Jeannette Winterson Monday, Mar 30 2009

Moving out of the 19th century finally!

To explore Jeannette Winterson and Art and Lies

A word about  post modernism: It juxtaposes things wihtout explaining them, it’s very collage-like.  Interested in disrupting what you would normally think.

Novels began to be written around 1700 (late). Short stories were in existence in late romantic era, in 1800.  Novels very quickly become a genre.  (“genre fiction” means it’s formulaic.)

The literary canon has been blown apart!   Or so we would like to hope.

What is great art?  Some people want to abandon this concept, and it is getting wider as we add women, racial diversity, etc.   “As soon as we include women writers in our studies, we decide to forgo the concept of great art.   Thanks a lot!”

Greatness is far too narrowly defined, people are afraid to look at it in a broad away because Stand by Me, from Youtube then we have to pay attention and recognize it in our neighbors.

What is great art, or great writers?  Emerson says something cool about this: “when someone reads something, or hears a great author, they get their own alienated majesty.”

On diluted projections: you have great thoughts and great desires, artistically beautiful sentences, drawings, etc.  Then you go out and adore the art and adore the great artists (ie Shakespeare, Keats, etc), and the only way you worship them is because you have projected yourself onto them.  You are loving yourself that is in them. It’s almost as though we can’t bare to see how great we are, so we have to see our greatness in others.
Part of the problem is our forms of attention.  For example, business majors get a list at Miami of the great literature to pay attention to. I want to know the greats, I want to read them, just tell me! Thinking about the great art requires attention, requires effort to not just be force fed and fall into what other people define as great art.

Consider everything you read as great art, for the rest of the semester. Too…much….thinking! I understand this, but still, sometimes there is just too much to think about. It can get overwhelming to think about this concept, let alone putting it into practice (by donning my “art goggles”). I would much rather be hit by art, blown away by it, stopped by it, by moments of profoundness. But I guess how often really will this happen without conscious attention to that fact that everything or anything could be art?

I think art to me is God. Or God is art. Either way, I see God as the ultimate creator and artist. Therefore, I see beauty and art in everything. As general as that sounds, it gives me the ultimate potential to see art, intelligent design, and beautiful creation in objects, nature, and people themselves. In this way, I think it’s easier and closer to my heart to see the world as a result of a loving Father and Creator, and from that to see everything as art, instead of just for the sake of trying to see art.

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More discussions on digitizing poetry Friday, Mar 27 2009

Our group focused on analyzing the last stanza of the Child and Flowers.  We were unanimous in thinking the scanned version is so much better than the html, and especially the TEI.  We agreed the scanned we more authentic and interesting to read, and keeping the readers interest with visual elements is very important.

What does this poem mean?  It encourages valuing the simple things in life, enjoying the now, saying don’t live in the past.  Interestingly, it seems like it is speaking to a child.  A child who would not be able to understand or grasp the meaning.

Nature hath mines of such wealth–and thou           Never wilt prize its delights as now!

Life hath enough of yet holier bliss!

This is about appreciation of the aesthetic, and visualization. Not just flower picking. Use of color and description.

Enough the rich crimson spots that dwell Midst the gold of the cowslip’s perfumed cell; And the by the blossoming sweet-briars shed, And the beauty that bows the wood-hyacinth’s head. Oh! Happy child in thy fawn-like glee!

One random thing I thought of was the use, applicability, and impact in a person’s life in the very simply idea of “copy and paste.”  The scanned version is most intimate and real as a poem, but you can’t select text to insert it into a blog or save certain lines for later reference in the scan!  I know that instead of re-typing what struck me from the scanned document, I would just forget about it.  So I would loose that meaningful phrase of moment in the digital sphere with the scanned version.

Positives of digitizing:  Writing is readily available to a huge wide audience.  The text is search-able, so if there is a word or idea spelled out in the text, it is available to come up in search engines.  Benefits of having this version to read?  This is text plus image, and really, text and image are the same thing.  So this is very different than just hearing it.

I think it’s a great idea to digitize as much poetry as possible, though the jury is still out for me on whether to put efforts into scanning or html (ing?) the poems, as there are pros and cons for each.  Either way, it gives more people more chances to discover and experience the poetry, and also preserves it in a lasting way.

