Garbage that they teach you in AP classes

[Robert E Lee]

I am starting to get sick of my AP class. My teacher is referring to everything as a symbol. The character can be opening a door and the door becomes a symbol of this or a symbol of that. Not everything is meant to represent an idea.

Consider the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a work of children's literature. But my AP teacher tried to portray it as some deep allegory where the river represents freedom. Come on, that's like saying the police station in a detective novel represents security.

Absolutely ridiculous.

[Munro]

Even though English is my absolute favourite subject at school it is almost my most painful, so I feel your pain. Unlike you I am lucky enough to have a truly wise, knowledgable and passionate teacher, and the curriculum in New South Wales high schools are good. Its my fellow students that infuriate me.
Only perhaps four students in the entire class of 30 actually understand and value literature, the rest are there for the sake of it, or so they can get into some university course, or because it looks good on their certificate.
They cram and study Shakespeare, or notes on Miller (just recently), not because they love those texts, or have been swept by the magic of literature, but because "if we don't get good marks...it won't be good." None of them will remember what they studied when they go into the world, and therefore it was all a waste of time. Argh! Maybe I'm some Nazi literature fundamentalist. Maybe thats why I like coming here.

[Shea]

I think that the reason why the teachers mention so many symbols is because they're there. The only thing is those of use who actually adore these works understand the symbols without having to talk about them. I get frustrated too, because I love the sublty of them and when a class has to disect a passage of literature for the rest of the students, I am left with the scar of the surgery.

It's plainly obvious to us that a river represents freedom or a police station represents safety. I think that we book lovers are impatient to get to the meat of the matter. :-?

[Shuai]

I don't know Shea. I really don't thimk that there is meaning in every single thing. It can't be really plausible that these great authors meant for every single thing they describe to have a deep rooted symbol behind them, can it?
I mean, I love books and all, but when I read about a river or a police station, I read about just that. A river and a police station. It's the big picture that matters, not something that is so fundamentally simple.

[Shea]

That pretty much what I'm saying, it's just that a lot of teachers will pick and pry a book apart to reveal the obvious. When I read about a river and a police station, it's on a subliminal level that I recognize the symbolism. Didn't you just naturally feel the river as the path to freedom when you read Huck Finn (if you read it)? Was it necessary for teacher to tell you what the river meant other than that happened to be the way they chose to travel? I hate that I may have to do stuff like that when I begin teaching. :x

[Jay]

I was thinking about the same. Sometime we just see (or we're said) there are symbols, but the thing is, they might not be meant as symbols. If the author isn't alive, no-one can say this is a symbol, this is not. Sometimes river is just a river. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes the author uses a symbol and almost no-one can find the meaning of it. It's the beauty of literature. You read a book and you can find a lot of people who think different about it. And I think it's right that way. Don't you?

[Shea]

Yeah, that's why I'm enjoying this site so much. I never had anyone else do discuss the books that I've read.

[MarsMonster]

it's because the teachers have spent their life studying things some other people wrote about the books and those other people spent their lives analyzing the books. so possibly they found some things that the author didn't even put in the piece. but still, the book is meant to live independently from the author, and everyone should interpret it differently... and the class can help you to realize some things you may have missed reading the book, and after all, you don't have to agree with everything teacher says....... i don't really see the problem.

[tamontes]

to robert e lee. if you truly feel that Huckleberry Finn is a children's story than i am afraid you have been admitted ap status under shallow pretenses. as a suggestion, try examining the character traits of the spanish "picaro," and compare them to that of huck. oliver twist will also serve well in this regard

[b]

You can see every single creation of men - whether or not presented as an art - as a symbol or allegory for whatever aspect of life you can imagine.

But the context in which the creation is presented usually decides the chance that a person actually sees it as a symbol or allegory.

When you are a teacher that doesn't have anything else to do but to pester unwilling students with pseudo-literature, it isn't hard to believe that one jokes around with unmeant symbolism.

[Koa]

I don't know Shea. I really don't thimk that there is meaning in every single thing. It can't be really plausible that these great authors meant for every single thing they describe to have a deep rooted symbol behind them, can it?
I mean, I love books and all, but when I read about a river or a police station, I read about just that. A river and a police station. It's the big picture that matters, not something that is so fundamentally simple.

I agree with this. I don't think authors mean everything in a symbolic way. Sometimes things become symbols unwillingly, i mean it's the authors subconscious... Sometimes critics just go a bit too far and see a meaning behind everything, when instead a river is just a river.


Munro, here in italy people don't choose a literature course, people have literature lessons in the secondary school they choose, wether they want it or not. Same at university, if you choose to study languages or things of that kind, you have literature even if you don't want it. You can imagine the pain of someone that loves literature in the middle of class where people don't give a damn about it and complain because for the exams they actually have to read a book...

[Robert E Lee]

I don't know Shea. I really don't thimk that there is meaning in every single thing. It can't be really plausible that these great authors meant for every single thing they describe to have a deep rooted symbol behind them, can it?
I mean, I love books and all, but when I read about a river or a police station, I read about just that. A river and a police station. It's the big picture that matters, not something that is so fundamentally simple.

I agree with this. I don't think authors mean everything in a symbolic way. Sometimes things become symbols unwillingly, i mean it's the authors subconscious... Sometimes critics just go a bit too far and see a meaning behind everything, when instead a river is just a river.


