word demon comes from the Greek Daemon, or another part of your personality or your psyche. Thought of as the inferior part. (Alter ego) But could it be your angel? Seen as positive.

In the Dark Materials Trilogy, everyone has an animal (anima-soul) that is opposite but completes them. The wicked people are trying to get rid of the daemons.

(Jungian psychology)

NF- these works are not a contradiction, except in the level of content.

Nf Pg. 146 Bad gods.

Gnostic- demurge- the snake is the savior who liberated Adam and Eve from ignorance.

Sarah Palin mythos (Hardy frontier woman having babies)

NF 165 illumination, 187 quest, 215 tragedy, 223irony

Nov. 5th class- This day is call'd the feast of Crispian

2008-11-03T11:15:00.001-08:00

* Pull a phrase from NF for each seasonal mythos.

Wed Nov. 5th

Judson- critic-Ivor Armstrong Richards

Rosanna- critic: Mikhail Bakhtin

dialogical Imagination

The carnival

Claire- critic: Jung

psychologist who compliments Frye's...

sorry...I missed this one

Jon- Paul de Man

first introduction to deconstructionism

Studied romantics- Metaphor sign symbol.

Break between sign and meaning

Metaphor can control discourse

One period during WWII, he wrote some racist comments that eventually made headlines.

He was defended by certain literary critics.

Jessica- critic: bell hooks

White supremacy capitalist patriarchy

media-movies...tools to teach about ideas and criticism

Dark Vader has the voice of a black man.

Movie, Crash (?) thief is young black man.

Class: The Elections

Apacolyptic image (positive sense that human becomes divine being) and Demonic (hero crucifiction) (Golden Bough-King is killed and eaten) ...body of christ...imagery

McCain's speech. Macbeth...you know, just before he was hanged, he repented...The better part of his life was his concession speech.

Obama...Henry the Fifth... "This day is called the feast of Crispian..."

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispian's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day

Remembrance.

NF 140 Ironic begins with realism, and tends toward myth. more realistic...more sureal...more mythical. Picture metaphor. New Critics like to analyze the brush strokes. Move closer or go back farther to get out of the content. We perceive the organizing design of it. Story of Job.

Alice in Wonderland- archetypal need to set it in summer
Through the Looking Glass- Autumn.

Tones and meaning

2008-11-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

While reading Frye's chapter on Myth, I found at the very beginning, a light bulb moment. "

Our handbook would not give the reader a complete musical education, nor would it give an account of music as it exists in the mind of God or the practice of angels--but it would do for its purposes."

This brought back my waitressing days at The Great China Wall. My boss, who spoke Mandarin as well as English, explained to me that in the Mandarin language, the way you say the words is as important as the words that you are using when speaking. The rhythm, intonation, stressing, pitch, and movement makes words very different in meaning when they are spelled the same on paper.

I found this new form of language intimidating and intriguing, as I tried to say a basic, "hello, how are you today?" with the right vocal inflections. I never did get it right. I also caused great amusement in the kitchen when I tried to say hello to the cooks. After that lesson, I listened to the conversations that went on around me, and I was aware that the sounds that I heard meant a great deal more than I had assumed before.

Frye's comparison of music to literature shows how it would be impossible to write about music, and explain it correctly even if what was written entails all that can be vocalized about music.

And Literature, as Frye says, is an "

art of words."

It makes sense to me that, as we have already said in class, the way things are said imply different meanings, as well as providing different incatatory sounds.

o I wonder why we don't have ways to show what the desired effect is in English. In other languages, there are signs used to show how to say the words. In Spanish an ~ is used. In Latin, a Diacritical mark explains how to say the word. I don't think this is exactly what Frye meant, but it does support his idea that the system for interpreting literature is archaic and underdeveloped.

NF "In this book we are attempting to outline a few of the gr

ammatical rudiments of literary expression, and the elements of it that correspond to such musical elements as tonality, simple and compound rhythm, canonical imitation and the like."

Oct. 31st class-The ant and the Grasshopper

2008-10-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

*Bring chart on Mon.

Lisa- critic: Giambattista Vico

Italian philosophers rhetorician

Melancholy.

Published poetry. Poetry-history?

Truth itself is constructed. Necessity of nature.

Civilization is acyclical development

divine-metaphor

heroic-metonymy and synectoque

man-irony, chaos.

Danielle- critic: Eric Auerbach

Jewish German

wrote Mimisis..rhetorical vs realist

Modern realism. Humanist.

History is cicical, not linear

Representation of reality!

Chelsey- critic: Samuel T Cooleridge

England

Fabrication through imagination.

Romantic literature.

not interested in didactic.

The Imagination

Primary imagination-THE INFINITE I AM

The second, Echo of the former

Poetic faith- art awakens.

Willing suspension of disbelief-ones own relationship with art.

Sarah- critic: Hayden White

Historian. Tropes. International symposium

Predestined for greatness.

80 years old.

Wrote: Figural Realism and Meta history

Writing of history is a poetic act.

Aesthetic element. Epistemological element. Ethical element.

Master tropes...MMSI

Class:

New Historian (Interpretation and tropes) Historian (Facts)

Anagogy. (Jon) TO DO...to act? Ritual.

Immortality Pg. 556 of DQ

Negative Capability.

Pullman

Bloom: DQ represents the pleasure principle. Neither fool or madman " "He sees what we see, yet he sees something else also" A possible glory.

Quixotic-Pursuing an impossible dream.

Immortality of Cervantes, Shakespeare, which are retellings of Ovid.

"So long as men can breathe and eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Mary (realist) Martha (pleasure principle). Ant and the grasshopper

Pg. 136. NF

Apocalyptic and Demonic.

Kenosis- Emptying out. (Pessimist)

Plerosis- Filling up. (Optimist)

Symbolism.

Seasons

Spring- filling up (Plerosis)
Summer-fullfilment
Autumn-Emptying (Kenosis)
Winter- Death

Myth: This this IS that. Opposite is realism...like...like...like

Naturalism-realism on steroids

Romance

Displacement.

Nov 3rd class-Election Day Tomorrow

2008-10-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Homework for tonight (by Friday):

Choose a touchstone poem for yourself.

Heather-critic: Helene Cixous

To be..what are you?

Iran Algeria, Jewish German

expelled because of Jewish heritage

Intertwine masculine and feminine or get rid of both.

The Laugh of Medusa

encourage women to communicate with body

women write differently

Brittney- critic: Wolfgang Iser

German.

intercultural exchange.

reader response theory.

hermetics (biblical or classics)

Alex- critic: Sigmund Freud

Lay down.

Czech Republic

psychoanalytic school.

repression. ID EGO SUPEREGO

dreams

sexuality. Phallic. Oedipus complex. childhood.

Master tropes- condensation displacement, civilization,

Jiwon- Edward Said

Difference between western epistemology and history

imperialism and orientalism relationship.

Barbarianism, civilization

History interpreted from western point of view.

Class: Focus on just ONE POINT with your critic. Day before test, we will figure out what is most important with each critic.

Judson- gave his T.V. to his neighbor...let's ban it, until after dinner.

You can register while you actually go to vote!!!

Places to vote are listed in newspaper.

Sexson's Pitch: vote for the six-mil levy

vote against dualism

intellectual excitement

Arnold:

"Poetry is a criticism of life"

"criticism is an interpretation and evaluation of the meaning of human existence"

"Truth is a construct" Vico

"Truth is a mobile army of metaphors" Nietzsche

Unconscious poetry. "More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to provide for us to console us to sustain us and to interpret life for us"

Idea of touchstones

Idea of religion

NF Pg 139

Sunny disposition. Connection to sun. Romantic idea with a halo...

Three organizations of myth and archetypes

Undisplaced myth (World of total fantasy...gods and demons...)

Apocalyptic (totally positive) impossibly powerful gods and humans, city of gold, unknown is water.
Demonic (totally negative) the wolf, the city is no utopia but distopia...

Oct 29th class-On developing the ear

2008-10-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

*Read intro to DQ by Harold Bloom.

Kelsey-critic: Henry James

Master of novel

loneliness, unreliable characters, moral issues, love, perceptions.

Am I gay???

Turn of the Screw

questioned childhood corruptions.

"Don't mind anything told you about anyone else"

I don't like people, though they are interesting

"Be one on whom nothing is lost"

"The madness of art"

Vic-critic: Ernst Cassirer

Philosophy of culture

Philosophy as symbolic form

symbolic animal (domesticated)

spun off of Kant's trancedentialism

Symbolic forms:

expression
representative
Significance

NF pg. 10 and 350

Ben-critic: Walter Benjamin

Born in Berlin in wealth

skipped the draft by simulating a weak heart

lost financial support at age 33

Influential text: Work of art in the mechanical reproduction

aura

ritual tradition

We have lost aura

Kyle-critic: Oscar Wilde

America- barbarism to decadence

Write the best...don't tell the truth

illusion is for pleasure

art is better.

