Friday, December 12, 2008

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

Monday, December 8, 2008

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.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

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.