Munro, here in italy people don't choose a literature course, people have literature lessons in the secondary school they choose, wether they want it or not. Same at university, if you choose to study languages or things of that kind, you have literature even if you don't want it. You can imagine the pain of someone that loves literature in the middle of class where people don't give a damn about it and complain because for the exams they actually have to read a book...

The people in my class are unenthusiastic, too. They just picked the class for the high school record. It irritates me when they don't read the assigned novel and instead read cliff's notes.

[MarsMonster]

why is that so iritating?

[Robert E Lee]

why is that so iritating?

It pisses me off when people take the easy way out of things like that. And it's like a slap in the face to the authors.

[Koa]

Indeed. Though i don't care much about the authors...Just taking the easy way usually seems to me a lack of responsibility...

[MarsMonster]

i still don't understand why it bothers you to see people take the easy way out. you don't have to, it's your choice. they want to- it's their choice.

[waxmephilosophical]

My AP class is pretty perceptive...guess I got lucky. My only gripe is that two student teachers were allowed to use us as their lab rats for weeks at a time...not very fair to the students who took the class for the love of literature and the wish to have a knowledgeable teacher guide us.

[Sam Gamgee]

Well, we don't have AP courses at my small private school, but I have a great teacher, and several very enthusiastic and thoughtful students (basically, enough to make class interesting.)

In regards to the symbolism thing. I think it is true that many people go to far. The great thing about literature is that people can (to a degree) get different things out of them. (I firmly believe in intent of the author, so I only think that can go so far.)

I think too many symbols are SOOO annoying, but then it is interesting to see different interpretations in a text. HOWEVER - the little exposure I have had to freud has been enough for me to want to give up symbolism in literature forever- he RUINS ALL LITERATURE - ugh!

[wimpkin]

you're in AP classes. wait til you take IB English. there's a difference between children's books and AP-ish type of books. it seems to me that you have a hard time catching the symbols..i do too, it takes practice. hang in there. you'll learn to like it. ;)

[Robert E Lee]

you're in AP classes. wait til you take IB English. there's a difference between children's books and AP-ish type of books. it seems to me that you have a hard time catching the symbols..i do too, it takes practice. hang in there. you'll learn to like it. ;)

I tookan IB English course when I went to school in Switzerland. There's really not much of a difference except that the kids aren't as dumb as they are in AP.

[Shea]

I guess I had a different experience than the rest of you. I went to an art school for high school, and my major was literary arts. We were all pretty much of the same interest literarilly (is that a word, I wonder?).

[Munro]

It's whats wrong with education today. The purpose of education was so that you have a good wide knowledge of the world and are reasonably knowledgeable to make it in the wide world when you come of age. Now it is treated as vocation, where kids only do high school courses to get into their university course of choice, so they can get into whatever profession. Their drive to get the best marks possible clouds what they are learning, they never truly enjoy or love what they are learning (which is important) and end up in some ****house office in some dead-end job spending their life making unfulfilling money, having forgotten everything they crammed for in school, and regretting the time they moaned "when the hell will I need farkin' Shakespeare in a job interview?!".
Yer, the symbols thing is hella annoying, which is why I prefer independent reading to studying texts.

[Rotty1021]

Munro, though I'm chiming in a few months late, I must say well said on that last post. I am appalled when my peers joke about the things we are learning in class, are bored during times of deep intellectual learning, and "have fun" when they waste two hour periods doing nothing. While having fun is essential in life, it's a sad thing that they have no clue as to what will happen when they try to pass college courses by slacking off. My opinion on this whole debacle is that there are no elderly figures in these young peoples' lives enstilling in them the importance of an education, and how what happens in high school will influence their lives.

I am in no way saying kids can't be kids; they need to have fun in today's world, but work is important, too. A little more self discipline is needed by students. As a future psychotherapist who would like to work with teens, I pray that I can get this message off to at least one person during my work. I can try now, too, though!

[ThousandthIsle]

I was disappointed with my AP English class too - I felt like our teacher presented us with these webs of symbols that never made a full connection to anything... I kept waiting for some monumental epiphany and was never satisfied. I think it is partly because not every author consciously uses part of their story to symbolize something. I found myself resenting AP English in the same way I resent certain religions - where somebody gets their hands on a book and draws their own conclusions/interpretations without running it by the author, and then puts it in everyone else's face as a fact.

What I DID enjoy about AP English though was tuning into a lot of the adjectives the author used to set the tone... It was like a more mild version of symbolism, where you gained a better understanding of the type of story that was written, without branching out into irrelevancy.

[stlukesguild]

Great works of literature survive because they cannot be reduced to a single simple "meaning"... a definition... but rather they reward repeated reading. A good teacher can only lead the student to some aspects of a work of literature. Some may focus upon character... others upon the development of the narrative... still others upon formal issues of structure and language. Greater understanding cannot be handed to you on a platter. It only comes with time, effort and experience. Any work of literature changes as we change. Someone who has spent a great deal of time reading will bring to any strong work of literature connections and insights that go beyond those of the casual reader. What's the great Lex Luther quote? "Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe." Certainly not every element in a novel or poem is symbolic of some larger concept... and certainly there are elements in some works of literature which may not have been intended as having some larger symbolic "meaning" but may now be seen that way in light of later works of literature (for as T.S. Eliot correctly noted the strong works of new art influence those of the past... or our interpretation of such... as surely as the works of the past impact the future). Having said this much I find myself agreeing with Tomontes in that I might certainly question anyone's judgment concerning literature who could imagine that Huckleberry Finn was no more than a work of "children's fiction".

