In preparation for writing your own essay in response to some version* of the question--what is literature and what is it for?--we have been reading and will continue to read several works that explore this question.
Work for this unit...
1. By class time (not pumpkin time) on Wednesday, February 4 write a "What is literature? [And why bother?]" comment. Respond thoughtfully to a thread of discussion from class, or respond a particular comment by a peer, or respond to a particular passage in one of the readings, or compare passages in more than one of the readings that seem similar or contradictory or in some other way thought provoking. Or, you could respond directly to the questions: what is literature and why bother? Or you could respond to one or more of the questions I have written below--at the end of each reading--to provoke thought. Responses should be 300 words or so in length. Be bold. Be thoughtful. Delve into some uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts. Be clear as you can be. Be specific.
2. By class time (not pumpkin time) on Thursday, February 5 read "How to Tell a True War Story" (if you would prefer an ink and paper copy please let me know), mark three passages for discussion, write two questions, and write a summary/response. Do not post these notes. Bring them to class on Thursday. On Thursday I will break the reading down into sections for which certain students will be responsible.
3. By pumpkin time on Friday, February 6 write another thoughtful comment (300 words or so in length) on the blog. End your comment with the question or questions you will explore in your "Literature? Essay". (Refer to the questions below and above in the title line if they help.)
4. A complete 1000-2000 word draft (which will be graded but weighted as a homework assignment rather than as an essay) is due on Friday, February 13 by pumpkin time. (What could go wrong on Friday the thirteenth?)
Here is a list of the works we have and will read related to the big question. Below you'll also find links to related resources.
1. Read for Tuesday, January 26. "Jabberwocky" a personal essay by Barabara Kingsolver (re: how does fiction help teach empathy, especially empathy for "others," i.e. people with a different point of view? how is teaching empathy inherently politically? )
2. Read for Thursday, January 28. "Keynote Speech at the First Pearl River Poetry Conference, Guagzhou, P.R. China, 28th June 2005" a speech by J.H. Prynne (re: what is the role of the poet, especially with regard to language and truth?; re: what is the nature of poetic language?)
3. Read for Monday, February 2. "What is Literature?" (the first chapter of Literary Theory) by Terry Eagleton
This is a webpage that might help with "What is Literature?" (re: how is literature different from other forms of writing?)
4. Read on Friday, January 30 in F-block. Read on Tuesday, February 3 in D-block. "Negative Capability" LETTER from John Keats to his brothers. (And here's another website about "Negative Capability". This one includes an excerpt from another letter: "poetical character... has no self- it is everything and nothing- it has no character and enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated- it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the camelion [sic] Poet... A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity, he is continually filling some other body" (re: how is the way a creative writer knows different from the way a critic, a philosopher, a scientist knows? how is dwelling within mysteries and uncertainties part of the creative process? how is being open to "others" part of the creative process?)
5. Read for Thursday, February 5. "How to Tell a True War Story" from The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (re: how can fiction convey truth "better" than a "true" story?)
6. Optional reading. John Gardner's letter to AP students at a Bennington, VT high school & an excerpt from John Gardner's On Moral Fiction: "...the writing of fiction is a mode of thought. No one can achieve profound characterization of a person (or place) without appealing to semi-unconscious associations. To sharpen or intensify a characterization, a writer makes use of metaphor and reinforcing background--weather, physical objects, animals--details which either mirror character or give character something to react to. To understand that Marlon Brando is a certain kind of weather is to discover something (though something neither useful nor demonstrable) and in the same instant to communicate something. Thus one of the ways in which fiction thinks is by discovering deep metaphoric identities." (re: how does a creative writer use mysterious, unconscious associations and correspondences to explore truth?)
7. Optional reading: from Eduardo Galeano's Century of the Wind here is an excerpt: "The poet [Pablo Neruda], distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body." (re: of what use is literature (of what use are the arts) in political struggles?)
8. Optional reading: from Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners here is an excerpt: "When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully." (re: How is literature's meaning embodied? How is literature's meaning experienced?)
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* You will write your own question related to these. Any such question contextual. None is the "right" question.
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I suppose I will continue with Barbara Kingsolver and Jabberwocky because that was my favorite essay we read. One of the things that was not brought up in class that struck me as interesting was on page 225 when Kingsolver talks about how the media and public are basically in a relationship that feeds off of one another. The producers produce what they do because “[they] can’t help it if it’s what the people want!” I know that it’s been said over and over again, but we are subconsciously taking in so much information through advertisement that it really is a shame. The fact that there are people who can’t tell you the first difference between a paragraph and a poem but can tell you how the Wendy’s Girl likes her hair best is something we have created. We want quick, easy, colorful, and understandable. No one wants to read up on how or why the Wendy’s Girl has her hair in two braids but I bet there is a documented reason for it. So my question is, if the research that goes into advertising just as time consuming as the research that goes into writing a piece of literature, are they comparable?
Why is literature so highly regarded as something that people dedicate their lives and emotions too, when not half as many people spend as much time taking it in as they do a Wendy’s advertisement? The fact that people get what they want through the media is a fact that cannot be ignored. People watch television because they can absorb other people’s problems and forget about their own for thirty minutes. However, watching someone’s life portrayed in a movie is something rather unforgettable, whereas a novel that moves at the pace of actual life is remembered, written about, talked about, and referenced for years. So how can the public become more aware of literature? Time.
The reason we remember ads so frequently, and jingles are stuck in our heads for years, is that they are quick and repetitive. Watching an advertisement can take fewer than ten seconds, and in a one-hour-long segment, you can see the same advertisement more than once. The same goes for a daily commuter: You will go by the same advertisements every day for weeks or months without change. This familiarity of the advertisement is comfort but in a subconscious way. The language used is quick and is meant to not make the viewer stop and think about it, but to just have the image in the mind. There is no need to dissect an advertisement with a cheeseburger and a little redhead with pigtails, you know you want Wendy’s because within an hour you’ll be hungry.
Literature is not as cookie-cutter and simple in most cases. It takes time to read, and after reading in order to get meaning you must think about what you have read. There are many people out there who are too busy to waste time with fictional characters, or even read an essay on the affects of bacteria. If people really want to know something about bacteria they can ‘Google’ it and get a quick blurb that will satisfy the question and the time requirement. Quick and Easy. We live in a World that is cut out for quick and easy only, and that is something that is going to be hard to “love it and get it right.”
In class today I mentioned how literature gives people a place to be comfortably lost. I kept thinking about day to day conversations we might have with certain friends that don't really hold much meaning, or being in a room of your group of friends and feeling more alone than you reveal, and all in all I feel like literature is where one can escape from the rest of the world to a place that makes them feel more at home, less alone,less crazy, etc. This is probably repetitive for my D block homies but I wanted F block to hear it too because I think they’d agree or maybe have something to add, I don’t know. So far, for me, literature is a getaway for it’s readers and holds different meanings for each individual reader to interpret and adopt however they want. It’s purposely and contentidly mysterious leaving room for the readers to fill in the gaps…like Hannah said it perfectly the other day “the authors know where to leave the spaces for the readers” to fill with what their imagination desires.
I am one of those people that Ali O says can comfortably lost in literature. Here I am specifically speaking about books (novels)… I will always choose a book over a television program and could sit for hours reading a book from cover to cover. I have always been a fan of reading, and now that this questions of “What is Literature?” has come up in class, I have realized that I never thought about why I enjoyed reading.
In his Keynote speech, J.H. Prynne, talks about the “compressing and condensing” of poetry that leaves “nothing complete, nothing entire and nothing fully and totally recorded.” We talked about this in class and discussed how that incompleteness allows the reader to place themselves into the poetry to analyze and “experience” it. The “compressing and condensing” allows the reader to “fill in the blanks,” and the large empty space on the right (or left in traditional Chinese) acts like a puzzle piece that has found its match, yet it matches with anyone who reads it. (I hope that isn’t too confusing.) Even though Prynne was speaking about poetry, I think that the same can be said for prose writing in novels. Though the large physical space is not there by reading one can “slip” between the lines of prose and escape into another’s world, and even if that world is not so wonderful, as a reader one understands that they can back out at anytime they wish and return to reality. And if the reader does not back out and reaches the end of a story they can always start over again and relive the moments that offered them an escape.
I’m sure we all have had moments were we wish we could physically fall into the story of a book…or maybe I’ve just become caught up in the Inkheart series I’ve been reading… Oh well...
I wanted to take this opportunity to further discuss an idea we had previously mentioned in class. Mr. Cook had stated that literature must be both read intellectually, but also with our emotions. I think this is very important to keep in mind when analyzing literature. After all, one great advantage of writing that we have gone over several times is that as readers, we are able to interpret the author’s intentions, and are not forced to envision a particular event a certain way (as a director in a movie might have us do). Having the freedom to come to our own conclusions throughout a story is not only intellectually stimulating, but also healthy. I fear that too often people (including myself) delve too deep into the meaning of a piece of art, and over-analyze it. We forget to address our hearts as we fight with contextual meaning. As Kyle put it, sometimes the best way to make sense of a novel is to read it as it is. I believe that it is paramount to keep our emotions in mind when analyzing a piece of art. It is not uncommon to tear something great to shreds by incessantly digging deeper to find more meaning than is there.
In response to the question “What is Literature?” and in relation to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Jabberwocky”, it is important to acknowledge the aspect of literature that introduces the reader (or one experiencing the effect of some other literary work) to the message the author is trying to get across. Being able to look at literature from the outside and understand what the author wanted to say and was thinking is essential to comprehending what literature is. However, it is equally important to be inside the work. Most importantly, comparing these two abilities will allow room for a fuller understanding of any literary work. This is relative to the example brought up in class in “Jabberwocky” that came from quotes such as, “ Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own.” The author gave the example of slavery. We instinctively learn that slavery was a horrible part of our history, but it’s difficult to force yourself to care about a topic that no longer exists, that isn’t happening to you, or isn’t in every day life. Slavery is something we all can define and know is bad, but our knowledge of it stops there. That is until we’re exposed to a novel containing an imaginary story during the time of slavery. At that point the subject becomes powerful as it creates empathy, and as the reader, you are now involved. This ability to take us in and make us a part of an experience is the aspect of literature that is most important. Kingsolver also says, “…what can a human heart do but slam its doors?”. This quote extends to what we discussed in class. Just reading about a tragedy in the newspaper is not enough to be considered literature because the thought of it is often times too much. One individual’s tragic journey explained through hundreds of pages changes the way we perceive an event or a story. To be inside a work of literature in a position where it matters to you is a key piece to what literature is.
