Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

In the first selection of A Room of One's Own,  Woolf invents a character, Judith Shakespeare. Judith has the same abilities and talents as William, but is denied the chance that William had because she is a woman.  Judith is a talented, adventourous women who was not able to express herself and that led to her suicide. It is sad to think about that women back then were not allowed to express themselves. We have come along way since those days.

In Androgyny, Woolf talks about how she feels that literature should be androgynous. It should not have a completely male feel and it should not have a completely female feel. It should be both. I agree. Every book that I have read and enjoyed was wrote in and androgynous way. I do not like completely female "chick" novels. And I definitely do not like completely male novels. It is better when there are both of both worlds in it. Below is an article that I found very intersting about Virginia Woolf's androgyny



Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston had an essentalism view. She takes an essential post to both black and white. She believes that due to biology, you are what  you are independent to cultural influences. She believes in what is called cultural construction. Cultural Construction means that you are what you are just due to assimilation or upbringing or condition. You do not have any nautral tendencies.  There is a good article where cultural construction is applied to twin studies at http://tinyurl.com/dxvsmy7.

One of the things that I found interesting in the reading on Hurston is the way that African-Americans have affected standard english. Hurston says, "In this respect the American Negro has done wonders to the English language. It has often been stated by etymologists that the Negro has introduced no African words to the language. This is true, but it is equally true that he has made over a great part of the tongue to his liking ans has had his revision accecpted by the ruling class." Hurston is saying that black speech has affected standard English. Black Americans at a time where they were not fully free made these contributions and it should be recognized.

Dubois

W.E.B Dubois

Dubois had a very strong view on propaganda. He believed that not only does art have a practical value, it is nothing without propaganda. Dubois could not see something as beautiful if it did not have truth and justice in it. Dubois said, " Such is beauty. Its variety is infinite, its possibility is endless. In normal life all may have it and have it yet again. The world is full of it; and yet today the mass of human beings are choked away from it, and their lives distorted and made ugly." He is saying that it is made ugly by injustice. That is why beauty to him is justice. This is why art can be used to obtain justice.

Dubois talks about the color line. The color line  is a line dividing communites based on color. It is often a physical line but for most part it is an imaginary line. When I read this, it made me think of that scene in Remember the Titans  when the players go to celebrate after winning a game and one of the white players brings the African-American players into a dinner that is only for whites. The white boy was from the North so he did not understand as much about the South. This video is of poor quality but it was the only one I could find and I really wanted to be able to at least here the exchange.



Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure

 

Sassure introduces us to the term semiotcs and semiology, which is the study of signs. Sassure believed that signs are totally arbitrary. He believed that there is no connection to a sign and what it refers too. Below is a video on semiotics.

 

 

Freud

Freud

In Freud's The Uncanny, he explains the uncanny as being familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. This causes the person to have a feeling that something is stangely familiar or uncomfortably strange. This video is a good representation of this feeling. It takes images that we recognize and distorts them in a way.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth and Lying

Nietzsche said that our whole lives are made of lies. However, it is not lies in a moral sense. To lie in a moral sense is to lie in a dishonest way. It is the type of lying that we are most familiar with. To lie in a non-moral sense is actual or precise. Nietzsche uses different terms in Truth and Lying such as metonymy's and metaphors. Metonymy's are figures of speech. For example, "the white house issued a statement today" or "lets hit the road." Metaphors are substitutions. Examples of metaphors include "you are my sunshine" or "you are my rock." Nietzsche explains that what we see in the world is not the actual world. We see things that are byproducts of our experiences. Nietzsche explains that we actually have no idea what the world really is. Nietzsche says, " Nature has thrown away the key, and woe betide fateful curiosity should it ever succeed in peering through a crack in the chamber of consciousness." What he is saying is that we don't see the wold how it really is and we don't have access to it. He then introduces the tern anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism means to make the universe into our own idea.



The Birth of Tragedy

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche introduces the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

The Apollonian represents order, light, clarity, and form. Examples of Apollonian include classical sculptures and monuments.

The Dionysian represents chaos and disorder. Examples of this include choirs, crowds, , mobs, rock concerts, festivals, and carnivals.

Nietzsche believed that art, no matter what kind, brings people together in some kind of unified body. I believe that he is absolutely right. People who would have never been together in any other circumstance will come together to admire art.





Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a cultural critic and a British poet. He is known for his poem "Dover Beach" and many others. He believed that culture is literature. He said that culture is essential, it  is not decorative. He believed that i would replace the world that was religion. I found a virtual video of Arnold reading one of his poems.

Culture and Anarchy

In Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold is presenting a less critical perspective than he is a spiritual perspective. He says that literature capture the best that has been though and said. Matthew Arnold believes that all literature is not great. It is like the top of a wheat stalk. Only a few of the kernels are good. Arnold says that it is the critics job to sort though and find the good ones.





I found this website to to be very interesting. There are two people arguing about the meaning in life. One blames Arnold for people believing that life has no meaning.