Jailed for telling the truth

"Either that wall paper goes, or I do"

   Ode on a Grecian Urn
   Keats

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
  Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape          5
  Of deities or mortals, or of both,
    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
    What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?   10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave   15
  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!   20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
  For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!   25
  For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
    For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.   30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,   35
  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
    Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
  Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
    Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.   40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!   45
  When old age shall this generation waste,
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
  Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape          5
  Of deities or mortals, or of both,
    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
    What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?   10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave   15
  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!   20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
  For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!   25
  For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
    For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.   30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,   35
  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
    Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
  Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
    Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.   40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!   45
  When old age shall this generation waste,
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Veil of soulmaking

Nagative capability- " when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge."

Kevin's blog: Pg. 429 DQ

didactic personality is being parodied. (Both in Hamlet and in DQ)

"Art, imitating nature, seems to surpass it" Aesthetic.

"All the arts aspire to the condition of music." Walter Pader - we don't ask what the musician was trying to teach.

Ben wins the prize of memory!!! He has been visited by Mnemosyne.

Incantatory. Rythm

Documentories use "the voice of God"

DQ 556

"Poetry, senior, in my opinion is like an innocent young maiden who is extremely beautiful..."

All other subjects are handmaidens to "the condition of letters"

Other subjects are pawing at her...but she protects her chastity...

"And so the man who uses and treats poetry in the requisite way that I have mentioned shall be famous...this is the key...with poetry you will be made immortal."

Oct 27th class- "And because he's simple, I love him with all my heart"

2008-10-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dustin- Critic: Samuel Johnson

turrets syndrome. Popular Lies of Poets series

poetry and biographies.

Poetry should be simple to understand.

Biography should be only truth, not praise...but, lit should still be read.

Good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and part that is original is not good.

Kari- critic: Longinus

Deeply influential "On the sublime" did he really write it?

Authentic aim is whether or not it reaches the sublime.

Sublime- that which cannot be expressed. Beyond anything else. Flash of lightening.

Can be achieved in lit. Exalted expression of language and control of metaphors.

*Homer and Sappho.

Erica- critic: Michel Foucault

French philosopher and critic

French prisons

Does not like labels.

3 volume history of sexuality.

Latin and Greek works. Repression hypothesis (in sexuality) refuted.

Agrees with 60's and 70's views. question anything that is defined as one thing.

Jake- critic: Julia Kristeva

Southern Bulgaria...sweet accent!

psycho-analyst

France when 25 years old in the sixties.

didn't like structuralism. Signifier-meaning

Instead, seminalysist. No actual meaning. Depends on how things are said. Ex: cooking pie!!!?

Intertextuality- Homer. etc...

Comments on My Book My Heart

Didactic messages. comedic in ironic phase.

Death and re-birth when we start reading. Innocence. Nf Myth to Irony is innocence to experience. Is also the world from life to death. DQ....

Synecdoche (A new movie is coming out with this word as a name of the city)

Most important trope in Lit crit. One thing stands for something much bigger.

When did you tell your first lie?

Literature wants to represent this passage, as from one phase to another. but ?

In DQ, Pg. 536, everyone in part two has read part one...they feel compelled to imitate themselves.

"Night (or is it knight) of the woods and his squire" a new set of DQ and SP

*know this passage "Ah fool but grave....mine's as innocent as a baby...and because he's simple, I love him with all my heart..."

Characters are reversed. Idealist vs realist. Continuum from myth to reality.

Pg. 153 in Frye

Rose garden.

The Movie tonight

2008-10-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

I just came home from My Book & Heart Shall Never Part, and I want to write about it while it is still fresh in my mind.

These are my thoughts for the night:

Books are just books until they are read. But once they have been read, they become apart of us. They remain with us forever.

The movie, I believe, had different kinds of references embedded into its script, and I'm sure that I only caught a handful of the witty Sexonisms. But I did get some of the basic points.

Of course...The story is the story. The magic of My Book & Heart Shall Never Part was the way it sounded. There were three speakers, each one intoxicating. I believe the word is incantatory?

The telling of the nursery rhymes and Aesop's tales created a rhythm that caught my daughter's attention instantly.

I am not familiar with Little Goody Two Shoes, nor Little Red Riding Hood, retold.

Right now, my daughter Izzy is learning to read. She is four, and she is so exited to read books! It is so cool to see her beginning to be aware of a different kind of world than she has known thus far. I think what caught my attention most tonight, was the comment than when children begin to read, they change. They become different because the story becomes a part of them.

I guess it seems that there are different ways of celebrating literacy. Some people read books, some people watch movies, while other people read everything. Even little labels, cartoons, accidental grammar slips, fables, newspaper lines, etc..., instruct our world.

Some funny moments in the movie were when those tidbits were read out loud.

Oct.22nd class- Circumference, not center

2008-10-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

New schedule.

We are now in the theory of myths ch. in NF

Handout on the season of pattern.

TOMORROW NIGHT!!! 7:00. Don't leave after the show is over. Introductions of directors, etc...

*Next week, 2 minute presentations.

"Poetry can be defined with that that you can see with poetry seeing eyes" (Stanly Fish)

William Blake's "Poetic mysticism"

why don't we look at literature as a guide, instead of religious texts?

*Personal presentations will go alphabetically of last names. 3 minutes each. Paper is due on day it is presented. No reports!!

*Group presentations 20 minutes each.

*Blogs should be done by December 12.

Three things with John Keats "poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by similarity"

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" (Blake)

Negative capability
Remembrance
Veil of soul making

Anagogy is the highest thing conceivable. Metaphors of divinity. Surpassing romance, back to myth.

"And appear almost a remembrance" (Keats)

touches on beauty.

NF pg. 119 "Literature imitates the total dream of man...not at the center, but at the circumference..."

Woo-woo "Nature is now inside the mind of an infinite man who builds his cities out of the Milky Way. This is not reality, but it is the conceivable imaginative limit of desire, which is infinite, eternal, and hence apocalyptic." (NF)

Oct. 15th class- Questions for test on Friday

2008-10-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

*Group five and six start critic presentations next week.

Ex: "Hi, I'm -----------, and this is what you need to know about me:--------------"

Two minutes.

Embody your critic.

Next two texts we will be looking at:

Collection of letters by John Keats

Short essay by Matthew Arnold.

Look at Sarah and Heather's blogs.

Update on schedule: Frye's next ch. on mythical criticism.

Online texts by Sexson.

Read book by Nov. 5th (Part two becomes anagogical!!!)

The artist has to work like the devil

2008-10-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

"Religions, in spite of their enlarged perspective, cannot as social institutions contain an art of unlimited hypothesis. The arts in their turn cannot help releasing the powerful acids of satire, realism, ribaldry, and and fantasy in their attempt to dissolve all the existential concretions that get in their way. The artist often enough has to find that, as God says in Faust, he 'Muss als Teufel schaffen,' which I suppose means rather more than that he has to work like the devil." (127 NF)

The artist has to work like the devil.

Texts (Many of them are movies) that have caught my attention this semester.

Natural Born Killers

Kari has mentioned two of my all-time favorites:

Toni Morrison

Moulin Rouge

Last Miracles at Little No Horse

Deliverance

Aristotle's belief on why society needs poetry is very interesting to me. I think about movies like Natural Born Killers. The story idolizes a pair of murderers. I have always considered why America went crazy for the movie. But because of this class, I can now view the movie as a form of literary criticism, instead of a moralistic accusation against young America. The scenes are in sitcom style with camera angles and fade ins and outs similar to television. The scenes are short, about the length of a good sitcom, and they are extremely dramatic. In fact, television shows are required to have intense action or drama or unresolved tension at the end of each sitcom, so that they can hook their selective audience to tune back in later. NBK seems like its a week of sitcoms, connected together as a film.

I haven't yet watched or read any commentary on the movie, but it seems to me that the director(s) had deliberate intentions (Of say, "satire, realism, ribaldry, and and fantasy") in making the movie both realistic and outrageous, while playing on the audiences sense of pathos and Ironic comedy. There are moments where I am rooting for Mickey and Mallory, and yet moments where they disgust me. But I don't want to kill people myself...or do I?

The first scene deals with the formidable acts of incest and molestation, and I realize that I, also, want to kill Mallory's parents. And yet, how can I respect Micky and Mallory when they themselves commit similar crimes? Ironically, the two murderers are not only forgiven, they are also idolized by the mass public in the movie, and in America. Perhaps they have proven Aristotle right.

Mickey and Mallory are in a sense, the artists in the movie. They scripted their own universe. The wedding scene on the bridge was the only reality to them. The two wore disguises and played games in a frighteningly convincing way, where the audience became attached to them as a united pair of lovers, not haters. Mickey and Mallory worked like the devil. They became what they hated and feared. They thrived off of murder, torture, chaos, and exposure. They worked like the devil, as did the writer who created them. How else could he/she (I will find out more about this) show that the boundaries between good and evil, or God and Devil are illusions, if not using the devil as a muse?

