aiming for apples of gold in settings of silver

“Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

2008-05-07T16:26:00.002-07:00

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote this essay to address the attitudes towards black literary criticism. There has been much confusion as to whether blacks writing literary criticism are leaning too closely towards following the dead European white men tradition or if they are writing purely from their own experience—and if their own experience affords enough “educated prose” to express their criticism at the same level of the typical white criticism. This question relates closely to what Christian wrote about, how she incorporated some of the Marxist theory into her writing on black feminist writing. It intrigues me how there is almost no separation between Marxist theory and ethnic/feminist writing—as if ethnic writing and feminist writing are automatically classified as low art, just because (let us use African-American writing as an example) the African-American writing does not employ the same type of vocabulary or expression that the white Europeans use. But how could they? It is an entirely different type of language—with different values packed into words and different words that describe the same values.
Another interesting topic within Gates’s essay is as follows: “We must learn to read a black text within a black formal cultural matrix, as well as its ‘white’ matrix. This is necessary because the existence of a black canon is a historically contingent phenomenon; it is not inherent in the nature of ‘blackness,’ not vouchsafed by the metaphysics of some racial essence.” There is only purpose for black literary criticism as long as there is black literature. Yes, blacks have been oppressed by slavery until recent history, but now they must speak up and learn to express their culture and background through a written vocabulary that, while it may not exactly follow the white European style, distinctly illustrates the essence of being black.

“The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism,” Barbara Christian

2008-05-07T16:26:00.001-07:00

Christian’s essay contained a few voices of criticism—ethnic, feminist, and even Marxist theories. Going back to Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden,” Christian writes on how Walker suggests we stop looking only at high art to find our feminine voice, that we must begin to look at “low” art, the gardening, cooking, oral storytelling that our mothers have passed along as a part of our history because of the lack of access to high forms of art in the past. Christian suggests that “even as we moved [towards finding the right balance of female voice], the high, the low persisted, in fact moved further and further apart.” Like Showalter, Christian believes that we depend so much upon Freud, Foucault, and Derrida to define what feminist writing is that we totally negate the essence of women’s writing—which is, in fact, writing from the life-experience of being a woman. We continue to show the male world that we cannot define ourselves without them—that we depend primarily upon male characteristics of writing to measure what we are (or are not). It makes much more sense, instead, to define ourselves based on the characteristics that are uniquely woman, not just un-man. We need to focus on how we respond as a woman to different texts, whether they be the high and mighty art of the white dead males, or the so-called middle art of women novelists, or the so-called low art of our mother’s apple pie recipes. We have distinct female responses to all art, and we must recognize these responses as valid and true. As Christian writes, “as we look high, we might also look low, lest we devalue women in the world even as we define Woman. In ignore their voices, we may not only truncate our movement but we may also limit our own process until our voices no longer sound like women’s voices to anyone.”

“In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” Alice Walker

2008-05-07T16:25:00.001-07:00

Alice Walker passionately writes about the interesting scenario and struggle of black women in this essay. Not only do black women have to fight against the racist forces of literature and try to accurately portray the plight of the African-American expression, they must also find their own female tongue within their specific ethnicity. To be totally honest, I’m not sure if this essay would fall more under a feminist critique identity or under an ethnic critique category…because it touches on both topics simultaneously.
I can say that as a woman, I could completely grasp the feminist critique effect of the essay. I especially identified with the following quote:
Yet so many stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother’s stories. Only recently did I fully realize this: that through the years of listening to my mother’s stories of her life, I have absorbed not only the stories themselves, but something of the manner in which she spoke, something of the urgency that involves the knowledge that her stories—like her life—must be recorded.
Women “absorb” the knowledge that their mothers impart, just as men absorb the knowledge that their fathers impart. This is true even if the mother or father is not present—the information comes out indirectly in how a person views the world and acts in different situations (as seen in family studies, etc.). We carry out in our own lives the stories of our mothers, some of whom did not have the privilege of recording their story through written word. This is where the essay moves towards African-American critique.
The freedom to tell the story through writing was essentially unavailable to African-American women, so they had to tell the story through song (linking with Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” with the blues/jazz tradition), or through gardening (like Walker’s mother), and other such methods. Yet these methods are not the methods which make a word or a person immortal. Much like Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare’s sister, Walker wonders if, because she was subject to slavery and silence by the whip, her ancestor was a genius bursting with creative storytelling ability but could not tell her story.

“Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” Elaine Showalter

2008-05-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

Elaine Showalter surprised me in this essay. I did not expect her to critically evaluate feminist criticism of the past and synthesize a new suggestion regarding what form this criticism should assume. The one passage that impacted me the most is as follows: “Nonetheless, the feminist obsession with correcting, modifying, supplementing, revising, humanizing, or even attacking male critical theory keeps us dependent upon it and retards our progress in solving our own theoretical problems.” The quote really helped me to answer one of the questions I posed in my blog site, which I posted after reading excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” I have often wondered if feminist theory continues to be helpful after generations of considering how women can distinguish themselves in history and present times. That being said, my past question was, “With the coming and going of each generation since Woolf first published "A Room of One's Own," do we take greater heed to her lecture?” In other words, are women writers trying to move past the dependency upon male critical theory and are they trying to finally progress in the solving of our own theoretical problems, as Showalter writes?
I have often been dissatisfied with the continual dependency upon male critical theory. Therefore, I rejoiced when I read Showalter’s essay, which brought up her idea of “gynocritics,” or the study of women’s writing as our primary subject rather than looking at men’s writing. I loved her emphasis on finding the distinction of women’s writing from all other kinds of writings. When we focus on defining women’s writing based solely on its characteristics, and not defining it according to what women’s writing is not, I begin to agree with Showalter: that “we may never reach the promised land at all; for when feminist critics see our task as the study of women’s writing, we realize that the land promised to us is not the serenely undifferentiated universality of texts but the tumultuous and intriguing wilderness of difference itself.”

Peter Wasamba

2008-04-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Dr. Peter Wasamba, a professor specializing in the study of African Oral Literature at the University of Nairobi, visited Messiah College on March 31st, 2008, to discuss the importance of oral literature to the Kenyan nation. In a small group setting, Dr. Wasamba explained how oral history brings change to our communities, and shared how he is using it to address several socioeconomic issues within the Kenyan nation.

Dr. Wasamba told the group that he uses oral history to approach the constant poverty problem in Kenya. There is a history in Kenya—and, of course, in many other nations—of problems arising when new social or political policies are introduced. Many times, these policies are insensitive to lower-level classes. Dr. Wasamba expressed that instead of the upper-class citizens making policies that do not directly affect them, those who do feel the weight of the policies should have a say in policy-making. In this way, Kenyans would be forced to look at the past effects of policies as a way of correcting and building the present.

How does this happen? Dr. Wasamba has taken it upon himself and a group of others to gather oral testimonies from the locals. The locals hold a wealth of knowledge that would otherwise be lost, if it were not for the sharing of their testimonies. These oral testimonies give the necessary proof of whether certain policies worked or whether power was abused in seeing them out. The oral testimonies are two-fold: they provide information to the testimony-gatherers (like Dr. Wasamba) to relay to officials if necessary; and also, they provide a platform for the locals to vent their frustrations and anger about wrongdoings performed against them (in a sort of therapeutic method), making someone else aware of the corruption within the government. This transfer of information through the sharing of oral testimonies builds a sense of camaraderie among the people of Kenya, which is important in a time when most feel alone and abused by the government.

kolodny

2008-03-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

As I read Kolodny I realized that she was answering the question I raised when I wrote on Virginia Woolf: is her essay "A Room of One's Own" worth studying over and over when most women (and men) are aware of the male gender's suppression of females? Kolodny's answer is that "feminist criticism very quickly moved beyond merely 'exposing sexism in one work of literature after another,' and promised, instead, that we might at last 'begin to record new choices in a new literary history'" (2147). And Kolodny's essay is exactly that--less of an exposure of how awful the female condition has been and more of a call for men and women to change the way they view literature.

This essay is a form of criticism with which I can deal. I like that Kolodny doesn't approach feminism strictly as a binary opposition to male dominance. Rather, she places responsibility on men and women to interpret women's writings in a whole new way. For feminism, which aims to place so much emphasis on equality but is typically understood to be a bashing of all things male, I believe that this essay finally reaches the equilibrium of what feminism is--both sexes trying to read women's writing with the understanding that it stands separate from male writing, yet holds the same weight as far as aesthetics and canonical standings are concerned.

on langston hughes...

2008-03-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

I found the essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" by Langston Hughes extremely interesting. Hughes expresses that he has seen many an African-American artist who is afraid of being his/herself. He writes that "no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself" (1313). This is true for all ethnicities. We always write from what we know, from what we have experienced. Even when we write about what we don't know, our imaginative thinking has been shaped by our backgrounds, our education, our culture, our histories. How can we ever fully express ourselves if we hold back that element of our beings that make us who we are?