[PeterL]

I can understand annoyance about symbols being pointed out, and I also agree that sometimes the professors and critics see things as symbols that are not intended as symbols. I also think that most human expression has more than one meaning behind it, and writers frequently create symbols without even noticing. I also have found works of literature in which I see symbols and figures of speech that others don't notice. Writers often insert references to events and people that they know personally without letting the reader know that there is a personal joke, or something, there; these jokes and personal asides are often taken as something with deep meaning that isn't there.

And remember that Lex Luthor quote. It will become very useful if you study literature in grad school.

[SleepyWitch]

what's AP?

[Hyacinth42]

AP means "Advanced Placement" and IB means "International Baccalaureate"... AP classes are "smart people classes" and IB classes are also "smart people classes", there is a lot of debate over which is better/who is smarter ;) I personally think that IB kids are smarter, but yet incredibly stupid for taking IB (unless they're geniuses)

Anyways, what really horrible is when you then start seeing similar symbols in other things... I watched a movie a while back (can't remember what it was) and made connections between it and Albert Camus's "The Stranger" *shudder* and I hated that book... The good thing about putting so many symbols in stories/books is that they are mostly BS, and if you're good at BS, then you do fine ;)

[stlukesguild]

Why, exactly, do you imagine symbols to be mostly BS? Should all art be reduced to a variant of Frank Stella's dictum, "What you see is what you see"? Should we imagine that every work of fiction and every poem is "about" nothing more than the literal narrative? Personally, I find a great part of the poetry in a work of literature lies in the various symbolic interpretations that go beyond the literal.

[bibliophile190]

My highschool doesn't have AP courses. I'd like to take one though. It is a bit annoying when I'm usually the only one in my class to finish our reading assignments.

[Redzeppelin]

I found myself resenting AP English in the same way I resent certain religions - where somebody gets their hands on a book and draws their own conclusions/interpretations without running it by the author, and then puts it in everyone else's face as a fact.

This is a somewhat fair criticism - but, as an AP teacher, I think there are some things to consider.

1. Good AP teachers are (or should be) aware the their interpretation of the book is only ONE potential way to interpret it; I make it clear that the way I see the book is not the definitive way the book should be interpreted, but that it is a way that logically adds up for me. They are invited to challenge my reading and demand me to defend that reading; as well, they are encouraged to come up with their own readings and defend them.

2. We can't "run our interpretation by the author" for a number of reasons:

a. The author's likely to be dead (at least for the books in my course).
b. The author - if alive - wouldn't tell me if I was right anyway; most authors are notoriously evasive when it comes to interpreting their writing, and some (like Faulkner) would simply tell you a lie as a red herring.

[Bakiryu]

My English class just began a week ago but it's really, really boring. We haven't begun reading anything but my teacher just quoted a reading list and it's supposed to be classics. The only thing I've done there is stare out of the window while writing poetry. figures.

[brainstrain]

Well, in that particular book, your teacher is probably right.

But it's true that often books are disected so far that we see not what the author wrote, but what we expect to see. It's silly, really.

My Dad is a teacher, and one of his friends once met with the author of a book she teaches in her class. She asked about some important underlying symbol in the novel, and the author said 'What?'. After the teacher explained what she had been teaching most of her life, the author said 'Well, I didn't put those things there on purpose, but it certainly makes sense.'

Often the best authors do these thing subconciously - if it's so subtle that you think it probably doesn't mean anything, but your teacher says it does, humor them. You might learn something.

By the way - my Dad is an IB History teacher, and his friend was my English II-Honors teacher.

Just ignore my signature, it's being funky tonight...

[Hyacinth42]

Why, exactly, do you imagine symbols to be mostly BS? Should all art be reduced to a variant of Frank Stella's dictum, "What you see is what you see"? Should we imagine that every work of fiction and every poem is "about" nothing more than the literal narrative? Personally, I find a great part of the poetry in a work of literature lies in the various symbolic interpretations that go beyond the literal.

First of all, sorry that I took so long to post (haven't had time to get on)... Anyways, I'm not saying all symbols are BS, just the horrible ones that AP and IB teachers put into the work :sick: . Most kids get through IB with good "BS skills", and those "skills" are incredibly useful in english. I mean, we had to read Equus in theatre, and my theatre teacher went on and on about how the main character was gay, but because his dad was so strict, he couldn't be, and so his motivation was that he wanted to be gay... And that the horse was symbolizing a man or something. I told him that was horribly wrong and... wrong, but I couldn't think of a different motivation for him, so he was convinced he was right :rolleyes: (of course my gay teacher would come up with this). And finally, there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

[nathank]

If an authors got something to say, why don't they just say it? Why bury it away in subtle allusions and symbols that may or may not be there? If what the author has to say is important enough to the author, I would hope they would put it right out in front for ALL to see. It would seem that if the idea is important enough, the author would make an effort to make it show through without question.

[aabbcc]

The answer lies in something rather simple and obvious - those dull and boring Formal Logic and Philosophy lessons from your average high school (yeah, those during which you used to read incognito, or play pocket chess with your mate, or just stare through the window on the outside sunny day instead of paying attention when the basics of semiotics were introduced :D).
As much as you could apply those concepts to philosophy or linguistics - you can also apply them to art.

Without going into the sign/symbol/etc differentiation, let me remind you of one very important point: nothing is a symbol until interpreted as such. In fact, the need for interpretation of something as a symbol, in order for it to have a nature of a symbol, was the part of definition if I recall correctly.