If the artist has to work like the devil, than the artist must explore every thought, action, desire, motivation... of the text. Writing becomes a temptation. The aritist must know her character (who is also the audience), and offer him or her what he or she desires most. And then discover what is done with the fruits. Then if he or she finds it, it will appear everywhere. In archetypal patterns, in morals, in conversations, in pictures, in dreams.

A little bit more...

2008-10-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

Good morning everybody! Today is our first test. Good luck to all.

I just want to mention a couple of things that we missed that might be on the test.

Too much repetition becomes comic
Treason of the clerks. (The act of letting religion or politics reign as the final measure of a culture or canon in literature). (That is my own translation)
The poet is called POESIS (the maker)
If a book depresses you... you know that something is wrong...
Aristotle believed that the poet represented a significant human ACTION.
Definition of rhapsodic
Low Mimetic comedy: Boy wants girl. Shakespeare tried all variations of this.
Five phases of symbols
Literal- motif
Descriptive- sign
Formal- image
Archetypal- myth
Anagogical- monad

9. Pg. 116- Parallelism between grids.

Literal meaning has to do with thematic irony. Poetry is an ironic structure.
We are in Descriptive phase. Symbolism-low mimetic. Ex: What does the author mean? Today, literature tricks us into thinking that literature is a transparent glass that we see through to see our world. (Sexson)New Critics-Formal phase- high mimetic.
Archetypal (patterns)-romance (Frye's favorite). Stories are in conversation with other stories.
Anagogical-mythic.

Click here for an interesting powerpoint on Frye's seasons

Oct. 15th class- Questions for test on Friday

2008-10-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

1. Trust the tale, not the teller

2. Centripetal v.s. Centrifugal (Inside (formal), Outside (Descriptive)

3. Which Frye box is the Pharmakos? Ironic comedy, scapegoat

4. Baseball. Umpire. Feelings of wanting to kill someone.

5. All literature is displaced______ (myth)

6. Tragedy is a ______ of an action that is...Aristotle's definition of Tragedy. Imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. Rituals at the base of literature.

7. Dromenon. Something done.

8. Canon- What does the canon believe literature should be? It should be didactic (or have a moral)

9. Logos- Power to create through the agency of word. What myth is operating in the Idea? God created by speaking. (Gospel of John)

10. Sense of _____ is far higher in tragedy than in comedy. (reality)

11. All comedy is directed at_________ (The rigid and uncompromising, the inflexible person)

12. According to Shelly, what happens to nature? Nature only gives us a ____ world, where poetry gives us a ________ world ( )

13. Know Abrahm's four elements.

Mimetic Theories (interested in the relationship between the Text and the Universe)
Pragmatic Theories (interested in the relationship between the Text and the Audience)
Expressive Theories (interested in the relationship between the Text and the Author)
Objective Theories (close reading of the Text

14. Pg. 350 Frye: All structures in words are partly _____ and hence_______. (rhetorical, literary)

13. Plato banishes poets in book ten of _____(The Republic). Why? They are useless, deranged liars.

14. According to , literature should teach, should have good morals, not just (Entertain)

15. Pathos would belong to which Frye box? (Low mimetic) (Tears)

16. Mythos, ethos and dionoia are Aristotelian for ___, ____, ___ (story, character and theme)

17. Repeats Shelly's last line. "Poets are the unacknowledged...."

18. Frye's ______ phase corresponds to low mimetic mode (Descriptive)

19. Formal phase- Polysemous language. Layers of meaning.

20. Sydney. Poet never affirms anything, therefore_____ (He never lies). Willing dispensation of disbelief.

21. Intentional fallacy, Frye: What the poem means is the poem.

22. Define tautology, tautologically.

23. Shelly. Imagination is superior to logic (or reason)

24. In regards to this class, what is an epiphany? (A light bulb, or a sudden manifestation of the divine. Anogogical level)

25. Pg. 100 Lycidas. Frye.

26. What are the alazons? (Impostors) (professor or learned crank)

27. What is metonomy? Something that stands for something else. English language does not have a word for artistic creator, so the use of poet is applied.

Oct. 13th class- Let's go skiing!

2008-10-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

* Wed- bring in MC or fill in the blank.

Test info:

History of literary criticism (Plato and Aristotle)

Dante's

Sydney's Apology

Shelley's Defense

Don Quixote

Frye

Last line of defense of poetry- "Poets are the unacknowleged legislators of the world"

Shelley. Romantic. Imagination is superior to reason. "Reason respects the differences but imagination..." "poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that that is distorted."

Veil.

DQ-Romantic SP-Realist

Gift of the Magi

*I went to the last blog to finish Frye's quotes.

*Find your own lightbulb moment from Anagogical.

*Bring test question

Oct. 10th class- Rhapsodic Types immersed in wattage of insight"

2008-10-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Shelley's defense should bring to mind Sydney's Apology...both are rhapsodic, both vindicate poetry on morality. Shelly goes beyond Sydney..climatic metaphor: Unacknowledged...

rhapsodic: Immoderately impassioned or enthusiastic.

Anagogical-Monad

Archetypal-Myth

Pg. 97 (Kari) "It is hardly possible to accept a critical view which confuses the original with the aboriginal, and imagines that a 'creative' poet sits down with a pencil and some blank paper and eventually produces a new poem in a special act of creation ex nihilo."
The real original person goes back to the origins (Sexson)
Pg. 100 (Dustin) "In short, we can get a whole liberal education..."

Formal (New criticism)-Image

Pg. 84 (Maggie) (100 watts) "One could hardly find a more elementary critical principle than the fact that the events of a literary fiction are not real but hypothetical events." Fake.
Pg. 87 form not content. Interlocking series of images. "What the poet meant to say is literally the poem itself."
Pg. 93 "The conception of art as having a relationship with reality..." (new definition of catharsis- exhilaration or exuberance) "The sense of buoyancy or release that accompanies PERFECT DISCIPLINE, when we can no longer know the dancer from the dance."

Descriptive-Sign

A dictionary,which is primarily...sign-values, means nothing without understood prior meaning. (Judson) Pg. 79
Pg. 78 (Dustin) "Descriptivelly, a poem is not primarily a work of art, but primarily a verbal structure or a set of representative words, to be classed with other verbal structures like books on gardening."
Tends to be realistic and didactic (Teaches you something)
We need to get out of it.

Literal-Motif- A collection of letters. Understanding the whole of it as it stands.

(Ben) Pg.77 "And if a poem cannot be literally anything but a poem, then the literal basis of meaning in poetry can only be in its letters, its inner structure of interlocking motifs."

Ben's mnemonic device- not literally, letterally.

"Wattage of insight"

If we got beat up like DQ got beat up, then we would be in hospital...

Stories...

Kevin's story. "Columbus" MT. "Kicked the shit out of us" "Eyes peeled"

We get lost in them.

Do we really want stories to be realistic?

Reality shows. Imitations of what we think of as reality. "Extreme makeover" "Brazilian butt lift"

"McCain used literary criticism 'My fellow prisoners...that this is one of the...' Lord of the Fly!!"

All I have to say is Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

NF Symbols ch.

2008-10-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

I am taking NF quotes that interest me and clear things up for me.

"We can hardly even say that it represents a part of the authors intention in putting it there, for the author's intention ceases to exist as a separate factor as soon as he has finished revising."

This, again, supports Frye's claim that poems are born, not made. He says that the revision act makes the text its own entity.

Clarifying points for me from NF:

"verbal structures may be classified according to whether the final direction of meaning is outward or inward. In descriptive or assertive writing the final direction is outward." (Descriptive)
"Verbal elements understood inwardly, or centripetally, as parts of a verbal structure, are, as symbols, simply and literally verbal elements, or units of a verbal structure." (Literal)

Frye's definition of tautology: A purely verbal structure that cannot come out of itself.

"Wherever we have an autonomous verbal structure of this kind, we have literature. Wherever this autonomous structure is lacking, we have language, words used instrumentally to help human consciousness do or understand something else."

Autonomy

1: the quality or state of being self-governing ; especially : the right of self-government

2: self-directing freedom and especially moral independence3: a self-governing state
This is interesting to me, as it is a scientific hypothesis on philosophy of good or bad in language. I would like argue that some people may function in the literary sense that Frye is suggesting only exists in literature. But that would mean that the words we use are fluid, with-out meaning at all. I could say to my daughter, "don't run in front of that semi-truck." And she could hear, "I want to give you a red balloon,"based off of the book we read the night before about a semi-truck carrying red balloons, leading a parade with children running after it.
"the self-contained verbal pattern, is the field of the responses connected with pleasure, beauty, and interest."

Oct. 8th class-Woo-woo

2008-10-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

*Test- A week from this Friday.

