Missing Cervantes

I just spent three hours ready fifty pages of Faulkner. The whole time I wish I was reading Cervantes. I miss Don Quixote. I miss reading about his mind when I'm forced to read something I really can't seem to find relevant to my education. Reading Faulkner is not what I imagined taking most of time this semester. I did not think most of my time reading any assignment would morph into ponder what reading in Don Quixote lies ahead of me. I think the class discussion about the essence of what constitutes a comic book hero provoked me to wonder exactly how Don Quixote is one. If that's true then do all the other characters have less than heroic implications and ideals in the novel? I suppose not but what is their purpose? It's odd that I feel kind of sad for Don Quixote at times but I always seem to side with the other characters before I truly believe his thoughts. I don't why. I really wish I could remember anything I've just read in Absalom Absalom moments ago. I shouldn't fret though because I know I now have a yearn to read Cervantes. Whether it is a yearn to read in spite of something else or a yearn to just return to a world in a book that is suspended from the norm, I don't know. It's probably both and that might be a good thing. I feel some reading always is accompanied with a spiteful attitude. In the case of reading Don Quixote that spiteful attitude turns into many attitudes or perceptions about reality. While reading Cervantes, perceptions about daily interactions seem less important. Perceptions about life seem to only matter in regards to what happens to Don Quixote's life. This is what I know after reading Faulkner. Bazaar eh?

I. A. Richards

"Almost no contemporary critic has written without being touched by Richards at some point" has been said about I.A. Richards in regards to influence on others. Richards believed that a comprehensible approach to literary criticism would need to be placed upon reason in a a more "scientific approach to it". His ideas helped harbor the "new criticism" into the vast philosophy of viewing the text differently than as before. To "construct a less subjective standard of literary value" is one of his major themes in striving to put old opinions away in thinking about a text. It reminds me in thinking about the low mimetic/ thematic box of Frye's criticism works to illustrated this notion. The separation from the dominant order is clearly a method that Richards has created for criticism. The individuality of separating from the older or traditional approaches to a text create a new approach. Richards also wrote poetry revealing "new insights into himself well into his old age". His was very active in mountaineering and traveling but I can't really think of any Brit than isn't at some point in their life. One thing that is most disagreeable with Richards is his idea that world problems could be reduced through the promotion of English. Although his work with linguists and suggesting a "basic English" vocabulary is commendable, history since the publishing of his book So Much Nearer has taken a different view. History has also been taken his "new critical literary" approach as one of the founding ideas as new method.

Critical Inquiry

It's always a skeptical moment the first day of class but I don't suppose that is a bad thing if we are all to promote the critic within us. I've read some Frye and I've read some Bloom but I've never owned a book with both their names on the cover. I say "Preposterous"! Why would Harold Bloom do such a thing? Bloom has his own set of ideological blurbs. Why would he want to lay his in addition with someone else. I think I'm a little shaken up from last semester and my engagement with Bloom somehow seems to reignite itself after I saw his name again.
Apart from my little blurb I'm here and eager to swim amongst the various schools of criticism and experience treading water in their particularities. If it so happens that our envelopment in Don Quixote hosts different avenues of different critical inquiries than I believe treading water in literary theory will be ever so refreshing.
If "The Idea of Oder at Key West" helps us navigate the chaos that critical inquiry inspires than I'll wait and listen to all the other students until I'm as comfortable as they in comprehending how that poem helps define our subject matter.