WHY Study Literature? Please note the importance of my addition - “and about ourselves as individuals” - and its “both/and” rather than “either/or” construction. We will spend much of the semester talking about the movement or transition from a text’s meaning to you as an individual to the text’s meaning to the or a subset of the species. I will refer to this movement as the move from I to We or I to one. YOU get to be a central part of your interpretive efforts. Back to Tyson: The “critical vocabulary” of this first unit: narration, metaphor and metaphoric vehicle and tenor, shape of story (Romance & Satire, Comedy and Tragedy), setting, authenticity, sentimentality, verisimilitude, rhythm and rhyme, are all intended as tools of interpretation, tools that assist us in our effort to interpret human productions and thus assist in our effort to “learn something important about ourselves as a species” and ourselves as individuals. If you’re struggling with what to say about any of the texts, or any of the questions on the final exam, consider starting here: What important something did I learn about myself or ourselves as a species? Where/how/when did the author say anything of importance to me or about my moment in time? You have found something to say. Another reason we study literature Knowledge of figural language/works of the imagination is a form of [cultural literacy]/of being literate/of being a member of a community. Literature reflects and reveals the human psyche AND cultural/communal psyche, in their constancy across time and culture and in their differences. We will be working with a very general/generic definition of literature Definition: Literature: "an act of the imagination, usually of high quality" For now, let’s leave the politics of “high quality” aside and on the too-simple definition of “words and texts that do good work": i.e. that effectively reveal the nature of a thing… Works of Imagination, usually of high quality Thus, at the heart of “imagination” is figural language: metaphor in its numerous forms Metaphor: the abstract/imaginative “transfer” [its Greek denotation] of meaning from a concrete/material/sense-able thing [the vehicle] to something else [the tenor]. This something else is usually an abstraction - something that needs to “borrow” form/characteristics from the physical world. Reading exercises: Moby Dick passage The Spouter-Inn OED: Hermeneutics (with focus on how it expands, qualifies, interpretation): A method or theory of interpretation; a particular interpretation Notes: The painting itself: History, time, difference and distance “besmoke,” complicate. We’re trying to peel back layers Powerful, insightful reading AND writing depends upon seeing and identifying this 1st-person SUBJECTive presence. Friday September 2 WHAT is not-critical reading? ● ● ● Identifying with characters Falling in love with authors Miming authorized sentiment (the link between sentimental fiction and pornography: a question of authorial intention re: AFFECT) essayist/non-fiction writer Charles D’Ambrosio: *constitutive: 1.a: Having the power of constituting, establishing, or giving formal, definite, or organized existence to something; constructive. 2: That makes a thing what it is; forming an essential part or element; essential. critical reading is distanced AND distancing Non-critical reading is close, emotional, embodied.