Class Discussion 12/10/08

Read up through Realism in the text.
James Joyce...author/contemporary
It's as if the growing trust in science validates and answers the questions we may have.
General INTEREST...in science...bring scientific approaches to literature.
The idea of time changes...used to be based upon the natural world...sun, moon, bird migration...weather cycles.
But, in modern times, seconds off could really ruin a train schedule as trains could run into each other or how they have set times of arrivals and departures.
stream of consciousness type of writing....a narrative, weaving the tale as your mind navigates all the input...what territory are their own territories?
What theories explain the validation of modern writing?
Technology infringes on time
....sometimes the writers try to get inside the heads of modern people and what it's like to live in these times.(the flow of imagination...)
Photographs
Telephones
Internet
Films
Digital TV
Books on tape!
yet, Literature stands apart as an entity alone...used to reign supreme before all this modern tech arrived on the scene!
All the philosophies still thrive...just newer theories change as our valuation of literature changes.
IDEA FOR FINAL:
2 questions perhaps
address the questions: What is Literary Criticism and why does it matter?
it tries to say "what is literature good for?"
writers want to engage people in their environments...tell more about them, illuminate what may be going on behind the scenes..the real-deal or not
Then, the reader gets to inhabit that world even for just a temporary time
"An imaginary garden with real toads in it!"
Tom Wolfe, author....hip, high-style writer
does huge amounts of research...journalist and Fiction (Bonfire of the Vanities)
"....you can't make fiction more wild than real-life..."more recently...the Rise of Ethnic Literature
-the whole world is open to us now...
Dr. Nelson reads us a short story: "On Hope"
Then..."Happy Endings".....HILARIOUS!! Margaret Atwood...splenderiferous!

Class Discussion 12/08/08

Text analysis programs:
"Visual Text"
"T Lab"
"Automap"
free, free, free
windows-based
Then, on to discussion about final critique assignment
Most students focusing on "Nine" short story
I'm going with "Waiting" by Amos Oz
Speculating the review of the story..
Well, Amos Oz writes this short story about a an older man who receives a note via another person that just says "Don't worry about me."....and it's from his wife!
This man kind of floats from point to point of some usual places she may be...even takes a nice long hot shower, has a meal, and a beer at some point during his casual search for her. Maybe he's assuming she'll pop up from a quick errand...just seems less bothered by the scenario than most people might be. Then, again, they have been married at least 25 years and have twin daughters together..so maybe it's just a given that couples go their own way each day...and come together at home later, no set time other than the choir rehearsal they had Friday night together.
He finally decides to go look around for her and has a mongrel dog follow him around the town, which mostly lay in siesta...a February "gray and moist" day...with fog almost touching the rooftops of homes.
Elements of Fiction to consider:
1. Characters
2. Plot (causality)
3.Setting
4. Point of View (1st person, 3rd person most common)
5. Style (narration...discusses an unfolding of events, description...just a description of a specific action, place, person, Dialogue...interactions verbally between characters.)
6. Theme

Review due Friday, Dec. 12th at midnight....yeeha!

Class Discussion 12/03/08

Stories from The Atlantic and The New Yorker
See Review prompt on D2L for specifics of final paper...
A writing exercise: Try to write an equal sentence from a story that is written by a renowned writer!
Must try that!
Spent classtime discussing the final "review" paper, reviewing a story and then analyzing the text of "Nine."

LYRIC POEMS

18th and 19th centuries...yet
Many critics feel the US is still ("popular" genres as a basic) in a Romantic era.
A Romantic revolution against poetic langaguage!
Literature of a common people...an equal people, and independence reigns as priority.
Rejects neoclassical formats and favors lyrical writing.
Beauty lies in choas....strangeness, wierdness perhaps. Throw out the orderliness and bring on a free-form creative flow.
(i.e. a manicured garden as opposed to wilderness, the latter is what's desired in
Romanticism.)
"Romanticism raises imagination over reason."
Now, not just romantic love stories, but strange stories that contain creative use of scenes and people and activities that may be strange, wierd, creepy...unbelievable.
Reconnect with nature...responsive reaction...engage and imagine.
Fresh language + blank verse + figures of speech + irregular + imagination + nature
Gonna take a sentimental journey...

