Critics receive such a bad reputation, for the fact that no one really wants to hear a bad review, however, how will we know if the pizza place nearby might give you the stomach flu or the workers do not wash their hands? If this was in the early 1900s, how would they know if their ground beef contained rat and human flesh? Continue reading “A Critic’s Jungle”
The labyrinth of life
In college, many people have different point of views of what college is to them. They have their own ideas of the college experience and they expect different things for what college does to them. College is like a labyrinth, it will confuse you and make you struggle, but when you overcome the maze, you will find your own treasure. Continue reading “The labyrinth of life”
Painful as XVZ
Structure is very evident in our daily lives as mentions in her blog post Easy as ABC, but structure is only for those that are more fortunate. We can see structure in our ABCs and in the general structure of how our day is going to be, but some may not have their ABCs or live a day with certainty in their lives. Continue reading “Painful as XVZ”
The line of jokes
I briefly mentioned how there is a moral line that should never be crossed by satirists and trolls in my other blog post, Satire or trolling?, and that line is very hazy. This line is hazy because morals are all relative and that humor is accepted, by society to a certain degree, to mask meanness and the degree of which can also be relative. Jokes are similar in that they also have this line when they are made at another’s expense, but whether it is a joke, satirical comment, or troll, does not matter when it crosses the line of a member of the audience. It is no longer funny and rather hurtful and mean. Continue reading “The line of jokes”
Illogical Logic
New critics revolutionized American writing and literature analysis, by using analytical laws to determine the quality of writing. It was believed that literature must be logically analyzed in terms of laws, but this logic is illogical. Logic is defined to be “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” by the Merriam Webster Dictionary, and it indicates that logic is subject to change when the reasoning focuses on different assessments and therefor cannot be restricted to such a narrow point of view of law. Continue reading “Illogical Logic”
A gross structure
There is a belief that “all elements of human culture, including literature, may be understood as parts of a system of signs” called structuralism (Murfin 490). Structuralism can be seen in linking of different subjects through a commonality like in the form of alphabetical order, numerical order, and many more forms. However the signs in structuralism do not have to be so clean cut, but in fact it may be dirty, poop dirty.
Warning: There is a graphic image below and is not for the faint of heart. Continue reading “A gross structure”
Look closer
In Percival Everett’s re:f (gesture), Everett hides the meaning of his poems with convoluted descriptions of the human body. Instead of using common terms, such as the nose, Everett uses the scientific name, such as the “nasal fossae” (51). Claire Corbeaux mentioned that by using scientific terms Everett removes the romanticism because the reader is unable to discern Everett’s intent. However, I clearly saw the sexual romanticism, but this may be because I have some predisposed knowledge of the human body, as a Biology major. I understood the terms Everett was using and I believed that Everett was able to romanticize the human body even more than if he did not use them. This idea attacks New Criticism advocates because objectively there would be no value in Everett’s work without knowledge of those terms, but when known, there is more meaning then there could have been. Continue reading “Look closer”
Satire or trolling?
In the Bedford, satirists “debunk and deflate their targets, whether persons, groups, ideas, or institutions” (Murfin 457). There is a similar term used today that is much more controversial and vague, trolls. Can a satirist be a troll and can a troll be a satirist? Continue reading “Satire or trolling?”
It’s complicated
Communication seems simple, so we keep it simple, but that is where it gets complicated. Percival Everett explains this better than I would with his quote in Erasure, “It’s incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean something, but the meaning need not and does not confine itself to that intention. Those sounds, strung as they are in their peculiar and particular order, never change, but do nothing but change. Even if grammatical recognitions are crude, meaning is present. Even if the words are utterly confusing, there is meaning”. Continue reading “It’s complicated”
Disturbed
Professor McCoy has been grilling me to do some “unpacking” on why I believed that the sex in Frenzy, by Percival Everett, was so “disturbing”, so I will. Now I do want to provide some meta-commentary, but it is going to be quite graphic and very awkward, which is why I never did “unpack”.