Technically, everything around you are symbols. The words you are reading now are symbols. Even moreso, the language itself you are speaking is composed out of symbols. (Remember your native language classes from school... what was that definition of a language? ... a set of symbols..., rings a bell? ;)) The words of a language stand for something else, their acoustic "value" of a sound, or visual "value" of a written word, are not itself a concept you create in your mind when you see/hear a specific word, it represents something else (by similarity or not - if we get into this we will get into symbol/sign differentiation, etc, which I consider to be fairly pointless for this purpose), ergo, it is a symbol. But, until you interpret it, it is purely - nothing. A scratch on a paper. A sound. And nothing more. It takes your interpretation of it to make it a symbol, and to give to it certain value.

Symbols are typical for human beings. In fact, symbol is a "unit" of what you would call "culture" (remember that typical high school division of reality - organic with cell as unit, anorganic with atom as unit, and suborganic - i.e. culture - with sign as a unit?), the whole culture itself, produced by mankind, is based on symbols and interpretation of symbols - starting with language, that very first "symbolic" property of a man.

Alas, I digress. My point being: having in mind the typical school definition of a symbol, and recognising the reality around you being formed also out of symbols, just "raise" the whole issue one level higher - and apply it to art.

Then you will see why it is perfectly possible of both sides of the argument being right. The question is not what is a symbol in literary piece (impossible to say), but, rather, what do I interpret as a symbol (and, in cases of high school Literature classes, what have dozens of critics before your professor interpreted as a symbol). Another person's reality can never be your reality, all is subjective, all is a subject of interpretation - especially Literature.

[ThousandthIsle]

This is a somewhat fair criticism - but, as an AP teacher, I think there are some things to consider.


You are right, Red, and I did not mean to come off as so unappreciative towards teachers. I should have clarified my resentment towards AP English better, so I will do it now! My teacher was in the middle of a divorce the year I had AP English. To make it worse, the man she was divorcing was another English teacher whose classroom was right next to hers, and all day, all year, we could hear his voice echoing through the walls. I'm sure that didn't help her keep her focus on her class.

A lot of the material we were presented felt very fragmented to all of us. I should have been more specific in saying that it was this particular class, not the AP English program as a whole. I enjoy looking deeper into literature, and even considering possible interpretations to texts. However, there was so much given to us with such wishy-washy reasoning... I remember being very irritated throughout the year as our teacher made these claims - not presenting them as a possiblity so much as - "Here's what so-and-so was symbolising," and then never really elaborating beyond that so her students could learn how she came upon that conclusion. She also should have treated symbolism more subjectively. She presented it very cut and dry, and for a long time, I was very intimidated by literature, because I was afraid I would not catch all of the "hidden meanings."

I was a nervous wreck before the AP exams (she always gave me 2s on our practice exams in class), and I was very doubtful that my own mind could carry me through the exams - wondering if I would be able to manage to interpret everything correctly. I passed both lit exams with 4s each, and more than granting me college credits, those scores assured me that everyone has a right to enjoy literature, and to draw their own meanings from it.

[stlukesguild]

If an authors got something to say, why don't they just say it? Why bury it away in subtle allusions and symbols that may or may not be there? If what the author has to say is important enough to the author, I would hope they would put it right out in front for ALL to see. It would seem that if the idea is important enough, the author would make an effort to make it show through without question.

Then why should an author or any artist even waste the time with the art? If Beethoven wanted to convey nothing more than that he felt melancholy sometimes why not simply say so and forget all the effort in composing a sonata or symphony that might not clearly be understood by all. If Dickens wanted to say something along the line of "poverty sucks" why waste all that time and effort inventing characters and narratives that were completely superfluous? He could have simply said "Poverty sucks," and we'd all nod our heads in agreement and been done with it. And what the hell were all those painters thinking? All those images and colors and textures. Just say what you've got to say and be done with it. And poets! My God, those poets! They're the worst. Rhyme and form and rhythm and all that time seeking for the "perfect word"... the "perfect metaphor". What a waste of time. Surely Shakespeare could have saved himself a good deal of time and paper and ink and replaced half of his sonnets with a simple phrase that was clear and to the point... perhaps something like "When I think of you, I feel blue". Heck, it even rhymes.:rolleyes: :nod:

[stlukesguild]

