Rhetorical Evidence

Today's discussion got me thinking about how, as writers, we attempt to know more than what we really do, imitating knowledge itself. The art of mimicry and deception is perhaps the greatest weapon in the arsenal of the poet. We talked about the author who was so in-depth about the brain surgery present in his book that he seemed to have actually been one. Earlier this week I handed one of my colleague a short story that I'd written, and he had asked me if I had lived in the house my narrative was describing. I assured him it was just a house I had imagined, on the spot.

He said that my description was such so that he thought I had grown up there, or perhaps at least seen it before. I was able to, as the unnamed singer of the song to the sea in Wallace Stephens' poem, create an almost existent world through mere rhetoric. My obsessive compulsive nature helps me as a writer, allowing me to not just imagine a house, but a corn-yellow house with brown siding and flecked and chipping paint, browned by the North Carolina sun. He said it painted a perfect picture of Carolina in the hot summer. I have never been. The ability for words to do that, to paint so vivid a picture in the minds of other, is the reason I love to write. That and the chicks.

Stephen Greenblatt

Why, hello there. My name is Stephen Greenblatt.

(Okay, it's just Alex, but for the sake of theatrics, let's assume I really am Greenblatt. I apologize in advance should my impersonation mirror or borrow much of its content from this post.)

I teach courses at Harvard University (perhaps you've heard of it), one particular course of note being a lecture-based class for an undergraduate program called History and Literature. The topic was on human sexuality, or more specifically, masturbation. Of course, within the academic community, especially one typically perceived as being as buttoned-down as Harvard, word traveled fast that the “modern master of masturbation” would be teaching a course at Harvard, utilizing the book Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, by my former colleague Thomas Laqueur. One can only imagine the daunting task, especially as a college professor, to teach something that the very surgeon general was fired for attempting to promote. She spoke out about the health benefits of masturbation, but her views, ironically, conflicted with our current president at the time, a Mr. Clinton of no small ill repute when it comes to sex.
In 2004 I wrote a beautiful book called Will in the World which focused on Shakespeare and how his life in the Elizabethan England influenced his writing. The book in its entirety can be found here.

If you're wondering what sort of school of literary criticism I happen to subscribe to, it would New Historicism. Sounds enthralling, I know. Basically, I sort of invented the concept and have worked on it to this day in perfecting it. To sum it up, I would say that it's all about examining a work of literature in the context of the world in which it was written, paying heed to the place and time in which the author wrote it, employing cultural literacy to understand the society from which the text has risen. By examining the social politics, historical context, and general circumstance of the time.

I believe profoundly that to truly understand the work of any author, one must essentially become that author, engaging the writer's mind with the intention of discovering not merely what someone wrote, or even how, but rather to examine the why. For instance, one can't simply examine The Taming of the Shrew by itself without first coming to understand what the general view of women and love or marriage was during Shakespeare's age. If I must compare myself to Northop Frye, I would say I utilize his archetypal (mythical) theory of symbols, looking how a piece of work related to literature outside itself, or to be more specific, how it relates to the day and age of the world when it was written.

I have written many books, or edited them, performed with the comic troupe that would become Monty Python's Flying Circus, and I even knocked over T. S. Eliot.

If you wish to see me in the flesh, here I am, being interviewed about the play I co-wrote with Charles L. Mee.

"Dead Man" & Muses

Mnemosyne does indeed seem to be the correct spelling of the muse, and it's worth noting that mnemotic and mnemotic devices are derived from her name.

We made mention of where to find the movie "Dead Man" with Johnny Depp, where he kills people with poetry, playing a character named William Blake. I need to clear some time myself to watch this, but here's a link I believe should work...

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0329/v/swf/qplayer.swf?VideoIDS=XMjY2Njg1Mjg=&embedid=-&showAd=0

You will need the latest Flash Player™ to view it, so go get it, man.

Anywho, today got me thinkin about polytheism and how great that whole concept was. I mean, God must be awful busy nowadays with a few billion more prayers getting crammed in his ear than he had when he first built Man 0.1 (I believe Adam and Eve were still in the alpha phase when they were released). Must be way easier to pray to a specific God for a specific thing... has to cut down on the response time. It got me to start thinkin about muses and Greek Gods more as a healthy alternative to traditional religion, and being rather undecided in my religiosity, I considered praying to one of the muses, myself.

