Difference between revisions of "Lit-Phil2014"

Revision as of 12:48, 7 January 2014

First day of class
What's lit. vs philosophy?
Literature is the art of written work
What's Philosophy?
Xaiver: The love of wisdom. DLR: Not knowledge. Xaiver: knowledge is just facts and organizing them, wisdom is experience and mistakes. It is basically taking knowledge and doing something with it. Nikoli: Facts=wisdom, truths=knowledge.
DLR: Knowledge is easier to gain than wisdom is, because you can just read the facts or use Google.
DLR: Return from literature. Lit. is things worth reading. However, some stuff worth reading ie textbooks are not worth reading.
Caplan: Literature are things worth reading for the purpose of obtaining wisdom with good style and content. DLR: What needs to be added to this? What aspects of style make something worth reading? How do you know that you are reading literature as opposed to reading fiction? Celia: Fiction does not have a very strong style, you need to have more meanings that are possible for it in order to be literature. DLR: Literature tends to have a somewhat self conscious use of language. "Close Reading" is an example of using this. DLR: What are the difference between these four: I am impoverished, I am poor, I am wretched, I am poverty-stricken. I.e. You can be poor and happy but you cannot be wretched and happy.
DLR: Here is an alternative interpretation of the distinction: Wisdom is result of the processing of knowledge and facts into some contextualization that improves the human experience. Sloan: Experience- you can learn from it and avoid it, and you can have empathy so you feel bad about it.
Homework: Read this book that alternates between chapter titles and numbers, read through page 24.
DLR: Distinction between empathy and vicarious knowledge?
Vicarious knowledge is learning about someones experience without doing it or learning it yourself.
Carl: You can read philosophy to figure out what you believe. That is to try to gain vicarious experiences to figure out how they want to live.
DLR: So what to do literature and philosophy have in common?
They mostly are different departments in book stores. DLR: Ask philosophy professors why literature and philosophy are so connected.
Xaiver: They both stimulate thought. Celia: They both have to do with understanding the human experience. DLR: To me that is the big one. Why/when is understanding valuable? Carlo: When you are interacting with other people. DLR: Yes, you need to have an understanding of how they will probably respond to what you say. DLR: When else? Jeffery: When you are trying to write literature. DLR: When is it useful to understand what it means to be human? Jake: Personal interest, intellectual curiosity. Fastow: To avoid confusion, to help you find your self. DLR: What happens when you put these together? It helps in the process of self discovery.
DLR: For tomorrow: When does this lead to happiness? Putting this all together, these overlap because they both tell you what it means to be human, and they all give you insights about human insights and possibilities. You could also try to transcend these definitions. In either case, it is good to know. The major difference is what? Xaiver: literature is inherently written for pleasure. Jake: Literature is more multipurpose, it is not only to gain knowledge. DLR: Both assume that the people they talk about are similar to everyone else. DLR: Philosophy tended to be didactic. Most philosophy tends to do what, even if not didactic? Carlo: To explain things persuasively. DLR: It purports to be explanatory as well as persuasive. Jake: In literature, there tends to be a story or a theme. Literature- the story itself is not usually the point that the author wants to convey.
DLR: "Art for art's sake" This is supposed to be a departure from using art to only teach lay people about god ie in the middle ages. This means that they were now making art for no outside purpose like art.
Dwight: Why is AGA less common w/ lit.?
Tues, Jan 7, 2014
DLR: This tells you how to read. What person is it set in? Second person. This draws the reader into the story more effectively
What about this story works? The strange second person seems to work quite well in the first and second paragraph, as it continues to slowly draw the reader in. It stops working in the third paragraph. This is partially because it is so old, and also because it talks about a lot of stuff that we are supposed to know but that we actually do not know. It works again in the fourth paragraph because the stuff is familiar again. However, he starts to use the imperative, and it alienates the reader because he tells them what to do. It also starts telling the reader what sort of person he is, which is bad and continues to get worse as the chapter goes on. This method of writing does not work because, as the narrative gets more descriptive, its starts eliminating people (ie, the "you" has to be male, which eliminates women). You transforms from the reader into a character in the book.
What about how the books are characterized? Celia: These characterizations are actually quite accurate. DLR: agrees, and has many of each type of book. He must read a lot.
Go to page 6-7. He describes books as actual books, and talks about the sensual aspects of reading an actual book. This might be different for younger people who are reading the book because they obviously do not read books.
What is the purpose of the first chapter (the first numbered one)?
The topic of the first chapter is reading, and it is supposed to be read. It is reading about reading, ie it is meta-reading. You would expect that the rest of the book is going to be about reading in some way because of the first chapter. We can assume that it is academic because of how it is written, so we can assume it is fiction. This is designed to get you immersed in the point of the book, just as the director of the movie tries to get you to feel what is happening in a movie and become a part of its world. In literature it is called the "willing suspension of disbelief." This first chapter has a tension between reading the first chapter itself and losing yourself in the story. On page 9, it tells you this at the bottom. "It is the book in itself that arouses its curiosity.."
We move onto the next title chapter. It seems like the beginning of the story. However, after starting the book you go into the second numbered chapter it reverts back to the original narrative. This chapter 2 subverts your expectations. "if on a winter's nights traveler" is a story and has plot, setting, etc. However, it is a little different than a normal story because it is self-referential. It is making you aware of the text as text at the same time as it is telling you a story. The first two sentences blur the boundaries between you reading a book and the story itself. This is a fairly unusual way of breaking the fourth wall. This is not true in a traditional theatrical way because the narrator is breaking the wall instead of a character breaking it. In reality, this is a frame shift, similar to how there are several different nested frames of references in Heart of Darkness.
You are the person holding the book. The station is like a station of the past, and today is a new day. I was perhaps a narrator, but is now a character in the story. The novel has transitioned into first person, but sometimes flows back into second person. They overlap, so you see both viewpoints at one. There is the I of the train station and the narrator I.
Why does the I work better than the you? There is a degree of separation, and you can identify with the I to a greater or lesser extent depending on how similar you are to the person being described. However, the upside of the you is that when it works it is better than any other method of getting a person into a story.
What does the paragraph on the top of 15 tell you to do? It tells you how to write, without directly telling you how to write. It is not meta-writing, it simply serves as an example of how this particular writing device should work. Most of us don't think about how this should work, we just do it. This makes you think about how you read and how you write. This needs to be reflective.
On page 22, at the top: "I am the eye of the present with this suitcase"
The chapter ends and the I disappears and you return to the story again.

Terms to know

• meta-reading
• "willing suspension of disbelief"
• subvert
• fourth wall
• frame shift
• self-referential