True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
-- R&J Act1 Scene 4
I know this is a little late in the discussion of dreams, but I haven't been putting this off on purpose; instead I have been waiting for a dream to which I could do at least the slightest amount of justice. We'll see what I can do, so here it goes:
My dream started by me finding myself in a class room in Wilson Hall, a nightmare even on the best of days. I found myself in a Ling 238 (Formerly Eng 238) Structure and Function of Language class, a class I took last semester. However, I was not enrolled in the class. Instead, I had applied to teach the class and had just found out that I did not get the position so I had stopped by to see who did. I did not recognize the person (who was also a student) who was teaching, but after a few short minutes of listening to this person speak, I began to realize that this person was going to do a bad job. Obviously this upset me. I preceded to make a scene in the back of the class and stormed out. Upon leaving the class I realized that Dr. Sexson was the professor who recommended this person to teach the class so I was upset with him and then after leaving the class, I found myself going around in circles within the maze that is Wilson Hall.
I'm not even going to attempt to interpret this or even say anything else about it, but I'm just throwing it out there for everyone to read.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Coming Out of the Humanities Closet
More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
From the time I was a freshman in High School, I wanted to be a doctor. Everyone in my life knew this was my dream, and the only thing that varied was what my specialty would be. But then, it happened. My senior year, I chose to take AP Lit (coming from a small school in Montana we didn’t have too many options for higher division classes) and from this point on, my life would never be the same. During the first semester of the class, we read Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises and for the first time in my life I understood why someone might enjoy Literature. In those pages written so many years ago, I saw vestiges of my life and I was hooked. Finding the flames of my passion stoked but not yet combusted, I didn’t quite change my life plans. When I enrolled at the university I was a double major, Cell Biology & Neuroscience and Literature, and was still planning on becoming a doctor. But three semesters in, after taking several English/Lit/Writing courses, I saw the path of my future change. Sitting in an Organic Chemistry Lecture, I realized that I could not spend the rest of my life looking through microscopes, that my thirst for knowledge was too great to be satiated by a field so narrow. That very week, I dropped my Cell Bio/Neuroscience major and started looking at English Graduate Schools. Now came the real challenge: telling my family. I knew that I had a supportive family who would love me no matter what, but I also knew that none of them really understood what went on (perhaps I still don’t really know) in the English department. My parents were the first to know and they were about as okay with it as I had suspected, but I figured my grandparents would be a slightly harder sell. In the end, everything worked out as well as could be expected, but I still see, in the eyes of both my parents and grandparents, the remnants of Theseus’s speech shown above. Perhaps they think that I sit around with my “poet’s pen” and spend my days writing “antic fables.” And maybe they are right, maybe that is exactly what we do, but there is a larger truth to the whole situation which can be seen in the narrative that I just presented. If I found myself surprised at finding my life in the words of Hemmingway, imagine my surprise when I realized that Shakespeare also outlined my life in his words. He described my feelings, Theseus’s words nearly to a tee, when I was in high school; and he described my family’s feelings now, but this just goes to show that the “airy nothings” which find their ways onto the page are more than the simply the words of madmen. Oh, they are so much more. These are the words which help to describe the human condition, to illuminate the darkness of both the past and the future, as well as give us insight into the innermost workings of the individual and the society to which he belongs. In the end, doesn’t this all seem to be accomplishing the work of all the other “real” majors in the university system within itself?
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
A Midsummer Night's Video
Sunday, February 3, 2013
10 Blogs and a Sunday Night
To pick 10 blogs, I just scrolled through the list and wherever the arrow ended up, I clicked. I'm not exactly certain of the best way to proceed from here, but I will record a few comments from the blogs that I read and see if I can't come up with something of my own to add to the end of it all:
Honey: I found the discussion about Dante's understanding of the 'depth' of human experience interesting especially when viewed in the structure of The Divine Comedy. In the epic, we see Dante the pilgrim pass through the layers of human degradation quite literally. From here, I am left wondering: is it possible to recognize this same physical motion, this same phenomenology, in Shakespeare? One last thing: I really enjoyed the bit about 'what is the human condition?' Not only does it ask what is the human condition, but it asks what is the human condition.