*Obscurity in NF. So entire Wednesday before test will be dedicated to mapping out the questions on the test. Bring one question on Thursday from NF to put on test.

*Next Shelley's Apology

Sidney: Poets present us with a golden world, nature can give brass. Mimesis.

Plato condemned poet.

Aristotle rescued poet by suggesting that poet represented a significant human action.

Sydney said poet improves nature. People presented (Renaissance/Neo-classical/pragmatic) as exemplified human beings.

Corona An online Journal that The Sexsons edit.

Shelley pushes envelope further with respect to imitation. Moves close to where we are in the Idea of Key West. Nature disappears completely. God-like poet.

Poet doesn't affirm anything, therefore the poet doesn't lie. Opposed to historians and philosophy. Deals with hypothetical situations.

Treason of the clerks. Most of us live in these two phases:

Myth to irony. Low mimetic. Realism. Reality vs possibility. Step back from world of belief and action.
Descriptive phase. Matching what is said with what exists.

"Literature encourages tolerance. Bigots and fanatics don't have any use of the arts. Because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and their actions..." NF

Dialogical imagination: The characters lose the authors intentions, and they write their own script.

Pg. 116- Parallelism between grids.

Literal meaning has to do with thematic irony. Poetry is an ironic structure.
New Critics-Formal phase- high mimetic.
Archetypal (patterns)-romance (Frye's favorite). Stories are in conversation with other stories.
We are in Descriptive phase. Symbolism-low mimetic. Ex: What does the author mean? Today, literature tricks us into thinking that literature is a transparent glass that we see through to see our world. (Sexson)
Anagogical-mythic.

Look at Symbols in NF Pg. 115 @ 116

Historical grid. Dante's divine comedy.

DQ-known as first modern novel.

new definition of literal.

Dante's levels of meaning from the bible:

Polysemous (multiple meaning). Literal
Allegorical
Moral
Anagogical (vision)

Pgs. to look at in the phases ch.

Literal pg. 77

Descriptive pg.78-79

Formal pg. 84, 85, 87, 93, 94

Mythical pg. 97, 100, 105 (woo-woo)

Anagogical pg. 119, 121

That one

2008-10-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

The debates last night had some metaphors.

Cutting remarks

bottom of the barrel

that one

Shoot! I had a whole big list, but I will have to get back with them.

It was interesting listening to the rhetoric of McCain's use of that one last night. Now those two words are about to make their own debut. We will have a new colloquialism.

I also liked listening to the news reporters. Most of their language is metaphor.

Also, if anyone is interested, on my U-tube link, watch the bottom cartoon of the debates. It has some similarities to the ideas we have been discussing in class.

Oct. 6th class-Synecdoque VS Metonymy

2008-10-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

Congrats Douglas!! New baby girl. I won't post her name on the Internet. Only those of us who were in class are lucky enough to know her beautiful name.

*NF light bulbs.

No moral relativity. (Plato)

Claire's blog. "I am I"

God. Don Quixote?

Frye: Theory of myths chapter. Alazons. Impostors. Myth is everywhere.

Dumb and Dumber. Aristophanes sense of comedy is rude, crude and vulgar.

Frye tackles comedy.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Farm. A musical from 1960's. Same

Figures of speech that are grotesque.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Pg. 126-127 Treason of the clerks. Culture, religion, and politics.

Autonomy: Independent of or liberated from.

Artists never do anything useful. "Philosophers bake no bread" Bread means all nutrition. That which sustains us. Is philosophy useless?

Synecdoque V/S Metonymie

Okay, so Synecdoque means that...huh...most definitions are in French. Wikipedia has no definition.

It seems that synecdoque is a particular kind of metonymie.

I think that synecdoque means that: by replacing a specific word with another word that has a smaller connotative meaning, the audience will understand the intended meaning by associating the connotative images. (Substituting the whole for the part)

Metonymie means: words are exchanged with other connected words to imply meaning. (The White House can be substituted for the President.)

It seems that the difference between the two, is that Synecdoque is more realistic. If the smaller part is used, than the metaphor has to make sense. If one was to travel to Montana for a business trip, then saying, "I will see old Faithful" will still be true, while not fully grasping the depth of the trip to Montana. Yet, it will be understood that the person is taking a trip to Montana.

On the other hand, metonomy is more poetic. The words have to be linked, but the substitution does not have to be realistic. Saying that the White House addressed the crowd, is a metaphor that could not happen. Buildings don't talk.

*Know for test: Calls the poet The Maker (Poesies)

Sidney: Nature doesn't set the tapestry as richly as the poet does. "only the poet...freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wits" (Carly found this passage in Sidney)

Brazen VS Golden (Myth of the declining ages). Nature is brazen (brass) but poetry is golden.

Pg 94. NF

Most people would be in a mood of exhilaration...pleasure has nothing to do with sadism...if when done with a book and you feel depressed, than something wrong with the writing, or the person reading it.

Oct. 3rd class- Joe Six Pack

2008-10-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

*Over weekend, find a light bulb moment in Frye.

The debates. Criticism word: Evasion. Discourse.

The use of language (rhetoric) to produce a desired effect.

Is the word evasion part of a rhetorical strategy? Protection from being attacked.

Metaphors: (I'm just like you)

"Take on corporate greed"

"Everyday, down-home American"

"Main street (any town U.S.A.) vs wall street"

"Average Joe six-pack"

"kitchen table" Mythos operating.

Tropes. Rhetorical figure. Figure of speech.

Lakoff: Elections are won by people's use of metaphors. Who controls the discourse?

Ask yourself, "What are the metaphors that are working here? Are they effective? Should they be used?"

In tragedy, Old woman with five sons...All five son's drown. Goes to box of pathos to achieve rhetorical point. Frye asks, what if it is 15 or 20 sons? There is a point where repetition becomes comic. (Mcain was a P.O.W.)

Palin's use of "Maverick"

Style. Repetition of motifs and images and patterns in a subliminal way.

Use of word, nuclear.

Class work:

Headline: Mccain Blinks.

Make a sentence that you can guess what this headline means.

Two answers: Literal and Metaphorical.

Describe what you see on the board:

I see a square jack lantern. Or a little kid's shape game. But the answer is to make an imitation of the picture.

Consistent metaphor in this class: Gods to chaos. Myth of declining ages.

Dante's letter:

Literal

Allegorical

Moral

Anagogical (dealing with spiritual or the mystical)

Sept.29th class- Catharsis

2008-09-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

*Know this for test:

The Five Phases of Symbols:

Literal- motif

Descriptive- sign

Formal- image

Archetypal- myth

Anagogical- monad

This list should be circular. (Tautology) Literal and anagogical will look alike.

Stopping by Woods...Literal meaning is the poem.

Cannot just read as an idiot, but must come back to reading just for the poem.

Theory of modes is circular too. When irony is present, than it is nothing more than myth. "It's all Groundhogs Day"

Matt's Batman blogs. Comic books like Don Quixote, about fictional people who are realistic. "It's real to me."

Back story to batman: Parents killed as a kid. Raised by butler. Name: Bruce Wayne.

Archetype of hero.

Aristotle's idea of heroes.

Sir Phillip Sydney's Apology: Imitation where of poetry is...those things which in themselves are horrible...in literature are delightful....

We desire to imitate.

*Mark in DQ when someone repeats Chelsea's comment. About giving up on un-realistic beliefs.

How does Aristotle counter Plato's treatment of poetry? Categorization.

Comedy: Phallic rites.

The Name of the Rose. A book on Aristotle's lost book on comedy.

Tragedy: Six elements.

*Know ch. 6 on test.

Aristotle said: Poet is one who selects the most important things to imitate.

Tragedy is an imitation, mimesis, of an action, praxis, which is a serious completion of a certain

"Imitation is an insight into the truth of something. The poet gives truth because the poet is not interested in giving the bed. Poet gives bedness." (Sexson)

Instead of making you want to go out and imitate what you read about, Aristotle argues that it has been done in literature, so people don't have to. Catharsis-purging self of...

Ex: Football.

Ex: Oedipus Rex.

Censorship.

Gone in sixty seconds- Car theft went up thirty percent.

V- for Vendetta- vandalism.

Aristotle rescues the poet. He made realistic less important than philosophy.

*Don't forget to use innuendo quotes.

Sept. 26th class-Palin Speaking

2008-09-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Good job on blogs everybody!!!

Homework: How did Aristotle defend the poet?

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"

Pg. 116-119 NF

Still center of the moving world. convergence.

Still center of words.

Step back.

Anagogical..."Nature becomes not the container, but the thing contained."

Mirror of art becomes the thing that creates nature.

Fairy tales are very close to myth and popular literature.

Most productive ones have "converging lines of significance"

The word realistic needs to be re-examined.

Why does Matt love Batman? Is it realistic?

