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