Keats and "Negative capability" the poet should be selfless and maybe even distance themself from their work and engage those of opposite mind-sets.The poet mingles ideass to bear and sets a buffet for the reader. No judgement enlisted...just making the recipe of the poem..facilitates the words and lets it be.
Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads
to choose from common life, use real language spoken by real men,
Passions of men intermingled with nature
Not confined by civilized society and conventions of behavior...
talk to a dandylion...
Simplicity reigns
A holistic rubric

Romanticism, after the Holiday with a contemporary poem

"The main tenets of Romanticism included a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination; from interest in urban society and its sophistication to an interest in the rural and natural; from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. The most important tenets of Romanticism, however, were belief in the importance of the individual, imagination, and intuition." (http://www.4classnotes.com/romantic%20period%20notes.html)
Ah, the mysterious and infinite....art for the sake of art...writing for the sake of writing...cooking for the sake of cooking, for that matter.
As Thanksgiving approached and I was polishing old family silver for the dining table, I was swept back to previous holidays with family. Some wonderful and some not so wonderful. Arguments, drunken behavior, messes, over-eating. Yet, the strongest memories are those of laughs, luscious smells of the food, the too-strong hugs of uncles, disgust at the pigs feet on the table, and that huge pot of Swedish meatballs I would just hang around with the cousins.
It was "romantic" and festive...it transcended the divorce and the family struggles to a magical arena of comfort and stability, even if it lasted only one day.
I chose this next poem from Poetry.com because I think it stirs feelings that most of us have concerning life and death. His story could be any one's story. It reminds the reader that as we grow older, time seems to speed up and we know the end is getting closer. We are then old enough not to have regrets and to be thankful for the time itself.





This Is My Story

by: Dusty Duty
When I pass over, and the time has come
And I look on days gone by,
To think about the race I've run
About life and the time to die.

While looking back on the wrist of time
Is there anything I would like to change?
Can't leave now, the race isn't over
So let me quickly work to re-arrange.

Now each pulse seems a bit quicker
A little faster than before,
The days piled up against my soul
As the sand piles on the shore.

Now,Let Gabriel sound his trumpet
What is there yet to be done?
To sing my song and praise the Lord
My course is finished and the fight is won.

The Romantic Era!

Yes, out with rules and restraint! Let us eat cake.
Romanticism involves creativity, experimentation, and artistic freedom.
It seems the French Revolution was largely due to a reaction against "the excesses of absolute government.... and the economic transformation of society." There was a large intellectual as a direct result of the Enlightenment. It is amazing to me to see the connections and gradual growth of the arts and literature as political environs change.
Nationalism and how people used "folk song formats" to express their cultural foundations.(the ideas of "individual rights but also the obligations of the individual toward society or the nation as a whole..."
And, probably much alike the reoccurring theme in human history, a struggle between liberal thought and conservative thought that played out via religion, art and literature as well.
Kant
"literature is ruled only by its own laws rather than by morality and education"
Wow, this was a completely new approach and really throws all that classical thought right out the proverbial window.
"Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason." The Kantian System
"There is no science of the beautiful, but only critique."
"All bodies are extended" and
"Everything which happens has its cause"
So, the Romantic period gave writers the ability to write about anything! Yes!
And, of course, I will choose a female poet!

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
by Emily Dickinson


Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee!


Yes, this is romantic and inspiring. Ms. Dickinson states that reality and measure have no place in romance, that her desire needs no compass...no chart...to "row" to her own Eden, a man whom she desires. Love, a luxury filled of wild nights.
A sea of love and feelings so quickly stated and aptly told with emotion.
The poem reflects a freedom of expression and no real reference to God or politics and does not relate a moral cause. She revels in a love and writes of it...freely.



Philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding the Kantian system.

Class Discussion 11/24/08, follow up to The Enlightenment

Reason and Beauty
Why do we critique literary works? how do we...and what do we use as our reasoning base
to come to such judgements?
Habib points to the valuation of employed reason tocome to an opinion.
Come to opinions not from preconceived notions rather from empirical research.
Hmmm, how do I form my opinions....I bet I'm pretty set in my ways.
The way we think is governed by practice and we need to be vigilant when we cast judgement.