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Homework? When do we have HOMEWORK for this class? Friday, Mar 27 2009

Comparing digitized poems in three forms: scanned, html, and TEI.

The poem is obviously the same textually, but it is very different in feeling, tone, appeal, and many other aspects in the different versions.

In a simple review, the html was the simplest to read and helped me concentrate on the words.  The simplicity also helped me read slowly, as this type of writing is hard for me to sort through.

Digitizing the poem, especially in the coded TEI version, does absolutely nothing in understanding the poem and if anything takes away from it.

The scanned poem is definitely the one I would choose to read.  Visual elements are a huge factor in poetry, especially in font and stanza and layout.   The scanned also makes it, at least to me, seem like a much more authentic poem.  Poems in books are almost like the authors journal, and holding the book of poetry makes it so much more intimate and easier to connect with the author.

When it is online, especially in the html version, it seems like anyone could have written it.  In this way, we are less likely to connect it with the author and analyze it based on the author’s life, and are more likely to see it from a more general worldview (as the internet is user created, so anything on the web is psychologically connected with this mysterious web author.)

In this way, the different versions digitized do make a difference in the understanding of the poem.

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Reviewing Digital Poetry Monday, Mar 23 2009

To consider:

1. Is the poem the same in the other two versions?  DO they make the poem different? format, layout, etc.

2. What difference will digitizing make to our understanding of poems?

(html, page image, TEI)

Bonus: Apply the poem’s theme about art to the poem itself.  Does digitizing contribute to Heminiz’s aim in writing this poem?  Writing about one thing and then doing something else.

In comparison, all three versions featured the word “friend” most prominently as viewed in the word cloud.  This is really the only similar word in all three versions.

Both 1818 versions were lighter and more positive than the 1831 edition.  The 1818 handwritten version (not the Thomas one) highlighted words like “deep,” which shows Mary Shelley’s heart and soul in writing this.  The 1831 edition strays the most by highlighting words like misery, converse, dark and despair.

Detailed comparing of texts.  The things that are different are shaded (hover mouse on the Juxta program).  This was we can compare side by side.

Questions to ponder:

1. Did Mary Shelley write three different novels?

I don’t think she wrote three different novels completely, but that is not a statement ignoring the three different versions that have different slants and perhaps different moods throughout.  The novel still has the same characters, plot, and basic lessons (about ambition and fame, etc)

2. In these passages, the strangers agree to different things.  What is the difference in what he agrees to and why do these changes matter?

In the 1818 written ed, he agrees that friendship is something that should/can be acquired.  In the 1831 ed he agrees that we are unfashioned creatures.

3.  Ways to visualize versions of text?  How does digitalizing/visualizing help us to understand the three different versions?

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Aurora Leigh – Book 5 Friday, Mar 20 2009

Looking at Book V – Stanza 200 stanza

A poets job is to represent their age/time period, you can’t truly represent or write about an age if you weren’t there.  Look beyond the romanticism of an age.  The challenge of poetry:  take what seems commonplace and record it in poetry, making it last through the ages.  She sites a historical figure (Roland) and for him to cry out for togas and other things of old is “fatal – and foolish too.”

What’s interesting about the language?  What’s confusing?

Laura’s question that she sent along even though she’s not here:

What is epic art and modern life?  Epic art, to me at least, is a little hard to define.  Aurora Leigh itself could be seen as an epic, as it is a long narrative poem.  If, then, we also argue that Aurora Leigh is a hero.  So if this poem is an epic, epic art

Can there be heroes in modern life? According to the poem and me.

Who are the modern day equivalents of the poets at Aurora Leigh is writing about?

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Prose and Poetry: The Battle Wednesday, Mar 18 2009

Aurora Leigh = A narrative written in poetry.

EB Browing – 12 children in the family.  She was always anxious, petite, and was on a morphine dose.

Book III Lines 302-312, What does this show about her journey in becoming a poet?  The mundane and ordinary is required in becoming a poet.  It’s hard work too, as you have to “swim with feet as well as hands.”