What are the patterns that still remain?

tautology-circular answers

Difference between literal and oral culture. Sarah Palin. Plain speaking.

"Reduction of taxes must be accompanied by reduced taxes"

George Lakoff (a literary critic)

Children use tautology. And so do politicians. Conjunctions.

Obama has to dumb down his language.

In this class, we must look at it as rhetorical.

Plato: against the poet.

Metonomy

Poet banished because he/she is a liar. Imitation of an imitation.

Plato taught that things aren't what they seem, and everyone should rely on philosophers to live.

"I like the way the steak tastes!" (Said Chris)

*Biggest tautology is the word realistic.

Pregnancy of Poems

2008-09-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still thinking about Frye's idea that poems are born, not made. This profound comment has stuck with me throughout the semester thus far, for many reasons.

If poems are born, than than the conversation of literary theory becomes much more complicated. We have to think about language. If poems are born, then there must be a universal poetic language. And what is that? We know that English is not the language of the poet, and we cannot measure a poem without it's exact words. Hence, the problem with translations.

(When we look at Harold Blooms translation of the Pentateuch in The Book of J, the first five books of the Bible's meaning varies greatly from the commonly known King James translation. And when we take Sexson's Biblical foundations, the story of Eve eating of Adam's fruit means something very different than the translation at E-Free bible study.)

In each case, the meaning varies greatly, giving translators, and then the readers the choice to chose where they want the text to go.

But Frye would argue that the meaning is already there, and the writer needs to divorce himself or herself from the text, in order for the true and ideal poem to show itself. And from there, the poem takes on its own life, becoming better, because it can get better. Perhaps Frye is speaking only in terms of literary criticism.

But it seems to me that Frye is saying that in language, there is the ever-present possibility of improvement, and that poets are not capable of achieving the perfection that poems are. Which means that there is a divine dialogue that exists on its own.

Plato believed that poets were deranged. But he also believed in a perfect ideal. His ideal was what inspired a copy in everything. So if Plato was a literary critic, then he would have to have believed that there was an ideal poem, also.

I wonder what the two critics' poems would look like in relation to each other.

Sept. 24th class- Invoke the Muses

2008-09-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

*Friday Oct. 24th class dismissed!...But...

*Thursday Oct. 23rd, go to the Emerson cultural center auditorium at 7:00 P.M. We will watch a film that the Sexsons have been creating!

Literal

Descriptive

Formal

Archetypal

Anagogical

We have changed since we became literate! "In Adam's fall, we sinned all"

What does this word mean in poem? It "It was more than that"

Ramon Fernandez. Did Steven's really just pick the name, or was it intentionally taken from an old, dead literary critic.

Thematic Myth: Inspired by the divine. (Metaphorical) scripture.

Mythos- Stories with plots.

Ethos- Characterization

Dianoia- Theme/Idea

Incantatory- sound alone.

definition: a use of spells or verbal charms spoken or sung as a part of a ritual of magic ; also : a written or recited formula of words designed to produce a particular effect.

Invoke the muses, and you will get an A! (Mnemosyne-muse of memory) Oh the irony that no-on can remember how to spell it!

Pg.56. NF

PLato created dialog. (dialogic imagination- Baktin)

Ch. 10 of The Republic- the perfect state- art doesn't have a place-Imitation.

Plato- Imitation is not as good as real thing-

Bed, cat (Travis the cat)

But...even a real bed or cat is an imitation of an ideal bed or cat.

Believed poets were deranged.

The Ion of Plato (a dialogue)

Aristotle's Poetics. Plato, his tutor, was making fun of poetry....so Aristotle rebutted

How does Aristotle respond?

Term paper: How do you respond?

Idea of Order disected

2008-09-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

I think the best way for me to do this is to build a chart, and then fill in the boxes with the poem. As I get older, my mind needs more ORDER. Yikes. What would Stevens do with that?

I am Mikhail Bakhtin

2008-09-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Bakhtin died three years before I was born. 1895-1975 (Lived for eighty years)

Was born in Russia- old nobility

Taught school when revolution began.

Lived through the Revolution

Exiled by Stalin

Thought of himself as an intelligentsia, whose job was to interpret his society for his society.
Looked for meaning in text.

Was considered an invalid since 29 years old due to leg disease

Believed that art was orientated towards communication

Popular humor and folk tradition.

Identity is shared by all

Philosopher.

First published works: Toward a Philosophy of the Act

Decentralized the work of Kant

*architectonic model of the human psyche which consists of three components: “I-for-myself”, “I-for-the-other”, and “other-for-me”.

1. I both actively and passively participate in Being.

2. My uniqueness is given but it simultaneously exists only to the degree to which I actualize this uniqueness (in other words, it is in the performed act and deed that has yet to be achieved).

3. Because I am actual and irreplaceable I must actualize my uniqueness

Second published works: Art and Responsibility

*Dialogism: emphasizes the relation between an author and his work, the work and its readers, and the relation of all three to the social and historical forces that surround them.

*Unfinalizability- People can not be fully understood, or labeled. (Finalized)old

*Polyphony- many voices

(it is the unfinalizability of individuals that creates true polyphony).Polyphonic truth

Bakhtin was accused of participating in the Russian Orthodox Church's underground movement. The truthfulness of this charge is not known, even today. Consequently, during one of the many purges of artists and intellectuals that Stalinconducted during the early years of his rule, Bakhtin was sentenced to exile in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state, it would kill him. Instead, he was sentenced to six years of 'internal exile' in Kazakhstan. (Wikipedia)

Third work to be published was misplaced: On the Question of the Methodology of Aesthetics in Written Works

And the next manuscript that he wrote was destroyed during a German invasion.

Osteomyelitis- 29. lost a leg 53 years old.

1940- Lived in Moscow and wrote Rabelais and His World during WWII

***He submitted a controversial dissertation on Rabelais , but couldn't get anything done with it until war was over. His dissertation created a division in the scholars of Maxim Gorky Literary Institute

*Was refused his doctorate, and his book wasn't published until 1965.

Finally, he returned and became head of Russian and World Literature.

*Rabelais was a french writer who wrote Political Satires (Satires on Spanish Catholic virtues ...The Inquisition) Laughter.

* Rabelais was a major French Renaissancewriter, doctor and humanist. He is regarded as an avant-garde writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, dirty jokes and bawdy songs (Wikipedia).

Bakhtin's book on Rabelais is considered "A parable and a guide book for his time" and also, "A contribution to historical poetics" (Helene Iswolsky)

***Carnival-the concept in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together

For Bakhtin, carnival is associated with the collectivity. Those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization.^[19] According to Bakhtin, “[A]ll were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age”.^[20] The carnival atmosphere holds the lower strata of life most important, as opposed to higher functions (thought, speech, soul) which were usually held dear in the signifying order. At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes individuals to feel they are a part of the collectivity, at which point they cease to be themselves. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one’s sensual, material, bodily unity and community.^{[21] (WIkipedia)}

***Dialogical imagination- is a compilation of four essays concerning language and the novel.

The larger context in which Bakhtin situates his discussion of rhetoric suggests the possibility of a dialogized or dialogical rhetoric that views all human activity and all human discourse as a complex unity of differences. This dialogized or dialogical rhetoric is not only a multiplicity and diversity of voices, a "heteroglossia," but an act of (and an active) listening to each voice from the perspective of the others, a "dialogized heteroglossia." Its purpose is to test our own and others’ ideas and ourselves and thus to determine together what we should think and how we should live. Its characteristic forms are the expression, juxtaposition, or negotiation of our individual and our cultural differences. This dialogical rhetoric follows a line of development from Socrates rather than Plato and Aristotle through Bakhtin’s reading of Rabelais and Dostoevsky to contemporary African-American, feminist, and postcolonial theory. This rhetoric would bring to the rhetorical tradition several concepts developed in Bakhtin’s work and in contemporary cultural theory: context, utterance, and dialogue as a broad concept applicable to all human discourse; polyphony, heteroglossia, and carnival; and dialogue as a subset of human discourse distinct from monologue and from traditional rhetorical theory and criticism.(Zappen)

Sept. 22nd class- Innuendos

2008-09-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

*Newest assignment-picture of self (your critic) on blog site, and begin to develop who you are.
*Continue to connect poem with Frye's chart and section of phases. Read with special care, the anagogical phase.

Pg. 142 DQ
Wanting to revive the romantic age. Reviving the golden age. Act as if you belong in age (quixotic figure).
Positive way of looking at quixotic- Ideals. Imagination and will.
Negative way of looking on quixotic- "chasing windmills." Fool. Nutcase. Mad as a hatter.
Humoring in Don Quixote.

Pg. 47 DQ
Burning of books.
Censorship.
criteria for which books are burned.
What percent of Americans don't read books!?

