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April 23, 2007
Add 1oz of Literature, A Dash of History, and Pinch of Politics
Literature, History, Politics, Belsey
As linguistic habits alter, cultures are transformed. Difference, history, change reappear.
Since history is a reaccuring theme in this game of life, then would it be safe to say that if literature was tied with history, then that would be a reaccuring theme? For centuries, there have been breakthoughs in different forms and criticisms of literature. But in history a lot of events happened, yet most of these events are similiar (locations, people and outcome may not change). So can we really put literature and history together without force them together. Literatre and politics CAN go together however due to canonization of text. Can we really change literature to reflect my aformentioned blog? Belsey stated that:
The literary institution has "fictioned" a criticism which uncritically protests its own truth; we must instead "fiction" a literature which renders up renders up our true history in the interests of politics of changes
Maybe we can. Maybe we can't I'm not sure.
Posted by KevinHinton at 3:40 PM | Comments (2)
April 21, 2007
Which Crit Is It?
Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish, Barker and Hulme
After reading this essay and reading other blogs, there is a little discrepency about what is the actual criticism for this particular article. I've seen author intent, reader-response, and intertextuality criticism being applied to The Tempest in this particular article. I think that the reason why this article is looked at in a cultural context is because that it has the ability to easily used all of the criticisms. It's just like I said in my term project presentation, culture itself is open to interpretation and can be changed to fit anything.
Posted by KevinHinton at 10:13 PM | Comments (1)
Pros and Cons of Cultured Literature
Culture, Greenblatt
Greenblatt's issue with culture and its affects of literature is really a "Catch-22" if you think about it. Even though culture can be used to build up a wonderful story, Greeblatt states that:
... if an exploration of a particular culture will lead to a heightened understanding of a work of literature produced within that culture, so too a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced.
Culture not exactly the it thing in literary text. Any of the criticism that we learn can basically help us in an understanding in the text. However, we can't count cultured literature out. If we look at most of the text we read, the authors did not invent that particular story that they wrote. I don't mean to break anyone's heart, but "despite our romantic cult of originality, most artists are themselves gifted creators of variations upon received themes".
Just look at the examples that Greenblatt gave us with Shakespeare's use of the historical event of New World exploration to The Tempest. And maybe others, Bram Stoker's Dracula to the legends of Vlad the Impaler. All of the text we know and love today to Grape of Wrath to Harry Potter have influence and been inflenced in some way or another. Even though we can't be held hostage to what is "in", we can used this information to get in tuned with the characters.
Posted by KevinHinton at 3:33 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
Kelo The Great's (Tentative) Summer Reading List
Reading List, Hinton
What I Plan To Do This Summer
What I plan to do is read books to increase my Literary Criticism skills. I choose some popular, classical, and just for the heck of it, non-fiction books. Except for the latter, I will do an analysis on all of them with one of the lessons that we dicussed all semester. Some I have read before, some that I haven't. If you have any suggestions please let me know, maybe we can discuss it in the near future.
Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevesky
Divine Comedy By Dante Allegheri
The Professor and the Madman By Simon Winchester
Vittorio, The Vampire By Anne Rice
Solaris By Stanslaw Lem
The Road By Cormac McCarthy
Posted by KevinHinton at 2:11 AM | Comments (1)
April 11, 2007
Hola y Adios Amigos (or not)
Blog Carnivale, Hinton
In the portfolio, I mentioned the three p's (porfolios, papers, and projects) and how everyone in class is affected by it. We say and do a lot of things to pass the time. One of my American Lit. amigos, Kevin McGinnis, writes (or should I say vent) a lot to pass the time.
Look at Oh man, classic. Total classic.
Some people freak out before a presentation. Even though they are strong inside anyway.
Check out Valerie Masciarelli in Derrida presentation: the scariest reading ever
But maybe it is reading structure in a literary text that is confusing to us. Poststructuralism was one of the most difficult lessons that we had. Kevin McGinnis shows his frustration about Derrida's article. While I compared the characters of Postmortem for a Postmodernist to a pack of pitbulls . While I'm screaming about pitbuls, Val is ushering in the lesson on her blog. If this is a blog carnival that confuses you...good. Then a postmodernist take on this blog is working.
Nevertheless, we come together in a common cause to learn how to approach literature in a different ways. I would like to say to my two blogmates and the rest of the classmates, Cuelgue en allí mis amigos (Hang in there my friends).