there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

Yes... there are some stories that are just stories and there are some paintings that are just images... or at least they may begin as such for the artist. As a visual artist I can tell you that a work of art may begin with nothing more than an intention to capture a certain image or mood or atmosphere that caught the artist's eye. You would do well to remember, however, that most artists in any field (literature, music, visual art) are very well educated within their field. Most of the strongest poets have read a great deal of poetry. Most painters have looked a great deal at other's paintings. As a work of art develops these various influences often come into play. Sometimes it is consciously... perhaps an intentional reference to another artist or even a rejection of his or her work. In other instances it may be subconsciously. As an artist's body of work grows the influences and the levels of "meaning" often grow increasingly complex. This does not mean that you cannot appreciate such a work of art without grasping all these levels of meaning, allusions and relationships. This can only happen as the audience/reader/viewer/listener becomes more experienced. Someone listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony with little or no experience of classical music can certainly appreciate the work for its drama and its powerful and beautiful tunes. Someone with a good deal of experience with classical music may also appreciate the manner in which Beethoven built upon and greatly expanded the traditional classical forms and might also recognize how his work acts as a precursor for later composers. Art is continually engaged in a dialog. Every truly strong work of art enters into the dialog not merely with the audience but also with other artists. A truly strong new work of art will often impact how we see older works as well as influence future works. By the same token the great work of art will speak to the audience of the present as well as the future. As J.L Borges noted in one of his wonderful essays the Shakespeare or the Don Quixote that were read in the 1600s were not the same works that were read by the Victorians nor the same works as we read today. By the same token, the Shakespeare that you read at 16 will certainly not be the same Shakespeare you read at 35 or 70. The role of the teacher or the critic with regard to literature is in part to lead the reader to perhaps become aware of some of these other levels of meaning or interpretation that exist in the work of art. Certainly you may disagree with a teacher's or a critic's interpretations... indeed I would encourage anyone to be ever skeptical and open to thinking for themselves. However, if you are to challenge this teacher or critic's interpretations you must be aware that you must be able to back up your arguments. You think your teacher was wrong in a specific instance about a specific work... why do you think he was wrong? Have you read what other critics have said? Have you read more by this author? Have you read enough of other key works of literature so that you can recognize this author's predecessors and successors? Learning to regurgitate what was taught to you... to BS about what you imagine the teacher wants to hear is certainly a skill that will get you through most high-school and college literature courses. Learning to think for your self... and developing the skills and knowledge base needed to back up your thoughts is infinitely more difficult... and I would suggest, infinitely more rewarding.:idea:

[nathank]

Then why should an author or any artist even waste the time with the art? If Beethoven wanted to convey nothing more than that he felt melancholy sometimes why not simply say so and forget all the effort in composing a sonata or symphony that might not clearly be understood by all. If Dickens wanted to say something along the line of "poverty sucks" why waste all that time and effort inventing characters and narratives that were completely superfluous? He could have simply said "Poverty sucks," and we'd all nod our heads in agreement and been done with it. And what the hell were all those painters thinking? All those images and colors and textures. Just say what you've got to say and be done with it. And poets! My God, those poets! They're the worst. Rhyme and form and rhythm and all that time seeking for the "perfect word"... the "perfect metaphor". What a waste of time. Surely Shakespeare could have saved himself a good deal of time and paper and ink and replaced half of his sonnets with a simple phrase that was clear and to the point... perhaps something like "When I think of you, I feel blue". Heck, it even rhymes.:rolleyes: :nod:

I assumed that my post would be misunderstood. I never said "say it simply" or in 2 words. I said make it more obvious. Otherwise, isn't the author just writing for him or herself? And if that's the case, that none of that other stuff is meant for the general reader, then what becomes the point of reading these more challenging and supposedly "deeper" works. Many people read to challenge their own ideas, to "broaden their mind", and so on. But if the only books with these high-brow ideas are the ones that are impenetrable to people without PhD's in literature what becomes the point? We might as well just read John Grisham, because the average person can't decipher the subtle allusions and symbols in these other works.

Again, I'm also not talking about the obvious, like Dicken's thoughts on poverty or Shakespeare on love. I'm talking about more subtly suggested ideas like those found in Joyce, Pynchon, Gaddis, Nabokov, Barth and all the other highly allusive and symbolic writers whose underlying ideas are buried deeply in their works and cannot be found unless you have an extensive background in the topics that support their work.

[stlukesguild]

I assumed that my post would be misunderstood. I never said "say it simply" or in 2 words. I said make it more obvious. Otherwise, isn't the author just writing for him or herself?

Again I might use an analogy to other art forms. What is the "obvious" meaning of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Bach's Well tempered Clavier? Is there an obvious meaning to one of Rembrandt's self-portraits? I can clearly tell what the painting represents but what does it "mean"? In other words... is the point of art nothing more than an expression of an obvious "meaning"? And if the artist is not conveying an obvious meaning does that mean the work has no value or worth except to the artist?

And if that's the case, that none of that other stuff is meant for the general reader, then what becomes the point of reading these more challenging and supposedly "deeper" works. Many people read to challenge their own ideas, to "broaden their mind", and so on. But if the only books with these high-brow ideas are the ones that are impenetrable to people without PhD's in literature what becomes the point?

Modern artists have especially struggled with this dilemma. Is art to be created for the masses? Should everything be dumbed down to the level of Harry Potter or network television so that the broadest possible audience may experience and enjoy the work? Or does the audience have a responsibility as well as the artist/author? The reality is that the greatest literature and music has always had a limited audience. The cognitive challenges and demands it places upon the reader/audience are beyond the ability of most. The average reader certainly will find Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Pynchon, Barth, etc... dense... difficult... perhaps incomprehensible... but then again the average reader past or present would find Milton, Dickinson, Blake, Dante, Plato, Hölderlin, Mallarme, Keats, Donne, Homer, Virgil, or Shakespeare no less daunting. This may sound elitist... but it is an elitism that is something of an elective affinity. It is not an elitism of wealth or position or even of formal education of degree. Shakespeare's poetry, Wagner's operas, Picasso's paintings all present the audience with definite challenges. The audience willing to put forth the effort will be certainly rewarded. For some readers the difficult challenge is worth the effort... and there is a certain pleasure to be earned from overcoming the challenge. For others, not. So the question, again, is to whom is the artist responsible? Does he or she owe it to society to make every attempt to reach the broadest audience possible... even at the expense of dumbing down the work? Or do individuals owe it to themselves... and to society to make every effort to broaden their own abilities? Or do artists only owe it only to be honest to themselves... and hope that their art finds its appropriate audience? These questions have plagued artists for millenia and have been explored by writers such as Plato, Tolstoy, Wilde, Woolf, Hesse, Mann, etc...

