Common Knowledge

During last Friday’s class, we read the poem entitled “Zulus” by Percival Everett. The structure of this poem is alphabetical, in which Everett starts each piece of the poem with “A is for” or “B is for” and so on.  Our first task in our small groups was to talk about this poem new critically, which of course we found difficult considering none of us knew all of the names and terms that were used. New Criticism, defined by The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, states “…based their interpretations on elements within the text rather than on external factors such as the effects of a work or biographical and historical materials” (287). It’s almost impossible to unpack and fully understand this complicated poem by Everett new critically because as soon as I saw a name that I recognized, I immediately went to the internet to increase my knowledge on said name. The most important question for me is what meaning is gained if you don’t know who the people are in the poem?

When I look at other pieces of literature we’ve done this semester, I realized that this question applies to these as well. In The Bacchae and Frenzy, some may find it hard to understand if you don’t know the different Gods, specifically Dionysos. I am in an intro to theater class and one of our first topics of the semester talked about Dionysos himself, which is why I knew who he was when I read the play and novel about him. Before we read the novel I am Not Sidney Poitier, by Percival Everett, we watched movies with the famous actor Sidney Poitier, which allowed us to gain a better understanding of him and give us background information. By becoming familiar with these characters and people, we can instantly have somewhat of a grasp on what we read. 

Before we could use intertextuality to unwrap this poem, we had to talk in our groups about what we already knew from the poem itself. Everyone skimmed through the poem, pointing out different names that were hard to pronounce. Claire had said that the only reason she knew who Anaximander was, was because of a philosophy class she had taken during college. After a brief discussion, my group had come to the conclusion that we are better off using intertextuality to help us as we read and sometimes we almost do it unknowingly. As humans we naturally make connections to what we already know and it helps us come to conclusions to what we are learning about. 

 But why is this important? As I said, our first job during this class period was to read this poem and discuss it new critically. But because we are human beings, we had to fight the urge to connect it to what is already stuck in our brains from other classes and our own knowledge. It felt like every other word in “Zulus” was a noun of a famous individual or a place which is what made it difficult to read only the poem and nothing else and then try to understand it. I believe that intertextuality is what drives us to increase our knowledge on different pieces of literature because it allows us to make a tie between what is being read, and the information we receive from other novels and our own personal experiences.

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