my paper

Significant Anxiety

There exists something in the mental engagement with literature. It’s not coherent or overtly recognizable. It’s rather an instinctual draw to yearn for rhetoric. Whether engaging in the current cultural discourse or reading about the emotions of the past there is always an inherent skill with it. Reading, writing, and dramatic performances are the keen skills in use in the life of an English major. Literature engagement promotes not just the skill to be able to perform successful daily functions but also the skill to interpret those daily functions to all.
It’s true that traditionally rhetoric accounts for the “here” and “now” but in order to comprehend cultural movements of the past people need to read more. Reading, whatever genre it may be will eventually yield skills that help one convey what they actually feel. What would historical pursuits be if there wasn’t the literature to exude the feelings of the time? What would psychological interpretation actually mean if there were no developed metaphors or literary allusions? What would happen if portraits of place, character, winter or human interactions were not recycled in contemporary culture? There would be no culture.
Thought processes can be reduced to cognitive functions and learned imitations. Such thought processes are required in mathematical pursuits but what happens after that? After all the equations, formulas and solutions were does the mind go? I’m certain it doesn’t do anything except idle in preparation for something else. Poetry on the other hand starts will the idle mind and invokes infinite tangents to be discovered. “Poetry awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptable of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought” (Shelley). Surely no mathematical equation can do this. Of course, there are symbols substituted in math but they would not have quality definitions without a history of prose accompanying them. Symbols exist only for further illustrating a definition. The hinges of a door wouldn’t mean anything unless the symbol of a door is cognitively invoked. Symbols in poetry are “primarily a verbal structure or set of representative words” (Frye). Dare I say the same representative symbols exist in math? Yes, only math ends with solutions and does promote anything beyond that. However literature engagement is everything beyond a solution.
Daily functions are more often reduced to habits of the economical realm reality. They are habits necessary for autonomous being. With the futile practice of cleaning, laboring or driving nothing can subside the monotony of daily functions like writing about them. I cannot name or think of any other discipline that promotes reflection in the form of writing. Writing “nonsense by the ream” becomes the interpretation of what happened and turn it into what is felt about the “happening.”
No social interaction can be repeated in the same way. The mental engagement in producing something on paper forces the mind to create out of memory and rhetorical emotion. “It is admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of reason is more useful” was one of Shelley’s many “reasons” for promoting the continuation of delightful imagination in creating poetry (Shelley). Reason is a powerful abstract method for suggesting how to understand something. In contrast to having the anxiety in comprehending “reasons” why does poetry invoke such similar anxiety? The deference is in the type of anxiety in “abstract reason” and “literary allusion.” Abstract reasons hosts anxiety that is purposeful. It exudes anxiety the purpose of eventually understanding an idea. Literary allusion promotes anxiety that is detached. It promotes anxiety detached from a central understanding or comprehension. The evocative feelings of reading or creating poetry are the anxious addictive mentalities the mind sifts through in order to comprehend what’s possible in poetry. One poem can mean one thing for one person yet mean another thing for the same person an hour later.
The feeling of anxiety are the emotions of a moment. Sure people can label their work day full of anxious duties and tasks but none actually know the true feeling unless they chose to engage with literature. Reading about the life of a character in a novel and not knowing what will happen in unsure circumstances is true anxiety. It’s the most organic kind of emotion available for human life because it comes from the imagination. The feeling of connecting with a literary character is foremost unique because the mind constructs a relationship that exists simultaneously in reality and imagination. “We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life,” is an instinctual draw to the rhetorical moments of the past (Shelley). It’s also the unique feeling of life while reading about life in poetry.
What other classrooms host a place for imagination such as literature classes do? How can a power point presentation instill more social connections than a comical sketch performance? I’m certain power point presentations can for a few moments but certainly they wouldn’t last in the imagination of the audience as much as a stage performance would for a long time after.
In the classroom inspiration is paramount. No imagination will get sparked unless passion for literature is exemplified. “For who will be taught if he be not moved with desire to be taught” (Sidney). In other collegiate disciplines group work encompasses a majority of learning. Where is the lesson in that? How can one individual feel the pressure to create something with their own knowledge and reflection? English majors have such experience in group work but mostly operate on their own. They have nothing but the text to engage with. Slowly but inevitably the opportunities become endless. What a singular person can take away from one text is more skillful than anything they would gain from group work. The forced lessons learned from a solo engagement with literature are not lessons in reading comprehension or composition. They are lessons about how one can critique them self. They are lessons in reflection.
According to Harold Bloom in his introduction to Edith Grossman’s English translation of Don Quixote de la Mancha, Don Quixote holds the mirror not up to nature, but up to the reader. Anyone’s name is always their favorite word in the world so why would a mirror be any different? Vanity doesn’t have to be self-idolatry it can also be the pure aesthetic relationship with a book. Self-idolatry can be character idolatry because in actuality it’s the praise of literature. Don Quixote can bring out the emotions of a reader and in doing so it shows the power of what’s possible from literature engagement.
Chivalry may be thought on many levels but the action of it commands attention. Ideological protests are almost exactly the same thing. If a person has the passion to rally groups of people for action then how different is this idea from Don Quixote? Acting on beliefs for a cause inspires others to wonder about the worth of achieving that cause. For Don Quixote his causes are simple. Wright the wrongs of what he views need it. His passion lies in the will to act against everything and only upon his knowledge. His knowledge surely is taken with disbelief by others in every single one of his argument in the novel. “Only be sure that it is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied, consciousness” is a statement written for the world but I see Don Quixote the only character able to do it (Pater). Don Quixote’s knowledge is a multiple consciousness. He acts with passion beyond reason except the knowledge of what he truly believes. Is there a possible lesson other than reading about his exploits that instill trustworthiness in one’s self? Chivalry is passion and action comes from trusting decisions based in knowledge. I’m just sorry people will not come to know this unless they yearn to engage with literature.
People often want to distinguish the difference between importance and anecdotal trivia. I’d like to state that everything that is or was important will be or was anecdotal at one time. Of course English majors are chalked up and catalogued as students of anecdotal knowledge. What happens when trivial knowledge gets taken out into the world with an English major? It gets used more than anything else. Stories create stories and anecdotal knowledge then becomes more useful in employment than knowing how operate a fork lift.
“Public relations” is a phrase used widely by a plethora of companies. What it really means is the ability to recognize and successfully interpret human needs. Without a public relation department a company would be without a voice. The skills of person having the background of literature engagement know what kind of a voice this should be. This “voice” for public relations is made only possible because it’s been a cultural discourse since the invention of the phrase “public relations.” It’s the voice of understanding what is needed and what is happening rhetorically within in social interaction. The voice is a collage of knowledge inside one’s mind that documents public commentary. Whether for a company’s purpose or self reflection, the voice inside one’s head comes from the mental engagement with literature. It’s not crazy it’s just addictive. What the instinctual draw is in engaging with prose and poetry is the yearn to feel any rhetorical significance, contemporary or historically.