With most of Hughes' poetry, there is either a sense of or a direct reference to African-American culture--and mainly within the Harlem Renaissance setting. And I think since Hughes was so deeply connected with this African-American movement, it would be ridiculous if he didn't write about jazz or the life of the "Negro Artist."

I found one of his poems, "The Weary Blues," on the net, and also a video on YouTube that is a great representation of the jazz/blues music and feeling of the Harlem Renaissance. Check it out.

inconsistencies and impossibilities

2008-03-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

The editors of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism comment on Helene Cixous' essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," saying that "The incompatibility between ecriture feminine as assertion of the female body and ecriture feminine as capable of being written by men creates an impossible logic that IS [caps added in substitution of underlining] ecriture feminine. Such a writing practice is bound to seem outrageous almost all the time" (2038). Yet other critics such as Susan E. Dunn, Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Center, writes in her lecture entitled "The Place That Writes: Locating Hélène Cixous in Feminist Theory" that "critics of Cixous have been most troubled by her assertions when they understand her metaphors too literally...In order to understand the complexity of her [Cixous'] writings, one must delve into its deeply contradictory poetics."

This is a tricky topic. While the use of oxymorons is my favorite literary device, I'm not sure that Helene Cixous uses it effectively here. But let me just use this space to figure out what I really think...let me use it to get a feel for my undiscovered thoughts--bear with me.

Cixous says that ecriture feminine is the assertion of the female body. It is the assertion of the woman's body insofar as men have turned women against themselves because of phallogocentrism. "They have made for women an antinarcissism! A narcissism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven't got!" (Cixous, 2042). It makes sense--women write to let their bodies be known and be proud of what they have--and have not. "Our glances, our smiles, are spent; laughs exude from all our mouths; our blood flows and we extend ourselves without ever reaching an end; we never hold back our thoughts, our signs, our writing; and we're not afraid of lacking" (Cixous, 2042).

If ecriture feminine is the female response to centuries of suppression by the male sex, how can males possibly employ this writing practice in their own writing? The practice is not just an awareness of female suppression; rather it is an assertion of the female body. There's just no way around it--how could a man assert the body as suppressed if he is not female? It doesn't add up. Perhaps I'm not understanding the whole thing correctly--which is quite possible because this was a difficult essay to read and I'm trying to work ahead of the lit. crit. class (due to an upcoming trip to London) and therefore have not participated in Dr. Powers' lecture/discussion on this particular essay. I hate to end it this way again, but perhaps there will be more to come?

give me my room or i'll go insane

2008-03-23T20:29:00.000-07:00

Virginia Woolf is someone that I've heard so much about; yet, until recently, I had never read any of her work. However, it seems as if I got the basic gist of her essay "A Room of One's Own" before I actually read it. I'm going to attribute that to Messiah's job-well-done of preparing me for the world of literature. With the school's emphasis on justice (and, consequently, on inclusive language), it only makes sense that we would open up the doors for women to write in a way that incorporates them into the history/present/future of humankind. It makes sense even without the school's emphasis. Perhaps this is because I am a woman, and I am living in a time where most people in the western hemisphere understand the need for women to have a distinct voice in the world of literature. I wonder, does it make a difference that I am reading Woolf's essay in 2008, when she wrote it in 1938? So much has taken place since 1938--my grandmother bore five children and saw them go out into the world; my mother graduated from college, got a job, got married, and bore two children; I have graduated from high school, am working towards my Bachelor of Arts degree, and continue to watch my mother care for my 88-year-old grandmother who must live in a nursing home due to her several medical ailments. With the coming and going of each generation since Woolf first published "A Room of One's Own," do we take greater heed to her lecture?

I don't know that I can truly answer this question without much research behind it. I'm currently taking a class on women writers in the 20th century, but oftentimes it seems that we read only African-American women writers. I don't necessarily think that such a genre gives me a picture of current women writers as a whole because it often crosses into areas of African-American writing, which is a separate entity from women's writing. I'm going to have to revisit this question in the future--in other words, this post is to be continued...