Posted by KevinHinton at 7:29 PM | Comments (1)
This Is What It's All About: Kelo The Great Second Blogging Portfolio for EL 312
Blogging Portfolio, Hinton
It is geting down to the wire, papers, projects, portfolios (the three p's). Through all of this, I'm beginning to understand a lot about Literary Criticism and how to take on literature from different angles. Via the blogs, I think I got the jist of it. However, there are something that I am having trouble with, but that is a little bit normal right? I'm not a replicant, I'm only human.
Coverage
The Head Shrinkers of Literature
This is what I based my presentation on.
As Real As It Gets
Why character can't be real people?
The Gradual Perfection Of Shakespeare
Magical World of Shakespeare.
Depth
Is It Too Uncanny For You?
How the Evil Eye affected literature and culture.
Who Is Human, Who Is Replicant, Who Cares
The lost humanity in Blade Runner.
It Seems Like Everyman Is Musical
Old Christian play into a sing-a-long.
Interaction
The Head Shrinkers of Literature
I used some websites to embolden my presentation.
Like A Pack Of Pitbulls...I Mean Postmodernist
The reactions were just insane.
Standing In Long Lines of Influence
Gotta go back to Eliot.
Blog Carnivale
Hola Y Adios Amigos (or not)
Join me and my friends
Discussion
Oui, Je vois le code
Dr. Jerz, Karissa and I talk about de Man who is the man.
Miko’s Breakdown of The Tempest
Karrisa and I talk about The Tempest.
Slave-Master Complex
Dave asked me a question.
Timeliness
All of these blogs were done during Spring Break.
Standing In Long Lines of Influence
Starting The Pale Fire That Burned Me
The Gradual Perfection Of Shakespeare
Xenoblogging
Dave Moio
Bacon Ghostwrote Shakespeare and Berger
Dave discussed Bacon's influence in Postmodernism.
Mitchell Steele
Mo Pomo Please
Mitch isn't exactly thrill for the ending of Postmortem for a Postmodernist.
Karissa Kilgore
EL312: Nabokov will play you, fool
Karissa and I talk about the difficulty of Pale Fire.
Lorin Schumacher
More Eyes, Human or Replicant, and...Jesus? = The Uncanny for sure
Christain Imagery in... Blade Runner in a places.
Wildcard
Kelo the Great's You Tube Moment
I found a new musical act.
Posted by KevinHinton at 2:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2007
Ideology And Childhood
Literature and History, Eagleton
It did not surprise me that Marxism would raise its head in Culture-Historical Criticism. I liked Eagleton's approach on literature. There is one quote that hit me only a few sentences into the reading:
"Art and literature were part of the very air Marx breathed, as a formidably cultured German intellectual in the great classical tradition of his society."
Marx had been affected by the great medium we called literature, or maybe he had affect the literature as we know it. I think it is more of the former understanding that "literature is nothing but ideology in a certain artistic form—that works of literature are just expression of the ideologies of their time." I personally liked Erin's statement on her blog when she stated that Marxist thought is less about "bitching about the economy."
Going on another note, remember in my presentation I stated that the only reason why reader can't get in tune with fictional characters because they are adults. Eagleton stated that "our liking for Greek art is a nostalgic lapse back into childhood." Such Greek culture is revered in the arts, I think we should get into our child within us. But there is a difference between tapping into your inner child and being childish. Greek's overextensive beauty is a sign of what I call the "childhood of literature" the beginning of what we know today as literature.
Posted by KevinHinton at 4:00 PM | Comments (2)
In A Ball Of Confusion Learning Who You Are
Reader, Text, and Ambiguous Referentiality in 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Feldstein
Feldstein broke down The Yellow Wallpaper into different ways to read the short story.
Confusion is Bliss
Feldstein had suggested that Gilman wanted the confusion that stemmed from the story. With the confusion, the reader wanted to know more and more about the story and about the author. By Gilman drawing us in, we are brought to the real consensus that John is the bad guy and the narrator/protaganist is going "coo-coo for Co-Co Puffs". Unsurprisingly, we are hit with confusion yet again when we are asked why are they in this position. This brings me to the next angle.
Ironic, That We Can See It This Way...
The position of the characters are confusing. That is the ironic thing, the obvious consensus I mentioned earlier is the confusing thing. Feldstein stated that:
"John, an antagonist and a proponent of realism who condemns his wife as a striken romantic" about John and
"A nameless protanganist whose ironic opposes the epirical gaze of the 19th century American realist to a modern, not romantic, configuration" about the narrator/protaganist.
So what is stated and what it actually is is two completely different things.