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire



From The Painter of Modern Life

Baudelaire talks about how most people only admire the popular things and do not take time to appreciate things that are not as known as others. He thinks it is a shame that some of these works of art gets neglected. He also believes that it is ok for people to admire things that are from the past, but they should also admire things that are from the present. He believes that art shoud not be admire only because it is from the past. I agree with him. I love to read classics and study them, but I also love to read and view things that have been produced in my time and admire them for the content and beauty that they actually have instead of admiring them for how old they are.

He then goes on to talk about Monsieur G. He likes the characteristics in him. He likes his modesty, his originality, and his obsessions with a world of images. He also admires how he wants to be anonymous, how he does not care if people approve of him, and how he does not have an ulterior motive. Baudelaire admires how Monsieur G does not sign his pieces using his name. He believes that people should be able to tell that it is Monsieur G's  because " all his works are signed with his dazzling soul." Baudelaire believes that Monsieur G's talents are a gift. He says that he genius comes from curiosity.Baudelaire also says that genius comes from childhood recovered at will. He talks about how children sees everything in newness. That nothing is more delightful than the way children see the world. I love this. I never thought about this until I read Baudelaire but it makes perfect sense. Everything was amazing to me when I was a child. I found the silliest things beautiful. Children just see the world different than adults do. They appreciate things more and do not take as many things for granted like adults do.

Next, Baudelaire talks about modernity. He says that painters dress their subjects in clothes from the past. He said that painters generations before his time had no choice, but the painters of his day that did this were lazy. He said for a portrait to be good, it must be a whole. And to be a whole, it must have everything from the present so that everything fits together. Even the smiles and facial expression. He says that each generations has their own facial expressions and gaits. Again, I have never thought about this. But now that I do think about it, it makes sense. I look at pictures of my parents and family when they are my age and they looks so different, and it is not just the clothing. It is the actual way they look.

Coleridge Biograpgia Literaria Chapters 13 & 14

 

From Biographia Literaria

Chapter 13

Coleridge considers the imagination to be primary or secondary. According to Coleridge, the primary imagination is "the living  Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am." The secondary imagination co-exist with the conscious will. It is an echo of the primary imagination. The secondary imagination will diffuse, dissipate, and dissolve in order to recreate.

From Biographia Literaria

Chapter 14

In this chapter, Coleridge talks about how him and Wordsworth decided that a series of poems may be composed of two sorts. The first would be supernatural and the second would be subjects they chose from ordinary life. This is what led them to the idea of the "Lyrical Ballads." Coleridge was the one who focused on the supernatural while Wordsworth focused on the normal or ordinary. Coleridge talks about how his poems were not as successful as Wordsworth. In the first edition, Wordsworth published 19 of the 23 poems. Coleridge said that his poems made the ballads not flow right.

Coleridge also talks about in this chapter what poetry is. He says "What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with what is a poet? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts and emotions of the poet's own mind." Coleridge talks about what the poet is in ideal perfection. He says that an ideal poet would bring the whole soul of a man into activity. He also says that the ideal poet "diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends and fuses by that synthetic and magical power, the imagination."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Background

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772-1834

Background

Samuel Coleridge was born in 1772 in a small town located in southwest England. He was sent to London at the age of nine when his father passed away. He attended Christ's Hospital school as a charity student. He enrolled in Jesus College, Cambridge University in 1791. He enlisted in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons two years later. He was drove to do this because he was in so much debt. He enlisted under an alias, calling himself Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. Luckily, his family rescued him from this. They returned him to the university. However, in 1794 he left the university without completing his degree.

Coleridge went on a walking tour in June 1794. While on this tour he met the poet Robert Southey. The two decided to come up with a plan to have a society ruled by equals. They called this pantisocracy. Part of their plan included Coleridge marrying Southey's fiance's sister, Sarah Fricker. The plan they came up with never worked, but Coleridge still married Sarah in 1795.

Coleridge's first poetry appeared in late 1794. His first poetry was sonnets addressed to men like William Godwin and Joseph Priestley who were contemporary political radicals. In 1795, while working as a journalist and lecturing on politics, history, and religion, Coleridge met William Wordsworth. They were considered to be good friends. Coleridge left his wife and two kids in 1798 when he left with Wordsworth to go to Germany. Coleridge's life began to take a turn. He was not in love with his wife. He fell in love with Mary Wordsworth sister, Sarah Hutchinson. He became addicted to laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol). He left his family behind again for two years when he travelled to the Mediterranean. He came back and lived with Wordsworth for a couple of months still an addict and the relationship suffered. The two went their separate ways and were no longer friends. Surprisingly, Coleridge was still productive after this. He wrote and published The Friend in 1809 and 1810. It was a twenty-eight issue periodical. In 1816 to his death, he lived with a doctor, Dr. James Gillman, who helped keep his drug problem under control. He died in 1834