Poem:
Pleasure of "Innuendo"
Reality? are words dictative or suggestive?
Order? Lolita

Tragic Low Mimetic- Frankenstein. (A modern Prometheus) (Megan's choice)
Low mimetic tragedy shows the death or sacrifice of an ordinary human being and evokes pathos. (Wikipedia)
Effect of monster is pathos- having to do with feeling.
Scrooge (Tiny Tim).
Charlette's Web.
Tragic person is heroic.

Wikipedia on Anatomy of Criticism

Aristotle's Poetics: All the parts fit together
6 aspects of tragedy: 3 internal, 3 external.

Tragic Ironic:
The ironic mode often shows the death or suffering of a protagonist who is both weak and pitiful compared to the rest of humanity and the protagonist's environment. (Wikipedia)
"Deranged society"

All of this is in trash!

*Brief overview of all comedy modes.
*know this for test: Low Mimetic comedy: Boy wants girl. Shakespeare tried all variations of this.

My running commentary on Quixote

2008-09-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ch.1-3

I haven't any experience with this text...

Do we have a fool here, beginning this story? A man, who abandons his estate to become a knight based off of his story books?

Helmet scene-quite funny. I wonder how he can hold an iron helmet on his head. Sounds heavy.
His methods of self-protection seem rather superficial, and it makes me wonder how serious he is.

Names: Rocinante-the hack, and Don Quixote Of La Mancha, and Dulcinea del Toboso, his lady.

He is off, telling no-one what he is up to, letting his horse choose the way. This sounds like so much fun! It's like going on a road trip, with no particular direction, no responsibilities, and a world of possibilities...But it is also a set up for ridiculousness.

Ooops, small problem. He is not yet a knight.

His first adventure...An Inn disguised as a castle, two prostitutes as princesses! This scene reminds me of Les Miserables, the sneaky Inn Keeper, and company.

Alazon-impostor.

The dinner scene is a complete comedy, helmet on, yet Quixote refuses to cut the ribbons. Irony of a knight in shining armor. He is nothing of the sort. He cannot even eat without help.

This might be completely odd, but I just had a brief image of Don Quixote as a farce on Jesus. He is wandering around, determined to save mankind, he treats prostitutes with respect, and he promises to serve everyone, no matter how lowly they are. Just a thought.

His first duel-he knocks the carrier out.

I just lost all of my notes on ch. 4!! shoot!

Ch. 5

DQ quotes lines from his books in an attempt to get up from his armor.
Peasant gets DQ on a horse and leads him to town, sad that DQ is mad.
Taken home where friends/ family are looking for him. They want to burn his books (like heretics)

Ch. 6

Crown in DQ's house, sprinkling holy water on books, to protect from evil spirits.
A very strange way of censorship; books are thrown for any reason, but then some are kept (basically if they have been read).
DQ's niece claims that after they cure DQ of his obsession of knights, he may wander the hillsides from reading poetry. Or worst-become a poet!!
Miguel de Cervantes puts his own book in this chapter! "That Cervantes has been for many years a great friend of mine, and to my knowledge he has had more experience in reverses than in verses. His book has some good invention in it, it presents us with something but brings nothing to a conclusion: we must wait for the Second Part it promises: perhaps with amendment it may succeed in winning the full measure of grace that is now denied it; and in the mean time do you, senor gossip, keep it shut up in your own quarters."
Finally they tire of throwing books out the window. Are they going to have a change of heart, I wonder? "I should have shed tears myself," said the curate when he heard the
title, "had I ordered that book to be burned, for its author was one
of the famous poets of the world, not to say of Spain, and was very
happy in the translation of some of Ovid's fables."

Ch. 7

Just to point out the obvious, the curator (also called the licentiate) and the barber (Nicholas) are interesting choices of people to censor books. (housekeeper and niece, Antonia)
licentiate
curator
barber
The use of word gossip. Does it mean close friend?
Cruel solution: to wall up and plaster the book room. Poor DQ!
Believes that Friston, a literary magician took his books and plots against him.
Sancho Panza leaves wife and children to be DQ's esquire.
DQ promises SP that he will be governor of a province.

Ch. 8

DQ attacks windmill but imagines it a giant. Accuses Friston of trickery.
DQ has been fasting for awhile now.
DQ attacks two friars. SP tries to rob one friar, but gets beat up. DQ fights a Biscayan who uses a pillow for a shield. Fight is left unresolved

Ch. 9

Story takes a strange turn, dealing with lost works and translation.
I am beginning to see why this book was chosen for this class.
Farce on historians

Ch. 10 (After the first fight with SP, the one where two friars were attacked)

It seems ironic that DQ feels no regret for hurting other people in the name of knightly hood.
DQ tells of his magic potion, and SP gives up his claim on land for the potion
SP worries about cost of making the potion- total realist
The realist (SP) cannot read or write...therefore he obeys the well-read romantic (DQ)

Ch.11

SP has a great dialogue for someone who is illiterate.
DQ is a jerk. He forces SP to sit below him to eat, when SP clearly would rather stand.
Beautiful prose in this chapter!
A simple acorn caused DQ to remember the golden age, hence the prose.
I wonder if the cure that the goat herder gave DQ and SP will be remembered by DQ!

Ch. 12

Yes! Paganism, rituals, scandal and passion.
Pretty funny that the young intellectuals became pious right before the rich, religious father died and left everything to them.
DQ has a great imagination with everything except the misuse of words.
The story of Marcela was fabulous! I might name my next daughter after her.

Ch. 13-17

DQ's insistence that all knights have a lady is just absurd, especially since his is made up. Also, DQ never even calls to his lady while entering battle.
The writings of the broken hearted Chrysostom are saved. Hurrah!
I'm curious about Marcela and the myths operating around her. My first instinct is that of the Greek Goddess, Artemis.
Of coarse, DQ is a selfish jerk again, and takes SP's mule after yet another stupid fight.
The confusing sex scene, where one enters the wrong bed in the dark, which Shakespeare has done many times, is hilarious.

Ch. 18

Poor SP. After DQ almost kills him again, he is forced to travel, but is instead beat up again. It does seem that SP is beginning to understand his predicament a little better.
DQ has now lost an ear, and all his molars. SP has lost is saddlebags.
This book almost frustrating to read.

Sept. 19th class-4 Elements of criticism

2008-09-19T10:55:00.001-07:00

*New assignment for class on Monday:
Running commentary on Don Quixote on blogs.
Connect WS poem to the grid. "To what extent does the poem involve the four elements?"

"Truth is made" (Brittney's quote) I didn't catch the name

4 elements- World (mimetic-ancient), Audience (pragmatic-neo-classical), Work (objective-modern world), Artist (expressive-romantic).

The Mirror and the Lamp 4 elements in a total artistic situation.
Romance two forms: Secular or religious.
Don Quixote: Low mimetic world. Using this piece of Lit as a model for his behavior.

Shakespeare's: A Mid Summer Nights Dream
Sympathy with nature
All levels of Frye's grid working together.

Election as something out of Northrop Frye.
Comedy is about sex! Jokes always against inflexible people.

Ironic Thematic. Modernists. Recursive-No place but up. Bottom re-unites with top.

Movie: It Happened One Night
Tragedy doesn't like it. "The sun breeds maggots and dead dogs" (Hamlet)

"We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and arrive at the place for the first time". (T.S. Elliot)

2008-09-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

2008-09-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Frye's Modes chart

2008-09-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hi class,
I made this chart, yesterday, and I finally figured out how to display it. I'm not sure about some of my examples, and the bottom of my chart seems to be missing a few things. Alas, I will leave it until I know more about blogging.

I use a mac, so it may be different than a pc, but this is how I got the chart on my blog:

When you have a finished product, go to the print menu.
Click on the PDF menu arrow.
Click on save PDF as iphoto.
Once the iphoto screen shows up, go to file menu and click on export.
In export menu, under kind, choose JPEG and click on export.
Then name file and save on desktop.
Next, open your post, and click on the Picture icon.
Click on choose file.
Click on desktop, and find your saved jpeg file, hit choose, and upload photo.

Sept. 17th class-Pharmakos-Kill the Ump

2008-09-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

Class:

Grid.

Critical vocabulary- someone who knows something, and uses a special kind of language.

assignment for Friday: "Find one box and go to town with it." Fallacy of misplaced completeness.

Comic irony- Pharmakos- scapegoat. Book of Leviticus in bible. (Ask Kari!) Pg. 46. Baseball- killing the Umpire. "Entire town wanted to kill Bill Buckner, 86 World Series. Lost game when the ball went through his legs. He had thousands of death threats"

Narrative VS theme. Are you more interested in the theme or the way that someone tells the story?

Stories are way's of displacing our literal desire to really do these things.

Mob violence. In reality...not cool. But in Literature? Crucifixion. The Oxbow Incident. To kill a Mockingbird.

Visionary Poet (Blake and Frye)

Idealist vs the realists.

*In apology paper, write to someone who is really upset that you chose to be an English major.