Ali O, I liked your comments about the power of literature to make us feel "comfortably lost." Ira Glass, the creator of NPR's This American Life once said that "By inviting a reader to feel empathy, we feel less crazy and separate [from other people]."
When we started this unit, I thought I had a decent idea what literature was but now I'm not so certain. Actually, I have no idea how to even begin to define literature.
At the end of class F-Block, Mr. Cook brought up intention. So I started thinking about that. Does a work have to be intentional, i.e. be planned and preconceived to have a certain purpose or message for the reader, to be considered literature? I'm not really sure. Books that I think are literature like Portrait of The Artist and Alice in Wonderland appear to have much that was intended and planned by the authors. But a reader can create meanings that are useful that the author never intended. Is this also a characteristic of a work of literature? That the work has enough dimension and depth that a reader can create new meaning from the meaning the author intended?
Things like street signs are created to be read and for a certain purpose but that purpose is not for the reader to gain a deeper understanding or explore deeper levels of interpretation and thought. Terry Eagleton says that one “operation involved in…literature” is to “prise” loose words “…from their immediate context and generalize them beyond their pragmatic purpose to something of wider and probably deeper import” (Eagleton 7). A person could “pry loose” the words of a street sign but I don’t think that they would find anything of “deeper import” in them.
Sorry if this blog is too confusing to read. I was kind of just thinking on paper. But I think that for a work to be considered literature, it must have intention. I don’t think it necessarily has to be intended as literature but maybe. Also for a work to be considered literature, it has to be able to be taken apart by the reader and give some sort of deeper meaning.
I think Barbara Kingsolver writes about literature in the most relateable terms. I'm not sure quite what literature is, but I think empathy is a crucial ingredient in the recipe. In another essay of Kingsolver's, she says she "wants to write about the places where disparate points of view rub together---the spaces between." How is it possible to do this? She believes with "a keen ear, empathy, caution, willingness to be criticized, and a passionate attraction to the subject" it is possible to "represent the world [she] can see and touch as honestly as [she] knows how, and when writing ficion, to use that variegated world..." To use that world for what, I wonder. Perhaps herein lies the purpose of literature? She goes on to say she craves other people's stories: "the ones that will show [her] a way out of here...The point is not to emulate other lives, or usurp their wardrobes. The point is to find sense. How is a child to find her way to her own beliefs unless she can stuff her pockets with all the truths she can find?"
I want to think of literature as a way to truthS. Not Truth. Maybe truthfulness. But mostly just truthS. TruthS that apply to that situation, and truths that may apply to this situation. I think literature is a tool to learn about the human condition, and each of our own individual places in this life. I think that you, Mr. Cook, would like us to dig a little deeper into this idea, but for now, I believe the surface allows for enough "mystery" to dwell in. Literature offers me options, truthS. I'm not ready to lunge, or to foul anyone; I'm just going to contain for awhile longer. (well until the 13th, i guess)
During our discussion on Monday the word “interpretation” was thrown about most of the class. For the purpose of this blog, I would like to substitute the word “interpretation” with “perception”. I think that the word “interpretation” applies to what we do in school, specifically AP. We interpret things using guidelines to come to an answer and that is a terrific way to learn, but I think what makes great literature is the feeling you get the first time you read something--how you immediately perceive it (Like how I perceive the word “perceive” to be better in this situation, when I know that making a distinction between “perceive” and “interpret” in more persnickety than I would like to admit I am.) And while I believe second chances are necessary; I find first impressions are usually right. For instance, if I ever like A Doll’s House I will travel to Ibsen’s grave and make a formal, public apology.
This brings me to me next point, just because something isn’t good doesn’t mean it isn’t literature. In class, we talked about bad literature, but the word “literature” still seemed to have a positive connotation in most. (I use the word “connotation” to liberally in everything I write, sorry.) I think the reason we put adjectives in front of the word “literature” is because there are so many…species of literature. If literature was only good it would make our definition easier, but we would lose gems like “bathroom literature” and we wouldn’t feel the need to say things like “It’s just bad literature.” or “That’s GREAT literature”. (What would we talk argue about in coffee shops?)
And, to come full circle, I think good literature is in the eye of the beholder. It’s all about how you perceive a piece of work. We talked about Warhol’s paintings and I have heard a lot of people say that some of his work is bad art, but it’s still art, which is an achievement in my opinion.
I’m not going to play the ingenue and say that anything that is written (and effects someone) is literature or that a street sign is literature, but I think we need to include the bad in our definition. Without the bad, how would we distinguish the good?
Michael McGovern
In Jabberwocky by Barbara Kingsolver, she talks about how readers can become more emotionally invested in a novel as opposed to a news article. The examples she gives is that you can read in a newspaper that 100 people died in an airplane crash and you think, “How very sad” but you don’t let it bother you. In a novel however, you become emotionally invested in the character and even though the character doesn’t exist, you still feel pain about their death.
I think that the point she brings up in this passage is one of the bases around which literature is based. Literature is writing that is presented in such a way that you not only become invested in it, but develop feelings and thoughts about it. Newspaper articles present something that is strait fact and makes no personal connections. You can definitely be saddened by a news article, but it isn’t something you will remember years from now. A novel, according to Kingsolver, has the ability to show you exactly how a character feels and thinks and forces you to become invested in him and treat him like a member of your family.
Here is an example: If you were to read a news article about a certain mental health facility where patients were mistreated you would most likely feel saddened and disturbed, but you wouldn’t spend extended time thinking about it. However, if you were to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you would develop feelings for the characters and the treatment of mental health patients would be lodged in your head for a long time. You would all of a sudden begin caring about something that you never would have bothered to think about before. That is why the novel would be considered literature as opposed to the news article which wouldn’t be. Literature is something that not only allows the reader to become invested but provokes thought and has a deeper, underlying meaning. In literature, you are not reading strait facts that you can’t relate too, you are reading something that you will not only care about, but stimulate your mind.
The biggest thing I think I pulled from Terry Eagleton’s article was the power of subjectivity in defining, analyzing and creating literature. What we value in literature is based so much on our subconscious and especially the societal influences that we consume unknowingly every day. For this reason, we cannot read anything objectively (“the fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns… might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries”), we cannot write anything objectively (“statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgments”), and we cannot strictly define “literature” (“literature, in the sense of a set of works of assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared inherent properties, does not exist”).
This inextricable link between subjectivity and our appreciation of art seemed at first to me to be somewhat depressing. Subjectivity, it seemed to me, ultimately made any effort to find real, objective truth futile. What if there is no real truth out there at all? This kind of thinking, I believe, is enough to throw anyone into a fit of nihilistic despair. But this brings me to JH Prynne’s speech: “truth is an abstract idea, and could so far as I know exist inside a glass cube without human intervention. But truthfulness requires people to do it.” Being subjective, we will never be able to mine any sort of truth that we can be confident is absolute and unbiased from literature, science, journalism, etc. However, we still crave truth, and even for that reason alone, we must have it. Even if we cannot have the absolute truth we can still create some kind of truth that is palpable and relevant. And I think literature does an especially good job of doing this. Both the reader and the writer create the meaning in a work. Because we are not always allowed the leisure and intellectual stimulation to create new ideas independently, we must do so through communication with others (via literature, for instance). Literature brings up new ideas and elicits contemplation in readers who create meaning through interpretation. Truth in literature requires a reader as much as a writer. For this reason, I don’t think there is anything wrong with analyzing works not usually considered literature as such – the ultimate goal in literature is to create meaning. As long as an observer creates meaning by analyzing an object, that goal is accomplished.
Also, I meant to fit this in somewhere earlier, preferably after the JH Prynne quote: subjectivity is also the element that allows us to enjoy literature or any other media. If we could be objective we would have no reason to analyze the contrived truths of others. Literature confirms essential human beliefs, questions inherited beliefs, and allows us to create meaning from our intensely unordered environments. Literature works both with and against our societal influences.
I was very interested in the idea of literature as a power. In Jabberwocky Barbara Kingsolver said this: “And if you should by chance succeed [in perfect execution of “serious content”]—oh, then. Art has the power not only to soothe a savage breast, but to change a savage mind. A novel can make us weep over the same events that might hardly give us pause if we read them in a newspaper. Even though the tragedy in the newspaper happened to real people, while the one in the novel happened in an author’s imagination.” It seems almost to me that good literature is one that has the power. I’m not saying that authors are power hungry, but a good novel is one that has the power over it’s reader’s emotions, and like Kingsolver says can “soothe a savage breast,” and “change a savage mind.” I had never really thought of literature as a power before, but now that I think about it, all the literature that is “good” seems to have control over its reader. It has the power to make them hate a genocide or fall in love with Prince Charming or understand a person totally unlike one’s self or in a person in a situation totally foreign to the reader. I feel like because of this not everything can be thought of as literature. We were talking in class about if anything can be literature by the way we interpret it, but I think that it can’t because of the power of literature. For example the newspaper doesn’t have the same power as a novel to make its reader feel a certain way. Because of this the newspaper is not literature. We can read it like it is literature and find “imagery” in the articles, but if it doesn’t have the ability to control us as readers, to make us feel a certain way, then it is not literature. I don’t think this is the only thing that makes a certain writing literature, but I think that this is a very important piece.
