Finale

I think that says “fin-ah-lee” Like final. I didn’t feel like dictionary.com-ing it. This will be my last post. I do not have enough for everyclass but I feel like the ones I do have, have some pretty excellent content. I have learned more in this class this semester than any other class in college. I feel like because i enjoyed what I was doing, I was able to absorb more of what we learned. Thank you Dr. Sexson.

December 3, 2008

The Dragon Lady Day: a grammer Nazi.

My point of view: I have never had a dragon lady. Just really great English proffessors, who, through no kind of degredation, have inspired me to love English.

December 1, 2008

Thenody. From Justin’s apology.

And… In our class, APOLOGY DOES NOT MEAN SORRY! I have now begun applying this to my daily life, by defending myself… rather than apologizing to others… this reminds me of a story.

A few days ago I was in my uniform and i was driving home for lunch. I was at the intersection of 7th and Kagy. Crappy place to be with no time. SO, this guy on a bike had to cross (I was trying to turn from 7th onto Kagy going left) and the car to my right stopped for him, and I was like “Yes, perfect opportunity!” So, I decided to wave at the guy to make sure it was okay to go, and he waved back, so I started to corss the intersection and this a-hole on my left slams on the gas! So.. I did what any normal person would do, I flipped him off. two days later the CSM of my battalion  in ROTC approached me to ask what kind of car I drove and I knew what she was about to tell me. Yep, this jerk had written a two page letter to my commander. STUPID! He almost hit me… and then when I flipped him off he decided to write a letter to my boss. LAME. So anyway, moral of the story. I was not at all sorry, I was “apologetic” that he was so pathetic and sad about being flipped off he wrote a letter to my boss. I must have really ruined his day. And he was an ex navy colonel.

November 21, 2008

DQ: Frued’s Reality Principle. DQ sees what we see, but also something else. “The Magical Horse Chapter.” Sancho says hazlenuts are smaller than mustard seeds. PG 723. Discussed end and conclusion of DQ. I no longer felt like reading…

What I thought: It was a very disappointing day to find out DQ dies. That… was a crappy “trailer.”

November 19, 2008

Poetry is to see the relationships between one thing and another. (Metaphor and simile.)

Stanley Fish: “Poetry is seen through poetry seeing eyes.”

DQ: Meets Dulcinea of Toboso. Euw. Of course, he thinks she is enchanted, and Sancho helps him out with this. PG 519.

Point of today as I see it: Poetry is all around us. We just have to be able to see it. We have to be able to pick out the similiarities in everyday things. For example: SETI and Mormonism. They are Both religions in their own rights. Both consist of large grousp of men gathering together to discuss their “most important” ideas. This is poetry. And comedy.

November 17, 2008

On this day we discussed:

The Cave of Montessino. Here DQ has “grisly” visions. Page 610 in the novel. (This might be the most important page in the book) he spends 3 days here but thinks it has been 1 year. Other novels that use this kind of 1 hour=eternity plot are “Alice in Wonderland,” “Slaughter-House 5,” and I guess “Star Trek” does too, although I have never watched it. Not imortality but the next best thing.

This brings about the following thoughts in myself:

Everytime you sit down to read a book, you add years to your life. You can read “Candide” in a few hours, yet you will have travelled through many years. Who needs a time machine when there is literature? And in literature, you can live die and be resurected. So who needs lazarus?

Jacques Derrida and Helene Cixous

I do not know much about the friendship between Derrida and Cixous, but I do know one exists because in my research on Cixous I came across a conversation between her and Derrida, and a certain book I obtained from the library said so. Therefore, when, in class, Jacques Derrida was brought up as being the father of Deconstruction, I thought it would be very interesting to go back and read the conversations between an esteemed feminist critic (Cixous) and the father of deconstruction. However, I could not find the same article again. I thought it would be very interesting to hear a conversation between someone who believed that there is no wrong way to interpret a work, and someone who thinks that a work should be interpreted as if none of the characters had a certain sexuality. (I was just thinking of Don Quixote having no gender.) What if, through the eyes of Cixous, Don Quixote had no gender? I can’t even imagine. Alright I can, but… back to the point. I would really like to find that article. This blog really went wrong somewhere I think.

Glorious Day of Filming

Honestly, when the Marxist group started joking around about creating a film, I didn’t think any of us were serious. But here we are four meetings, nine hours later, with a complete film that most critics would love… I think. The day of filming started with coffee at ICT and a little bit of script writing (and more tangents than class) followed by a little more coffee and a few more tangents. Eventually, after two hours of  “writing” we gave up and decided improv would be much more entertaining. So… on to acquiring a few awesome costumes: Mustaches from Cactus Records, white hair paint from a party store, alcohol from Town and Country (not really part of the costumes but necessary anyway,) and a few ponchos from a friend of someone’s friend. Not to mention all of the random ‘stuff’ we brought. Next, it was to the park. It was cold. And then the castle (inn.) For a lot of improv film-making. It was, for sure, one of the best school projects I have ever worked on. AND we got to drink… water… not.