She seems to like poetry/verse better, but she is saying financially and by society’s values in England, you can’t survive with just verse.  She write prose in magazines and newspapers to keep her name from the mud.   The prose seems to be the feet, keeping her afloat, and the poetry is the creative and crafty hands.   But both hands and feet, prose and poetry are needed to survive.

Browning obviously wrote this story in poetry, her chosen form of art.  What comment does this make about a woman artist writing about a woman artist?  The layers of a woman who is a poet, writing about a woman who is a poet.  All aspects support her love and her affinity for poetry and the woman artist.  Also, the irony that Aurora Leigh wouldn’t exist without her husbands financial support, because it’s impossible to make a living with just poetry.

Other passages:

Book 1, 304-12 – Metaphors.  Her aunt is a bird.  Aurora views the aunt as confined, but the aunt doesn’t see that because she knows know different.  Aurora is the wild bird, brought into the cage with her aunt, the caged bird.

There are different models of femininity in Aurora’s childhood to explore.   Through her mother Italy is represented, and femininity is also influenced by her Aunt and England.  Aurora is stuck in the middle.

She was raised in Italy, thrust into England, where her curls are broken and she is forced to change.  But when she goes back to Italy, she doesn’t find it the inspiration that she hoped.  Is it okay to float between two worlds and not fit?

Book II – Romney proposes, Aurora refuses, and there is a fight.  Lines 218-25.  Basically, Romney says that she is not going to be a great poet.  Her two comforts in England are reading and writing – books books books!  You can be a mother, a wife, even a Madonna or a saint, but never Christ.   You should be all these things, but you can not be as passionate as Christ.

Aurora’s retort: Book II 400-6.

What you love is not a woman, Romney, but a cause.

Romney doesn’t love her, but loves what she could be and how she could help him.

What he wants is not a bad thing, but she is unworthy of theses and that do otherwise conceive of love.  She’s not unworthy of his love, but unworthy of being the mistress and the help-mate.  Really, instead unworthy, she means she is worth more. She is using language to further her ends, tricking him to say she is wonderful.  She is being subservient?

Book II, 671-84 – She would rather die as a woman artist than marry for securities sake.

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Thoughts on Aurora….Book 1 Wednesday, Mar 18 2009

pg 25 – Reading!

I love this passage:

We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits – so much help by so much reading.  It is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves and plunge soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound, impassioned for it’s beauty and salt of truth – ’tis when we get the right good from a book.

Pg 35

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.

How can we live true life, and is it possible to love truly if we aren’t living a true life, whatever that may be?  Is it even possible to attain or feel a true life or a true love?

Pg 36

We were not lovers, or even friends well matched: say rather, scholars upon different tracks, and thinkers disagreed, he, overfull of what is, and I, haply overbold for what might be.

What is friendship, and how can it be defined?  Or can it even be defined?  I almost think mismatched friends would be a more interested relationship, because you can learn more from them, broaden your thought and life horizens, without being stuck in a world of someone who is essentially still you.  There is passion and more thought involved when you have to always be on your toes, you can’t simply exsist when you are not “friends well matched.”  For each, there is a requirement for constant self examination and questioning, stopping life and belief from being complacent.  On the other end of the scale, scholars upon different tracks can just simply exsist together, without obligation to prove themself or understand the other.  It’s a friendship of simplicity and of true just “being.”

This relationship or passage stick out to me because I think I have a relationship like this.  We are completely different people and thinkers, on different ends of most scales of thought.  But we love talking and debating and learning from each other.   I wonder, do I feel closer with him, or that I can talk with him about more than I can with some friends that are on the very same page in life that I am on?

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Aurora Leigh Monday, Mar 16 2009

Elizabeth Barrett Browning – A Victorian writer.  I do NOT feel at sync with this type of poetry.  I can basically get the rhythm of it, but it takes effort to get into it.  There were a couple of phrases that hit me, and there were some places where she used weird words and rants that I just got annoyed with.  My ears are tuned to a different rhetoric, or humor.  Timing is key!

A memorized sonnet from Laura: The Wind Hoverer?  Written by a priest.  Pits accents against syllables.