The ideas about fiction brought up in Barbara Kingsolver’s writing really sparked my interest, especially those about novels having the ability to put you into someone else’s life. I’m a fan of fiction novels and when I’m in the mood, reading them can really take me away. Whether I be alone in my room, or in a noisy study hall, diving into a book can bring me to almost a whole new world. The scenes described in the pages surround me, and the characters become more like friends rather than made up people. Kingsolver says “…you might find yourself crying, even if you aren’t the crying kind.” As I read this I was so surprised, because this actually happens to me. Well, not exactly, I don’t actually cry, but when something sad happens a strange feeling comes over me, and the same when something happy. I might even find myself looking like an idiot with a big grin on my face with no one else around me but the characters in my novel.
As Kingsolver mentions, you relate to the person in the story. Even if it’s in some miniscule way, I’ve definitely found myself saying “That is so me!” as I flip through the pages. Sometimes it’s the way they act, their interests, or ways of living. Other times it’s the events that unfold throughout their life, something similar to the scenes in the story have occurred in your real world. Then when your find your relation to that character and see the outcome of their life, it may even teach you a lesson, and help you decide where you should be headed. Even if this person is nothing like you, you still find yourself relating to them in one way or another, just reading a book that puts you into this person’s life can be connection enough.
It seems to me that literature is the format in which we can spread experiences beyond their pure factual content and into a realm of further understanding. Jabberwocky discussed how fiction can spur more emotion than journalism. This is the key of literature, the aspect of reliability. I remember in Jane Eyre, a discussion of how a reader of the time had to repent because she wanted so bad for Jane and Rochester to get together. Such a strong reaction is why literature is important, because it can bring reactions out of people and spread a message.
On spreading a message, let’s consider the literary merit of something we take for credit. Aesop’s Fables are some of the most told stories of our time, and although they are oral history (transcribed, like Beowulf) they are surely nothing short of literature. And we know, they spread a message. I think this is the root behind literature. Why literature? Well it’s a variety of ways, part of entertainment (as we see entertainment in storytelling of all kinds), part of a journalism endeavor to spur relation, and part to spread a message (fable or social criticism)
(is Clacti a word?)
So I’ve been grappling with this idea that “literature” doesn’t exist, but there are many documents which exist to convey messages because humans just feel the need to relay their thoughts to one another; and when they are enormously successful (or obtrusively unsuccessful), it becomes something we’re interested in reading. If it simply “succeeds” (“Pay attention, the moving walkway is about to end”- nobody falls flat on their face on the nice octopus painted on the floor at Logan), we are willing to read it and forget it. Facts are examples of these “successes”: 100 People Dead In Bombing, Sarah: Take Out Trash or Mom Will Revoke Blender Privileges, SLOW: CHILDREN. Things that are real, concrete and immediately concerning are successful communication. But what about when we have a bigger message? (This is all very similar to the passage previously referred to in “Jabberwocky,” so holla at you all.) But what if I wanted to tell society that parents shouldn’t threaten their children to get them to do things, but rather reward them for doing them willingly? I could, I suppose, make a sign that says this and post it everywhere. But would my parents forget this message the same way I forget to take out the trash week after week, and the way America forgets every tragedy as it comes preparing for the next one? Yes, I think so.
So there must be a way around this “instant gratification success,” because somehow I know that lying is bad and holding the door for someone is good. Is it because when I read childhood stories, I identified with that guilty feeling a child gets when they lie, and the happy feeling that comes with praise for good work? Everything about me as a person is a result of my interpretation (or, Caitlin, my perception and resulting reaction), of the world around me. Perhaps, just perhaps, this discovery of the world around me, my reactions, and my desire to share my reactions are the strings that make up the tapestry of any “literature” I may produce, which m ay be true for any author who ever existed.
This is something discussed in the excerpt (“What is Literature?”) from Eagleton’s book. This essay explored many aspects of this so-called “literature” that I’d been wanting to investigate for some time. As I described above, we are all unique products of our surroundings, which Eagleton calls an “invisible network of value-categories,” noting that without them, we would have “nothing to say to each other at all.” If we didn’t have values, we wouldn’t have messages to send, and then wouldn’t bother with trying to be overtly successful or not. So this is why “literature” cannot simply be Good or Bad or Pretentious or Stupid, or any other word we might use to describe it. Literature is simply one person’s attempt to SAY something about societal ideals. Eagleton also says (and I brought this up in class – and I just saw that alex r also mentioned it) that we “always interpret literary works….in the light of our own concerns.” I can’t think of a better way explain this. “Literature” is one person trying to describe something according to their concerns, and then putting it out in the world so that other people can figure out what it means to them. Facts and statements aren’t up for interpretation. They don’t mean different things according to each of our individual concerns, just one uniform meaning. This is why what we call “great literature” is “great”, because somehow, LOTS of people were able to find a way to interpret it, and then (surprisingly) found out that our interpretations were similar, because (shockingly) we all have similar concerns! The “greatest” literature, of course, already knows that we will do this, and therefore lays hints so that those of in AP English who are looking for ways to relate our societal concerns can find them, and feel devilishly clever about it. And that’s just in books! Think of all the opportunities in poetry to leave ends open so that people can interpret and relate! And then distinguish themselves from each other! It’s like we’ve created a way of communicating what we want, ONLY to the people we want. Is this elitist? Pretentious? Does it present an opportunity for reaching out across societal gaps? I don’t know, because I’m the one arguing that literature doesn’t exist…
In any case, I think that “literature” is one of the few things that humans will still be able to puzzle over hundreds of years from now, unlike technology, trends, etc. That in itself makes any message that isn’t an outright statement “literary,” and worthwhile, even when it means more to one person than another.
(Clearly my argument is flawed, but I plan on continuing to disprove the existence of “literature” and continue to advocate the “debatable message about human society” idea. stay tuned….)
In my opinion, the question of “why bother?” so deeply connects with the question “what is literature?” Most often, a work of literature is written to send out a message, whether this be to the world, a specific person or type of person, or to one’s self. Perhaps this is in the form of a thought experiment such as “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, or in a satirical article like those posted on the blog “Stuff White People Like”. Or maybe this message is being sent through an autobiographical compilation of essays like “I Was Told There’d Be Cake” by Sloane Crosley. In each of our poetry anthologies from class, a clear message was being sent through our themes and how we played them out with our poetry choices, even if we did not know whom exactly our message was being “sent” to (as most of us struggled with the dedication). Sometimes the message just has to be “out there”, and conversely, sometimes the message can no longer be kept “in here”. Basically I feel that literature is a form of writing that somehow connects with the reader, even if that reader is only yourself, and consequently strengthens the connection you have with your own being. Sometimes when reading textual art, you don’t quite understand the underlying significance, but you feel strongly that it is there. This is a connection, and further compels you to try to understand the work and connect with it further. Sometimes you clearly understand the meaning of what you’re reading, and yet you disagree or are displeased by it. You may think it is worthless or pathetic; you may feel it to be insignificant or unworthy of publication. Even a negative connection is indeed a connection, and something in that writing was significant enough to give you a feeling. Literature should evoke thought in some form: positive, negative, questioning, confusion, revelations, what be it. One need not be able to relate to the work for it to be literature, but if it evokes some sort of thought process the connection has been established. What is literature? A connection. Why bother? To connect. To connect with others, and to connect with yourself.
P.S. I apologize for the stream of conscious-esque manner of this post, and for the amount of times I employed the words “message”, “connection” and “sen(d/t)”.
Brian Hand
In AP English, we are often asked to analyze what techniques an author uses and how the usage of techniques contributes to the meaning of the work of literature. I think the What is Literature? packet dealt heavily with how literary techniques both carry and contribute to the meaning of literature.
On page 6 of the packet, Terry Eagleton makes the claim that it is not simply techniques that define literature but the context of the language. He notes that there is "more metaphor in Manchester than there is in Marvell." Just because we may use literary techniques everyday in a colloquial setting does not make our speech literary because the usage of such literary devices is done on a subconscious level, that is, it is built into our language and therefore doesn't use language in any innovative or original manner, as Eagleton puts it, "making strange."
Thus, literature can be defined by how the language is used, not the language that is used. Eagleton cites an example from Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger: "This is awfully squiggly handwriting!" This sentence does not seem literary because it isn't in the context you are reading it in. In Hamsun's novel however, the sentence is literature because it is used in the conveyance of and in some way contributes to the meaning of the work. To demonstrate this, Eagleton uses an example of a drunk reading a sign out of its intended context and therefore giving it a "wider and probably deeper import." I don't think literature can be defined by what it contains but by what it does with what it contains, and of course how it is read.
I would also like to discuss this erroneous idea of literature being a medium to deliver truths. I don't think this is true; if the point of literature were to deliver truths then I think I would find less joy in reading, and writers would find less joy in writing. Viewing literature solely as a way of delivering a message or persuading people demotes literature to prose of the lowest kind. I believe that literature is valuable because it increases our apprehension of the world, not because it persuades us to think of the world in a certain manner. I do think that from literature one can increase cognitive and rhetorical ability but I don't think the purpose of literature is the deliverance of moral values, nor do I think it should be.
Literature is a 3 day old gumball (chewed by multiple people) forgotten in a wooden birdhouse dangling on a skinny tree branch roughly 4 yards away from my back door.
Being faced with the task of defining literature and its purpose is unsettling. Partly because I don't want my take to be inaccurate, and partly because I don't want the essence of literature to be defined. So my first inclination upon reading this prompt was to turn off my computer and go to sleep. I immediately felt guilty, so I hesitated for a bit. Out of boredom and discomfort, and for the sake of fun, I ended up trying to think of the most absurd, irrelevant metaphor I could post here. Something that (on the surface) in my mind would have nothing at all to do with literature. I realized that if I were to do that I would get away with it. Somebody would take it upon themselves to scrounge for the meaning in my bullshit, and they would miraculously find it. Because, maybe, that's what literature does. The longer I allow the arbitrary metaphor I came up with to immerse itself inside me, the more connotations I extract from it, and I begin to uncover sense. When words are positioned on a surface they are read, when words are read they are automatically interpreted. Literature challenges a body to find significance in concepts that are foreign to them and/or concepts that are already within them.
