Martha Nussbaum

In The Narrative Imagination, "Nussbaum argues that higher education should produce "citizens of the world," and that literature plays a key role in achieving that goal because of its special efficacy in helping us to understand others"(The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism). This is much like what Plato was talking about in his Republic. Nussbaum saw an education giving each person a more thorough understanding of the people that are not like themselves. This would in turn produce a better understanding of the world and make these educated people better citizens. They would not just be local or national citizens, but world citizens.

One thing essential to this citizenship is a moral imagination. This moral imagination would allow people to understand and suffer with people who have problems. This is something I've believed in(because of hearing it  from many people throughout my life) without ever giving it much thought. I took it as being a common since type of knowledge that everyone understood. Of course it is not that unfortunately. Or at least many people do not apply this to their logic or life. I personally just find it silly to think that being ignorant of situations and cultures around the world, or even around a town, can produce any understanding of them. I agree with her very much on literature being a portal to a moral imagination. It opens up worlds that some people may never have imagined. As a Bill Murray fan I immediately thought of Scrooged (not a big Dickens fan so I'm going with Bill in this example). Scrooged tells the story of an immoral (in many ways) man that, through intervention of spirits, finds his moral imagination and understands the meaning of giving and caring. I really think this idea is very much alive even in our television programs with reality type shows such as America's Most Wanted and other crime and law shows bring true stories, although sometimes exaggerated, to people that are safe in their homes.

Stephen J. Greenblatt

Stephen J. Greenblatt is considered a founder of New Historicism. What the New Historicism wants to know is where things come from and what they mean. It looks at the history behind the literature to get a better understanding as to why it was/is of significance.

New Historisist do not accept inevitability. There is nothing that is already determined. What we do does have an impact on what will be and what is in the present was brought about by what happened in the past. But there can be limits on an individuals intervention.

We care about what is happening or going to happen in our time, in the the present. When we read something written before our time, we will still project the problems and concerns that we have in the present on that work of the distant past. Authors will set a story in the past or future, but will address problems and concerns of the present.

In the video above, Stephen Greenblatt discusses the importance of recirculation of text and it's impact on a new generation that discovered it and it's long term effects.

Edward Said

Edward Said saw the view of the Orient as being a creation of Europeans. To him, Orientalism was created so the western powers would have a way to dominate the people of the Orient. The western powers would justify this in the same way a parent would justify dominating a child, by telling them that it was for their own good. This lead to Europeans having a social construct of themselves that was not accurate. They labeled the Orientals as mean, cruel, savages, ect. and in turn labeled themselves the opposite of these. What Orientalism says about us is that we have made our own reality and have not taken into account the actuality of things.

Stanley E. Fish

Mr. Fish believed that writers were not the ones who give meaning to there work. Instead, he saw the readers of the work giving the text meaning through the influences of their interpretive communities. I think this is very true. He viewed the work of the writers only as invitations to potential readers, to invite them to bring their interpretive communities rules to the text so that it may gain meaning. So, what the writers are really doing here are advertising their ideas and stories in hopes that people will have something to say about it. With this view, Mr. Fish is saying that the more a work is read by different cultures, the more meaning it garnishes and the lesser read works are basically meaningless. This seems like a very Darwinian idea. It actually kind of worries me when I look at the number of sales a series like Twilight boast.

What Mr. Fish means by communities could be a particular college and the way the students learn and accept what is taught to them or it could mean the entire education system of our country. I suppose it could even mean chat rooms, forums, and blogs and so forth. These communities that read and study whatever it is they are reading and studying are what gives those texts meaning. If what Mr. Fish is saying is true, then there is no text that has meaning in and of itself. The text only gain meaning when it is filtered through communities. I suppose though, that rather than being filtered through a culture, the text could be helping to filter the communities.


Below are two links to articles I found interesting:
An interesting article on grammar.
Fish on academic freedom

Adrienne Rich

Reading about Adrienne Rich and all of her ideas on the oppression that women suffer in a patriarchal society brought me to reminiscing on the days when I would under throw a ball to first base and immediately hear my step dad, from the fence, or one of the coaches yelling at me to stop throwing like a girl. On the other hand, for a rare positive statement, I might hear how I "took it like a man" or "manned up" in case of a good play. As a very young kid I would actually get mad at these outburst demeaning women because, like most young boys, my mom was a girl. I gradually grew out of that though and just understood it as a common saying that held no real meaning. Little did I know that Adrienne Rich had been laying out these feminist views for people such as Roseanne Barr to take hold of and incorporate into her comedy and television show.