bourdieu's distinction

2008-03-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

Pierre Bourdieu, in his work Distinction, insists that aesthetics are determined not entirely by a work's actual "pure" beauty; rather, the aesthetics of a work are assigned by the educated class of society--by the people who spend years studying the history of art and literature and the aesthetics present in past works. Along the same lines, Bourdieu writes that "cultural needs are the products of upbringing and education...preferences in literature, painting or music, are closely linked to educational level" (1809). This creates a problem when viewed in light of what he says later in his writing--that the "'pure' gaze" (his term for the untainted look upon art) is merely a "historical invention" (Bourdieu, 1811) that is associated with the self-lording organization that is artistic producation (see my last post on Ohmann--the symbiotic relationship between publisher, reviewer, and advertiser...AND consumer--it applies here as well). This web of "what is art and what is not and who determines what it is?" ruins art for the...err...common person (for lack of a better phrase). Bourdieu says it better than me: "The 'naive' spectator cannot attain a specific grasp of works of art which only have meaning--or value--in relation to the specific history of an artistic tradition" (1811).

When I was reading this essay (and yes, I think I might agree with Bourdieu to an extent here), I thought of the Mona Lisa by da Vinci. Yes, it's an extremely popular work of art. Millions of "naive spectators" make the pilgrimmage to the Louvre and stand in long lines just to take a quick glance (wikipedia.org says approximately 15 seconds) at the now-estimated $670 million portrait. Why all the hype for this painting of a pretty plain woman? Why not stand in line for Monet's Woman With A Parasol? Or Van Gogh's The Starry Night? To me, these other paintings are much more aesthetically pleasing, and I have no experience in studying art. So again I ask, why stand in line for the Mona Lisa?

Mona Lisa got her fame from Walter Pater's essay "The Renaissance," in which he praised the work for being the embodiment of "the modern idea." Would this piece of art be as famous as it is without Pater's scholarly essay? Probably not. Just chew on that for awhile...

In the meantime, check out this youtube video...it shows just how well-known the Mona Lisa is these days (and it's kinda fun).

who decides what and why?

2008-03-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia.com, Marxist aesthetics "involves a dialectical approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art, beauty, etc. Marxists believe that economic and social conditions affect every aspect of an individual's life, from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks. The role of art is not only to represent such conditions truthfully, but also to seek to improve them."

Such is the belief of Richard Ohmann, who, in his essay entitled "The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975," discusses the impact of what he calls the "professional-managerial" class upon the American literary canon. Essentially, Ohmann argues that the best-selling fiction works are published, reviewed, and advertised by the professional-managerial class. He writes that

a small group of book buyers formed a screen through which novels passed on
their way to commercial success; a handful of agents and editors picked the
novels that would compete for the notice of those buyers; and a tight network of
advertisers and reviewers, organized around the New York Times Book
Review, selected from these a few to be recognized as compelling,
important, 'talked-about' (Ohmann, 1884).

What all this means is that there could possibly be hundreds of great works of fiction written every year--and the public wouldn't know a thing about them, because the group of people that publish books benefit the group that advertises them benefit the group that reviews them benefit the group that publish them. Wait...what??

I'm not entirely sure what I think about all this "Excellence based on socially chosen values which are constantly changing" discourse. It makes sense in a way...in monetary and financial terms, businesses try to work symbiotically (especially when they all work in the same area, such as novels). And when these businesses work together so tightly, they're bound to be comprised of employees (people! we're still people that breathe and have the capacity to think individually) that have similar values and ideologies. So yes, the works published/advertised/reviewed by these symbiotic businesses and pushed to the top of the best-seller list most likely will contain those same types of values and ideologies. Does this mean that a work published outside of the symbiosis will never succeed? Ohmann might say yes. I'm gonna say no. Call me an optimist, but I think that if a book is truly artistic and meaningful, then it will push its way to the top at some point or another. Maybe not while the author is living, like most of the books that make it to the top of the list, perhaps it will surface later on (see Emily Dickinson).

the art of counseling

2008-03-21T16:42:00.000-07:00

Walter Benjamin wrote the essay "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov" as a Marxist evaluation of the value in oral story versus the written novel. Near the beginning of the essay, Benjamin writes, "Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn...'When someone goes on a trip, he has something to tell about,' goes the German saying." Benjamin argues that the storyteller fulfills the purpose of giving counsel to his/her listeners. The storyteller provides the community with a wealth of knowledge--whatever the storyteller has seen or heard, so the community of listeners has seen and heard. The story of the teller "contains, openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, a proverb or maxim" (Benjamin, 3).