I guess I am interested in the idea "why read literature?" aspect of 'what is literature?'. I think that there is no one way to ever boil down exactly what constitutes literature, and what criteria we use to either include or exclude a piece of work from being considered literature. Caitlin mentioned that we talked about the perception and way that literature is looked at by different people. I liked the idea that was brought up during discussion; if someone reads a piece of literature that is generally considered of literary merit or just good literature, and the reader doesn't understand or clearly see some of the underlying messages and meanings, is that still literature. And then that led in to the further discussion of what is literature, and how do we decide...but like i said i don't think that there is ever going to be a clear answer to this. So when thinking about 'why read literature?' I turned to Ali's comment on being comfortably lost. I like this idea, for several reasons. For one, I find it very true, at least for me. When I read something that I truly enjoy I often find myself 'lost' in the story. I also think that it is common to incorporate a piece of yourself into the piece that you are engaged in. I also think that to give a piece of literature the fullest attention needed to completely grasp it, you need to become sort of lost in the reading. I think that 'why read literature?' is a simpler question with another indefinite answer. Everybody will read a piece of literature and consider it good literature if they find something enjoyable or captivating in the piece. The part that is challenging is what is it that people enjoy from literature. I think its definite that that will vary from person to person. And those who enjoy what are considered to be of 'literary merit' are just luck they can impress people with a conversation about Shakespeare or Whitman or whomever.
Isabel mentioned one of my favorite passages in class yesterday (Page 4 of What is Literature?). The most memorable phrase for me was “Most of the time we breathe in air without being conscious of it: like language, it is the very medium in which we move. But if the air is suddenly thickened or infected we are forced to attend to our breathing with new vigilance, and the effect of this may be a heightened experience of our bodily life.” This phrase built upon the idea of the Formalists that literature made ordinary language strange. According to the Formalists, language that brought us more in tune with our ‘bodily experiences’ was considered literary, and ‘literary’ language was estranged from ordinary language. I began to think about WHO connects with literature, specifically the literary versus the non-literary.
The essays we have read are so clearly directed towards the literary, or at the very least, those who are interested in language, that they estrange them from the rest of the population. Not in a bad way, of course, but in a way that makes it difficult to define ‘What is literature’. In order to answer what literature is, I believe all levels of intelligence must contribute to the meaning. To ignore the non-literary is rather pretentious. Literature can be ‘served’ in many ways. A ‘lowly’ man who never enjoyed the likes of a Harvard education may make just as profound a connection with a sci-fi thriller as one would “Anna Karenina”. But the literary Terry Eagleton writes about would not hesitate to argue that the Russian epic holds much more merit as one of the great classics. As an AP student, I would agree with Eagleton. But while I personally think there is importance in understanding the author’s message within his or her art, I recognize that not everyone makes the same connection to literature. It is because of this that I believe the QUALITY of a novel, play, poem etc. is defined by how many DIFFERENT people it touches.
There is a difference between a literary intellect and a reader, and they will interpret literature differently. Perhaps the reader will even interpret the work differently than the author intended. (This continues on the assumption that the intellect will comprehend the author’s comments on society, humanity, etc.) Is the message wasted then, if it wasn’t understood by all? I haven’t fully decided yet. Right now, I think it is more important for a connection to be made on some level than for no connection to be made at all, even if the work inspired different thoughts than intended. As long as a reader is brought into a “heightened experience of our bodily life”, I believe that literature, and art in general, has done its duty.
Meghan Ciaramitaro
During our D Block discussion on Barbara Kingsolver’s Jabberwocky, Jackie S. brought up the great question of, “What would happen to our opinions of literature, if the news became broader with the information they share.” This intrigued me. The news shows a very narrow range of stories. This censorship creates limited ideas in one’s head, and is a big part in the formation oneself. By seeing death and destruction as a common theme in the news, our ideas of art and music become mutilated. The depth of pain within pieces of art, poems, or even song lyrics is often overlooked because the focus is placed on the top layer. A layer of a foreign gloom, that one cannot relate too. If there was more input from the media, I think either the truth literature gives us could be lost, or it could help us gain a stronger connection to everything in the world around us.
Many already believe that literature represents the truths one can’t find in the “political” world. I completely agree with this. There is nothing better than being able to lose yourself in a great work of literature. Of course, not all works of literature are great or even any good at all, but they all take the reader on a new adventure. As Kingsolver said, “Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can.” My original opinion of literature has changed after reading these opinion pieces and listening to ideas of others during the discussions. In my opinion now, I believe a work of literature is like a puzzle. All of the pieces are given to you by the author, but it is up to the reader find the relation of their own lives and experiences to put the puzzle together. Even if someday the news and media closer relates to the literature we love, it can still never replace the falling into and losing ourselves in novels and poems.
I have decided that defining literature is an impossible task. Of course there are things that simply are not literature, for instance the wording on a street sign, directions on how to assemble something, or a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but other than that, there really is no distinct beginning or end to what can be considered literature. Jabberwocky seems to focus on the differences between fiction and journalism, and comments on how " a novel can be more true than a newspaper". Kingsolver intimates that in reading a novel the reader becomes invested in the character(s) because the struggles of single individual are revealed through strong, vivid detail, whereas newspaper articles make statements that are too tragic to be fully comprehended by those who read them thus the reader does not make an investment in the story behind the text. In making this distinction, I feel that Kingsolver is implying that journalism and other forms of factual writing should not be considered literature; a sentiment that I disagree with.
Kingsolver separates writing based on whether it is "political" or "pure". Kingsolver never actually defines either term, which creates a sense of ambivalence for the reader, but a general definition of each word can be extracted from the context in which each word is used. I understood "political" as referring to anything that opposes the any idea/feeling that is widely accepted to be true/justified/correct by society, and I understood "pure" as referring to anything that advocates for/is supportive of any idea/feeling that is widely accepted to be true/justified/correct by society. After playing with the idea of pure vs. political and exemplifying each, Kingsolver says "Good art is political...", which once again, suggests that only art that is political is good, and that art that is pure can be done away with, which I, once again, disagree with.
As wholeheartedly as I wish to abolish "bigotry and warfare", I believe just as firmly in presenting both/all sides to any argument/conflict/situation. I feel that in Jabberwocky Kingsolver demeans pure and glorifies political, but really what would political be without pure? Also, is it impossible that the pure point of view may just be the one that is morally sound?
Also, I think Kingsolver omits an extremely important aspect of writing in Jabberwocky. Kingsolver analyzes writing based solely upon content, never once does she pause to consider form, diction or syntax. Is something that someone has written completely worthless simply because is expresses a popular belief? Can merit not be given to those whose writing appeals to the masses simply because it appeals to the masses? Is there no value in eloquence and style?
Although I agree with most parts of Jabberwocky, I think Kingsolver should reconsider what she considers to hold value and have meaning and look at all aspects of a piece of writing before she discounting it.
One point that I noticed in Jabberwocky was the extent to which media is focused. Since the media only shows what the people will most want to know about then many important things go unnoticed. On page 224 in Jabberwocky there was an example about people in Spain knowing things about what the U.S. was doing in Iraq that was not at all in the media in the U.S. There was also an example on 226 about how it was difficult to find information on recent historical events concerning anarchy in Somalia and Haiti. That contrast with how easy it is to find out information about celebrities and trivial events. That point was startling to discover while reading. Later she discussed how the medium was the message and we talked about how empathy can be conveyed in novels much more easily than a news story. However, while a novel can make us more compassionate on a topic, there are so many tragedies going on it should be important that major events across the world are at least somewhat common knowledge and are mentioned in news stories. She makes a good point that writing should be questioned as whether it is conscious and thought provoking or if it is just what people are most comfortable hearing.
Rose Pleuler.
Literature is a vehicle for ability. There is a give and take to it, where both the writer and the reader create literature.
For the writer, I think intention is key. A writer should care about their piece, whether their focus is primarily the message or primarily the way the message is being said. I think both content and style are legitimate ways that a writer's intention can become clear. In whatever way he chooses, the writer should be passionately invested in his work. I think truthfulness (like Barbara Kingsolver has said) is critical to a writer's intention. Strangely, fiction becomes the endeavor to speak the truth without speaking the facts-- Ursual K. Le Guin said, "a novelist says in words what cannot be said in words." A writer creates literature in a conscious, intentional endeavor to relate, or reveal, or to interpret his world and be truthful about what he finds.
It seems unfair that there could and must be writers out there in the world who do just these things, and will have no reader to proclaim that their work is true literature. I don't know if I think it's true and I definitely don't know if I think it *should* be true, but literature becomes literature when the world interprets it and calls it so. This is the 'take.' Readers use literature as a vehicle to be able to understand - each other, themselves, whatever. Writing is for communication, so literature communicates to the world a very fragile truthfulness that desperately wants to be recognized by another person. I think writing is about communication and literature is about connection.
Ryan O’Connor
As it seems most of my classmates have also decided, Kingsolver’s Jabberwocky was the essay that stood out the most to me. As Michael said earlier, novels truly do have the ability pick you up out of your life, and drop you off amidst the fictional life of another, or as Ali had said, “give you a comfortable place to get lost.”
When I read a good novel, I feel as if I myself am sometimes intertwined in the story. It’s no longer Charlie Asher who walks through the streets of San Francisco, but me, simply living through him. And when Mr. Asher does something so appalling, so unlike me, I have to stop and think, “Am I really capable of doing something like that?”
And it’s because readers become so infatuated with the characters that they read about. They become almost like friends, people you care about, people who you can really relate to and you want to stay safe. And it’s because of this, as Kingsolver says, that “…you might find yourself crying, even if you aren’t the crying kind.” I know more than a few people myself who cried when Dumbledore died at the end of Harry Potter, or inversely, the joy readers felt at the end of New Moon when Bella and Edward ended up back together (Yeah, I read it). And perhaps these aren’t the best examples of classic “literature”, and yet the purpose is still the same.