Posted by KevinHinton at 1:20 PM | Comments (1)
Growing Up Guetti
Resisting the Aesthetic, Guetti
Virtually no critics have thought of reading the questions Keats addresses to the urn literally--that is, not as rhetorical exclamations, but as sincere and urgent demands for information--and therefore it has not occured to anyone that Keats is, as de Man would put it, attempting to read, rather than to imagine, the urn.
Don't you detest it when people answer a rhetorical question? But Guetti asks why not. Espcially the questions asked in the lovable Keat poem that we know and love. She quotes de Man in several instances explaining how the poem "begs to be released from such delusive affirmation of unity." It [the poem] can only be (and maybe even feel) complete when you answer the questions in the poem. Guetti claims that the problem with our readings is because of the fact that we are not reading the urn. This qusetion therefore I pose:
Can we really learn more from the urn if we answer the questions?
Posted by KevinHinton at 11:57 AM | Comments (3)
April 7, 2007
Miko’s Breakdown of The Tempest
Tempest, Miko
Remember that McDonald article that had broken down theories of the Tempest into categories. Miko had done something similar in a poststructual point of view. Again, I will make a feeble attempt to breakdown The Tempest.
I.Do What I Say and Not What I Do
Miko made a claim that it is the language that the reader should look at closely. This is because that it is the language that made The Tempest a good play and a good work of literature. In this language is a series of ironies and metaphors. Miko called it the “language of miracle and wonder.” Shakespeare always had a cryptic language in his plays. Miko stated that we can’t just see the Tempest just a play, we should see it a form of poetry (maybe an epic like Paradise Lost).
II.Let’s Tie Up The Loose Ends
In other Shakespeare plays, the main character uses a marriage, a suicide, or a murder to solve problems that were stated in the beginning. In The Tempest, however, there are a lot of things out there still lingering in the play. A lot of things that were mentioned in the play, like revenge, were never fully used. Miko stated that “probably more than any of Shakespeare’s other plays; The Tempest leaves “reflection” a live metaphor”. The Tempest is meant to be explored That is the only thing that bothered me. Wasn’t it Chekov that said that “if you see a gun in Act One it has to be used by Act Five” (or something like that, I can’t remember)?
III.Prospero Runs The Show
As Miko stated, “this is Prospero’s play, with no very close parallel in Shakespeare.” Prospero is what I call a keystone character. Without him the whole story with collapse. There is no other main character in any other play that has such a command in the plot. Everything that happens, every time someone is influenced by magic, even his own misfortune is due to the one we call Prospero. Miko claimed that his exile is due to his brother and his “ducal responsibility into studies-magic and liberal arts”.
IV.…Or Maybe It’s Ariel
One of the things that Prospero does is control Ariel. He is the one that uses his power to influences most of the other characters in the play (but Miko said that they did not need it.) Maybe he is the keystone character and we didn’t know it.
V.Friends in Low Places
Like The Replicants, Caliban seems to reflect some human qualities good and bad. He wants the right to be a sovereign entity. It is a basic human right, the right to be free. Caliban lives in illusions in his present situation. He has the “everything’s-going-to-be-alright” mentality and strips himself away from that as the play concludes. Miko goes on to say that Caliban could be representing original sin, the first human fallibility.
Posted by KevinHinton at 2:10 PM | Comments (3)
April 6, 2007
Oui, Je vois le code
Semilogy and Rhetoric, de Man
I think de Man is on to something when he wrote this article. He mentioned a certain code in literature. A code that is "conspicous, complex, and enigmatic"...this means that there is no simple meaning of literature. Literature is not like a historical fact or a math problem, you can not solve all problems in one sitting.
There are certain criticisms that attempt to use this code to there advantage, like good ol' fashion formalism. But understanding that formalism is not exactly bedfellows with poststructualism, formalism is not the best form to go with.
Dr. Jerz said that if you don't get it, then don't worry. I'll think I'll take his word on that.
Posted by KevinHinton at 3:51 PM | Comments (4)
Culture Shock
Ch 7 Intro, Keesey
In plenty of our discussions in class we talked about what is the differnce between high art and low art. The whole meaning of culture is a tread that last through out the ages. Keesey stated that:
literature imitates universal human nature and conveys timeless truths
Historical events and culture are together, yet the are different. Culture is more closely tied to the auduence than a historical event. So, in order to understand more about literature (especially canonized literature), we must learn the culture that surrounded it.
You can't get an inside joke or reference without knowing the culture behind it. However, quote Vanessa when I say that it's more that just culture. By understanding literature, we will understand not only the cultur , but the langauge as well. Keesey has to asked the question "What gets defined as literature?"
I ask that same question to you good folks. Want do we consider in the world of entertainment literature.
Posted by KevinHinton at 1:12 PM | Comments (0)