This section of his essay is of particular interest to me. I spent five months studying in Cheltenham, England, last spring (2007). When I wrote to or chatted with my family and friends back in the states, I essentially took on the role of storyteller. Rather than saying something dull such as, "First we went to the cathedral. Then we went to the gardens. Then we--," I would try to bring my adventures to life for the people with whom I conversed. I felt a drive to bring out the most important details about the new people I met, the trouble I ran into, the lessons I learned. Perhaps through this creative/inventive storytelling process, I saw my time in England holding not only significance for me, but for my listeners. Is this a selfish desire--that I want everyone to think that each experience I have is significant? Perhaps in a way, it is. But I think that Walter Benjamin would say that it is an unselfish act to tell my story, because through my counsel, others gain wisdom and a greater understanding of the world around them. Benjamin believes that a major reason for the decline of storytelling lies in the fact that "the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out" (3).

Another reason for the decline of storytelling, Benjamin claims, is the prevalence of information and news. Rarely does one hear a story "without already being shot through with explanation" (4). That was/still is a hardship I face when I talk about my England experience. I desire to tell everything, every detail--and explain why I felt every emotion and how I thought I matured and who/what/where/when/why/how...yeah, it gets somewhat analytical after awhile and it loses a great deal of the art that dwells in the connections that the audience must make without guidance. I know that I have a great deal to learn when it comes to telling my story--I need to master the art of telling without telling it all, so that my listeners find wisdom in a manner that builds their own discernment.

2008-03-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

Imagine a novel about a young Native American boy who, attending an "Indian
School" where Native Americans were forcibly assimilated to European-American
ways, develops a deep relationship with his grandparents who have maintained
Cherokee traditions. Through them he learns the ways of Cherokee culture,
resists the worst manifestations of European-American culture, and arrives at a
healthy maturity. The book's author is hailed for giving birth to a renaissance
of contemporary Native American literature, some bands of Cherokees look to the
book as a way of educating their children, and is seen as an authoritative
rendition of Native American culture's engagement with the contemporary world.

After the author's death, scholars discover that, in fact, the book's
author was not a Cherokee Indian or even Native American at all, and that he had
been living under an assumed name. More, scholars discover that the author spent
the bulk of his career writing racist editorials for white supremacist
magazines, and had himself been an organizer of Klan klaverns in Alabama Critics
quickly demonstrate that the book is rife with white supremacist themes and
imagery and denounce it as yet another instance of literary racism.

Dr. Powers gave us handouts the other day in class that illustrated three scenarios dealing with the question, "What does it matter who's speaking or writing?" The above situation is one of the three we discussed in class. We were supposed to discuss our own views on these situations, as well as the views of structuralism theorists such as Todorov or Foucalt. In this blog however, I will only discuss my own view as a means of trying to arrive at original literary theory (perhaps not so much original, and more like adaptive).

I suppose my view stands on the basis of affectiveness. Clearly, the book enriched the culture of the Cherokee nation and encouraged them in continuing their traditions. It had a positive effect on their lifestyle and their views of themselves--it resulted in good. Should the fact that the author was a white supremist retract the good that already took place? I don't believe it should. I think it's easy to look at a text and twist words and phrases to adapt to a certain mindset (for example, all the controversy with Disney films and sexual innuendos--who knows for certain what the true meaning is in that situation?). Can we instead rejoice that a white supremacist's possible intent for bad resulted in good?

2008-03-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

"The virtualities which make up the object of poetics (as of all other sciences), these abstract qualities of literature exist only in the discourse of poetics itself. From this perspective, literature becomes only a mediator, a language, which poetics uses for dealing with itself" (Todorov, Structural Analysis of Literature, 2105).

Interesting how scientific the discussion of literature becomes. I must admit that my eyes and mind were pleased when I read Todorov's excerpt from Henry James' "The Art of Fiction," where James comments on the scientifically-proned method of analysis, how "people often talk of these things [description, dialogue, and incident] as if they had a kind of internecine distinctness, instead of melting into each other at every breath, and being intimately associated parts of one general effort of expression" (2101). Personally, the thing I like about literature is that it's often a far cry from anything science-related. Things just work together without formula or measurable methods, literature is "melting into each other at every breath" (I just love that phrase).

But Todorov makes a good point. We can continue the discourse on literature as a whole by studying structuralism: "although it does aim at an understanding of concepts like 'description' or 'action,' there is no need to find them in a pure state" (2101). He writes that these concepts occur at the same time and do interrelate, as we see when he refers to the example of blood, nerves, and muscles all appearing in the same place in the body and working together, yet still being separate and distinct entities.

It was a new experience for me to look at this essay and try to think about approaching literature with a more scientific, methodical viewpoint.