EB Browning.  Her mother died when she was about 20.  She published her first book of poetry when she was 22, in 1828.  She was so famous as a poet she was almost poet Laurette.  Very politically radical, she wrote a poem against children oppression in the industrial revolution.  Her father was a personality, he dwarfed his children, kept them around him and didn’t want any of his kids to marry.  She became an invalid and became dependent on morphine (actually, most women of the time were addicted, as it was used for childbearing)

In 1846, she met Robert Brown via letter.  She hid their relationship from her father, and then they eloped!  She became this bohemian, radicalized woman living in Italy.   She wrote some of the most famous love poetry.  Ever, apparently.  “How do I love thee?  let me count the ways?”  Aha!  Maybe I do know her.

Aurora Leigh: Born in Italy, her mother dies when she is 4, her father dies when she is 13.  Her father was rich and had land in England, was getting older and not expected to marry.  When he went to Italy he met Aurora Leigh’s mother in Florence, in a confirmation parade.   He marries her, and they love each other.   He is the kind of man who became uncommon as he suddenly jumped out of the role of the English Lord, prim and proper, and throws off his duties in England for love.  He becomes melanchology when his wife dies.  He teaches Aurora.

Aurora Leigh – the third greatest poem written in Enlgish.  Beaten by: Paradise Lost by Milton and Wordworths The Prelude (the growth of a poets mind)

Aurora Leigh is a coming of age, further as a woman poet.

Barrett disagrees with Locke’s theory of Association of Ideas, she thinks people are a Palimpsest, which is  a piece of parchment or papyrus.  It has many layers of text on it, since it was so hard to make paper.  What is already on/in us?  Phylogeny?  Do we have the knowledge of our ancestors in our genes, or the knowledge of humanity?   It could be God, our parents…who has written on our phylogeny?

She speaks about acculturation, when traveling inland.  When you listen to the divine or infinite, to eternity.   A sense of the outer infinite, see the pose saints are painted in.  God is the outer infinite?

Aurora says her mother died because she loved having the child so much.  Her mother absolutely adored her.

She looks and hungers for the world, feeling a “mother want.”   She feels shut out from the world.

I, Aurora Leigh, was born To make my father sadder, and myself Not over-joyous, truly.

Wow, what a statement about your life!  Kissing full sense into empty words:  through her love she pulls him into a cultural understanding of the language that we all have to learn.  Streaming pretty words together that make no sense: Think nursery rhymes!  They make no sense, some are horrible and barbaric, but from mother to child and what the child hears, it’s all just sweet words.

And kissing full sense into empty words; Which things are corals to cut life upon,

^^ What a line, Laura says.  I should explore this more.  This is very different than the step sisters amputating or cutting themselves so they can fit in the glass slipper, in the culture that they want.  This is different than cutting with a knife, Browning says cutting with coral!  Coral is beautiful, is it not?

There are two uses of the words “live here.”  To be alive in spirit and physically, where she lives and really comes alive and discovers poetry.

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The Lifted Veil, Part 2! Friday, Mar 6 2009

To begin, a throwback to our previous favorite book:

“One mild night in the beginning of November…”  um, hello Frankenstein?

Does Latimer’s brother know no more about poor spirits than his horse knows?  I agree with Laura, there is no one in the world who never suffers.  Basically because there is sin in the world, no one is perfect, etc.  Sadness, loneliness, poor feelings are all a part of being human, so it is definitely impossible to always be positive.   I think Alfred is overcompensating for his LACK of self confidence or some other lack of feeling in his life.  Plus, I have trouble taking anyone seriously that is named Alfred.  Personal problem, I guess.

Laitmer can’t find any doubt or uncertainty in Bertha.  This fact in itself is almost a proof that Latimer can’t actually read minds, every one has even minuscule little doubts reeling through their heads.  Latimer then compares himself to Alfred.  Is he chastising Alfred for not being as sensitive as him?  Latimer seems very jealous of Alfred, even though he doesn’t know him.  All he sees is the outward appearance and the affection from their father.  In this way, Latimer must feel like he has to come up with something to feel superior to Alfred.  Latimer chooses to take pride in his sensitivity and clairvoyance.