We might as well just read John Grisham, because the average person can't decipher the subtle allusions and symbols in these other works.

Again, this is certainly one option. If all I demand of literature is that it be easily understood... transparent or obvious in what it conveys... then such a choice may be appropriate. On the other hand, I might feel that the efforts demanded by challenging works of art will be rewarded with a sort of pleasure not afforded by the easy. The choice is yours.

Again, I'm also not talking about the obvious, like Dicken's thoughts on poverty or Shakespeare on love. I'm talking about more subtly suggested ideas like those found in Joyce, Pynchon, Gaddis, Nabokov, Barth and all the other highly allusive and symbolic writers whose underlying ideas are buried deeply in their works and cannot be found unless you have an extensive background in the topics that support their work.

But is Dickens really obvious? Is his art so transparent that the average reader can immediately grasp every level of meaning he conveys? And Shakespeare...??? Are Shakespeare's sonnets truly far more obvious in meaning and less demanding upon the reader than Joyce or Pynchon or Nabokov? How many average readers can easily fathom a sonnet such as this:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Or thus:

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

And even a rather "easy/obvious" poem such as the following I would presume would present some real challenges to the average reader... and how much more it might be appreciated by the reader who has taken the time to read other earlier sonnets by Petrarch or Ronsard and can recognize some of the formal/structural innovations as well as the manner in which earlier conciets about the beauty of the beloved have been turned upon their head:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

While Joyce certainly presents some real difficulties I doubt that with the exception of Finnegan's Wake his work is more challenging than Dante, Plato, Lawrence Sterne, Blake, or many other older writers. It surely challenges the reader's assumptions and expectations... but a good deal of the strongest art has always done as much... but it is not impossible for the reader with some experience willing to put forth the effort. Is it worth it? Again, the choice is yours. I greatly enjoyed parts of Ulysses but prefer Faulkner and Proust.

[Hyacinth42]

You would do well to remember, however, that most artists in any field (literature, music, visual art) are very well educated within their field. Most of the strongest poets have read a great deal of poetry. Most painters have looked a great deal at other's paintings. As a work of art develops these various influences often come into play. Sometimes it is consciously... perhaps an intentional reference to another artist or even a rejection of his or her work. In other instances it may be subconsciously. As an artist's body of work grows the influences and the levels of "meaning" often grow increasingly complex.

While I agree on you with this, I still say that it doesn't apply to all stories.For example, I personally believe that the people who try to put symbolism into Lord of the Rings are insane... I mean honestly, there are no "levels of meaning" in Lord of the Rings, they're just stories meant for entertaintment... Although, there are some things that should have a deeper meaning (otherwise they'd be totally pointless) and the meaning doesn't seem to be there, and so any meaning put there seems incorrect... Like, this one poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams... We had to learn it a few years back, and it had no point (which was really annoying) and we were expected to "analyze" it...



Learning to regurgitate what was taught to you... to BS about what you imagine the teacher wants to hear is certainly a skill that will get you through most high-school and college literature courses. Learning to think for your self... and developing the skills and knowledge base needed to back up your thoughts is infinitely more difficult... and I would suggest, infinitely more rewarding.

Well, it's not really regurgitation of BS, its the act of finding multiple symbols in a story that doesn't have that many... So, you make up things that fit, but you don't really believe. It's not that you're not thinking, you're just coming up with interpretations that you don't necessarily think are correct, but can pass as plausible interpretations, and are therefore are BS ;) .

[nathank]

I assumed that my post would be misunderstood. I never said "say it simply" or in 2 words. I said make it more obvious. Otherwise, isn't the author just writing for him or herself?

Again I might use an analogy to other art forms. What is the "obvious" meaning of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Bach's Well tempered Clavier? Is there an obvious meaning to one of Rembrandt's self-portraits? I can clearly tell what the painting represents but what does it "mean"? In other words... is the point of art nothing more than an expression of an obvious "meaning"? And if the artist is not conveying an obvious meaning does that mean the work has no value or worth except to the artist?

And if that's the case, that none of that other stuff is meant for the general reader, then what becomes the point of reading these more challenging and supposedly "deeper" works. Many people read to challenge their own ideas, to "broaden their mind", and so on. But if the only books with these high-brow ideas are the ones that are impenetrable to people without PhD's in literature what becomes the point?

Modern artists have especially struggled with this dilemma. Is art to be created for the masses? Should everything be dumbed down to the level of Harry Potter or network television so that the broadest possible audience may experience and enjoy the work? Or does the audience have a responsibility as well as the artist/author? The reality is that the greatest literature and music has always had a limited audience. The cognitive challenges and demands it places upon the reader/audience are beyond the ability of most. The average reader certainly will find Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Pynchon, Barth, etc... dense... difficult... perhaps incomprehensible... but then again the average reader past or present would find Milton, Dickinson, Blake, Dante, Plato, Hölderlin, Mallarme, Keats, Donne, Homer, Virgil, or Shakespeare no less daunting. This may sound elitist... but it is an elitism that is something of an elective affinity. It is not an elitism of wealth or position or even of formal education of degree. Shakespeare's poetry, Wagner's operas, Picasso's paintings all present the audience with definite challenges. The audience willing to put forth the effort will be certainly rewarded. For some readers the difficult challenge is worth the effort... and there is a certain pleasure to be earned from overcoming the challenge. For others, not. So the question, again, is to whom is the artist responsible? Does he or she owe it to society to make every attempt to reach the broadest audience possible... even at the expense of dumbing down the work? Or do individuals owe it to themselves... and to society to make every effort to broaden their own abilities? Or do artists only owe it only to be honest to themselves... and hope that their art finds its appropriate audience? These questions have plagued artists for millenia and have been explored by writers such as Plato, Tolstoy, Wilde, Woolf, Hesse, Mann, etc...

