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January 29, 2007
Speaking Of Vacuums...Look At This
Benito Cereno, Melville
After reading one of many Melville's dry stories, it only confirmed what I already knew. Valerie asked this question on her blog:
Do I really want to be conscious of the fact that I'm reading from a certain perspective EVERY time I read something?
To answer that perfectly legitmate question, I what Valerie and all the good folks who read her blog ponder this. We are thinking in a 21st century mind set about everyone is equal. In Melville's time, slavery is legal... not to mention in 1799 (the year the story takes place). As I read this story something in me was bothered by Melville's take on the story. Which only prove the point of Keesey and myself that we bring a personal perspective to every single thing that we read.
According to Delano, Benito Cereno most likely could most likely could be someone held against his will. But as we read on we discover that it may not be that simple. I will reinforce the message in my previous blogs that we cannot read or write in a vacuum. Melville definitely could not...understanding that twenty years or so prior, the La Amistad rebellion had taken place. I'm pretty sure we are going to read this story over and over again so there will be more things to discover.
Posted by KevinHinton at 2:18 PM | Comments (2)
January 28, 2007
The Formalists' Formalistic Formula
''Introduction: What is Literature?, Eagleton
Reading this selection made me look up the definition of formalism. Now I understand that "formalists see the literary work as an object in its own right". Formalist look at the form, genre, and the whole structure of the work and can get the understanding of it. I think of formalism as a cheet sheet to an exam. It has all the background information to any literary work out there. When we learn about the basic things (like Father Stephen had put emphasis on in Intro to Poetry), we learn all the complicated stuff. Eagleton has stated the "literature, by forcing us into a dramatic awareness of langauge, refreshes these habitual responses and renders objects more 'perceptible'" More perciptable to understand the work and use it to prove all kinds of theories. Formalism is the theory most know to us and non-English majors (We know the difference between poems and novels). This is the first step to a lifetime of literary criticism.
Posted by KevinHinton at 9:55 PM | Comments (2)
Reading In Between The Lines
Contexts Of Criticism, Keesey
In the view of another group of critics, this tendency to look either to the author or to the audience causes causes us to overlook the very thing that unites them -- the literary work itself.
Along with our lovely Lit. Crit. class, I'm taken Introduction to Poetry with Father Stephen Honeygosky. He always stressed the importance of looking at the structure of the poem before looking at the meaning. By being literary critics, we have the option of approaching a literary work either way. Keesey describes that we might have thousand different answers to a very simple question about the work. That is what we have to realize in this class. It is not about the answer itself, but what we use to get the answer. Dr. Herbert Simon of Stanford University states that "enormous thought goes into the production of texts and perhaps even more (given the ratio of readers to writers) into interpreting them". Simon considers literary criticism as a cognitive science.
We must go beyond basic understanding of English, because every single reader not pursuing our profession performs a basic criticism. Nevertheless, we must embrace that every single reader brings a certian way to interpret a work. Keesey said that " ...for every reading is an active process of making sense, an interpretation". Learning what the yellow wallpaper stand for in "The Yellow Wallpaper" maybe what we what to do for a career, but eventually everyone who reads make a criticism.
Posted by KevinHinton at 6:16 PM | Comments (4)
January 27, 2007
Not in a Vacuum
Tradition and the Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot
During our first class, something that Karissa has said stuck out as I read this selection. She said even though we should read stories objectively, not everyone reads in a vacuum. It is the same thing with writing, you might think that you may be doing your own thing but that is far from the truth. Eliot definetly understood that concept. He stated that " no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone".
This means that no piece of literature is a category in itself. That is were literary criticism come in. We may not hit on exactly what the author meant..but again quoting T.S. Eliot: "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet upon the poetry."
It is the poetry itself that will live on and go though countless criticisms and will be read in countless Lit. Crit. classes. Through that poetry, we will be able to help determine, not completely determine the thoughts of the author.
Posted by KevinHinton at 3:45 PM | Comments (4)
Kelo The Great's Definition Of The Week
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
While reading this wonderful definition book, I had an extremely hard time picking which term I want to use. Eventually, I found the term I definetly want to use. This week's word is:
Lampoon : A satric, often vicious, attack on an individual (or occasionally an institution or society in general). Lampoons were common--- and popular---in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, but with the development of libel laws became legally risky for their composers and people.
There were many lampoons out there. Especially about politics. Now, if you are a supporter of President Bush, then my apologies right now. I am merely looking for a great example of a lampoon and this was it. I want to show you that not even the President of the United States is immuned to a lampoon.
Posted by KevinHinton at 1:57 PM | Comments (4)