Parting of the ways

Alas, it is time to say goodbye!
I can see why literary criticism is a required course, as it gave me a gold mine of knowledge to take with me.
I really wished that time would have passed more slowly, because I always thought "oh, I can add that later to my blog.. what a great idea... I'll get to it later..."

I want to thank all of my classmates for sharing their thoughts and helping to make this class more exciting. Thanks for an inspiring semester!!

Notes for the final part 2

New criticism: Also called Formalism
Values technique, text above all else

Deconstruction: Affirms and deviates from New Criticism
Values Unity, like Donne's sonnet, The Flea but most especially Cleanth Brooks' The Well Wrought Urn
Coleridge's idea of satisfaction of parts
Frye fits here, as everything is partly rhetorical and hence literary.

Feminism: Reductive or expansive. Either examines the treatment of women to discard text or examines the systems of oppression at work to determine women's treatment ala bell hooks.

Reader response: Loves personal associations
Frost's Snowy Evening is both about Santa and about death
Cannot make a poem's meaning whatever you want, that's chaos

Psychoanalysis: Don't make fun of Freud too much, as he's given us a great deal of our modern vocabulary.
Tries to find the hidden truths, like looking through a glass darkly

Marxism: Dominant culture determines social truths
Also looks for hidden truths, especially class struggle

Fight Club is an example of each of the excellent pairs of glasses to use to examine a text/film.

Complaint v. criticism
Glenn Gould and Edith Grossman
Don Antonio's truth> The Enchanted Head
Don Quixote of the Stains, deconstruction of the name
Cave added years to life, periods of time dealt with in lit
Knight of the White Moon, Mirror> Knight of the Wood the bachelor Corasco
Of all literary critics, Frye puts on the most pairs of glasses

Notes for the final part 1

New Criticism:
Came about because poetic interpretations were straying away from actual close readings of texts. I.A. Richards had a centerfold of poems which he had his students explicate-they didn't actually read the poems!
Focus in on the text only

Deconstruction:
There is no outside the text!
Stay inside the text. Everything is a text, that's making room for intertextuality or how texts speak to each other.

Feminism:
Don't discount DQ because there aren't strong females, but instead realize how different readings of the book can come about.

Reader response:
There are no "wrong" readings of a text. Personal associations are encouraged, as everything is relevant. Stanley Fish had his students explicate the "medieval religious poem" to great success, though it was really leftover notes from another course.

Most of these criticisms came about as reactions to New Criticism's exclusivity, which are like different sets of hats or glasses for critics to wear.

Anything labeled "random" or "chaotic" are simply forms of order we don't understand yet.

Presentations

I am really glad that I haven't been absent for any of the individual or group presentations so far. I really enjoyed Gabryelle's and Rosanna's original writings for them, as well as most everybody's personal touches. I feel like mine seemed a bit inadequate after everyone had finished, but also that I made my paper my own.

I do feel, too, that the beginning of the group presentations makes my own group's idea feel a little lessened, as we too have a game show theme. It made me ponder the past few days how much game shows and Saturday Night Live are very didactic, even as they seem somewhat derivative or shallow. Hm.