I have yet to do so, but I have been able to scour the internet to bring the nine muses to the forefront (as far as I know, it is an accurate list) Who appear to have all been (or still are) daughters of that crazy Zeus fellow.

Melpoeme, muse O' tragedy,
Erato, muse O'eroticism (tee-hee),
Euterpe, muse O'music,
Thalia, muse O'comedy,
Urania, muse O'astronomy,
Clio, muse O'history and fake Jammaican psychics,
Polyhyminia (one can imagine what her name evokes), muse O' spoken word,
Terpsichore, muse O' song and dance,
Calliope, muse O' epics, and of course
Mnemosyne, but I found her to be a Goddess of memory, rather than a muse, so not 100% on the reliability of my source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muses)

I Loves Me Some Comic Myth!

Comic (in the sense of societal integration) and Myth (in the sense of God or Gods being involved) is, frankly, a badass category of literature. You got your Illiads and your Odysseys and your Hercules and so on and so forth, but I'd like to talk specifically on this as it relates to one of my favorite pastimes: video games. I know, I know, but I'm a nerd, so you have to deal with it.

The game "God of War" deals with a human's rise into the realm of the Gods, first doing favors for them, and finally (unlike that wimp, Hercules) kills a God, Ares, only to take his place upon the throne of the God of War atop mount Olympus. I always loved this game for its well-developed game play, excellent presentation, and theatrical storytelling. But you may like the way it looked when your car explodes, but you're still going to hate the fact that it did, indeed, explode. I'm alluding to the content, you see. The amount of ancient Greek mythology represented in the game (well, spread across two games) is marvelous, from griffins to Medusa to the Golden Fleece. Long story short, it's my favorite Mythic Comedy ever.

I love myth so much because it is so much more than what life is. Like Don Quixote, I, too, yearn for a greater purpose than mortal life. Giants, ogres, cyclops, dragons, faeries, elves, all that J. R. R. Tolkien stuff of fantasy and legend, or the epic stories following a lone adventurer in the days of polytheistic religion (those were the days, eh?) saving the world, or sometimes just himself--stories designed to captivate, but told with such deliberate intention as to make you believe them. Everyone, back in the day, really did think there were Zeus, Hera, Hades, and all the other Gods I can't think of from that one Disney©®™ movie.

I love the comic, not because of the humor implications, but who wouldn't want to be integrated into a society of Gods? Drink some ambrosia, smite a few heathens here and there, become the divine inspiration for some old dude to build a boat. Sounds sweet to me. Plus the whole never dying thing sounds like fun (especially considering the amount of literary knowledge one could attain). Who wouldn't want to be accepted into a group of anything? That's why gangs, cults and religion are so darn popular, I surmise. I suppose the combination of the overly-fantastic (myth putting romantic literature to shame) with a sort of success story that comes with the comic mode tends to engage me best as a reader.

"What did you do today, Bob?"
"Read a book on literary criticism by the renowned author Northop Fyre. You?"
"Totally flew my flaming chariot around the skies a few times, getting the sun to set and rise. Then me and Somnus made a bunch of people at the vommitorium fall asleep in their own filth. It was totally good times."

The Idea of Order at Key West: the Four Elements

In "The Idea of Order at Key West," by Wallace Stevens, we see a clear relation to the myth of creation (Ho, ho! Who's the poet now, Stevens?). An unknown woman (of unknown origin) sings to the sea, her song warping into being a specific and unique world separate from the sea and subsequently transforming the way the people who watched her saw the world after her song was over.

This poem is dealing with the themes of manifestation, materialization and, of course, creation. In terms of the four principle elements of creation we discussed in class (Logos, Cosmogony, Mimesis, and Poesis), the poem appears to possess all four.

In terms of the power of voice, logos, we get the immediate understanding that the woman uses mere voice to create being, that is clear. It reminds me, conversely, of the story in the Bible of the army who through the sound of their marching and trumpets were able to destroy a great wall (or city or Tower of Babel or something—I'm terribly unfamiliar with the Bible). The power to heave (possibly upward) or incline material into or out of existence through the power of sound or voice is an obvious theme that Wallace intended to focus the poem around.