Good substance: The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst.

This thought is especially true in relationships.  Latimer asks Bertha if she really loves Alfred.   Bertha then responds it’s easier and better if she doesn’t love her husband.

Alfred tells Bertha that she doesn’t really feel that way.  He is, again, projecting his feelings on her.  It might actually be impossible not to project on someone you love.  Sarah here agrees!

“The easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell him the truth.”

Latimer says to Bertha “Will you love me when we are married?” and two hours later Alfred ends up dead.  Did Latimer kill him?  What would Bertha think?

When Latimer finally penetrates Bertha’s mind, he is horrified.  They both look at each other and judge each other.  There is no hidden landscape or depth in Berthas soul, she is very surface and narrow.

Are there two kinds of projections?  One idealizes Bertha, and one demonizes her.   In a Christian sense, there is something wrong about presuming to judge.  There is this fleeting thought in the mutually judgment standoff, that he is selfish and judgmental also.  Is judging realism?  One way to escape from the knowledge that YOU are petty is to judge other people as petty.  Is there never a true sense of judgment since everyone doing the judging is also worthy of judgment?  This reminds me of Matthew 7:5: You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. > From this, I really think that judgment is never really true, that judgment comes from the judgment of ourselves, projected upon others.  We refuse to acknowledge our own weaknesses, especially in this American, individualistic society, so in hypocrisy we judge people who are equal or even less blameless than we are.

The mutually judge RIGHT after Latimers fathers death.  He doesn’t need her anymore to prove himself to his father (or brother?) so she becomes a real person to him.

That’s all today for judgment and projection!

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The Lifted Veil Wednesday, Mar 4 2009

Channeling airheads!!

(I looked at the girl in the red dress and red hair on the couch)

I wonder what the photographer thinks of me does this lighting make me look too pale I am hungry my hair is falling in my eyes I should shake it out I love my eyes how can I look sexy for this picture do my arms look fat I wonder if my leg fat shows when I cross my legs think pouty think seductive i should stick out my lips more to look like the rest of the famous girl.

Class notes and thoughts:

When you look at someone, you can imagine what they are thinking based on all kinds of clues.  This is a way of understanding the person in front of you.

What about Latimer?  Does he have supernatural powers?  Can he read minds or is he just doing what we all do, looking at people and imagining?

It’s subjective, from HIS eyes it was totally real, to anyone else he is just crazy.  He could just be convincing himself that when he sees the actual person that he saw in a previous vision, the real person is also the person in the vision.  (Think of when you meet someone and think you have met them before, that you recognize them, only to find out you really never have met them.  Same thing with Latimer, he convinces himself the real people in his life are the same as the visions he has.)

Why can’t he read Bertha’s mind?  It would take the fun out of it!  The role that “other” people play in love.  Why would someone hear amazing poetry coming out of a “stupid” really hot football player who only grunts? You are projecting what you want him to be on him, he is just a screen for projections since he doesn’t give much back.  So how is Bertha a perfect screen for Latimer?  What does she do that makes us think that there is a whole new under layer there, that she doesn’t really love Alfred, etc.

There is no tyranny more complete than that which a self-centered negative nature exercises over a morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support.

Sarcasm.  Cynicism.  Sneering.  This is what makes it looks like Bertha has a deep soul to him, he thinks that something is going to move her, and hopefully it is going to be him!  He is the weak sensitive one, drawn to her as a cynic.  You always listen to the person who doesn’t talk much, an assurance or compliment from the worst critic is the most valued.

Parentage:  Latimer’s mother worshiped him, then she died.  His father wanted a different kind of son, didn’t really want Latimer.  Latimer wants the closeness back, wants to be loved.  Is his attitude about himself shaped by his doting from his mother?  He sees himself as cursed, destined, fated to be the most hurt person, to be special.  Like Victor Frankenstein, like Milton’s Satan.  Always contrasts his poetic self with the prose or his realistic self.  He calls himself romantic.

To complete the class, our pre-Green Beer Day Pledge:  I solemnly swear not to drink and drive, go near the railroad tracks in the next 24 hours, and eat every two hours whether I am hungry or not.

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