Zach: "Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of someone who has lost his balance." J. Joyce
I can't help but to think of this every time I hear Joyce and Shakespeare mentioned together. Back to the discussion at hand, I'm glad you brought up Shakespeare and realism. I discussed Shakespeare and realism in one of my blogs, but I found myself a little more skeptical than Turner. Perhaps I will have to look into the works you bring up for myself in hopes of developing a better view of Shakespeare's role in the development and implementation of realism.
Eli: I'm glad you are feeling better. And as feeble of an attempt as this might be, I must admit that it seems ridiculous how a strange gentleman writing 400 years ago could have written words that we still find applicable to our condition today! Something like this was the reason I originally took a liking to literature.
Harvey: For some reason, the simplicity of a picture and a short passage seems to say more than a couple paragraphs ever could. And while I am here, I have been wondering whether 'puckish' is derived from this play or it went the other way around and it is where Shakespeare got the idea. *Consulting OED* Semi-convoluted answer: Shakespeare did not seem to coin the term Puck, the noun form of the adj. 'puckish,' it seems to have been an archetypal character around the time and shortly before Shakespeare started writing. It would seem that like Bottom, Puck would have functioned as a sort of tag-name with which the audience would have immediately identified.
Katie: Let's write about love. As you said, I think Shakespeare is irrevocably linked with the idea of love, especially in the mind of the modern American reader. If I must proffer a guess, I would say this has something to do with the fact that this is one of the most common texts used throughout high school English courses. I would actually like to see some kind of statistic that showed how many Americans know of any other works by Shakespeare besides R&J. It's a sad comment on the lives of Americans.
Tristan: Being someone who spent three semesters in the Cell Biology and Neuroscience department before switching to English Lit, I completely understand having to justify the reading of fiction, and sometimes even reading at all. Not that there are not empiricists in the English Departments around the country, but I think most people forget that language is an art form. I know it took me a long time to realize that, and I know most people don't believe it. I wish more people could be like you and be willing to walk both sides of the line, and see how the line isn't so concrete.
Scott: The relation between an Author and his (or her) work has always fascinated me. Less so in the case that you bring up, but I am always curious about how individual psychology can cross textual borders, and how the text to influence the writer himself. This is something which Harold Bloom calls the personal 'agon' of the writer, I believe. (Perhaps that's not correct, but I'm just working from memory here.) The ability, or perhaps 'possibility' is a better word, of a writer to truly distance himself from his work or the extent to which this is possible is a question which may never be answered, but I would be interesting in reading some thoughts of psychologists and literary critics on the subject. It might end up throwing a wrench into the inner workings of the Formalist's whole theory, huh?
Cassidy: The power of music in story telling has the potential to create a great project. I liked the sound of it anyways. I can't help but to think about the play without music being played throughout. Especially as the play takes place in a near dream-state, it seems strange that music wouldn't constantly flow throughout the piece, highlighting the characters and the actions. Without proffering any answers, especially because I have none to give, I would like to know how Vico would view music in his scheme of things of which Dr. Sexson is so fond.
Sam O: You asked me to name someone who has been more influential in the realm of literature than Shakespeare? Alas, I cannot; and I believe that most great mind of the literary scene would agree with me. Or perhaps it best be said that I agree with them. With such a great influence, I cannot help but wonder to what extent can we trace the reach of Shakespeare's unparalleled arms and fingers into the modern day. Frederick Turned obviously does it in his book about Shakespeare and Twenty-first century economics, but I suspect that there are most surprising influences than even that.
Emily: Shakespeare has managed to reach a rage of audience that spans about 400 years, and the traditions continues to lengthen. 400 years, in nearly the exact same language and form, and we still get it. I can't help but to say "Wow." That is something of which most authors can only dream.