Secondly, we have good ol' cosmogony, or the birth of cosmos, the very something that these fads of science and religion seem to so harshly disagree on. One side sees a pancake floating in the sky and says "God made this pancake, it was here for three days, and it is blueberry." While another side sees it and claims that "It is no pancake, it is a waffle that has been here for nearly fifty decades and it is, in fact, boysenberry." Of course neither side can really go examine the pancake, or test its flavor. Besides, for all we know it's really just a crépe. But I digress.
The birth of being is an obvious side effect when dealing with a woman whose voice is moving enough to shape worlds within her audience's minds. She creates something greater than the sea, overcoming its "grinding water and gasping air", using it as "merely a place by which we walked to sing."

On mimesis, she does not mimic the sea, but it is the sea who mimics her. In its "mimic motion," Stephens personifies the ocean, having it attempt in vain to imitate her body and voice, "like a body wholly body, fluttering its empty sleeves." The aspect of mimicry is certainly contained withing the confining confines of the confident contents therein, concretely and collectivley, enduring the poem to show us that the sea is essentially futile in its attempts to be human, its "constant cry" "inhuman of the veritible ocean."

Finally, there is the concept of poesis, or creation itself. Poetry cannot be without having poesis. My favorite thing about this poem is that it is self-fulfilling in its scope; it's like watching a movie that has a movie take place within it. We are reading a poem about creation via a lyrical song, and while we read, we conjur images in our own mind, bringing this sea and the boats and the town and the woman and the audience into being within ourselves. We may even have picked out a song that she would be singing (hopefully not "Who Let the Dogs Out").

Don Quixote: Hero of the High Mimetic

I'm afraid I'm likely not nearly as far along in Don Quixote as most of my peers, but I have enjoyed reading it thus far and, time sparing, hope to read as much as I can again soon.

I don't wish to bore anyone with a synopsis of the book, but I'm just where he escapes his own house with Sancho Panza while Mr. Quixote's neighbors hold him captive and attempt (in futility) to destroy all his romantic books filled with the tales of knighthood and mythical battle. So far tlhe whole of the book has been a hoot. It's funny because it is so ironic and wonderful. This poor farmer despises that he lives in a time outside the errant knights, so he basically goes off to fulfill his own self-proclaimed destiny, completely oblivious to his own foolish atire, behavior and speech.
Someone said Don was an ironic character, less than society (perhaps because he is both poor and insane/delusional), and that he essentially has misfortune follow in his wake and footsteps. I would argue he is a hero, of sorts; he is a high mimetic figure, swathing his own path through life, utterly unsattisfied, or even convinced, with/of his life as a peasant. He may not have aquired riches or glory, but I believe the true narrative of the story is his own mind, his demented world of giants and gallantry, not the boring, menial life he was so recently bound to.
He uses his own powers (of dimensia) to create a better lot for himself in life, turning average women into prolific muses of beauty, and homely inns into grand imperial castles.

Say what, Frye?

Northop Frye writes: "Catharsis implies the detachment of the spectator, both from the work of art itself and from the author. The phrase 'aesthetic distance' is generally accepted now in criticism... the emotions are purged by being attached to objects; where they are involved with the response they are unattached and remain prior conditions in the mind."

We talked briefly in class about the question of if one truly can disconnect oneself from any work of literature and look at it in an entirely cathartic sense. I don't think it really is a possibility, now that we've read Frye's Theory of Symbols, for we derive very specific connotations from all words, be they universal, in relation to other pre-established notions about the symbols from other texts, or even through the direct imagery evoked by such symbols. It seems to me that it would be impossible to distance oneself entirely from any piece of text without written knowlege on behalf of the author that the work was written to be taken as literal word. Maybe there is some miscommunication between Frye and myself, but it seems as though I would have to place all my emotional connections that I had coming into a certain reading aside, and be able to get through the whole thing without reading the words "dead baby" and instantly connecting it to pain, death, suffering, etc.

Perhaps he means to disconnect one's initial reaction to emotion-rousing words and placing them towards objects, ignoring the ethos and focus on "objects," as he put it. I'm often dumbfounded at his esoteric rhetoric, either reading too into his words or delude myself by not paying enough attention to what he's saying, but I think he's talking about having our only emotional attachment to the text be through the words themselves and not the symbols the words represent? Or is he talking about attaching our emotions to inanimate objects, such as in the animated feature The Brave Little Toaster?

