Author: Claire Corbeaux

This semester I took a course entitled “The Great War in Literature and the Arts.” The class focused on the novels, music, poetry, and visual arts inspired by World War I. For the course, I wrote a research paper on the German invasion of Belgium that occurred at the war’s outbreak and how its brutality affected Belgian poetry of the era. Much of my research focused on the unjust execution of thousands of Belgian civilians by German soldiers. Reading about these atrocities was extremely difficult, especially since this was my first time learning about them.

In order to glean the invasion’s effect on poetry, I analyzed the work of the Belgian poet, Paul van Ostaijen, who witnessed the German siege of Antwerp and saw the chaotic carnage it produced. As a result of his experiences, van Ostaijen wrote Occupied City, a book of poetry that describes Antwerp at the time of the attack and relays the terrors that transpired.

 

Continue reading “The Sense in Nonsense”

When we are young, growing is something that we can’t help but do. At first, our growth is entirely visible.  I’m sure that almost everyone can relate to having an older family member they rarely ever see exclaim at the sight of them that they’ve “gotten so tall!”, or that they’ve “changed so much!”.

The same process of involuntary, organic growth can be seen in Percival Everett’s I am Not Sidney Poitier. From the moment of his unusual birth, Not Sidney was ridiculed and pushed around by others. Other children would call him names like “elephant boy,” and many would physically abuse him due to his atypical name. Not Sidney eventually overcomes such taunting and torture by outgrowing it. That is to say, Not Sidney physically grows and starts to tower over his peers, making it difficult for them to hurt him, at least physically.

However, once Not Sidney’s physical growth is complete, he does not appear to exhibit growth in other ways. In fact, Not Sidney seems to be more of a picaresque hero, in that he represents a fairly static character who does not develop throughout his misadventures, despite how transformative a reader may perceive these instances of adversity to be. Perhaps Everett chose to stabilize Not Sidney’s character in order to demonstrate just how difficult the process of growth can be, for while many believe that challenge represents the perfect stimulus for growth, challenges can instead prove an impedance to the seemingly unavoidable process.

Continue reading “The Art of Growth”

During my visit home this Thanksgiving break, I was driving in the car with my family, headed to run some errands. My mom was scanning the radio with her usual speed and capriciousness when she came across a Prince and the New Power Generation song called  “7” that she instantly identified as one of her favorites. Reflecting on the song’s title, Percival Everett’s poem “Logic” immediately came to my mind. I was particularly reminded of the last part of the poem, the sectioned entitled “6”, that seems to instead focus on the number 7.

Listening to the song’s lyrics, I was able to pick up the final phrase in the song’s chorus: “One day all seven will die”. These lyrics struck me since it seems to exist in contradiction with the final line of Everett’s “Logic”. The conclusion of Everett’s enigmatic poem claims that “All men will die but not seven.” (Everett, 70) Noticing this connection, I wanted to see if I could further relate Prince’s song to Everett’s poem. I was interested in seeing if they truly did contradict each other, or if there was some shared message to be found in both.

Continue reading “Seven as Structure”

In my reading of Joe Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, I was surprised to see so many connections between what I was reading and what I had learned in one of my other classes called “The Second Darwinian Revolution” taught by Dr. Paul McLaughlin.  While the class and Moran’s work share many similar threads, I was struck by Moran’s discussion of the definitions that writers, scientists, and philosophers alike have assigned to describe the natural world.

In Dr. McLaughlin’s class, we discussed the consequences of such assignments at length, focusing particularly on how Francis Bacon’s notions on the essences of science, humankind, and nature created great distance between people and their environment. Dr. McLaughlin firmly believes that this sense of distance caused the ecological crisis we now face in the modern era.

Bacon generated this distance through his formulation of stipulative definitions regarding the qualities of humankind and of nature. Emma made a reference to stipulative definitions in a recent blog post and introduced me to the phrase. A stipulative definition assigns a new meaning to an existing word or term that already bears a prescribed meaning. Stipulative definitions represent the powerful, volatile nature of language.

Continue reading “Defining Nature”

Earlier this semester, Dr. McCoy wrote a blog post discussing the Everett quote that we are all likely very familiar with by now: “It’s incredible that a sentence is ever understood.” The quote is originally from Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure. While reading the novel would definitely provide me with some helpful context that I could use to better understand the quote, I still believe I am capable of comprehending the quote, though in a different way, allowing the circumstances of my own life to inform me in my understanding.

