Monday, September 15

"Trust the tale, not the teller"~ T.H. Lawrence

Term Paper:

• defend or 'apologize' for literature or literary criticism
• defend against non-English majors
• entitle it: 'your name's apology: What's the use of stories that aren't even true?'
• 3 pages long
• must include:

1. Idea of Order At Key West
2. Don Quixote
3. Anatomy of Criticism
4. your critic

A Call to Arms:

• Matthew Arnold's defense of poetry
• Thomas Love Peacock was mean to poetry and Percy Shelley defended it
• N. Frye too of course
• "Biggits and finatics have no use for the arts..." N. Frye
• The first step in a courtship is "what's your major" - it's quite the pick up line
• 'Haroun in the sea of stories' defends children's lit, it's a book about reading books
• USE is the key word, what does it mean?

Horace

• myth: there are many definitions
• lie- apperances are reality
• a collections of stories that help people w their lives

ME-

• where do you get ideas from?
• They don't pop into our heads, they are put there
• shows that something in our history touched us and put it there
• analogy:
• lets step back from what we are doing
• the farther we step back, you begin to see its origin and the big picture instead of the small one
• logos-> log-> logic
• the power to create, the power of the spoken word creates a world
• you can't read things innocently- you have to step back
• you you rather know too much? or know too little?
• ignorance vs wisdom
• Adam and Eve- knew too much after they ate the fruit
• children, like prefruit A & E know too little and are content
• cosmogony: creation or birth of the world
• myth- through the agency of voice
• open sesame: you speak it when you know it and make it real
• many times the critic is shocked at what the critic finds in their work
• IOOAKW: the singer sings the world into being. she beats the sea because she knows more than the sea. What is she singing?!

Birds song:

• thrushes:
  
• chickadees
• the music of nature is usually more beautiful than anything else, but yet she sings more beautifully still
• the relationship between humans and nature, when nature is "just a body fluttering its empty sleeves"
• rap contests: metaphors usually win
• lil' Wayne lyrics
• genius: demonic spirit takes over our body


• the daemons from the Golden Compass:
• mimic: copy
• mimesis: most of history believed that art is an imitation of nature
• realistic or impressionistic? Monet
• we are being separated from the music of the sea because we want to make our own music
• poesis: creative "as a painting so is poetry"
• "Aristotle thought of drama as being "an imitation of an action," that of tragedy as of "falling from a higher to a lower estate", and so being removed to a less ideal situation in more tragic circumstances than before."
• imitation vs creation of poems, songs and literature
• greenworld: pastoral- goats and sheep, shepherds