Story of Oedipus.

"If you read a book and you're depressed, (Titus Andronicus-Ovid's Metamorphoses) There's something wrong with either you, or the book. The only emotion you should have should be illumination, enlightenment, or joy). -Sexson or Frye. If the book is great, then...did you read it right?

The two categories are off limits in this class because we have already done that:
Tragic-High Mimetic
Comic-Low mimetic

High school- tragedy- Aristotelian definition. High Mimetic. One person with high status, leader, who is flawed.
Aristotle in a nutshell-Goldilocks. Hot, Cold, Just right. Some Like it Hot

Too short, the lyric. Too long, the epic. Just right...?

New critics: six elements to every poem: Plot, character, theme,

3 people out of 40 have been to high school in this class. Statistics???

Literary Criticism history
(What is the focus of the work?)
Ancient-World-mimetic (imitation)
Classic- audience-pragmatic
Romantic-artist-expressive
Modern-work-objective

Sept. 15th class-Wheel of Fortune

2008-09-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

Class:

*Each person is assigned a literary critic. Not a report.
(Hard copy handout of people and their assigned critics)

Theory of Modes:

Tragic Comic Thematic

Myth
Romance
High mimetic
Low Mimetic
Ironic

Class requirements:
2 Quizes
Presentation

Term Paper Due just before thanksgiving. -Primary texts in history of criticism that are defenses (or apologies) of criticism.
Defend against bigots and fanatics, readers who hate literature,
Title it: Name apology: What's the use of stories that aren't even true?

Reference 3 class texts, and other things as well.
3 pages long. *Clean up your spelling.

Starting Dec. 3rd, group presentations.
*Lit should entertain and instruct.

Selves as possibilities. Literature encourages tolerance. Group presentations should take 20 minutes.

Poem.
the ocean could not use metaphors. Ocean has innocent knowledge.
mimic-to copy. Mimesis
Literary study- art is an imitation of nature. Low mimetic.
Is the poem suggesting that we are moving away from mimesis? The song was not that of the ocean, the innocent knowledge.
Poesis is creative.
The song gave the people a different kind of knowledge. Transforming.
mythology- A collection of stories that help people with their lives.
Step back from whatever we are viewing (Frye). Organizing principle, structure, base.
God spoke. Myth of creation through the agency of speaking.
Innocence. Morals. Fall from innocence.

Gnostic- knowledge.
Cosmogony-

Trust the tale, not the teller (Lawrence)

*look up the word genius.

Wheel of Fortune: (Around and around)
Comic romance- Pastoral. Green world. Little lambs.
Comic irony-Scapegoat

Homework: Plug in the boxes

Sept. 12th- Rituals

2008-09-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I missed class on Friday, so I don't have class notes. So instead, I want to get my thoughts out about some reoccurring themes that have been coming up for me.

On Friday I went to a Catholic funeral. On the way to the funeral, I made a comment about the Catholic rituals of sitting and standing, and repeating chants over and over again. * Neither my boyfriend or I have a strong understanding of the Catholic religion, and I hope that I don't offend anyone who does.

Anyways, my boyfriend gave a dismissive reply that seemed almost aggressive. He felt that rituals (such as repetitive praying) were just a pompous waste of time. I sat there, surprised at his statement, and I thought about the subject of rituals itself, including my boyfriend's intense reaction to it. Then, I delicately suggested that the rituals must mean something for the people who believe in them. We continued our drive in silence as I pondered the idea of meditation, prayer, chanting, and rituals.

When we got to the church, I was immediately struck by the stained glass and the choir directly behind me. Having been raised in a non-denominational christian church, I get a nostalgic feeling every time I walk into a church. Immediately I felt both comfortable, and uncomfortable.

Awkward, but familiar hymns were played (quite without any sense of order), as people were seated in the pews. I distracted myself by asphyxiating on the little old woman sitting in front of me. She was maybe four feet tall, and she wore all black, with an antique Italian head covering. It was beautiful. The scarf was black with little glimpses of silver sparkling brilliantly, as if they were competing with the stained glass window. I wished I knew her story. I wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she was real.

Finally, the service began with a beautiful song. Everyone else heard a sorrowful but powerful female voice singing a familiar, wordless tune, but I heard, "She sang beyond the genius of the sea," and I smiled over my literary epiphany. The end of a life was what we were celebrating, not the beginning.

Yet right there, in that song, was a well established pattern. Aside from the obvious rhythmic structure of music, I was aware of a different pattern. How many people had mourned to that song, I wondered. How many people have searched for meaning in times like this? How many years have people found comfort in these ritualistic songs that celebrate life and sorrow?

Then the priest (?) gave a familiar passage, "The lord is my shepard, I shall not want." He lifted an arm, and the congregation quickly replied, "The lord is my shepard, I shall not want." Hmmm. I took a minute to think about that promise. And I also noted the repetition of the prayer. I imagined wanting to be in a flock of sheep, looking toward my shepard to care for me. And, I thought about what it would be like to have no desires, or wants. But of course, to the church members, being a fellow sheep had layers of meaning that each individual had learned separately and together. I wondered what that one passage that was continually repeated throughout the funeral meant to each person in that church. And I began to understand Frye's perspective- that there are patters of imagery and meaning, circulating in story and language. How could we, as a human population, exist without adhering to sets of rules that operate in mythical realities? And how can we not be influenced by them?

I sat and listened to the repetition of the prayer. It had the same appeal as the telling of folk-lore, the passing down of stories from cherished ancestors, and the memorizing of chants used to gain entrance into a private, selective clubs. The prayer had the power to seduce its audience, yet with every repetition, it grew under the influence of the congregation. This power of words, I thought to myself, is an ever-evasive virus that changes and mutates. It stays true to its own form, yet always contains possibilities of complete transformation; beginning with a quest (Frye), and building. One story after another, myth on top of myth.

I watched and listened, as the young man who was standing in front of me preached to the mass of people in the church. In the same way that the woman sang her song in the Idea of Order at Key West, the priest sang his song. We had no words written down for us. We only had the words that he gave. Those words were molded, and sculpted in his mind, with a goal (quest) at hand. He had a particular view that he wanted to develop.

And I sat there, taking in that ritualistic moment that I was caught in. I felt like a child, wanting to know this woman in front of me, wanting to understand this world that I don't belong to, and wanting to chant with the rest of the congregation, in time, with words that I did not know. And then I thought about my literary criticism class. Because, more often than not, this is how I feel about literature.

Group 3 Info.

2008-09-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Group 3: Thursday at 6:oo p.m.

Hi there! I'm just jotting down some basic web-info on feminism.

Hollywood squares info

(Phase One) 1880's-1928 Women's suffrage in the UK and the US.
(Phase Two) 1960's-1980's issues of equality and ending discrimination. (After WWII) Tends to leave out the poor and minorities.
(Phase Three) 1990's Response to perceived failures of second wave feminism. (Sexual harassment issues). (After Anita Hill lost the court battle) (inclusion of all women in all countries with all different types of status)
(Phase Four) Is currently being constructed.

This website is good.

Website on the 14th amendment

We've Only Just Begun website

Women's rights 101 website

We might use major feminist issues like...

Declaration of Independence
Literacy
Voting
WWI and WWII
Abortion (Roe vs Wade)
Black women's rights
The Workplace
The home
The schools
Earned Wages
Lesbianism
Christianity (All religions)
socioeconomics

Chisholm's campaign slogan, "unbought and unbossed,"

Feminist leaders:

Sappho

Mary Wollenstonecraft

Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Anita Hill

Sojourner Truth

Rosa Parks

Betty Friedan

Rebecca Walker

Declaration of Sentiments

Madwoman in the Attic- book about feminism. Women's power and ability.

We might do something fun that involves referring to Chris (Gubert and Gilbar) (who must be in the first phase of feminism) about something in their book. We also already have, as she has mentioned, bell hooks in our group, who it seems to me might be in the third phase of criticism??? Please correct me if I am wrong.

I erased our phone numbers because it finally dawned on me that this blog is on the Internet. Sorry about that. Sometimes I am quite dense. Should I erase the last names too? Let me know.

I erased everything. I think we know who is in our group by now. Okay, see you guys later.

Sept. 10th class- Frye's stages

2008-09-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Class:

Translation of the word apology. Sydney and Shelly use apologies as validations and defenses.

Ratatouille-critic. Judgment. Arbiter of taste. Cliches.

Groups. Schools of literary criticism.

To see an exemplary blog, check out this site: http://www.geocities.com/the_abhorsen/litcritindex.html

Group 1: New critics Centripetals (pedals) goes in. Stay inside the text.
Group 2: Deconstructors (almost opposite of new critics)
Group 3: Feminists
Group 4: Reader response
Group 5: Marxists (social energies)
Group 6: Psychoanalysis
Group 7: Postcolonialists

Centrifugues (fugues) Out

Handout on article about a woman who's favorite, least favorite high school teacher made her memorize Lycidas.