Apology

Heather Parsons

English 300- Survey of Literary Criticism

Apology Paper

November 23, 2008

I am not an English major. There was a point where I was one though. The turning point that turned me away from the path I was on to major in English literature was when I told my mother about my decision to switch from cell biology and neuroscience to English literature. I had already taken the necessary action to switch majors before I told my mother about my decision, probably because I knew in the back of my mind that she would not be pleased with the choice I had made. All through high school I has taken the advanced courses, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and AP English. The only one that ever interested me was English, and although I passed all three classes, I never made it to either of the sciences very often, and when I did, I did my English “homework” (meaning I read.) I knew going into college that I wouldn’t be happy majoring in a science, but my mother and my school counselor convinced me otherwise. They both asked, “don’t you want to make money? And have a nice house? And nice things?” Of course I answered yes, but in my mind I was thinking, “No, what do I need money for if I can get everything I need from a ten dollar book?” At the time though, I did nothing to defend this thought because I was also thinking, “How am I going to turn my ten dollar book into a house and a car and money for bills, crap, I better major in science so I can get a good job.” I started college and flunked an entire semester’s worth of classes. Towards the end of the semester I began to realize that the reason I was failing wasn’t because I wasn’t capable of passing my classes, it was because I didn’t have any desire to pass them. I had no desire to learn chemistry formulas, or cell anatomy. What I really wanted to do was learn why I am here, why I exist. At this point I was dumbfounded. What could I major in that would give me all of the answers and a good paycheck? So, I joined the Army, which still provides my good paycheck, and that left me free to major in what I chose. So, I of course, chose English. Which brings me back to the conversation I had with my mother about being an English Major. It went something like, “Hello, mom, I have something to tell you. I have changed my major.” She replied, hesitantly, “To what? Why would you not want to be a doctor? Or at the very least a nurse?” So, I made an effort to explain my reasoning, “Well, I really enjoyed English in high school and I know you don’t think it will get me what I want in life, but how do you know what I want in life? I want to learn EVERYTHING, and in any other major, I can’t do that, in every other major I have to learn something specific. In English I can read books about all subjects, most importantly the subject of life, even if the subject isn’t specifically life, any subject in literature can be applied to life. With a degree in a science I have to learn one subject specifically, and that would not stimulate my mind.” To this my mother replied, “But you’re so good at science. Why would you waste such talent on literature?” By this point I had very little left to defend myself with. Obviously my mother did not understand my desire to be an English major, even if I could have been a teacher.

So, as I have already said, I am not majoring in English literature, eventually my mother won the argument and, only to spite her, I changed my major to art, which also didn’t work out. I have now settled on a science, after a brief stunt in the liberal studies department, and that science is psychology. Obviously I am still trying to spite my mother, psychology being the science most intertwined with literature, not to mention the youngest and hardest to obtain a decent job in.

My desire to stay connected with the conscious literary world though, has kept me in English classes throughout my college career. I say conscious literary world because, although literature affects all college departments and beyond, that is, it affects everyone, many people lack the ability to observe the literature that surrounds them. It is contained in the textbooks they read, the papers they write, the media that surrounds them, the music they listen to, and the words they speak. They unconsciously absorb as much literature in one day as is contained in a short novel, and they are unaware that they have learned anything at all. Many have become as close to a robot as a human can become. Each day they absorb massive amounts of knowledge and although they have the capability of making themselves conscious of this information and the literature that surrounds them, they are content to let it slip through their minds, hardly aware that it was ever there, unable to recall it at the end of the day. By being present in a literature class I feel that I have made it very hard for myself to become one of these people who do not notice literature all around them, but it does not take a literature class for one to be aware of literature. All it takes is the ability to recognize when it is happening, when a literary moment has surrounded one, when suddenly something that has eluded one for so long becomes clear, usually something that a person didn’t even know was eluding them, and to then connect each of these moments, these things learned, to one another, to make sense of all of them and to find out what they mean. That is the way to be conscious of the literature surrounding one, and in the process, to learn everything.

How does one live without literature? In a day we have the ability to fight giants with Don Quixote, or to fight wars and travel through space with Billy Pilgrim, or to learn about Stalinism with Old Major. To be able to live in every century including those that have never been lived. To enjoy didactic novels, and also those that provide nothing but beauty to our lives.

My apology is not for literature, or for poetry. Literature and poetry have done nothing to anyone but to provide them with answers and to entertain their minds, to brighten their worlds and enlighten their minds. My apology is to those who cannot understand how to use the information provided to them everyday, not to mention the information they would have to search for. Poetry and literature can only do great things for people who make the effort to use the knowledge and power they are capable of providing. What I am most sorry for though, is that I did not believe in literature, that I opted to not major in English literature and that I almost lost the ability to see the world from a literary point of view.

A Better Touchstone

“‘Man,’ he said, then left a long pause, letting scorn build up in the cave like the venom in his breath. ‘I can see you understand them. Counters, measurers, theory-makers. All pigs eat cheese. Old Snaggle is a pig. If Snaggle is sick and refuses to eat, try cheese. Games, games, games!’ He snorted fire. ‘They only think they think. No total vision, total system merely schemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than bridges and say, spiderwebs. But they rush across chasms on spiderwebs, and sometimes they make it, and that, they think, settles that!'”

Grendel, John Gardner