Theory of Modes Grid

What makes a book bad? Is it that it contains content that one might consider unjust, unsound or simply disagreeable? Or is it only bad writers that can produce bad books? As (I believe) Oscar Wilde has said, a good enough book is true. Only the badly-written are false. In this relationship of quality writing and that writing taking to reality in its shape, we may see the implications of a bad book being hard to take seriously and a work written with little care or heated passion. Perhaps, then there are no bad books, but simply untrue books who cannot on their own feet stand. Surely the simplicity of the text bears no impact on the "good" versus "bad" qualities of the work, as children's literature may be of high quality, if a little simpler in wording.

It is hard to say what then, if anything, makes a book bad. It may be more of an individual inclination or even opinion that may reshape the higher traits that one may deem a book or work of writing to be good, if in accordance with that person's preferred personal respected perceptive perspective or partiality.

Rhetoric and Bees

Last week (I think–I've been busy trying to catch up on my blogs, and haven't gotten any concrete dates right now) we talked briefly on the dissolution of rhetoric as literal translation. Memes, metaphors and clichés all came out, in true form that day, and it got me a thinkin' about a little project I've always wanted to produce, about an excitable character criticizing popular phrases.

Such as "You get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar." I mean, why would bees be attracted to honey? Why not flowers? Is it because they are both foods and make the phrase easier to understand if one contrasts two foods? And why the heck would anyone want a bunch of bees in the first place?! They are horrible insects that sting and buzz and just happen to make a delicious byproduct. But if this person already has enough honey to lure bees to him/herself, then they obviously have honey to spare, and don't really need the bees after all.
Seems like rhetoric, taken in literal sense, can lead to both exciting new ways at looking at what we simply except as turns-of-phrase because we know that, contextually, they fit. But come on, who or what really is a gift-horse? Why can't I look them in the mouth? Is it a crappy gift, because the horse has no teeth? It's my horse, I can look anywhere I want in him. Well, let's not take that too literally, now.

The Sin of Literature

Seems to me that this Literature business is everywhere nowadays. Can't seem to spit without hitting some sort of text or work or writing that involves it, frankly. I've been noting it popping up in every corner across this great nation of ours; students on the street corners, homeless folk outside Wal-Mart, even kindly Christian old ladies seem to be using Literature on a daily basis.

Seems to me this has become a damn-near epidemic! Why, as an example, just the other day I was walking home from campus and I heard some commotion from a nearby alleyway. I admit my curiosity got the best of me as I peered my head into the darkened alleyway, hoping to inform myself as to the source of such hullabaloo, only to find a group of teens all bent over a copy of Tennyson's Ulysses. Often one doesn't expect the atrocities of reading to be found so near one's own backyard, so to speak. It was a horrifyingly sobering experience that instilled in me a great fear for the safety of those poor misguided teens, and the ability for society, as a whole, to ever completely win the war on Literature.
We all try to avoid it, try to turn a blind eye to the problem, and assume it will right itself or even dissipate entirely under its own weight, but I get the feeling that Literature isn't going away any time soon. It's up to us, as strong Christians, to defeat this menace that is sweeping our poor country of its once-decent condition. Only active involvement in the war on Literate will produce any positive results. If we remain silent, our children can look forward to a lifetime of reading, writing and even literary criticism. It is not only unpatriotic to support such activity, but it is downright despicable and a true sin of omission to ignore this. I urge all of you, as God-fearing Americans, to follow my lead, and above all, stay safe, my fellow Americans, stay safe.

Foist Post? Internet, here I comes!

Hello, you freaks of literary criticism, you gentile English majors... you damn dirty apes. This is my first post, but rather than talk about me (cuz' let's face it--even I don't want to hear about me), I will make brief mention of the website of a very good friend of mine. His name is Bayard Lewis and he's a student here at MSU, currently enrolled in the Photography department, and a part-time freelancer. I honestly never payed much attention to his work, but now that I've browsed around his site, I'd like to share it with you.

I know it's not really related, but I just don't care (because cool people aren't supposed to)

http://www.montanalightphotography.com/

I was frankly impressed, and maybe you will be too. I don't know about the copyright nature of this site, but I think I might just set some of 'dem fer my wallpaper.

Yours beardily, Alex.