We might as well just read John Grisham, because the average person can't decipher the subtle allusions and symbols in these other works.

Again, this is certainly one option. If all I demand of literature is that it be easily understood... transparent or obvious in what it conveys... then such a choice may be appropriate. On the other hand, I might feel that the efforts demanded by challenging works of art will be rewarded with a sort of pleasure not afforded by the easy. The choice is yours.

Again, I'm also not talking about the obvious, like Dicken's thoughts on poverty or Shakespeare on love. I'm talking about more subtly suggested ideas like those found in Joyce, Pynchon, Gaddis, Nabokov, Barth and all the other highly allusive and symbolic writers whose underlying ideas are buried deeply in their works and cannot be found unless you have an extensive background in the topics that support their work.

But is Dickens really obvious? Is his art so transparent that the average reader can immediately grasp every level of meaning he conveys? And Shakespeare...??? Are Shakespeare's sonnets truly far more obvious in meaning and less demanding upon the reader than Joyce or Pynchon or Nabokov? How many average readers can easily fathom a sonnet such as this:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Or thus:

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

And even a rather "easy/obvious" poem such as the following I would presume would present some real challenges to the average reader... and how much more it might be appreciated by the reader who has taken the time to read other earlier sonnets by Petrarch or Ronsard and can recognize some of the formal/structural innovations as well as the manner in which earlier conciets about the beauty of the beloved have been turned upon their head:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

While Joyce certainly presents some real difficulties I doubt that with the exception of Finnegan's Wake his work is more challenging than Dante, Plato, Lawrence Sterne, Blake, or many other older writers. It surely challenges the reader's assumptions and expectations... but a good deal of the strongest art has always done as much... but it is not impossible for the reader with some experience willing to put forth the effort. Is it worth it? Again, the choice is yours. I greatly enjoyed parts of Ulysses but prefer Faulkner and Proust.


Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reply. These have always been questions I have pondered and being a non-English major (perhaps the antithesis, science) I have never really had the chance to pose such questions to someone with any background in these areas. I have always read and enjoyed books of all kinds, but I never really thought about them in the ways you presented here. I never thought it could be a choice as to how one reads. That authors are writing for the reasons they have and that all books aren't created for all people. I really appreciated your comment of a chosen/self-imposed elitism, an interesting thought. All of my high school English teachers would complain that the only "good" authors were the "challenging" ones and that the rest is garbage and that you are pathetic if that's what you choose to read (ie Grisham, King, etc). They would of course always include that you are stupid if you don't get the "challenging" books as well. So, thanks for a different point of view!

[nathank]

So, you make up things that fit, but you don't really believe. It's not that you're not thinking, you're just coming up with interpretations that you don't necessarily think are correct, but can pass as plausible interpretations, and are therefore are BS ;) .

That's hilarious, I always thought it was just me!! :0

[stlukesguild]

While I agree on you with this, I still say that it doesn't apply to all stories.For example, I personally believe that the people who try to put symbolism into Lord of the Rings are insane... I mean honestly, there are no "levels of meaning" in Lord of the Rings, they're just stories meant for entertaintment... Although, there are some things that should have a deeper meaning (otherwise they'd be totally pointless) and the meaning doesn't seem to be there, and so any meaning put there seems incorrect... Like, this one poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams... We had to learn it a few years back, and it had no point (which was really annoying) and we were expected to "analyze" it...

Again, I agree with the notion that not all books, stories, poems, or works of art have multiple levels of "meaning". There are times, for example, in a painting that it is nothing more than "what you see is what you see" as the painter Frank Stella so famously put it. Sometimes a painting of a knife and a loaf of bread is nothing more than a rendering of what the artist saw. At other times it is definitely intended as a reference to the Eucharist or to paintings by earlier artists. The same certainly holds true of literature. I'm not certain I'd agree with you with regard to the Lord of the Rings... although I'm no expert here... it's been many years since I read it. Nevertheless, I believe it would be foolish to underrate the intentions of the author in this case. Tolkein was a well-respected professor of English literature and languages. He was fascinated with myths and fairy tales and read a great deal of such works by authors such as William Morris and other Pre-Raphaelites and Lewis Carroll who influenced his belief in the value of the fairie-tale/fantasy/myth genre. From the Pre-Rapaelites (and William Blake) he developed a deep distrust or dislike of modern mechanized/industrialized society... something which impacted the ancient, pre-Modern bucolic settings of his works. He admitted to being influenced greatly by Scottish, Celtic, English, German and Scandinavian legends... especially works such as the Kalevala, the so-called "Poetic Edda" , the Volsunga Saga as well as Homer, Sophocles and Shakespeare. Most important was Beowulf. Tolkein was a true scholar of this Anglo-Saxon epic which he translated into contemporary English. While many scholars undervalued the work because of the fantasy nature of the battle scenes Tolkien argued that the author of Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem and symbolic of larger issues of faith, destiny, good and evil. He would incorporate these concepts in an equally symbolic manner into his own writings. Beyond Tolkein's literary sources, he also built much into his writings relating to his deep Catholic beliefs: concepts of clearly delineated entities of good and evil, destiny, etc... Interestingly enough, one of his greatest plot twists was based upon a key element in Shakespeare's MacBeth... a work of which Tolkein was somewhat critical (as many artists are of the very artists that the fear have too great of an impact upon their own art). All of this suggests to me that Tolkein intended something far more than a mere bit of entertainment.