2008-03-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

"As a reader, we must realize that our immediate reaction to a poem is unimportant" (taken from my notes during Dr. Power's literary criticism class).

What Wimsatt and Beardsley are saying in their essay "Affective Fallacy" is that after reading a poem, the reader must not take into consideration their gut instinct. This instinct is to remain completely separate from all critic of the poem--don't even think about that question, "and how does that make you feel?"

I'm not so sure how I "feel" about that (funny, but as I've spent 3 years within the Messiah College community, I've learned that we can say statements without owning them, saying "I feel like you're not doing this right" instead of "you're not doing this right, idiot." I know this doesn't necessarily tie in with our affective fallacy conversation, but it's just a side note. And everyone should know that this behavior has crept into my own communication skills and I might continue saying it for the rest of my life). Back to Wimsatt and Beardsley--

Apparently we have to be a student of a poem before we can make a criticism of it. Sounds like a good idea. We don't want just anyone making outrageous statements about a work of literature. But again, doesn't that make us sound elitist? Yes. Oh well, I think that in this case we can let it pass. Because in all honesty, we do have a history of censoring things that are far from needing to be censored because our gut reaction tells us to be afraid of what the text is saying, or what the text is about. If we cannot base our judgments of a text on initial reactions, then it makes sense to say that we do indeed have a duty to appreciate the things we do not like. Appreciate, not in the sense of really thoroughly enjoying it, but just in the sense of understanding it completely. You don't have to agree with the poem, it doesn't have to make you feel good, but appreciate the form and the meaning within it.

defending the honor...or something like that.

2008-03-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

A classmate of mine recently wrote about the frustrations she was having with our literary criticism class. Her post made me think about my own constant frustrations with this class. How am I ever going to apply this material to my career? My Instructional Design and Assessment class is directly applicable to my future career as an English teacher, but this class is a little trickier to categorize. I will probably never teach middle schoolers about Formalist, Romantic, or so-and-so's theories--that's just not part of the criteria deemed necessary to teach by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

BUT...this class isn't supposed to be directed towards my future students. It's directed towards me. It is extremely important that I know the value of literature, reading, and authorship. Otherwise, why would I even bother to teach it? If it's not important, and if I don't know why it's important, why should I teach it to my students? Why do they need to know the deep and rich history of literature, of the billions and billions of readers who have read the same material as they will in my classes, of the authors whose minds have crafted such works of brilliancy?

I need to take this class, and I need to pull as much out of it as I can. I need to be able to defend the honor of literature...otherwise we'll all become computing robots and science nerds (sorry to all those out there who have passions for those topics...just try to roll with my ridiculous exaggeration). I agree with Eliot when he says that in order to truly get a grasp of one piece of literature, one must study the great tradition of literature. That's also why we have to grapple with these questions of "What is Literature?" and "What is Reading?" and "What is Authorship?" The frustrations and the fight eventually form into a deeper understanding of what we're reading and why we're reading it.

To my fellow classmates: I know sometimes these readings are painful and to make any sense of them is often a difficult task. But do not lose hope...we're deepening our wells of knowledge so we can defend the honor of our beloved major!

what does it even matter?

2008-02-26T22:16:00.001-08:00

Today in class, we discussed Wimsatt & Beardsley's "Intentional Fallacy." In their essay, they bring up the question of whether it's legitimate to ask the poet a question sounding similar to "What did you mean by this line?"

After thinking about this query, I don't necessarily think it is always legitimate to ask such a question. Does it bring us any further revelation about the meaning of the poem itself? Not really. According to Wimsatt & Beardsley, intentional fallacy "begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism" (1388). Essentially, what these two critics are saying is if we dig too deep into what the poet was experiencing when they wrote a poem, we get only answers to what was going on in the poet's life--it doesn't add to the richness of the poem itself. We'll find out loads about the poet's personal life, great. But perhaps it doesn't really help us understand the poem any better. There is sometimes a reason that the poet keeps lines ambiguous--so that the words can mean many things to many people. Thus, in discussing all these different meanings, we create a HETEROGLOSSIA. yikes, that's more postmodern than anything I had previously mentioned. I better not cross into that realm yet...

quote taken from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001.

misrepresenting

2008-02-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

Do we misrepresent the human race when we write? That's the first question that came to mind after reading Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear The Mask" in class a few days ago. For further clarity in this blog, I'm going to copy the poem down here:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

If we leave out the hardships, the "cries from tortured souls," or the torn and bleeding hearts, is the poet giving a thorough picture of humanity and life? No, of course not.

