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.

Samuel Johnson

I couldn't agree more with Samuel Johnson's description of works of fiction and what he believes their purpose should be. They are to be true to life stories that bring about a lesson or inspiration to the reader. He thought that they should show guidance in how to live. Where I disagree with Mr. Johnson is when he states that "if the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account." This seems to be heading back into Plato territory. This type of logic leads me to believe that Johnson had as little faith in humanity as Plato. Of course this could also be a sign of the number of uneducated people at the times and simply a precaution that was well deserved.

Maimonides

Maimonides is very confusing to read, but according to him, from what I've gathered, that is my fault. He seemed to be saying that the reader holds the responsibility in understanding the writer rather than the writer having to put his work down in a way that is understandable to reader. This makes sense to me for the fact that anyone with an exceptional vision should not dumb down their ideas or hold them back, but should put them out there to be explored by other people. As for any work that I will do, or have done, I want my work to be read by as many people as possible and understood to the fullest. Samuel Clemons once, sorta kinda, said that great literature is like wine and that his writings are like water. Everyone drinks water. So I believe the writer has the responsibility to edit and publish his work in a way that allows readers to comprehend and appreciate them. Maimonides and I clearly have a disagreement there.

Horace Ars Poetica

Horace really seems like my kind of guy. His need for decorum, although it may seem a bit tight-assed, is probably my favorite thing about him. I took this in a commercial sense seeing as how we operate in the world today. Every writer needs to understand the importance of the appropriateness of their published work. For a writer wanting to get started, this is a great way to make their work easily understandable and a good read for the average reader. Finding a style that they can excel with and build upon should be the number one priority. This can be applied to many facets of life, but this is a literature class so I will not go off on a tangent. But getting back to my point, what is written should be written in a way that would make it easily understandable to the reader and want the reader to come back to this author for more, whether it be a text book or a steamy sex novel about vampires.

The social decorum that Horace speaks of  is also of high interest with today's meltdowns of economies and the hatred many people have for who is "running" their country. Protest poems are absolutely a good thing to get the word of the people out in times of distress. Take for instance, back in 2003 or 2004, when Laura Bush asked writers to an evening of poetry at the White House, many of the poets declined the invitation and one, Sam Hammil, with the help of others, staged readings at libraries and collected poems and published the book Poets Against the War. People should, and I'm proud that they do, take a stand for what they believe is best for their country. Another example is all of the propaganda, that is now somewhat comical, that was used during 1940's to draw support for the war. Propaganda is a-ok.

http://youtu.be/eAttrxM0nN4

(I couldn't get this thing to embed a video to save my life)


I should probably mention that I do understand the importance of experimentation in writing. It is important for writing to move forward. Not to mention the fact that people get bored very easily and sometimes just want something different. Horace does tell us, after all, that "words once uttered forget the way home" (131). So while keeping in mind the importance of the published work, sometimes a writer just has to do his thing while he's doing his thing.

While doing a bit wandering on the Google, I ran across some interesting tidbits about our man Horace. First off I have to give a shout out to Poets.org. and then another shout out to Maecenas for giving Horace a farm to live on so that he could concentrate on his writing. Horace was said to have loved this little set up and that he would just chill in bed until 10 a.m. many a morning. How about that.



http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/331

Aristotle

I was able to identify with Aristotle's writings much easier than Plato's. For me, the appeal of Aristotle begins with his scientific approach to the subject at hand. The categorization he uses makes Poetics read like a kind of instruction manual to poetry. He goes as far as to break down how a vowel and consonant are made and even defines an utterance. I had never even thought about what an utterance really is until I read this. He goes to talk about names. This where he really gets nerdy and explains what a metaphor is by using taxonomy to break down the parts. In this he basically explains how phrases that are (usually) more dramatic sounding are used in place of the boring literal phrases. He moves on up the food chain until he gets to a debate between tragedies and epics. So to make a long entry short, Aristotle begins with the smallest part of the whole and works his way to the larger animals, explaining everything that he will be discussing later in detail up front so that as the reader moves along in the writings they have already been versed in what they are up against. With this, Poetics a shining example of how to phrase an argument.

What stood out to me most in this selection was Aristotle's praise of Homer for being "well aware of what he himself should do" (110). As far back as middle school, whether it was writing a story or a research paper, I was always told by my English teachers to show what I mean rather than tell. I was oblivious to where this had come from and ignored my teachers' advice, out of complete and utter ignorance (and probably some arrogance too), until my final year of high school when Mrs. Leighton told me where this advice had come from and that she and the other teachers were not just full crap. 

Plato's Republic

This was my second time around reading Plato and I must say that this selection was a bit easier to grasp than what was assigned so long ago in World Lit. What stood out to me the most was just how much literature Plato wanted to get rid of. Of course, with the fact that I have been completely against any kind of censorship since way back in my high school years, and with what has been going on with internet censorship recently, I shouldn't be too surprised with this grabbing my attention. So I'm sure that I missed a lot of what Plato was trying to get across because of all the distractions that I was facing with this whole censorship nonsense.

What I found that I did enjoy was the allegorical cave. This was my second time reading about this and I went a lot deeper in thought this time around. During class Logan had mention some movie that followed this same position on how humans see the world and I believe it was Vince that brought up The Matrix. This is some deep stuff. I wondered what I would do if I were in the position to where I learned how the world is really operating. Would I be like the dashing Fox Mulder and the hard nosed, and thorn in the Soylent Corporation's side, Robert Thorn(great name BTW), risking my life to find the truth and spread the word to all the people. Or could I possibly turn my back on the world like Krycek and the Cigarette Smoking Man? Maybe I would just simply go mad and be that crazy guy that all the kids make up horror stories about. I'm pretty sure I'd be dashing and Mulder-esque, but a body just can't be too sure.