i have a lot more to say but alas...

i guess this is where I'll leave my thoughts in regards to this class, but only in the cyber world will my thoughts be discontinued. in all honesty i have to say that i really enjoyed this class, i wish that there was more time to continue on with the discussions that we have had thus far, but overall i am grateful for what this class has been able to expose to me. i was thinking about my grade in the class and unfortunately i came to the conclusion that i am kind of indifferent to the letter that will reflect what this class meant to me. the reason i say this is because once i was able to transfer some of the thoughts that i had through out the course of the semester on to this blog i began to realize that i really walked away with a peace about literary criticism, which in all honesty i did not think would happen. i know that personally can say that i am leaving this class with a completely new respect for all the work that people have done in the field of literature and also a new respect for my self. to look back at all the various aspects that we have covered and see the ties and connections that are found between everything is truly amazing. the fact that all of the criticism groups we studied are intertwined and connected with not only each other, but with the things that Frye wrote about really blows my mind, i mean wow it really makes sense. i just feel like this is not one of the classes that i have taken in which the material that was taught, was in a way taught in vain. i am not saying that the other classes that i have taken have been pointless, but i am saying that with the ideas that i have been exposed to in this class, i feel far more prepared to take other classes that this university has to offer. i guess this class is like the idea i had just mentioned, it makes connections and builds bridges to so many aspects of my education...so for that i am stoked...ok fin

Inwards Outwards and Everything in Between

Centrifugal and Centripetal
Centripetal is staying inside the text
Centrifugal is going outside the text

I think it is great how these two words that we had discussed in the first part of the semester make their way into the later part of the semester in relation to the literary criticism groups.
there seems to be two groups that can be created and fit perfectly inside these two groups. i would venture to say that the deconstructionist as well as the New Critics would without a doubt fall under the category of centripetal being that they look at literary criticism as something that can only be taken from inside the text. and then you look at groups like the Marxist or the feminists and they see literary criticism as texts that need to be explored in various aspects of our lives, taking in consideration our social standing and what a persons situation maybe at the time. i just think that it is amazing that two words that we talked about in this class actually classify as broad ideas in which groups of literary criticism fall under

random thoughts from Frye

teachers tend to think that analysis and criticism means that you read literature based on what the author writes and as well as what the author intended you to see when reading their work, Frye suggest that what the work means is what is written, it is more important to focus on the structure of words. the literature's meaning is not detachable from the actuall work itself.

oh i just found this

i think this picture sums up what i was speaking of in that last blog entry about the art itself directly connecting and creating something within us, our relationship with art

WOW i kind of have a crush on my critic

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was just another author that had a second job of being a critic, i guessed he needed some spare cash to pay the bills, but it turns out that he was and is so much more than that. i have read a lot of his work, but never did i know his thoughts behind literature. i guess i could have inferred given Kubla Kahn and so on and so forth. when we talked about the willful suspension of disbelief in class, i could only think of this song that i have like now for the past two years or so

"Willful Suspension Of Disbelief"

Everywhere everywhere everywhere
It's all so plain it's all a plan
The sky doesn't ever end
The air just gets much thinner further up
You could keep diggin' down and down
A thousand graves down without turnin'
Around or finding hell
You find you're digging up again
Everywhere everywhere everywhere
Willful suspension of disbelief


this song was always so beautiful and accompanied me on many walks and moments in my life as a form of comfort, the irony. when i found out what a willing suspension of disbelief was, i realized that was defined in how i felt about this song which just so happened to be titled a willful suspension of disbelief, now if thats not crazy i don't know what is. I'm actually playing the song on repeat right now as I'm typing this and the haunting instrumentals really make an impact on my soul, and i think about what Samuel, yes we are on a first name basis, talked about a person's relationship with art, and i totally understand that, its like how the woman in Wallace Steven's poem has a relationship with her song, or how DQ has a relationship with the books he has read, or even how Frye has a relationship with all of the writings he has read, it goes to show that art is apart of us, it creates something in us all its own. we suspend our minds, imaginations, and souls in order for that to happen, and i think that is beautiful.