Works consulted:




Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. 1957 Princeton University Press. Princeton

Paperback Edition 1990.


Pater, Walter. “Conclusion from The Renaissance” 1873. Peace Corps Mauritania’s

Literary Magazine. Vol I. January 2003.


Sidney, Sir Philip. “An Apology for Poetry” The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism. Ed.Vincent B. Leitch. 2001 W. W. Norton and Company Incorporated


Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry” The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism. Ed.Vincent B. Leitch. 2001 W. W. Norton and Company Incorporated.

The wattage of insight

I started to write my paper and I thought back how I've not memorized The Idea of Order at Key West. I've read through it many times and I still cannot come to one conclusion why the sea is the starting point for the song. I mean it is really possible to sing "beyond" the sea? We have a better map of the moon's dark side than we do of all the ocean's floor. It's very perplexing to me but then I suppose "the lights in the fishing boats anchored there" wouldn't look different, wouldn't feel different of even sound different. At the beginning of class I wanted to refute being able to sing above or beyond the sea. Now I'm reverent in arguing why we ever wouldn't sing with the sea as a backdrop for humanity. This may not make sense but it doesn't have too because questions are anything but and end. What I get from the poem is a regeneration of ideas. A reflection of how I would praise the nothingness and the everythingness the sea exudes. I get an idea to write a poem that may not seem like its has anything to do with the ocean. Yet, it does because I built every line off of the one line that mentions "sea" in it. It goes like this and I call it......Terracotta Daydreams-

In the future

There are water wars and tombstones on mars.

