Weekly Response #4

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280 001

Natalie Phillips

9/18/12

Weekly Response #4

Quote; Morrison: “ As a disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in the Eurocentric tradition that American education favors, both a way of talking about, and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and repression, formations and exercises of power, and meditations on ethics and accountability.” (Morrison 1007)

Quote; Shakespeare: “I’ll have some proof. My name, that was as fresh/ As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black/ As mine own face. […]/” (3. 3. 387-389)

Question: Where is this Africanism that Morrison brings up and is it written completely without some sort of known ulterior motive?

            This aspect of Africanism is truly intriguing because of the implication that it has influenced writing, even when it was not intended to. Perhaps Shakespeare’s Othello is not the best example to demonstrate this, but it works for this instance. The particular passage I would like to examine, “My name […] is now begrimed and black/ As mine own face. […]/” has a very obvious alternate meaning here. That is that because Othello’s face is Black, that it is dishonorable, or unacceptable to begin with. This sort of self-degrading speech perpetuates that Blackness is somehow undesirable. That Othello would refer to his own face as ‘begrimed’ or make reference towards it in comparison to something undesirable shows that Shakespeare was aware of and made the connection between Blackness and societal expectations. Even if it was unconsciously, Shakespeare had to be aware of the implications of these particular words for him to have written them.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. “Playing in the Dark.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.

            Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Othello William Shakespeare. Ed. Edward Pechter. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

            Print. Norton Critical Edition.

Weekly Response #3

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280 001

Natalie Phillips

9/11/12

Weekly Response #3

Quote; Bakhtin: “Not only parody in its narrow sense but all other forms of grotesque realism degrade, bring down to earth, turn their subjects into flesh.” (Bakhtin 688)

Quote; Swift: “On such a Point few Words are best, / And Strephon bids us guess the rest;/ But swears how damnably the Men lie, / In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.” (1. 15-18)

Question: What is it about making something seemingly beautiful or perfect seem ugly and real that is so funny to begin with?

            In the case of Swift’s poem “ The Lady’s Dressing Room”, what makes the degradation of women’s beauty so funny is the man who happens upon the evidence in the poem. The true source of the humor is not that women happen to be so ‘disgusting’, but that the man who happens upon this dressing room is truly surprised by what he finds there. In the case of something like a woman’s beauty men know, somewhere, that women aren’t just born looking like this, that there is work involved. But none of them consciously realize it until it is shoved in their faces. So for a man to be so aghast that a woman does indeed have many of the same faults in appearance that men do is quite ludicrous. It is the same with any other humor of this type. It’s the moment of realization, of the element of equality being brought to the fore, perhaps in a less than graceful manner that makes us laugh. What makes it funny is the realization that something so perfect has problems just like you do, and that thought they may be better at covering it up, they still have the problems, and maybe have a little less fortitude in admitting it is so.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Rabelais and His World.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.

            Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. “The Lady’s Dressing Room”. 1732. Ed. Jack Lynch. Print.

Weekly Response #2

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280 001

Natalie Phillips

9/6/12

Weekly Response #2

Quote; Skhlovsky: “Such habituation explains the principles by which, in ordinary speech, we leave phrases unfinished and words half expressed. In this process, ideally realized in algebra, things are replaced by symbols.” (Skhlovsky 15).

Quote; Andrews: “If you prove that what we believe is wrong, / we should change our minds. / But minds don’t change like that. / We keep proving it/ every time we take another test. /” (1. 3-7)

Question: In the way the Skhlovsky points out that we often replace or leave out things because everyone habitually knows what comes next, isn’t it also true that when we articulate ourselves, we can also put in things that we know other people will get the double meaning behind?

            Skhlovsky brings up a very valid point in that there are areas where prose is a lot like algebra. He makes the point that we often tend to replace words or leave them out all together because there is a common knowledge of what is supposed to be present in a particular context. What I would also like to express, taking this principle even further, is that we often switch out or add words and phrases that have double meanings to get a greater or hidden point across to whomever we are speaking with. Essentially what I’m referring to is word play, and that it relies on a lot of the same habitually to function in context. The example I would use would be from Andrews Dear Professor poems. Specifically the use of the word ‘proving’ in line six. It is because of the previous use of the word in the poem and the connotations that we arrive at the word with that enable this word to carry more meaning than just its base one. The habitually behind the word has allowed it to carry something additional in this context.

Works Cited

Andrews, Nin. Dear Professor. 15. Print

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.

            Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Weekly Response #1

Emily Schmitt

ENG 280

Natalie M. Phillips

9/2/12

Weekly Response #1

Quote; Emily Dickenson: “ Nods from the Gilded pointers-/ Nods from the Seconds slim-/ Decades of Arrogance between/ The Dial life-/ And Him-/” (4. 14-19.).

Quote; Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan: “While practical speech facilitates access to information by making language as transparent as possible, poetic speech contorts and roughens up ordinary language and submits it to what Roman Jakobson called “organized violence,” and it is this roughening up of ordinary language into tortuous “formed speech” that makes poetry poetry rather than a weather report” (Rikvin, Ryan 4).

Question: Does “organized violence” only take place in poetry? Or do some of its elements come through in standard prose?

            Looking at this theory, I have to wonder if what the authours say about the “roughening up” of language is so exclusive to poetry. Looking back at some of the elements in the poems we were assigned I can’t help but note that I’ve seen some of this “roughening up” in standard prose as well as poetry. If you take Dickenson for example, the choppy way she refers to persons or ideas with multiple names and expects us to know what or whom she is talking about at each instance isn’t unfamiliar to me in standard prose. Words or passages with more than one meaning don’t just occur in poetry. Foreshadowing and symbolism are present very strongly in standard prose, and those are both expressions of literature that carry two or more meanings. 

Works Cited

Rikvin, Julie; Ryan, Michael. “Introduction: Formalisms.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.

            Julie Rikvin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 4. Print.

Dickenson, Emily. “The Soul Selects her own Society”