As Alex had stated, novels can never only be read as words on paper. You have to read the story with emotion, as well. It is necessary for you to intertwine yourself with the life of the characters, and to truly feel what they feel, for then reading, whether it be a novel or otherwise, causes it to become more of an experience, then just something that you do.
In our discussion in class on Monday, there were some ideas being tossed around regarding the definition of literature. We gathered from Eagleton's essay that literature is defined by the reader, and that any language can be literature if read in a literary way. However, Naomi (I think) argued that there must be some distinction because there are some examples of language that could definitely be described as "not literature." Thinking about this, I have come to disagree because I think that although there are some possible definitions of what literature is (or does), when it comes to separating language into "literature" and "not literature," it is completely personal. What I mean is, if it were at all possible, each individual person would have their own "literature anthology" that would encompass all of the works that they found evocative, meaningful, or 'literary' at that particular point in their lives. Of course, this collection would most definitely evolve with age and experience, but you get the basic idea. I don't think that it is within i the scope of anyone's authority to compile such a collection and deem it universal. Rather, if anyone WAS to publish such an anthology, it would have to be titled: "Literature according to (fill in the blank) in (fill in the year)." As Eagleton argued, ideas and examples of literature change with time and culture, so it would follow that literature would also vary from person to person. Therefore, I think it is important to stress that each individual should be free to decide for themselves what constitutes literature and not have literary ideals forced upon them. However, I do agree that being told a work is literature may help the reader find its literary value more than if the work was absentmindedly picked up. As for the actual definition of what that literature may be, I really like Alex R.'s explanation in class that mentioned good literature and a type of "jumping off point" for deeper thought and reflection.
What is literature and what is it for?
Oh my, such a loaded question. I'll start with the necessity of "literature." I quote that term because it is so highly debated that it might not exist simply as one thing, it may not exist at all. Literature is like a pane of glass; it allows us to see the obvious outside scenery but also gives reflections that are translucent and not as solid as the ones right in front of our face. "Literature is" are the two hardest words to start a sentence with. It is simply impossible to define it, yet it is so important. Literature versus journalism: thoughtful insight versus raw brief fact. Literature is so important because it gives us more perspective and more insight, yet too much of this empathy (as mentioned by Alex R) can take away that insight. So literature then is the balance between the raw fact and the shared understanding allowing a small space to seek insight. Maybe then literature is the small space; where personal insight and deeper thought can combine to allow for "deeper" thought. But if "literature" doesn't exist: what then? Literature only exists in the mind. It is the way we look at anything, works of art in all medias. It is a way to look at, and delve deeper into a possible hidden meaning to expose truths. Works of written media are deemed important literature if they instill some sort of meaningful perspective that may be more “political” than “pure”. Politics are necessary in literature or else nothing would be said, because not everyone shares the same beliefs and morals; what is political to one is pure to another. Literature invokes a deeper emotion that may enrage or empower the reader among other feelings. Even five page children’s books can be considered literature because they give a deeper meaning behind the colorful pictures and cushioned words. The purpose of this mindset is to see past what is obvious and understand the translucent reflection in that window. To understand with empathy what truth is being so artistically stated.
I have taken a lot of time to think about what literature actually is, and I have come to the conclusion that there are no specific guidelines. I tend to wonder on whether literature is defined as literature for how it is written or how it is perceived. Literature, like art, is sometimes unappreciated at the time of its release. After it is analyzed and read for its merit and ability to distort and utilize the English language, it may then be acknowledged for its literary merit. In "What is Literature," it goes on to talk about how Formalists perceive Animal Farm as an allegory of Stalinism, but stalinism could also provide for the construction of an allegory. There is hidden language within many novels or other forms of literature that take time to decode or understand. I believe another part of literature is the ability to intrigue the reader. Some forms of literature may not utilize an extensive knowledge of literary devices, but manages to catch the interest of readers. Written language, in a particular form, or order, or that makes little sense to the reader upon the first reading, is literature to me. One example, which we talked about in class is the more simple writing of George Orwell, and how it is well-known literature. When you compare the work of George Orwell to the complicated and advanced work of William Shakespeare, you can see how literature can describe a variety of different works.
In both "Jabberwocky" and "What is literature" there is a challenge on the definition of truth versus fiction. When truth is written, it is almost impossible to write about it without a bias or from a certain point of view. Which can bend the reader's perspective of the truth entirely, and if it can bend the truth, would it not be fiction?
The more we read the assortment of essays the more it becomes apparent that the question is not “what is Literature?” but rather what is literature or any writing, as a truth. The other day Lucy M. pointed out that one of the common things all works have is a “trigger.” Something that does not make you relate or make you feel a certain way, but it causes something to happen. It does not mean that all literature has to spark a truth in you or make you feel for the person writing, but subconsciously or consciously, we are taking in information that acts as a trigger at some point. Every person gets something out of something, and that is the trigger, whether it is universal or personal. However, we also talked about how some author’s are not telling a story to make the reader feel a certain way, but telling a story just to state their own facts or truths. That all related to something in the third essay we read that said something along the lines of there is ambiguity in truth or “truths.” I guess I just really liked that conversation and I could not contribute to it at the time because I did not have anything to say about it, but it helped me better form my question. I suppose my question is “Why is conversational language seen as less intricate, when there are just as many areas of gray as the language regarded in literature as ‘proper’?” I want to hit on conversations people would have in inner cities, and how it is derived and modernized to fit what they deal with everyday, and how if you sent the highest regarded literary expert into the Bronx, would he be able to understand what they were saying? I guess I am saying that I get lost sometimes when reading certain essays and I have to re-read because the phrasing or wording is at a higher level than what I am used to, but I would have to do the same for a conversation heard in the Bronx. And why is it that the inner-city is “slang,” a word with some serious connotation, and these essays are “literature?”
1. I've noticed that a few of you have apologized for making arguments that are not complete. The blog is a place for you to use writing as a thinking tool, a tool for explanation. Remember that at its etymological core "essay" means "attempt". We are using language in an attempt to embody understanding in language as clearly and truthfully as possible. It seems to me that part of using language truthfully is acknowledging the mysteries, doubts, and uncertainties that linger in your understanding.
Collectively you have been explorers of mystery, seekers of understanding, and ever humble (awestruck?) before the enormity of your task.
2. An idea that has come up repeatedly & that I will repeat again is that in *literature* -- in imaginative uses of language whether fiction or non, whether poetry or prose, whether oral or written, whether performed or on pages -- the theme/message/moral/meaning/effect (those terms are not synonymous, though they are related; I will not suss out the meanings here) is *embodied* in the text & *experienced* by the reader.
3. There's a lot more to say about your particular takes but I'm going to hold off until I have your questions. Please take them *very* seriously. Dwell with the possibilities for awhile. Ask yourself what is most important to you. What is your story to tell? Or more to the point, what is your essay to write? I'd like for this to be an essay that is useful to you and that you will remember and reflect back upon years from now.
On Thursday in class we discussed my epigraph for the poetry anthology, a quote which always gets me thinking. I will paste it below (excuse the language). Just to put the quote in context: The Marquis de Sade has been put in an asylum because of Napolean’s reaction to his explicit novels. Father Coulmier runs the asylum and is attempting to get the Marquis to give up his “heathen” ways.
Coulmier: And such puny scope. Nothing but the worst in man's nature.
Marquis de Sade: I write of the great, eternal truths that bind together all mankind. The whole world over, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die.
Coulmier: But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.
I’ll just come out and say it, I adore this quote. It always gets me thinking and after class I was thinking entirely about the word “endure”. We touched on endurance being the purpose of mankind. I don’t know how else to pitch this, so here is my assertion:
It is every individual’s purpose to endure (we get through life somehow, right?). Great literature helps us do so. Literature that has endured (Jane Eyre, etc) helps us to overcome or overlook the Marquis’ “eternal truths” allowing us to fall in love, build cities, compose symphonies…
My Question: What literature has endured, and how does it help us endure?
After discussing “How to Tell a True War Story” for last few days in class, I think everyone involved in the discussion can agree on one thing: Truth is found everywhere in some form or another, particularly in literature. The reasoning for such an assertion is due to perception of literature by the reader based upon experience, beliefs/religion, availability of certain topics in which certain literary works are based upon, etc. In class on Wednesday, I brought up the relationship between truths (as Lucy F. noted the plurality, and I mentioned above because there is truth somewhere in everything, and sometimes in more than one form) and religion. There are so many different religions throughout the world and it has been the cause of so much conflict for too many years. Religion alone is simply a belief, and it is reality to all those who believe, and therefore, is the truth to those individuals, which is why I say it can be present in more than one form, as there are many forms of religion. So who are we to judge whether or not a religion is the right belief, and is there even such thing as a “right” or “honest” belief? Anyway, I’m not trying to spin off into a theological discussion, but that to me is the best comparison I can make to truth in literature and truth in reality. Who are we to judge the truths of a work of art unless we were there to experience the situation or sympathize with the artist/author? Barbara Kingsolver’s “Jabberwocky” also touched upon an aspect of literature in which truthfulness (would honesty be a better term?) can be unknown. The government often controls what news reels we see and which stories we are informed of. While what we see may be true, how we view the situation may not be the same as to what is actually happening, but it appears to be the truth to us because of involuntary ignorance as to what we are being shielded from seeing. Mr. Cook also brought up the point that the news and information that we are being blocked from seeing conventionally can in fact be found in other places other than just the newspaper and news channels, and while it is so easy, many people still choose not to search for the truth(s) per say. This brings another question to mind: Is it the government or ourselves who are restricting us from seeing the truths of reality? We have the free will to surf the web and pull up any story we wish to learn more about, so why are there still so many “naïve” people out there? Do we only wish to see, read, and hear what we, for so long, have been being showed for so many years? If the government is able to restrict what we see and read in both the news and works of literature, it is clearly because they feel that we should behold the same viewpoint of particular situations as we did years ago (i.e. the Holocaust, which, naturally is viewed by a vast majority of the world as one of the most inhumane and satanic acts of the time). If we were to read works of literature solely based upon the accounts of Nazis and Nazi supporters, I wonder if we would still believe the devastation or if by some weird change of sympathy, we could grow to understand the standpoint of Hitler and his Nazis. While it seems so unrealistic to ever be able to sympathize with such hatred, it’s intriguing to think about because that would reveal the true power of literature and how the power it has over us now could be so manipulative in the strangest ways.