But who decides the epitaph of the aftermath?

After all it will be the first in the heavens from the earth.

Shall it really even be a stone?

Would terracotta be epitomizing or ironic or both?

Cemeteries and funerals of intergalactic tragedy

Are imminent because future explorers seek to see.

How will bodies decay in the red dirt?

Will we wrap their bodies in preserving bubble wrap?

Religions of many might just want their gods stamp on that wrap.

As the solar system waits stampeding human feet,

I digress out yearn for new tie dye space suits.

What other colors shall indicate and promote virgin atmospheric peace?

How soon will the fresh water of this world deplete?

These questions for just one more decade I’ll keep.

Years of remembrance much faster pass us by.

Sometimes I stick out my thumb or wave goodbye.

I wish earth could frequently idle.

But I suppose the stars wouldn’t twinkle.

Well, my fellow humans this week will end.

And what ever happens this evening

Don’t you force it mortal being!

Wait, wonder and dream without thinking

Because the people of tomorrow contend their most memorable advice

had always come in from a day of sailing

They said “let the sea indulge your vice."

So it must not matter if there are plans of terraforming,

Planet claiming or inevitable intergalactic globalization.

The future as it unfolds doesn’t need to track us in time.

It only matters momentarily our descendant’s tombstones shine.

So in the meantime, if the globe will allow I’ll just sway back into rest and recline.

it's been a while

I'm posting on the holiday because everyone is sleeping right now. I was scanning the house and I noticed most of the books in my folks house are either about Montana history or left over Spanish books from my dad's college days. I wish I could read Norwegian. When I was little my aunt would send us Norwegian children's books. I always loved flipping back through them. I have no idea what the content is but I can tell the story through the lovely photos. I know every other chapter is centered around a season. The fall seasons show little trolls chopping wood in late afternoon light with a very medieval looking axe. I especially like the winter chapter because the troll family has perhaps the coolest wooden ski sleds I've ever seen. The summer chapter has many trolls fishing and swimming but somehow I think the illustrations show some kind of conflict. They show the encroachment of different looking trolls. At least that is what I remember viewing when I was younger but now my perception is different. Flipping through it now I seem to notice the "other" trolls look like people with human qualities. It seems the encroachment of humans slowly forced the trolls deeper into the fjords. The last few illustrations of the children's book show the disguise of the trolls in daily summer life. It's Norse mythology I somehow understand without being able to read the language. It kind of makes me feel like Sancho. Exposed to something long enough and inevitably you will start to exude it's qualities. I used to think the books didn't show anything real but I now think differently. I'm sure they live in disguise in the world even if I can read their names or the dialogue on the page. The illustrations have been with me every holiday when I've been bored at home. In the time I do flip back I now know what "eternity within an hour" really is. If could read the language in the book I wouldn't have as much artistic allusion. What's left for me to interpret from foreign illustrations is the perpetual imagination of what I want them to be. I'm sure it'll change the next time I flip back through it but that's exactly what I want, nothing the same yet repeated again and again.

plerosis/ kenosis

You must view this image to grasp the differences in what humans feel when thinking about a glass half empty/ half full- It condeses many emotions about life into very entertaining themes- It's from threadless.com check it out ~>

