This semester as a whole has been a challenging and interesting experience; I’ve explored branches of education that were entirely new to me, participated in courses that exposed me to countless new methods of interpretation, and gained a renewed appreciation for key pieces of English literature. My time in English 203 this semester has been a substantial part of these experiences and the conversations I was a part of there have led to me asking bigger questions about not only the texts and their intended meaning, but also about the very study of literary analysis itself. In fact, I would say the most pressing questions asked by this course are: What does it mean to engage in literary criticism and why do we do it? Questions like these continue to be challenging to answer but they all lead into the idea of what my time in Fluid Readers and Fluid Texts was actually about. “About” in this case meaning a purpose, a single, but not uncomplicated, summation of everything this course has taught me. What’s one word, one concept that weaves together all of the novels, movies, and essays we’ve analyzed and discussed this semester? For me, the theme that the course emphasized the most, the theme that brings all of these materials together is the idea of connection.
Over the course of the past few months I have been forced to think about connectedness in a way I never had before and I began to think about how so many key concepts and ideas were inexorably linked. The two biggest of these connections – that is, the connections that I found to be the best representation of what I learned and experienced in the course – were how our identity is essential to how we practice literary criticism but fluidity is crucial to why we practice literary criticism.
Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette was the first indication of the connection between identity and method and it was possibly the strongest as well. The idea of identity and the way it affects storytelling is a profound concept and the way Gadsby explores it just by being herself is extraordinary. When she took the stage, certain things were expected of her and her identity as well as the identity of her show, but she managed to challenge so many of these expectations. Although Nanette is labeled as a comedy on Netflix, it is so much more; it is a special that constantly questions the appropriateness of comedy as a medium for communication. She says “I have built a career out of self-deprecating humor and I don’t want to do that anymore. Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore… If that means that my comedy career is over, then, so be it.” She manages to criticize the inner workings of a genre because she has connected her monologue to the precedents set by stand up shows and comedy tropes of the past; these precedents being that a marginalized group should point out their flaws as much as possible and that when they’re mocked they should just accept it and move on. The idea that any minority should have to perform this way or live this way is absurd and Gadsby expertly points this out. She even acknowledges that other homosexuals have criticized her for her shows not being “lesbian enough,” which shows just how dangerous it is to expect every person to identify as one thing and one thing only – it is here where the idea of fluidity also came into play for me as I pondered how people can be so much more than one thing and how are minds, thoughts, and opinions are fluid and constantly evolving. As a result of creating the special, Gadsby proves that one’s identity can drive a narrative and it can drive criticism instead of criticism making someone compromise their identity. Hannah Gadsby’s identity is what forms her methods of literary and social criticism; she is able to look outside of herself and find a connection with the world. That connection is that she will not bow to society’s every whim and instead she will strive to live in a world that doesn’t question her validity and thrust its expectations upon her. Here, I began to see how writers contributed to literary criticism using their own identity and just how personally important it can be for a author or creator to interject their own individual thoughts into a bigger literary discussion
While Nanette was a shining example of connection within an individual work and how we can connect our criticism to our own identity, the work of Henry David Thoreau focuses less on our inner connections and more on the connections between identity and nature. For me, this mirrored the process of connecting multiple works to each other as we did throughout the semester and Thoreau’s work on Walden also served as a huge wake up call for the idea of theoretical thinking as he constantly moved up a level of abstraction to make his points about our society. As a result of his experiences on Walden pond, Thoreau emphasizes the importance of connecting with nature and finding your own identity in the identity of the world around you In the chapter of the novel entitled Solitude, a passage whose theoretical thinking fascinated me so much that it became the focus of my first blog-post, he talks about how we must be mentally and emotionally satisfied with ourselves to avoid being truly alone. In the fifth of paragraph of Solitude, Thoreau says “This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?… What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?” Essentially, after giving voice to the skeptic, he points out that loneliness isn’t defined by how physically removed we are from other people, but how removed emotionally detached we are from a content peace of mind. Connection yet again proves vital in beginning to understand Thoreau’s work as well as how and why he contributed to the never-ending literary conversation.
Another major component of Walden and Thoreau’s writing in general was the way he critiqued societal norms, trends, and fashions. Thoreau’s belief was that of all the aspects of modern life such as what to wear, how to speak, and where to live are all relative and are given far too much weight by society. His tirade on clothes in particular stand out as a prime example of this trend in which he questions why some clothes are considered more fashionable than others simply because those in charge say they are and why we even need fancier clothes at all considering their only purpose is to make the distinction between different economic classes. These observations have their own unique identity within a work but they also take on larger meanings when you see how they feed into the larger idea of connection within literary criticism. Time and time again I found myself connecting Thoreau’s ideas to those of Lewis Carroll in his Alice novels. Just like Thoreau, Carroll uses his work to warn against basing your identity on the identity of others. He encourages individuals to take charge of their own lives and not base on every decision on fitting in with the crowd. The fact that our identities can find so many different voices, such as those of Carroll, Thoreau, and Gadsby, in so many different mediums, spanning centuries, connected everything we have read this semester to the concept of fluidity. While all these authors have created masterpieces on their own, their interconnectedness strengthens their mutual theme of individuality examining both of these works as a whole gave me the opportunity to think more about how the connections between identity and fluidity in literature.
More than anything, the literary concept I learned to appreciate this semester is fluidity and how it connects to why we practice literary criticism. In other words, Why is it so important for these kinds of literary discussions to had in the first place? My best answer would be because just like conversation, literature itself is fluid. It’s constantly changing and evolving so it’s essential that our study and criticism of literature does the same. This idea is probably the most important and most interesting concept that I took away from the course this semester. With nearly every piece of literature on the syllabus, I would find myself reading, analyzing, and coming to class with my own interpretation of what I had just studied the night before. But whenever I would enter a discussion, whether with the whole class or with the smaller groups that focused on one or two specific aspects of the work, I found my interpretation always changing. For example, when I first read The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, I saw it as a clever, tongue-in-cheek satire of materialism and upper class society, but as I read more of Wilde’s work I began to consider that it could be seen as more of an encouragement of shallowness. Perhaps Wilde was trying to say that “being earnest” was actually more trouble than it was worth by the end of the play. These kind of experiences made me realize that fluidity is essential in literary criticism and to be a thoughtful, unbiased literary critic means to have an identity, thoughts, and experiences of your own but to also recognize that you don’t know everything and that the literary conversation has been changing and making progress for centuries.
With this realization, I know I have to strive to make sure of two essential things in my discussions and in my writing: that my voice is heard in a discussion and I should always bring something new to the table; and that I hear the voices of everyone else and be willing to have fluid opinions and interpretations. This is the way successful discussions work, with a little give and take. Because of this I do believe that my writing has improved, my interest in literary criticism has increased, and I have had an extremely beneficial semester. If it’s every college student’s goal to grow and improve over each semester, I would like to think that I’ve succeeded.