So, my question for my essay is: How does our perception of literature influence what we assume to be true? Is the government restricting us from what we see, even furthering the influence that literature has upon our society, or are we just blind to other possibilities of truths?
After reading "How to Tell a True War Story" by Tim O'Brien, my ideas of what literature is have expanded. The idea of literature is very complex and contains many deep layers. I think that "true war stories" and the truths in literature have both similarities and differences. This was an idea I had while discussing my section of the story yesterday. However, it was almost too complex for me to explain. After thinking about this all day, I have come to this conclusion: The truth of a story can be a lie, as long as the person telling the story doesn't know their story is a lie. In HTTATWS, Lucy F pointed out a very important line, "When a guy dies, Like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot." Anything can be a truth, as long as one person perceives it to be. If the pictures in their mind get jumbled, they still believe it is all the truth. This is similar to confabulation, filling in the blanks to a story subconsciously and being unaware that it is made up.
Another question was proposed during class a few days ago, “What does a work need to contain to be considered literature?” Although there is no certain set of guidelines for a work of literature, I would like to explore this question in my essay. I also want to expand the question, and write about how the different aspects that are within literature affect the human perception of the world and of the actual works.
I want to hit on a couple of things I’ve picked up from Tim O’Brien’s short story here:
The scene in which Rat kills the baby water buffalo immediately caught my attention as it was obviously intended to do: it contains scenes of brutality, desperation and extremes of human emotion that immediately provoke empathy. Furthermore, O’Brien clues the reader into the importance of the scene: “We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it.” But what is this “brand-new” element and how does it relate to the issue of literature that is present throughout the rest of the story? I think the story itself reveals a few major themes not directly related to literature: the world contains random unexpected, uncontrollable accidents; in desperation people will act senselessly and destructively; humanity has the capacity for extreme cruelty. The soldiers, devastated by the loss of a friend show their basest impulses acting without “a great deal of pity.” The two sentence, understated reiteration of Lemon’s death (“He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead”) deemphasizes the incident and suggests that it was a random uncontrollable incident. However, what do these themes have to do with literature? I think the scene addresses questions about literature in two ways: it is itself an example of a “true war story,” illustrating what literature should be, what literature actually is, and what it is for; but it also contains the essential problems that literature deals with. The themes I already mentioned are some of the fundamental problems dealt with by literature. The world and humanity are essentially uncontrollable. And humanity cannot solve its problems by resorting to violence or disorder. In this case, literature stands as a method of control. While the world will always operate in ways that are unexpected, we can understand these ways. And while humanity is capable of being violent and destructive, it is also capable of immense goodness and creation. Literature helps to improve the world by informing. Stories like these warn against the negative capabilities of humanity and suggest ideal ways of living. However, as the next paragraph illustrates, “The truths are contradictory.” As much as literature can tell us how to live and how not to live, there is no real ideal. Literature surpasses mere instruction by presenting whole truths and giving readers the ability to think critically about the world around them. It brings readers to a kind of fuller understanding that is crucial to transgressing chaos.
Questions I’m interested in exploring in my essay: in what ways are works of literature independent objects merely existing as a vehicle for subjective analysis and thought? Are works of literature really dependent on the intentions of their authors?
Some thoughts about getting started writing your essays after you have written your questions:
* Attempt an informal answer to your question.
* Look for passages in the readings (and elsewhere) that speak to your question. (I'll post works cited information for the readings I've provided. You on your own for the works you find on your own.)
* Write a bit (perhaps in note form) about what those passages have to say about your question.
* Think about particular personal experiences -- especially, but not exclusively, experiences reading and writing -- that will help you develop a response to your question.
* Define your terms whenever possible. (Kingsolver offers a definition of political novels. Prynne offers a definition of poetic language. Often these definitions are paragraphs rather than sentences.)
* Consider your own tone and style. What way of writing would best suit your response to the question?
* Consider using narrative, explanation, analysis, and reflection in the essay.
Michael McGovern
In Terry Eagleton’s essay “What is Literature?” he explores what could be and what couldn’t be considered literature. Among the many ways he tries to define literature is meaning, self referential language, and fact vs. fiction. After reading this essay, I believed that true literature is made up of many different aspects, all of which contribute to making a piece of writing into literature. Literature is to complex to give it a single definition and limit it to a certain criteria. For example, if a magazine article holds meaning within it and a person is able to connect to it, then why couldn’t it be considered literature? This question helps further define literature as something different for each person. One person might gain meaning from an article and believe it to be a great piece of literature while another might see that same article as useless writing. Another example would be if a child was given an E.E. Cummings poem to read. This child probably wouldn’t regard the poem as literary, just a funny written sentence. Give that same poem to an adult and that person might tell you it is one of the best poems of the 20th century. Literature is helped defined by the point of view it is being read from. If you don’t understand what you are reading, you can’t say that it has literary merit.
Although, just because you aren’t able to understand what you are reading doesn’t mean that the piece of writing isn’t literature. I can guarantee that if I read a Dostoevsky novel, I would have a tremendously hard time understanding it. That being said, I still know that it is a piece of literature and that there is no way I could convince someone it isn’t. Having said that, I still believe that literature can be different for each person and that point of view makes up some part of the definition of literature.
My question: How does the point of view of the reader affect how a piece of writing can be seen as literature?
Brina H
As I was reading the Jabberwocky packet, I came across this line: “The artist must craft missiles to deliver these truths…with no possibility of doubting they are true.” I don’t really like this quote because in my mind I’m picturing a writer finishing a book, and then injecting truth into it like a god. To me, a book is not a message. It is the result of the writer’s conscious being strained and processed through society and through his or her individual filter to create a narrative that contains debatable truths. I think literature can be interpreted as truth, but literature itself is not truth. I think that a literary work cannot be broken down into a moral or message that conveys truth better than the work as a whole.
What I did like about the essay was when the author said that a novel could make us weep when the same story in a newspaper would “hardly give us pause.” I believe the author is saying that it is a combination of how the story is structured and how it is originally viewed by the author that causes us to feel so greatly.
But this differs from truth because truth is not universal. Truth is whatever we say it is. It inspires us to question the world and to look at it in new ways but I firmly believe that the act of reading is a selfish pleasure, not a moral or social act. That is to say I read because it inspires me to think differently about the world, which is different from absorbing another’s view of the world, and I read for independent aesthetics, the mark of a great writer and a great artist.
The questions I’m dealing with are how to read, what to read, and why read.
I just realized that I wrote my name as "Brina." My name is actually Brian, not Brina.
After we talked about “How to Tell a True War Story” in class, several new ideas came to mind when questioning the components of literature. We came up with other questions besides just “What is Literature?”, and began exploring other paths. In How to Tell a True War Story, I was most interested in the lack of emotion we see from the sister who Rat wrote a letter to after Lemon dies. This reminded me of the theme I liked most in “Jabberwocky”, and that was the exploration of the differences between tragedy displayed through fiction and real life media. The differences between what we learn about in the newspaper and in a novel, and how it effects us differently from an emotional standpoint is a topic worth discussing. The path I want to wonder down with this touches upon the differences between fiction and non fiction, and off of that, how far into a book the reader must be inside to feel an emotional tie that is greater than what one might feel for a non fiction work.
My Question: What element constitutes what takes a reader inside of a novel, and is this element ever present in non fiction?
An aspect of literature I thought about while reading How to Tell a True War Story came in the part when all the men were silently listening in the mountain. In class today Kat and I thought about why it was easier to destroy the entire mountain than to just go home if they were so scared. I think part of it has to do with embarrassment; there were no enemies so everyone would question why they had to leave. However; they still got questioned about why the mountain had to be destroyed and what was wrong. They could not answer this question. “They just look at him for a while…amazed, and the whole war is right there in that stare…you don’t even want to hear this… because certain stories you don’t ever tell.” It’s uncertain what exactly the noises were, they could have been completely in their heads or they could have come from the thick fog carrying sound from far away. The story says something about people that can’t be summed up in words necessarily, but has to be told through story in order for the complete message to be conveyed. The situation is thought provoking in that the men’s fear was so great that the destruction of the entire mountain was chosen over the embarrassment of returning home or facing reality. Like the quote above says “certain stories you don’t ever tell” I think that literature helps you convey the message of those stories. Even if the message can’t be said outright it can be understood through the tool of literature. So what makes stories such an essential way to express subjects that get at the core and are unable to be directly stated? Does it allow for deeper thought and perspective?