thinking about the first half-

I finally made it! I'm half way through- The second part of the Ingenious Gentlemen, Don Quixote of La Mancha awaits me. I must say I feel odd about what I remember from the first part. At some points I was thoroughly intrigued by Quixote's rants. A other times I couldn't wait to read the reaction of other character's. Especially one of the latest scenes where Quixote says to the goatherd "You are a villain and a scoundrel, and you are the one who is vacant and foolish; I have more upstairs than the whore who ever bore you did" Wow- talk about intense insulting. Quixote crosses the line of flighting much too often. As least he may think most conversations are fun from the beginning. I think Sancho considers himself sane but I don't really want to regard him as realist. Even though that may be true I'd rather think of him as expected any friend would do in reaction to "real" social tensions. The first part of the novel I'm still letting incubate on my thoughts. As a reader responding, which is what I prefer to do before anything else- I think Don Quixote does not purposely step over his social boundaries but rather invites everyone to believe in chivalrous duty without being timid about the consequences. He knows what his doing, and he always accurately forecasts what anybody's response will be to his words. I think that's why his rants always come full circle. He insinuates a dire question and refutes his arguments that convey why he asks such questions in the first place. As far as having a critical literary theme to interpret the first have of the book I can't say any would be better than one another. New historicism might love the end notes but that almost would be reading rhetorically and commenting more on the references than the actual text itself. Psychoanalytic theory could have their way with Quixote but I'm sure nothing would be concretely accessible. For all of Don Quixote's rants that might help allude to a psychological condition I highly doubt any of those reasons would be a legitimate commentary. It's because all of Don Quixote's rants make sense. They all mean exactly what he means them to mean and to try and say they mean something else is ridiculous. Sancho is hooked by this. He is hooked how Quixote seems to make sense to himself but the world doesn't make sense of him. Being illiterate, Sancho sees the opportunity to become educated by an unconventional standard in the service of Don Quixote. So perhaps he is the first in the many groups of folk that will start to accept Quixote's quest. Of course I'm just speculating at this point but even if I'm wrong I know Sancho will learn something without realizing it.

Expressing life experience

I remember reading Washington Square by Henry James just last year. It's crazy how long it takes to think back on stuff which seems clearer the longer it resonates in the brain. James' prose it surprisingly quirky in that old proper sort of way. I'll just say the book ends not how one would think it to end. I'm not very knowledgeable about " the madness of art." I have found that it relates to a psychotherapy- "the need to transform and metamorphose personal experience by means of prose, poetry, or other artistic expression" as in the artist using their depression/rage of life to control the experience of aging without the experiences they wanted to have. That's according to the American Psychiatric Association so it might be a little removed from the "goals" of thinking about it for English 300's purposes. To think about art (literature) as expressions of personal experience surely promotes and endless forum for "transforming" what life is and turns it into everything that's it's not. What I mean by this is expressing life experience in literary works changes what the experience actually was into the experience of feeling the life in the experience. James may allude that the madness about art perhaps might be the irony that art produces more feeling about life that life itself. Sure, this notion can used to psychoanalyze the person producing the experience but in no way can it summarize the feeling of the expression in art.

After Blake

After class today I wanted more. I know the Blakean notion of innocence to experience will continue to label the ideas we refer to in class from time to time but cannot we not dwell just on the experience? I feel like jumping right into talking about Blake to better explain the grand significance of reading as child does have relevance to what learning is but I really want to stop just before we get there. Intertextuality, the sublime, structuralism and biographical accuracy all come from dwelling solely on the experience. Of course, some would say because something is learned from the literature but why not stay there and praise the experience. I feel like cataloguing the experience with innocence takes away from what one thinks about immediately following a reading as the experience. It takes one away from their thoughts and thrusts the Revelation of the "lesson" to be more significant than all others. I may be completely out of my league in trying to separate experience from innocence but I know I'm not alone. If experience an innocence cannot be separable from one another in an overall theme than neither can hope and expectation be. Hope and expectation are two very different things and seldom it is than humans keeps them separate. What I'd like to say about them is that expectation supersedes hope in reading. When the "experience" of reading sets in we're"expected" to learn something not "hope" that we do. Thus experience invokes expectation and innocence demonstrates a hope of something. I want to stick with the notion of experience before taking about going into anything else. I suppose Sancho Panza might operate in a similar way before the end of the novel. He might expect his master to do something before he hopes he does in due time. Maybe that's what I really wanted more from class today. A little willing skepticism about Sancho's "learned" motivations.