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

Helene Cixous- Most Important

écriture féminine

Hélène Cixous first uses this term in her essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975), in which she asserts, “Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies.” Elaine Showalter defines it as “the inscription of the feminine body and female difference in language and text.”^[2] Écriture féminine places experience before language, and privileges non-linear, cyclical writing that evades “the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system.”^[3] For Cixous, écriture féminine is not only a possibility for female writers; rather, she believes it can be (and has been) employed by male authors such as James Joyce.

Écriture féminine was especially well developed by French and other European feminists. It is now widely recognized by Anglophone scholars as a sub-category of feminist literary theory. Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray^[4] and Julia Kristeva^[5],^[6] were foundational theorists of the movement, and also other writers including Bracha Ettinger^[7] and psychoanalytical theory ^[8] joined this field in the early 1990s. ^[9] The book Laughing with Medusa (2006) analyses the work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous.^[10] Collectively these writers are sometimes referred to by Anglophones as “the French feminists,” though Mary Klages has pointed out that “poststructuralist theoretical feminists” would be a more accurate term.^[11] Madeleine Gagnon is a more recent proponent.

-Wikipeadia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_f%C3%A9minine

Touchstone

What god drove them to fight with such a fury?
Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto. Incensed at the king
he swept a fatal plague through the army–men were dying 
and all because Agamemnon spurned Apollo’s priest. 

This is my touchstone. It is from The Illiad (yes The Illiad by Homer.) I realize it is pretty didactic and I wasn’t sure if that was against the rules or not, I just overall like the lines.

More Soul Making

Keats says that we are born with intelligence but that we have to create our own soul, “Do you not see how necessary a World of pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul!” So our experiences make us what we are, they form and shape our soul, without a harsh world we would have no pain and no empathy and without pain and empathy you cannot have hapiness. We would all be intelligent robots. In his conclusion Patersays something similar, “to such a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself on the stream, to single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our lives fines itself down. It is with this movement, with passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off-that continual vanishing away, that strange perpetual weaving and unweaving or ourselves.” It seems that both of these men have made up their own idea of creation. That our souls and who we are constantly change and grow.

The Vale of Soul Making

“Call the world if you Please ‘The vale of Soul-Making'”

Who creates and how? Why are we here and how the heck did we get here? What is life? ‘What is Life’ is the title of a liberal studies class I am taking and we are reading a book about astrobiology called Lonely Planets (I highly recommend it, expecially if you think aliens might exist in a very serious way.) Anyway, at one point in class we discussed the difference between intelligence and ‘human being’ intelligence. Dolphins are intelligent, chimpanzees are intelligent. Would we be disappointed in finding just ‘normal’ intelligent life? I was reminded of this discussion by a quote in Keats, “…I say ‘soul-making’ Soul as distinguished from from an Intelligence-There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions–but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.” I related this quote to my own ‘creation story’ (involving the Cosmos) and then I realized I could relate it to other creation stories, such as… Idea of Order at Key West. Keats says there a three thigns needed for soul making: intelligence, world or elemental space, and mind and heart. She must have some intelligence because she is singing and usign language and in a former blog I definded intelligence as any ability to string together words, sense or no sense. She is definantly in a world and its ours, and she is by the sea, so she has a setting, and to have intelligence you must have a mind. So she has all the ingredients for creating herself a soul. She is creating her it.