Is the real meaning or picture of truth that which resides in the human condition? Yes. But we cover it up. Everything must appear as if we've arrived at perfection, when in reality doesn't the Bible say a contrite and broken spirit are as a fragrant offering to God?

Oftentimes it's hard for me to read Emerson or Shelley and really agree with them, mostly because it seems as if they believe they've achieved perfection--they are, as a matter of fact, The Poet (or so they would think). I would more quickly follow after one who admits that no, they don't have it all together, but that they are willing to learn and make mistakes--someone who admits to being human. There is just something too pompous about the way Emerson elevates himself. How can the Poet hold truth if the Poet acts inhuman?

the truth of it all

2008-02-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

Our literary criticism class talked about the truth of literature a couple of days ago, and I had a heck of a time trying to articulate my thoughts to the class. So I am just going to do a type of freewrite now, to see if any thoughts solidify and help me form a well-worded opinion.

Shelley wrote in his essay "A Defence of Poetry" that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (717). In other words, poetry teaches us to use our imagination, which teaches us to live morally in society. I agree that training our imagination helps in knowing how to live morally, but I struggle with how this fits in with my Christian beliefs. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the only one through whom we learn how to live life abundantly. In this case, perhaps poetry (literature) is just a medium through which we derive meaning. The poetry itself is not truth. It is not intrinsically good. Jesus is intrinsically good, and through knowing him, we know truth. We know life that is moral and fulfilling--as John 10:10 states, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (NIV)

I think this is also why I struggled with Dr. Powers' discussion on Tuesday. He said that he didn't think poetry was so much a tool for truth, rather he thought it was the truth. Perhaps we had a disconnect somewhere in the conversation, but I really could not agree with him. We all have moments where we read some type of literature and jump for joy that someone else has articulated what our hearts have been hiding from our tongues. But does that make the utterance true? Does that make the word selection inherent truth?

There is still so much that I don't know. And perhaps I am still not making much sense. But that's the purpose of these blogs, is it not? To attempt to reveal what my heart is hiding from my tongue. Someday I'll figure it out.

Separated from the Poet?

2008-02-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

Formalists would argue that a reader should not attempt to make connections between the poem and the poet, an author and the literature. Why? Because poetry should merely be read as a poem, as a work of art that has no value within the author's personal life. According to the formalist, the reader should only ask the question, "How does this structure of words, or combination of words, make a meaning?" The value of the work lies only in the written words.

I strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Literature takes on a whole new meaning when considering the background of the artist. Even the words a poet chooses to employ in a given work retain some of the poet's personality. Although she didn't write during the modern period, let's take a look at one of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Bishop, and her poem entitled "One Art."

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

With the knowledge that Bishop traveled extensively throughout her lifetime, it seems as if the poet is directing advice right to the reader. Yes, everyone has lost keys and other various random objects, but not everyone has changed homes so often that you think it's no big deal to up and lose three houses. Bishop lost those. She traveled to Brazil and Canada, and several places in-between. She lost the rivers near her homes and the cities and continents she had lived in. The last stanza, however, is the one stanza that truly stands out from the rest, in regards to personal emotion. Bishop's lover committed suicide after Bishop left the relationship--life is a terrible thing to misplace. The "---" before she begins this stanza indicates a hesitation to admit such a personal loss. We see this hesitation again at the last line: "(Write it!)"

"One Art" is only one of many poems that would lose a great deal of meaning if we could not connect it with the poet's background. I think it's impossible to write, let alone read, without including one's own history, or past actions (or current, for that matter), or thought processes (which are often influenced by our environments and culture). Therefore, I don't think I'll ever be able to read a poem in a formalist manner.

"Cult-cha, Dahling"

2008-02-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

Culture: n. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture]

"While I appreciate Matthew Arnold’s creation of the interrelationship between
culture and perfection in, Culture and Anarchy, I find it difficult to follow
how he arrives at such. How would he suggest we pursue total perfection, when we
are a very different people, individuals? He suggests that we allow the will of
God to prevail but sadly, the will of God is often misconstrued even by the best
of finite minds. Still, I uphold Arnold’s call to see and learn truth in an
effort to pursue both personal satisfaction and bring about culture. I wonder
whether this might realistically be a logical impossibility. Arnold’s essay,
provokes a lot of pertinent considerations, but in my mind, also leave a lot of
questions."