I think that throughout my experience with our recent readings and with literature thus far in my life, I already believe that anything can be considered literature because any collection of words means something to someone. Also, it most likely means something to whoever wrote it. So, anything CAN be meaningful to anybody, but of course, not everything is meaningful to everybody. Since a work can be literature according to one person, but not another, the question arises: How is that piece of work meaningful? Why does that person consider it literature? Why does that person find value in that particular work , that particular collection and arrangement of words? Where is that value? What is the value? Thinking about this reminds me of a passage from Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story.” The narrator mentions that it is impossible to tease out the central threat without unraveling the deeper meaning, right after revealing Sanders’ struggle between trying to find the moral, and manipulating the story to try to reveal the meaning by adding the specific “glee club” and “opera” sounds. As he struggles with this balance between the simple moral of the story and the story it self, it reminded me of a concept in chemistry called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Basically, this principal states that you cannot know the exact speed or location of an electron in an atom, and the more exact your measurement of one, the more uncertain the other becomes. I think this translates to Sanders’ struggle between the truth his story, and how as he fights to find the truth in the moral, he strays away from the ‘facts’ of the story. Basically, you can’t have both, and I think that the meaning, and somewhat the value, comes somewhere in the middle, where neither the story or the moral are necessarily ‘true’ in the literal sense of the word, but rather the overall message is just beyond, just out of the reader’s grasp, yet close enough to feel the essence and perhaps FEEL the meaning, without actually being able to concisely articulate exactly what the value is. I think that when an individual finds value in a piece of literature, it is not important that they can perfectly explain why it is that that piece of value, but rather that KNOWING that the work has value is enough. In light of all this, I want to revert back to my previous questions about how each person’s individual collection of “literature” (aka the works that they consider to be literature) are valuable. Although I think that each person’s definition of ‘valuable’ is subject to their discretion, there is probably some quality common to all the works, or common to the responses that they evoke in the reader that can be identified, or at the very least explore. So, therefore, my question is this: Since anything can be literature depending on the person and the moment, what/where is that value that the reader finds and possible, how does it affect the reader?
I’ve been contemplating how important entertainment is when it comes to literature. I’m very interested on the shift between oral history and written literature. This also may tie into the origins of written language in itself (cuneiform and possibly even tapestry showing stories). I think it’s important to see how language itself developed to fit a writing platform to better understand the purpose of literature. To apply Darwinism to writing seems like an intriguing format for going through this problem of why literature and what is literature. Why do we have literature and why did it develop? The idea of this kind of detective work is actually exciting me a little bit, I can already see pieces of a puzzle forming to apply Natural Selection, a biology form, to English and transcend bounds between subjects!
From previous reading (history channel) I have come to see that the popular concept of first language was from Jewish slaves in the fertile crescent. They wrote prayers in the walls of quarries they dug in. From there, I understand that the function of language had a forefront in being used for mostly ‘business’ type function. Oral history and storytelling during the development of language is obviously most important. When written language shifted to a creative vehicle will be hard to find (possibly around biblical times, if we can consider Bible a creative writing, but that may be a risky proposition…this is also just a preliminary pre-research guess). From finding the ‘first’ creative writings, we can thereby follow the development into what we now know as literature, or maybe even advanced literature (AP, literary merit) (a guess for a end to the time line, would be around Chaucer? Again, just a guess for now)
So I guess this segways into the question I intend to answer:
What is the history of written language, and how does this history become the advanced literature we know today?
I don’t have the actual pages of Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story,” but at the end of the “How do you generalize?” portion, the quote “There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors such you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity.” Ever since Lucy started talking about truthfulness versus truths and so forth, I have been inclined to further explore the differences and their roles in literature. Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story,” explores the truthfulness and truths in a war story (which can be applied to any type of story, since at the end he tells the reader that the story is both a war story and a love story). In class Ali O has repeatedly talked about how something could be true for one person but may not be true for other people and I think again in O’Brien’s metafiction he talks about the idea that a truth(s) or can exist for just one person, and that one person alone – especially in Saunder’s story when the men begin hearing chamber music and the glee club.
As for a question, I was thinking about something along the lines of: “What is it that draws a reader to literature?” I basically want to explore the question of “Why Bother?”
After reading "How to tell a true war story," I began to think more and more about the emotions that are put into literature, and how reading and writing can be therapeutic. Tim O'Brien mentions how a true war story is embarrassing at times, and war more than hell. "War is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness...," and in telling a true war story, these traits of war should be unveiled within the story. Literature, in my opinion is supposed to awaken an emotion within the reader or multiple emotions. The true feeling of embarrassment that the author has dealt with in writing the story is conspicuous in this case. Sometimes the reader must, in essence, translate the works of an author, to find the feeling or the meaning. In other cases, the other writes a certain way and emotions act as a bias throughout what they have written, which the author may be unaware of.
Literature in many cases is therapy, for the author and/or the reader. If a work of literature can help the reader make a connection to their own life, the reader is often more involved. Literature is also at times very personal. I believe that true literature comes from the heart, and cannot be forced. When an author has "writer's block" they simply are not emotionally ready to write what their heart and soul plan to write. Literature is important as a means of stretching the mind. Reading acts almost as a caffeine for the imagination. While awaking emotions that you are unaware of, it also keeps you aware of what might be lost. I believe that true literature interests the reader, whether the reader likes or dislikes the work of literature. It also allows the reader to make connections to their personal life, or a gateway to a life they might like to live. So what I would like to ask: Is literature different to everyone, in what is meaningful to them or keeps them interested?
One passage that caught my attention from “How to Tell a War Story” was when Tim O’Brien discussed how reality can be altered when retelling factual events. He states, “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. . . And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always a surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (page 71). I had to think about this passage for awhile to decipher exactly what was going on. I believe it means that when you retell a story or event that you witnessed, your story will always have a slant on it since you incorporate your point of view. Then when you tell this story, with your perspective intertwined throughout it, it will seem completely made up, when it actually is the truth of how you remembered it. O’Brien gives us an example of the soldiers going up into the mountains and listening. They begin to hear unnatural sounds (all kinds of music). After they come back down to base camp, one tells another that he had to confess that he really didn’t hear a glee club or opera. But at the same time, they did hear “wicked sound out there.” In this instance, the men began hearing things. Since they were unable to discuss what was going on while they were in the mountains, they had a crazy twist on it (that they were hearing an opera and whatnot). However, just because they didn’t really hear an opera, doesn’t mean they didn’t hear anything strange. Therefore, it is important to take into account the perspective of the storyteller and what affect that may have on the story.
I have been struggling with coming up with my question, but as of now I would like to deal with a topic we discussed earlier this year: What literature is considered “literary,” and what exactly constitutes literary merit?
Well, I have been struggling with how to form my questions about what I plan to write about. Basically I’m interested in why people like what they like in or about literature and what that shows about the person. I think that its interesting to try and figure out why people like what they like in literature, and why they like what it is that they like. I am also intrigued by what peoples favorite piece of literature of all time is, and what makes them choose that specific piece as they’re favorite. I was discussing with Mr. Cook how my favorite book of all time is ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ and this lead me to my final thought on the subject of ‘what is literature?’. My final question that I want to explore is related to peoples favorite book and the genre of literature they generally read, and that is if the favorite piece of literature is outside a persons general genre of literature, what is it that makes this outstanding piece of literature still a persons favorite. Also related to genre, what is it that will make a person chose a genre as their favorite and also what does that say about a person, and how is it that sometimes when choosing a book inside someone’s genre of choice, a person can become disappointed with a book when no one ever know what there is to expect when reading a book. All of this is kind of hard to unravel and boil down to a few plausible and workable questions to discover, but these are the basics of what I am interested in discovering. The other possibility that I was interested in was about the things we find in different pieces of literature. And by those things I mean, things such as metaphors, similes, motifs, and underlying meanings. My question would be what are the things that are actually present (purposely included or constructed by the author) that we find, and what isn’t there that becomes found anyway. I’m not sure that there would be anyway to know the difference. I think that almost anything can be found in a piece of literature, so long as there is something within the piece of literature itself to prove or support a theory or idea of what is within. I’m also pretty sure that this would be easier to explain and prove one way or the other, so as of now I believe that I am going to be going with my first idea. Also from our class discussions, I was interested in what is truth? And how to tell something truthfully (mostly from How to Tell a True War Story) and how to distinguish from what happens and what seems to happen. I am also intrigued by how perspective can change the facts from person to person so drastically.
My questions still need some fine-tuning, but are as follows:
What is it that makes a person like certain pieces of literature? And what is it about those aspects that reveals something about that person? And what exactly is revealed? If anything..
What does having a favorite piece of literature outside ones normal genre demonstrate about either the person or the literature?
Finally, how is it that someone can be disappointed with a book, or say that it is not what was expected when no one can certainly expect anything out of a piece of literature without reading it?
Lucy fox
My favorite part of HTTATWS (thank you megggghan) was the line that says, in the part about generalizing, " Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillary barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference - a powerful, implacable beauty." I think this is an acute recognition of the beauty of nature. When I say nature I don't specifically mean the forest, the river, the sunrise over a calm lake; I mean the nature of an action. I think O'Brien was insightful and honest about the truth of nature. A cancer, however awful and ravaging it can be to a family, is simply a group of cells that is dividing more rapidly than it should. The cells aren't consciously saying: "lets rapidly divide to kill this human being, destroy any future plans it has, and devastate the family." The "purity of moral indifference" is astonishing, awesome, and just that: pure. I think that O'Brien believes this moral indifference is crucial to a truthfulnessly(!) written piece of fiction. I don't know if I'm ready to explore this yet, but found it extremely heartening that there are others that can appreciate life and nature as it can so often be: morally indifferent.
My questions I wish to explore concern the things "good" literature should and should not have. I am interested in what an author considers of a person's human nature before writing a piece of literature with literary merit. What must an author know about the mentality and emotions of a reader before they sit down and write? To appeal to a reader, to stimulate emotional relativity, to teach a lesson without "instruct[ing] nor encourag[ing] virtue, nor suggest[ing] models of proper human behavior", there must be some initial research done concerning human nature. What is it that an author needs to know to be most effective in achieving the goals desired by a good piece of literature?
Since our discussions this week, I've been trying to draw a line between empathy and truthfulness (the concept that I wrongly credited to Barbara Kingsolver in my first blog, but is actually the idea of JK Prynne). Sometimes it seems that empathy is about endeavoring to understand other people, and also assuming that once you've made the effort, you will understand. Truthfulness, instead, is an endeavor to recognize when you won't be able to understand completely. We discussed on Friday the relationships that formed with the men in the military unit in 'How To Tell A True War Story' -- the unspoken unity when, after Rat was finished with the baby buffalo, the other men threw the buffalo down the well. Similar is the unity of when a group of men, after days of silent observation and hearing music, decide to bomb an entire section of the jungle. These events, along with the moment that Mitch couldn't explain to his boss why they had bombed the area and the moment where the narrator tells his story and is told by an older woman who tells him to find new stories to tell, leave me thinking about this constant attempt to understand everyone else. It's more about the attempt than the understanding. It reminds me of the connection of community - support without forcing yourself to relate. Also, reading will always yield a sort of natural empathy, because a reader will always try to relate themselves to what they're reading.