My Apology for Poetry

Jessica Pocha
Dr. Sexson
English 300
24 November 2008
My Apology for Being an English Major
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" was a wise question, which I think drives me as an English major. My mind is formed and reformed by the words of others, and I think it is entirely a good game plan to learn from geniuses foremost in respect to what I've seen and will see in order to know what to think and say. Poets, the madmen and liars of the literary world according to Plato, may seem like the worst lot to trust. Poets, however, have much to say to those who choose to see, so they may actually end up being the ones to go to in order to gain knowledge and wisdom. I suppose it would be wise to move in somewhat linear fashion, for if nothing else, it will help to not slide or digress into chaos and turn my paper into purely chaos language.
According to Aristotle, imitation is an instinct of our nature. Even for this paper, I am forced into the mode of mimesis, so that I might pass this course in literature. English majors learn how to write by imitating those who have come before them, such that emulating their favorite authors becomes a way in which to learn how to learn. It becomes acceptable, and somewhat of a necessity, to imitate the style, voice or turn of phrase of a particularly "good" poet. What's "good" is completely a value judgment in the eyes of each literature student, with each successive choice being a reflection of each individual's set of personal favorites. I tend to love Chaucer, Milton, the Romantics like Blake and Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, and also some poets from the time of the Renaissance, like Shakespeare, Marlowe and Donne. I do also like the postmoderns, with my taste ranging from Ginsberg, Craig Raine, Adrienne Rich to Eliot and Pound. All of these poetry tastes tend to mean that my mimetic style ranges from very loquacious to very succinct.
M. H. Abram's idea of the universe, audience, world and artist informs how I think about everything. I think of my style of thought as procedural, incorporating what the artist may have intended, audience reaction, participation and appreciation, the time period and impact of each work and how each element interacts with another and also gauging an importance of each aspect. For example, it's hard not to laugh when I read the New Frontier series by Peter David. He's a fan of the original Star Trek and The Next Generation, which causes him to include seeming endless references to both series (it is a spinoff Star Trek book series), and to make jokes at the characters' expense. He knowingly plays into the fact that pretty much all of his readers are Trekkies and writes for our enjoyment and edification. By knowing the characters, back story, ST plot conventions and something of authorial intent, a reader gains much enjoyment from reading in this fashion. This kind of procedural reading is like watching The Matrix and being able to know and appreciate that it as a retelling of the allegory of the cave.
Shelley's notion that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world really strikes me. Can I ever think of banned books without thinking about Fahrenheit 451? Or critiques of 9/11 without Fahrenheit 911? Can you ever extricate Shakespeare from English drama? Can Machiavelli be separated from notions about political rule? Can you think about dreaming and nostalgia without thinking of Don Quixote de la Mancha? I think the answers to all are No, because poets have everything to do with how people perceive the world. There are so many notions that seep into the consciousness, that after a certain point, certain comparisons and opinions are inevitable. The best example is that Shakespeare will always be the one and only major master of Elizabethan drama, or God as I call him as an English major. Hardly a class goes by that at least one of my professors reference one of his works, even beyond the single one focusing on 17th century drama. (He's even in Bloom's introduction to Don Quixote!) I don't think that his reputation will diminish, as his words have captured certain truths which are true for the human condition and therefore, for all time.
According to Arnold in his Study of Poetry, his "one great contributory stream to the world-river of poetry", the criticism of poetry is criticism of life. We find that the classic poets have much to say about how we live, but also what to take away from poetry, for "[i]f he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him." My favorite touchstone lines of John Donne, "Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears / Men reckon what it did, and meant / But trepidation of the spheres / Though greater far, is innocent" are such, as I think they sum up how I think about poetry. The earth can move and inspire fear, and we can ponder what it all means, but the earth itself won't say anything. Poets must. We must reckon what anything did and meant, because people are natural critics. Criticism is the mode by which everyone functions. We need poetry to define and shape our observations of the world and without which, all is lost. I am an English major because I am compelled to reckon what I've done and meant.

Works Cited
Aristotle. Poetics. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/resources/poetics/poettran.htm
Arnold, Matthew. The Study of Poetry. http://www.bartleby.com/28/5.html.
David, Peter. Star Trek: New Frontier series. Pocket Books.
Donne, John. A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning. http://www.eliteskills.com/c/4546
Shelley, Percy. A Defence of Poetry. http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html

Quixotic

"Shelby couldn't help but think that Calhoun was getting the lucky end of the deal at the moment. Why couldn't she have been smart enough to make some incredibly stupid and quixotic trip down to the planet's surface?" -From Gods Above by Peter David.

I think Peter David actually read Don Quixote from a literary critical perspective, because he actually uses the term "quixotic" in the context it usually isn't-correctly. I've always heard the term used to describe a dreamer's actions, which I don't think encapsulates what DQ is all about. Captain Calhoun is quixotic, because he heads into a volatile situation without regard to safety, because the world for him is the world he decides is one specific way. He takes the role of captain on in much the same way DQ does being a knight. They both see the world in their own original way, much to the chagrin of those closest to them. Quixotic for me as term means heading into danger to fulfill one's duty, more so than it means dreamy and romantic. I would even add blood and disappointment to the list as well.

More specific Touchstone moment...

From my last post, here's a more concrete version.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne


AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

I like how romantic this sonnet is, especially since it also captures the fancy of a woman, me, when it's written by a man.