More ON STC

Hello, I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge; I was born on the 21st of October in the year 1772 in Devonshire England. I am fairly I should tell all of you a little bit more about my self in respects to criticism and literature, even though I would much rather fabricate who I am through the use of my imagination. I was a poet, romantic, philosopher, and also a critic. Most of you probably know of the project that my friend William Wordsworth and I put together titled, lyrical ballads, this work of art, like all of my work, exemplifies my philosophical and critical approach to literature. For example the lyrical ballads opens with my poem, the rime of the ancient mariner, which is now considered to be one of the pieces that opened the door for the period of romantic literature. In response to this work Mrs Anne Barbauld tole me that the only faults she found with the Ancient Mariner were – that it was improbable and had no moral. As for the probability – to be sure that might admit some question – but I told her that in my judgment the poem¡¯s chief fault was that it had too much moral, and that too openly obtruded on the reader, It ought to have no more moral than the story of the merchant sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well and throwing the shells aside, and the Genii starting up and saying he must kill the merchant, because a date shell had put out the eye of the Genii¡¯s son .

The imagination that can be found within the poem is what should be focused on rather than focusing on what didactive qualities can be found. I think that a crucial aspect of literature is with out a doubt imagination. In my Biographia Literaria, I wrote about the two crucial components of the imaginations, the first of the two is The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite of the eternal act of creation of the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider, as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. I also believe that the concept of fancy is the lowest form of imagination because its only counters are fixed, there is no creation, but rather a recreation of that which has already been created, which takes little to no imagination. I also believe in the idea of poetic faith, meaning when an individual indulges in any type of art that their mind will awake from the lethargic of custom and it will then be directed to the loveliness and wonders of the world that is before us.

The last concept I am going to expose to you is the willing suspension of disbelief, which I have been told has already been mentioned in this class but let me help expand your knowledge in regards to the meaning behind the words. The willing suspension of disbelief is the aesthetic theory that tries to characterize one¡¯s relationship to art. Specifically when looking at the creation or reading of poetry, I think people should express a willingness to accept a work of fiction as truth, even if it is fantastic or impossible. I challenge you all to allow your self to be separated from the truth you know and take part in the truth that literature creates.

My Apology

Chelsea Diem

Literary Criticism

December 2, 2008

My Apology

My major is English education, and my name is Chelsea Diem. The order of words that I chose for the opening line of my apology seems to reveal exactly what I think in regards to me being an English major. When we were presented with the task of apologizing for being English majors, I have to admit that I continued to think that I was going to have to say, “I’m sorry for pursuing an English degree”. This was not something that I was prepared to do, but then I began to understand what the word apology in this situation meant.

Noun: apologia `a-pu'low-jee-u- A formal written defence of something you believe in strongly.

Now this definition illuminated exactly what it was that I had to do. I was going to have to make a stand for one of the most important aspects of my life: English! So here I am sitting at my computer with my thoughts spiraling out of control and my fingers desperately trying to keep up in order to type. I guess I’ll begin with why this assignment elated me to a great extent. While it may seem to many people that the reason one would choose to add on the education title to their English degree is so that they can actually do something that would resemble a “real” job, I can say personally for me that is not the case. I chose to be an educator of English because I want to be able to help people understand what it was about English that is undeniably crucial to our everyday lives, hence my excitement. This apology grants me the honor, or maybe more accurately the attempt to explain to whoever will listen why English is nothing short of fantastic, and on that same note I hope to be able to carry these ideas into my classroom some day. My defense seems to parallel greatly with each of the apologist that we have looked at this semester, but I have to admit that it appears as though both Percy Shelley and Sir Philip Sidney were able to convey my thoughts years before I was ever able to conjure them.

The best way that I can explain English is that it is the poetry of life. When I have the opportunity to mold the minds of various high school students in an English class, the idea that I want them to consider to be a “woo woo” idea is that English is everywhere.

In regards to that last statement I hope that to be able to convey what both Sidney and Shelley touched on, which is that no matter what field you enter, the fruit of that field stems from English. For example in the Defence of Poesie Sidney writes, “The poet with that same hand of delight doth draw the mind more effectually than any other art doth”(25). This quote really seems to hammer the nail on the head, while poetry and writing are viewed as nothing more than an act of fancy; Sidney proposes that it also stretches the mind more than any other field. Therefore other fields such as the sciences and so on benefit from the knowledge that is gained though English. Without rhetoric, writing, and literacy none of the other crucial occupations that make this world go around would be able to exist. Shelly also brings up this explanation in his work A Defence of Poetry, “Poetry is indeed something divine It is at once the center and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred” (39)

"For until they find a pleasure in the exercises of the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them that know not the fruits of knowledge."6

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the center and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship—what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labor and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the “Paradise Lost” as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the Muse having “dictated” to him the “unpremeditated song.” And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the “Orlando Furioso.” Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty are still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in a mother’s womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.