A classmate of mine wrote the above as a brief response to "Culture and Anarchy" by Matthew Arnold in her literary criticism blog. Her questions concerning the essay's realistic possibilities are valid. Truth be told, Matthew Arnold lived smack dab in the middle of the Victorian era, a time where lines of faith and religion were extremely blurred due to the rapidly-accepted theories of Lyell and Darwin and the ever-growing Industrial Revolution. Therefore, it's understandable for everyone, including Matthew Arnold, to have some cognitive dissonance about culture, God's will, and the such (what I'm getting at is that I don't necessarily have answers to those questions, either!).

At the time of the Victorians, the socially-elite bunch were obsessed with the kind of culture that distinguished them from the lower classes, the lifestyle that they lived. Arnold, sick of seeing the discrepancies between the extremely (few) wealthy and the extremely (plentiful) poor, decided to shake things up a bit in the socially-elite realm. He wrote that culture was not the distinction between classes, rather it was the driving force that united humanity as a whole (Arnold believed that isolation was undesirable; see “To Marguerite—Continued”). To Arnold, culture represented all that was the best of human thought and knowledge: one could say culture was a representation of all that is true in the world. With the Victorian faith crisis, what had been the established form of truth, Christianity, was negated. Therefore, Arnold’s culture became the new religion, the “sweetness and light” in the world.

Arnold’s theory of culture (literature/poetry) would match up, to a degree, with Shelley’s mindset of the ethical faculties of poetry. If all together, humanity strove towards truth and morality by means of studying literature, would it be beneficial?

Shelley's Golden Rule

2008-02-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

Though Shelley professed to be an atheist, his views of morality did not stray far from what we now call "The Golden Rule," found in Matthew chapter 22, verse 39: "Love your neighbor as yourself." It might not be apparent initially, but loving one's neighbor as oneself requires a great amount of imagination. Shelley states that "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many other; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own" (700).

To think of what the self wants is easy and comes naturally--but thinking beyond selfish primary instinct towards what creates happiness in others is quite abnormal to the human being. The mind must leave oneself and crawl into the body of another, taking on a new history, present, and desires. Since this exercise is foreign, there must be a method for aiding the continual practice of unselfishness, or ethical behavior.

Shelley insists that "poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb" (700). The imagination necessary to comprehend a poem helps to build the imagination necessary to place oneself in another's position and decide whether or not an action or decision is ethical. Shelley's writing may be valid in an argument regarding the validity of studying literature--our society wants us to make ethical decisions that better the our communities and governments, right? Well then, perhaps we study literature to help us understand better the mindsets of our neighbors and to act in a way that will benefit society. Emerson would most likely agree that we must study literature because the emotions and histories that take place deep within ourselves are only stated as correctly as possible by the poet. However, I would not go as far to say we can ONLY understand our neighbor by reading about them--relationships must come into play at some point, or we would never make any decisions that affect anyone.

2008-02-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

In a diagnostic test I recently took during my literary criticism course, I was asked to define authorship. My response?

"An author is one who constructs a thought or an idea and shares their idea with others by crafting words that explain the thought processes. These words are gathered into novels, articles, short stories, poems, and other forms of literature. It is the author’s purpose to convey an idea as clearly and sometimes as creatively as possible, bringing understanding to a topic that a reader might not have grasped previously."

After reading Emerson's essay, "The Poet," I found that my definition had a few similarities to Emerson's definition of an author:

"The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experience of the age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet" (726).

The author is responsible for bringing new understanding to a unique experience. Especially since "the man is only half himself, the other half is his expression" (Emerson, 725). Emerson's words ring true for me. As an English major, I cannot begin to count the painstaking hours I spent trying to siphon out just the right word to accurately portray a personal experience. Emerson argues that many men try to pinpoint the poetic language of Nature, but only those with the most adept and skillful ears can interpret Nature's song (Emerson, 726). Yet even then, when the poet/author finally expresses an idea in the purest humanly form, the expression is still imperfect. I believe that this imperfection is the beauty of authorship--sometimes our language does not contain the best word possible for expression.

The struggle for purest expression flows out of authorship and into reading. Where the author has failed to express correctly "nature's song," the responsibility to find the best form of expression falls on the reader. Perhaps the reader will have a broader experience of the author's idea, and perhaps a broader vocabulary useful in explanation. Where does the line between author and reader fall? Is there ever a point where authors stop reading and possess only original thought, or are they always under some sort of influence of other authors (which would make them a reader)? Are readers ever only just readers, or do they take on author-like characteristics?

All quotations taken from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001.