Roseanne Barr used these same views as to bring up issues of oppression to women in the home, public, and workplace as well as issues with homosexuality on her long running television show Roseanne. Her personal life was reflected on the show in many different ways. She was able to experience the 50's, 60's, and the 70's and saw the way women were treated and also the way the feminist movement grew throughout those years. She also grew up with a gay brother and a gay sister and has ever since sympathized with the gay and lesbian community and feminist views. She brought these issues to light on her show at a time when it was not being addressed by any other television sitcom. This brings to mind Adrienne Rich's poem Diving into the Wreck. A poem that reads to me as a person that is wanting to discover something. It's about jumping in to where you've never been and finding a new world. This is what people do when they take on political or social issues to the public. They just jump head first in with their beliefs and see where it takes them.

http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/adrienne-rich-1929-2012

http://www.thegavoice.com/aae/books/1910-roseanne-speaks-out-on-gay-family-gay-friends-during-reading-from-new-book

Nietzsche

Nietzsche is mostly known for his call of "the death of God." Although there is some truth to this, religion has prevailed so far and seems to be gathering quite a group of dedicated follower. Modern science has definitely brought doubt to many of the older ways of looking at God, but the religious leaders have simply stuck to their guns and keep proclaiming  "God allows (new scientific thing that does "good") to happen." They always find a way to keep God in a good, moral light. I think they have a flawless plan here. It's kind of like Apple Inc. with the iPhone. Every time a new Android phone comes out, all of the iPhone faithful start quoting the commercials about how iPhone was there first and made all of this smart phone stuff possible. Even though that's not true, people believe it. They eat it up. They've just got such a great marketing team over there at Apple.

Where Nietzsche really hit the mark with me is his view on how everyone is full of crap. We all see things through our own perspective and rarely, if ever, take the time to try and look at things in a different way. I had dinner with my GF, along with her sister and brother in-law. We were at an Italian restaurant and the subject of traveling and seeing the world was brought up. I've always wanted a chance to do just that, see the world and all of the different people first hand and get a feel for them on my own. She thought that was the stupidest idea that any person or animal could ever even slightly begin to imagine, much less actually think about it and agree with it. I'll paraphrase her comments on it, but she basically said that she saw no reason to travel whenever she could just look at a picture and see it. She then pointed to a picture of a Tuscan sunset on the wall and reaffirmed her statements by saying something like, "See? There's a sunset. Big deal. I can see it right here and not spend a bunch of money and have to deal with foreigners." So she'll never see or hear or feel any of that stuff on her own. She'll live her life through other people with that sort of logic. That kind of thinking just seems about as fake as anyone can get. I guess it's the same as when people who read books about people who do things, exciting things, merely finish the book and do nothing but read the next one without exploring the adventures in the previous one. Those people are the wallflowers of the world.

As it was stated in class, Nietzsche shifted criticism from finding truth to finding meaning. I like to think that Mulder finally realized this on his quest for the truth. Although there is truth out there somewhere, the important thing is that whatever that truth is, the meaning that it holds is what someone should be trying to obtain. As in reading books and watching movies, there are many great lessons for the readers and viewers to focus on and take away with them at the end. I think this is what Nietzsche envisioned when he saw religion taking a fall and literature taking over in its place as to where people could gather their moral senses.

Baudelaire

I became somewhat intrigued with Baudelaire last semester when Mrs. Garner told me that a few lines of a poem I had written for her creative writing class reminded her of his poem The Corpse. While reading through this and other poems I also started to read about him and discovered his adoration for Edgar Allan Poe. He translated Poe's work and garnered a lot of attention for this task. He held Poe in high regard which caught my attention even more, being that I prefer Poe's work over pretty much anyone.

In reading the sections from Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life, I felt that Baudelaire fit in the category of flaneur. To write about people in the way that he did would have required a great deal of people watching and studying their tendencies. I'm a people watcher myself and tend to only interact when I want to learn something about somebody. So I definitely understand the appeal of this lifestyle from that aspect.

The way the dandy was described reminded me of the hipsters(they are also called scenesters, but I'm pretty sure only hipsters use that word) that we have today. The type that wears more daring fashions, ones that most people think are kind of cool looking but would never actually wear, and are always trying to stay ahead of the new fashions and even help create the new trends. These dandies, I'm sure, would have been just as hilarious to me as the hipsters of today. Every time I see fedoras, skinny jeans, feathers in peoples hair, or just anyone that dresses like Denise Cosby in the first few seasons of The Cosby Show, I can't help but smile and think how dandy it is that we live in the time that we do.