Honey: I found the discussion about Dante's understanding of the 'depth' of human experience interesting especially when viewed in the structure of The Divine Comedy. In the epic, we see Dante the pilgrim pass through the layers of human degradation quite literally. From here, I am left wondering: is it possible to recognize this same physical motion, this same phenomenology, in Shakespeare? One last thing: I really enjoyed the bit about 'what is the human condition?' Not only does it ask what is the human condition, but it asks what is the human condition.
Zach: "Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of someone who has lost his balance." J. Joyce
I can't help but to think of this every time I hear Joyce and Shakespeare mentioned together. Back to the discussion at hand, I'm glad you brought up Shakespeare and realism. I discussed Shakespeare and realism in one of my blogs, but I found myself a little more skeptical than Turner. Perhaps I will have to look into the works you bring up for myself in hopes of developing a better view of Shakespeare's role in the development and implementation of realism.
Eli: I'm glad you are feeling better. And as feeble of an attempt as this might be, I must admit that it seems ridiculous how a strange gentleman writing 400 years ago could have written words that we still find applicable to our condition today! Something like this was the reason I originally took a liking to literature.
Harvey: For some reason, the simplicity of a picture and a short passage seems to say more than a couple paragraphs ever could. And while I am here, I have been wondering whether 'puckish' is derived from this play or it went the other way around and it is where Shakespeare got the idea. *Consulting OED* Semi-convoluted answer: Shakespeare did not seem to coin the term Puck, the noun form of the adj. 'puckish,' it seems to have been an archetypal character around the time and shortly before Shakespeare started writing. It would seem that like Bottom, Puck would have functioned as a sort of tag-name with which the audience would have immediately identified.
Katie: Let's write about love. As you said, I think Shakespeare is irrevocably linked with the idea of love, especially in the mind of the modern American reader. If I must proffer a guess, I would say this has something to do with the fact that this is one of the most common texts used throughout high school English courses. I would actually like to see some kind of statistic that showed how many Americans know of any other works by Shakespeare besides R&J. It's a sad comment on the lives of Americans.
Tristan: Being someone who spent three semesters in the Cell Biology and Neuroscience department before switching to English Lit, I completely understand having to justify the reading of fiction, and sometimes even reading at all. Not that there are not empiricists in the English Departments around the country, but I think most people forget that language is an art form. I know it took me a long time to realize that, and I know most people don't believe it. I wish more people could be like you and be willing to walk both sides of the line, and see how the line isn't so concrete.
Scott: The relation between an Author and his (or her) work has always fascinated me. Less so in the case that you bring up, but I am always curious about how individual psychology can cross textual borders, and how the text to influence the writer himself. This is something which Harold Bloom calls the personal 'agon' of the writer, I believe. (Perhaps that's not correct, but I'm just working from memory here.) The ability, or perhaps 'possibility' is a better word, of a writer to truly distance himself from his work or the extent to which this is possible is a question which may never be answered, but I would be interesting in reading some thoughts of psychologists and literary critics on the subject. It might end up throwing a wrench into the inner workings of the Formalist's whole theory, huh?
Cassidy: The power of music in story telling has the potential to create a great project. I liked the sound of it anyways. I can't help but to think about the play without music being played throughout. Especially as the play takes place in a near dream-state, it seems strange that music wouldn't constantly flow throughout the piece, highlighting the characters and the actions. Without proffering any answers, especially because I have none to give, I would like to know how Vico would view music in his scheme of things of which Dr. Sexson is so fond.
Sam O: You asked me to name someone who has been more influential in the realm of literature than Shakespeare? Alas, I cannot; and I believe that most great mind of the literary scene would agree with me. Or perhaps it best be said that I agree with them. With such a great influence, I cannot help but wonder to what extent can we trace the reach of Shakespeare's unparalleled arms and fingers into the modern day. Frederick Turned obviously does it in his book about Shakespeare and Twenty-first century economics, but I suspect that there are most surprising influences than even that.
Emily: Shakespeare has managed to reach a rage of audience that spans about 400 years, and the traditions continues to lengthen. 400 years, in nearly the exact same language and form, and we still get it. I can't help but to say "Wow." That is something of which most authors can only dream.
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