The question that I want to explore in an essay will help me explore some of my remaining uncertainties about literature's relationship with truthfulness and empathy. I want to focus my questions more, but currently, they are: How does literature create a community using empathy and truthfulness? How can people use literature to honor each other? How does truthfulness connect people to literature?
What fascinated me most about Tim O’Brien’s essay was that he said that stories that are completely made up can be more truthful than stories which are fact. I know we had discussed this idea when we read Kingsolver’s Jabberwocky but O’Brien really hit it home for me. When he uses the example of the four men and the grenade near the end of his essay, I really began to understand what he was saying about truth. I started to think about how for some people, the reverse would be opposite, that the version of the story about the man who takes the grenade for his friends and saves them would be truer. I guess I’ve known this all along but I’m only just realizing that which stories or “truths” we believe depend on who we are and how we view life.
I liked O’Brien’s essay the best because it reminded me of what Mr. Cook said that an essay is an “attempt.” I think that with our schooling, we are taught that an essay has to have an introduction, a body, a conclusion, a point, a counterpoint, and so on. We start to think that essays are very dry and scientific when in fact, essays are so much more fluid and three dimensional and imaginative. At its best, I think an essay is an attempt to inspire us, to move us, to make the reader see things from a new perspective. What I love about O’Brien’s essay is that it seems to transcend the genre of essay. It uses the form but comes to life off the page. It serves as a reminder that an essay can use not only logical arguments and solid hard fact but also emotions, anecdotes, perspectives, and personal experiences.
I’m still not sure yet what my essay question will be but I think it will be something like “What makes a good novel?” or “What makes a good memoir?”
Lucy Fox
To add to/revise my questions:
what are the goals of a "good" piece of literature and what does an author need to consider about human nature to accomplish these goals?
Kyle Smith
Post 1
So when we first began discussing how to define literature, I was in a state of shock. It had never really occurred to me to consider the purpose or definition of literature. It’s one of those things that many would never think to question and I was stumped for quite a while. But the various readings that we’ve done has made me realize that the reason I never thought to question what exactly literature was, was because its definition was so deeply ingrained in my subconscious. I was forced to reconsider my preconceived notions and in doing so I realized there are two general types of writing, fact and literature. That’s not to say that the two don’t overlay and mix in peculiar ways but in general, I consider literature to have a bias or a politicized nature whereas things I wouldn’t consider as literature (like newspapers) at the very least attempt to present ice-cold facts.
In Jabberwocky by Barbara Kingsolver, the concept of politics and its role on the censorship of literature and ideas began to intrigue me. More importantly was the concept of literature being self-censoring in that many authors do not express viewpoints that are unlikely to be published. I consider this to be in stark contrast to the previous decades of prosecution and book burnings, black-lists and redaction (real word? The process of redacting?). Much like history, literature seems to be told only in the viewpoint of the victor, which leaves many untold stories and even more half-truths. And this is where my two types of writing begin to overlap. At what point does a factual account become literature? The author clearly has his own bias he injects into the piece, but society has its own bias as well. These two things seem to cloud any factual piece leaving little more than literature. And can literature be factual? Yes it can; some authors seek to capture the feeling of the era or place they write about and in doing so can define the place in a factual manner. These two overlays and the role that censorship plays in the writing process are full of conundrums and are also quite filled with overlap.
I like what Britta said about writing being therapeutic for the author. I wanted to build on that and say that it is also therapeutic for a reader, to learn that there is someone out there who feels/experiences what they are. Of course, this ‘someone’ is almost always invented or elaborated upon, but the idea that created them was semi-conscious. (I say semi-conscious because I’ve read that characters in fiction have minds of their own, and often, the writer is controlled by them. But I haven’t written much fiction, so I wouldn’t be able to rightly attest…) Making connections with the imaginary builds upon the ideas in the Jabberwocky essay; about literature inspiring empathy. This makes me think about songs (almost more than the novel). When one hears a song that not only sounds good to them, but has the lyrics that relate to their situation, it often becomes a favorite. It doesn’t matter whether the story in the song happened or not, I know that I still love it because it makes me feel. (Feel as in emotions, not physical touch…) I think that when someone reads a novel that is written in their preferred style, and also inspires them to connect with the ideas/characters/settings within that novel, it too is usually a favorite. Preferences in literature/art are particularly personal, and change day to day, which we discussed a lot in class. Thus connections made to literature can change day to day. Because of this, I believe that there can never be one distinct message an author can try to relay, since it will be interpreted in a number of different ways. Maybe some are incorrect. And it is from this point that I begin to shift from connecting with to interpreting literature. The questions that I’ll explore will focus on connections and interpretations made by the reader, and whether the writer has a say in any of it. I’ll also explore whether we can rightly say one reader is more correct than the other (literary versus non-literary).
Can interpretations change day to day the way our connections change?
How does literature inspire a reader?
Is it acceptable for a reader to be inspired differently than the writer intended?
Is the piece of literature ‘bad’ if the reader does not react to a novel the way the author expected or planned?
Are all connections made to literature/art valid?
Are all interpretations valid?
Should literature only be judged by the literary/ should art only be judged by the artistic? (When I typed that, I thought of a blind person trying to critique a painting, and then someone explaining what the painting looked like to the blind person. Would the seer mention enough about the painting for the blind to create meaning from it? How much is ‘enough’? I suppose that is an example that I DEFINITELY will have to explore more..)
Kyle Smith
Post 2
After giving literature and the politics of it a bit more thought, I have come to realize that not only does literature capture the topic being described, but it also inadvertently captures the politics and beliefs of the time period in which it was written. Because many authors only write what they think will be published, they capture what is considered to be the common opinion of the era. Sure, they may throw in some controversy, just to be edgy, but never enough to be true renegades. Renegades are rarely published, which would be counterproductive to the author’s goal. But not capture all the feelings that exist in a given situation or time is counterproductive to the purpose of literature. In this manner, some authors seek to escape the industry’s self-imposed censoring by writing about another time period that captures the sentiment of the current one. Specifically, Arthur Milller’s The Crucible sought to be a commentary on the both the persecution of the Salem Witch Trials and of the McCarthy era HUAC. In this way, literature managed to overcome the politicized nature of publication and created a true commentary on the era. I hope to discuss the nature of politics and censorship on literature and specific example that literature ahs overcome its’ self imposed restraints.
Literature, Truth, truth, truthfulness, perception, perspective, identity, messages, morals…we talk about these things incessantly in class, and yet I’m sitting here without a single answer, because I can’t think of the right question. The spectrum is so broad, I know I need to narrow it down to something I can talk about, but I don’t know which direction to head in. When I read “How to tell a true war story” on the way home from Vermont, I was initially excited as I thought “now this is literature. this will most definitely give me something to go on.” But the more I tried to understand the piece (is there any truth in it? or is the truth just the fact that there is no “truth” because “truth” really just depends on the observer’s perspective…), the more I realized it was just another layer in the general Literature Cake that had to be broken down into a recipe before I could make a cake of my own…(bad, bad, badbad metaphor, sorry). While reading, I noticed that every time the author shifted back to first person narrative, there was a new aspect of the story we had to consider. Everyone involved had a specific memory of the event that they related to completely separate experiences outside of that one shared experience. Literature is the same way. When we decide something is worth reading, then we find a way to make it personal. We create a lens we can look at it through, in hopes that we could relate it to something else we’ve read that will help us delve meaning from it.
So my question will be something along the lines of: How do we use literature as a crutch to interpret the world around us? or: How do we use our experiences as a crutch to help us interpret literature? and how the two are connected. or something like that.
As Sarah, and Allie and others have talked about, I think I would like to discuss the concept of truth in literature. I think it is very interesting that people say that fiction can be more true than non-fiction. It seems that literature doesn't really depend on the facts, but more on the truth within the story. I want to explore what it means to tell the truth in a story. I think I want to tackle a question like, What kind of truth does good literature contain? or Does the truth (as in the facts) of a story really matter or is it simply the truth inside the story that matters/ Which one makes good literature or do they both have to be there?
I have been grappling with the notion that literature does not exist, but I have decided that it does. Literature does exist; just not in the form that we think it exists. When we think of literature we immediately think of books and poems and essays, but those things are not literature, they are text. The words written or typed on a piece of paper or a page in a book or newspaper are not literature. They are how we share literature and they are what motivate each individual to create more literature. Literature cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be read, it can only be thought and sometimes, if it is powerful enough, it can be felt. Literature is intangible. Literature is all the ideas and thoughts and feelings that one gets from reading the words that are scrawled across the pages in a book or a newspaper or a magazine and the meaning that each individual creates from those ideas and thoughts and feelings. Many people feel that writing that expresses or reveals truths or truthfulness is literature, but really it is not the writing that expresses or reveals anything, it is the reader that makes the words come alive and it is the reader that decides whether or not the words are actually expressive of truths or lies. If there were no minds to read the words on a page, the words would be utterly meaningless, they would hold absolutely no significance. It is the minds of the readers that create or disprove the truths. It is impossible for text to be considered literature; if text were literature then literature would be the same thing for everybody, but seeing as literature is not the same for everybody, text cannot be considered literature, but rather the ideas and feelings that the text invokes.
So here is my question (so far): What isn’t literature?
What I would like to answer: At what point does fact become literature? Which is the truth?
The question I answered in my literature essay was how the negative capability in reference to John Keat's ideas elevate a work of art to the level of literature.
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