Of course, the quote was still relatable for me, even at the beginning of this semester since I have experienced my own share of miscommunication in many different areas of my life. From work to school to relationships, I have always aimed to both understand the words of others and make myself understood as well. This can be a challenging process and miscommunications can create awkward, uncomfortable situations. However, this semester the quote took on greater meaning for me, as I began to undertake new responsibilities and encounter and learn from new, original perspectives.

Continue reading “The Power(lessness) of Words”

The end of I am Not Sidney Poitier left my thoughts swirling with different theories regarding Not Sidney’s eventual fate. The novel spirals towards its ambiguous conclusion when Not Sidney decides to acquire 50,000 dollars in cash so that he can fund the construction of a church for the nuns he encounters during his time in Smuteye. In order to procure the necessary funds, Not Sidney travels to Montgomery, Alabama, alone.

Continue reading “Many Worlds, Many Meanings”

Claire Corbeaux, Kat Johnson, Joshua Mora, Corinne Scanlon, Taylor Tisdale, Analiese Vasciannie

Franz Anton Mesmer was an Austrian doctor in the 18th century. He had great interest in astronomy and believed that the moon and the planets could induce disease in humans.  Human diseases caused by the cosmos could be healed using his technique of “animal magnetism” or mesmerism. Mesmer incorporated magnets into his experiments as a way to disrupt gravitational tides that caused sickness in his patients. However, Mesmer found that magnets were not the true cause for his success and believed that it was his own animal magnetism that healed his patients.  Mesmer achieved hypnosis in his patients by gazing at them intensely and making passes, or strokes, usually on the patient’s arms. 

In I am Not Sidney Poitier, Not Sidney discovers a book in his public library that details the process of “fesmerization.” Fesmerization is a lesser known type of hypnotism that lacked notoriety due to its similarity in name to the “debunked” mesmerization. Not Sidney describes Fesmerism as “the perfect form of self-defense.” (Everett, 16) In contrast with mesmerism, which requires extreme physical intimacy, fesmerism can be accomplished by simply making eye contact with one’s subject. Furthermore, the process of mesmerization depends upon mutual consent between patient and practitioner, but fesmerization allows for its practitioner to gain control over its “patient” without said patient’s awareness. Additionally, fesmerization differs from traditional hypnosis as subjects can be forced into doing things that they would normally find morally abhorrent.

Continue reading “The Power in a Gaze”

Though as a class we are continuing forward on our journey through Percival Everett’s works and are currently reading I am Not Sidney Poitier, we are still thinkING about the first work we read by Everett: Frenzy. This thinking is in part a necessity since we are to complete a rewrite of our first Frenzy essay by mid-November. However, even when the rewrite of this essay is completed, I believe we will all find ourselves, at one point or another, thinking back to Frenzy. Our reading of Frenzy has impacted us as readers insofar as that it taught us how we should read and why this kind of reading is important.

In class today we were deliberately asked to think back to Frenzy and contemplate its status as a picaresque novel. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms defines a picaresque novel as “a novel that realistically recounts the adventures of a carefree but engaging rascal who always manages to escape by the skin of his or her teeth” (Murfin and Ray, 382). It further stipulates that the picaresque novel be episodic and that these “episodes” feature a consistent central character who is typically the first-person narrator of the novel. Furthermore, picaresque “heroes”, or picaros, represent static characters since they do not learn or grow as a result of their episodic tribulations. Finally, picaresque novels usually convey some kind of satire. This satire often takes form as a “punch-up” to the class system, being that the narrator usually comes from a low social class. Continue reading “Dionysos and Vlepo: Picaresque Partners”

My Mondays and Wednesdays often begin with Dr. McCoy writing a word out on the board and asking the class to research its origins and the evolution of its meaning. Sometimes, the words are familiar to me. Other times, I am a stranger to them. One class discussion on the various names Dionysos is referred by, lead us to attempt to unpack the etymology of the word “ecstasy”, since Dionysos is often referred to as the god of ecstasy.

Staring up at the word, I thought to myself, Hey! I know this one! And I was at least partially correct in knowing that ecstasy means an overwhelming sense of joy or excitement. But, I never knew that the word originated from the Greek word ekstasis, which itself means “standing outside oneself”.

Standing outside oneself, what does that mean? How can it be accomplished? Metaphorically? Physically? Would standing outside oneself be a good thing, or a bad thing? Continue reading “Everyday Ecstasy”