Northrop Frye in one line: "All literature is displaced myth"
Right now, focus on Frye on blogs.
Next blog, find a passage on Frye that you understand.

Try to figure out what literature is, not what it means.

"If you put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig" Phrases that operate in political discourse. Rhetorical images.

What is the myth in Key West? Persephone? Displaced words.

Frye's stages in anatomy of criticism:
Myth (europa?) (creation?)
Decline
Romance
High mimetic mode
Low mimetic mode
Ironic

*Extra credit: Diagram two sections of the seasonal patterns and the twenty questions in Archetypes of Literature

"all of life is an affair of weather"
Literature is a pattern of weather.

Sept. 8th class-Alice's Restaurant

2008-09-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

The first poem in Don Quixote is titled Urganda the Unrecognized
The foot note explains that Urganda was a character in Amadis of Gaul

literature is the central division of the “humanities,”
ﬂanked on one side by history and on the other by
philosophy. Criticism so far ranks only as a subdi-
vision of literature; and hence, for the systematic
mental organization of the subject, the student has
to turn to the conceptual framework of the histo-
rian for events, and to that of the philosopher for
ideas.

Class:

*Don't forget to put your name on the blog.
*Amazon.com- If you would like to purchase Frye's Essays.
*Schedule of syllabus is still being written...and will continue to morph throughout the class.
*As many entries as class settings- which means at least 38 entries.

*Quiz #1 17th of Oct.
*Quiz #2 14th of Nov.
*Final exam Thursday Dec. 18th of finals week. 8:00-10:00 A.M. (Worth only 50 points.)

Netiquette. Ettiquett on the net. If sensitive subjects, please be considerate of others...Yet.. let's keep it interesting.
Inspiring, freewheeling, insightful provocative, etc...not here kitty, kitty, kitty. "I dont know is lame, boring mundane and shallow"

Flyting-a literary form of abuse. Used in waiting for Gadot. Here is a web site on Samuel Beckett

Metephor of internet as Alice's Restaraunt- song by Arlo Gutherie. Paradoxical blessings.

Intentional fallacy.
Frye's idea: Meaning is not detachable from the work itself.
Joyce. Finnegans Wake: Substitute different words to achieve the same meaning.
What it means is what it is. Meaning is in structure of words. If you are operating in the “centripetal” (503) in thrust, rather than ‘centrifugal.’ (Stevens)

*On syllabus. Dante. Sydney. Shelley.

Day 2 class-critics as parasites

2008-09-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Class:

Pg. 100 NF Entire Literay edu by taking one conventional poem and following Archetypes as they stretch out into the rest of literature.

Frye's poem: Lycidas

Critics as parasites.

criticism- What we talk about when we talk about Literature- Life transforming!?!

rhetorical tropes

Ecstatic/ecstasy/vision

Anagogical criticism.

Anagog of Christ.

Literature...connections

Homework over the weekend: Keep up on reading the three texts. Read Frye's Archetypes of Literature. Blogs.

Frye-realist V/S
nominalists.

"Frye advocates a 'rhetorical or structural analysis of a work of art'" Dr. Richard Clark

The sea, for example, is what
he terms an “archetypal symbol” (506), the significance of which resonates in the work of more than one
poet. Indeed, he points out, any “profound masterpiece seems to draw us to a point at which we can see
an enormous number of converging patterns of significance” (507) in a single work(Clark).

"Literary criticism can rely on patterns" Frye.

My response to the material today:

When I first acquired a love for poetry, I was in ninth grade. I remember vividly, that while reading Romeo and Juliet, I developed a passion for literature as well as a passion against high school English teachers. My teacher, who I have named Mrs. Rabbit, asked the class to interpret a poem. Then, she corrected (or critiqued) the students' interpretations as they spoke. Or maybe she just critiqued mine...anyways...

Now, being the youthful, hot-headed teenager that I was, I took great offense. "Poetry is for the reader," I screamed in brilliant shades of entitlement. And I shamelessly pioneered a class rift. My fellow rebels joined me in heated arguments against our rigid, fifty-some-year-old ninth grade teacher. Mrs. Rabbit insisted that every piece of literature had to be considered from the authors perspective, and interpreted the way the author meant it to be, otherwise it would contain no real meaning. And I insisted that each reader brought his or her own knowledge to the text, changing its meaning for every individual.

At the time, I had never heard of the subject literary criticism, and I wish that I had. Instead, I experienced literature as a dichotomy of something that was personal, magical, and provoking, yet arrogant, and overly-structured. I felt conflicted. I didn't comprehend yet, that our views are often full of dichotomies.

So I chose to fight for literature to be something that I could love; something that included me, and I was unwilling to accept that it could be both.

The argument, I learned ten years later, was one of the age old literary theory discussions. How is Literature understood? What are the boundaries, or demarcations, of criticism, in what ways do we derive meaning from texts, and who decides what is brilliant?

I don't believe what I fought for so passionately as a Freshman. Since then, I have read many more pieces of literature, and I have experienced life enough to know that my initial reactions can be quite shallow. Often, I miss the point completely. Because of that, reading has become something that is active. I usually have to do a little bit of work to feel confident that I am approaching a topic in a way that feels good.

It seems that Frye would have approved of my professors stance in some ways but not in many ways. He definately

Ooops...I have to go. I'll get back to this.

Day one My first look at the poem

2008-09-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Hello to all! My name is Rosanna. I will start right in with the poem by Wallace Stevens. This is my first reaction to the poem, I just wrote what came to mind.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

Immediately we are asked to imagine a woman. When I start with she, I picture a beautiful woman. I think goddess, mother earth, roundness, cyclical, gentle, powerful... And this woman has already done the act. She sang. What was her song? Was it just lyrics and rhythm? Was it a story? Was it a feeling she had, her imagination, her immortality? We must remember that she had already completed her song. Was the song one of beauty, sadness, rejoicing, creation? Was she keeping a record of something? Was she remembering a loved one? What was her song about? If she sang further than (beyond) the sea, then was her song in flight, over the water, reaching far beyond the sea's stretch? Was the song more sophisticated than that of nature? Or perhaps her song was deeper, with more life, with notes randomly swimming in the bottomless ocean.

The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

What does it mean to form to mind or voice?

Okay, is this really a woman who is singing a song, walking by the ocean? Does she wear a dress with empty sleeves? It seems that she and the sea exist separately, as the water remains as it is, instead of turning into her song; hence, she did not create the sea by speaking it so. She is not yet the creator. "Like a body wholly body, fluttering its empty sleeves" is a metaphor, a comparison , of the sea being complete, yet missing something the same way that a body with all its limbs intact could have a fluttering sleeve. A powerful body fluttering it's "empty sleeves" is also a personification of a wave. We can hear the descriptive language of the waves crashing and rolling by, and we feel something. Just the memory of the sound of waves elicits an emotional response, although we know the ocean is not human.

Yet the sea makes a song of its own with its "mimic motion". Somehow, the sea's movement creates a feeling of the human condition.

There are two songs: the woman's and the sea's. Both songs are real, yet very different. The songs are not cohesive as a melody, nor are they depending on each other.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

Literacy and imagination. Words have layers of meaning. The word fear has very different meanings to each person, depending on his or her own life experiences. The act of speaking seems to trump the power of nature and its sounds; thus, we heard her song, and she was able to create the grinding water and the grasping wind by giving it meaning.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

Reality depends on the individual. For the sea, it's own waves and storms and life may always be a source of deep and profound wonder. I love the image of the ocean as an"ever-hooded, tragic gestured sea". I imagine everything underneath the surface as chaotic and beautiful, and frightening and magical. Yet the hood is often deceivingly stoic. And sometimes the hood can be fraudulent as it gives away the storm underneath.

And here, in this poem, we can see that these images are all real and alive, but only when brought to our attention. Because she only walked to the ocean so that she could sing. And the sounds of nature do not apply meaning, and the many miracles and anomalies of nature are lost on her if she does not recognize them. We create our own realities.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Her imagination is just as inventive in her own reality as her reality is inventive in her imagination. Awareness.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

How interesting that we went from needing her song to explain our sights, to needing Ramon's explanation. It's almost as if we had an epiphany in the middle of the poem, where we understood that we are always alone in our perceptions, and should trust our own experiences, and that we have the potential to accept poetry as truth. And then we turn around and have an inner conflict blocking our vision again.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

I am left questioning everything. Is blessed rage a good thing or a bad thing? Are we happy with what we have done with language? Are we celebrating that as humans, we get to map meaning into everything? Or are we screaming blessed rage in a desperate appeal to the world of the supernatural? How can we explain things like the sight of an evening, dark, with lights painting portraits of secrets... Or the the nuances of our origins?

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape	5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?	10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!	20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!	25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.	30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,	35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.	40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'