As for William Carlos William's The Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I agree that on the surface the poem does not seem to say a lot. Much of the "meaning" of the poem, however, is dependent upon the reader's awareness of what the author intended. The poem is an example of an "imagist" poem... a poem that essentially paints a picture of a thing rather than conveying an idea or narrative. In other words, if we were to look for an analogy in painting for most poetry it would be found among the great narrative paintings... or portraits. The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc... convey grand narratives. For the Romantics it is the thoughts or the feelings of the poet that often becomes the narrative. With the imagist poem see the poem as a still life... a presentation of an image. Other strong examples would include early Ezra Pound, Rilke's Book of Images, even some of Rossetti's poems that focus upon "things". William Carlos Williams creates a great "image" that clearly relates to both his strong love of American culture and Asian zen thought. One might compare William's poem to some examples of Japanese poetry
(translated here by Kenneth Rexroth from One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese)

On Asuka River
Maple leaves are floating.
On Mount Katsuragi,
High upstream, they are
Already falling from the trees.

-Anonymous from Manyóshú

The snow falls and falls.
The mountains and meadows sleep.
Only an old mill
Stays awake.

-Ókura Ichijitsu

Like William's poem the Japanese Zen poems do not convey an abstract idea, the feeling of the poet, or a narrative. They merely paint an image... beautifully concise and with a beautiful language. But Williams is also an American and very concerned that he avoid anything that smacks of the refinement of older cultures. Wallace Stevens in his Anecdote of the Jar makes a similar use of colloquial American imagery and language:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

In part Stevens jar acts as a counterpart to Keat's Grecian Urn (Ode to a Grecian Urn). Where the European, Keats presents the triumph of art over nature/time in the form of a beautifully artful, ornate carved urn that has survived the centuries and which is described with a beautifully elegant Shakespearean language or vocabulary, Stevens, the American, has but a plain jar in Tennessee which is surrounded by nature triumphant. William's poem works in a similar manner presenting a very American image and insisting upon its importance ("So much depends upon..."). Of course in rural America so dependent upon agriculture so much DOES depend upon the wheelbarrow... the farmer's tools. But Stevens is also insisting upon the aesthetic importance of the image. Just as a painter who paints a pair of homely shoes (like Van Gogh) or the simple harvest of some few apples (like Cezanne) Williams insist upon the aesthetic worth of the image/object he is concentration upon for the very reason that it has caught his attention. Cezanne and Van Gogh lend a certain nobility to their lowly subject matter through the beatiful manner it which they are rendered. Williams suggests the same choosing the wonderfully suggestive word: "glazed". An old master painting uses the technique known as "glazing"... is "glazed. A precious enamel is glazed. William's red wheelbarrow is not merely wet or rained on... but is "glazed" with rain water lending it the air of something far more suggestive than what it initially seems. Again, you may assume that such interpretations are the flights of fancy of the critic but I would suggest that a great part of the "meaning" in all art is in part brought to the work by the viewer/reader/listener. I would guess that a Japanese reader familiar with the simple imagist Zen poetry of Japan and China would not find Williams' poem at all unfamiliar in manner. On the other hand, the reader familiar only with the more traditional narrative manner of poetry might certainly find Williams as well as early Rilke or Ezra Pound, etc... to be meaningless. I would contend, however, that your teachers (in most cases) are probably not fools making the whole thing up themselves. The more one has read, seen, listened to... the more connections and possible interpretations one will discover in any strong work of art. In no way should you imagine that these were all consciously intended by the artist... but in many cases the artist is the worst critic of his or her own work.

[DanielBenoit]

To the thread starter: Well just in case you didn't know, many novels possess symbolism, and are just as valid whether or not the author intended it. I find what your teacher is saying to be very reasonable. If you think that is garbage, then I don't know what you're going to call the stuff they teach you in college. When you get to the works of Pound or T.S. Eliot. . . . . .whooooweeeeee!

Btw, Hucklberry Finn is soooooooo NOT a childrens book.


It's whats wrong with education today. The purpose of education was so that you have a good wide knowledge of the world and are reasonably knowledgeable to make it in the wide world when you come of age. Now it is treated as vocation, where kids only do high school courses to get into their university course of choice, so they can get into whatever profession. Their drive to get the best marks possible clouds what they are learning, they never truly enjoy or love what they are learning (which is important) and end up in some ****house office in some dead-end job spending their life making unfulfilling money, having forgotten everything they crammed for in school, and regretting the time they moaned "when the hell will I need farkin' Shakespeare in a job interview?!".
Yer, the symbols thing is hella annoying, which is why I prefer independent reading to studying texts.

You sir have just said something immensely reasonable. This is EXACTLY how I feel about how education is being done today.



Anyways, what really horrible is when you then start seeing similar symbols in other things... I watched a movie a while back (can't remember what it was) and made connections between it and Albert Camus's "The Stranger" *shudder* and I hated that book... The good thing about putting so many symbols in stories/books is that they are mostly BS, and if you're good at BS, then you do fine ;)

While I pretty much agree with everything stlukes said about reducing literature to a mechanical puzzle of symbols, I have no idea what it is you have against the use of symbolism in general.

All symbolism is BS? I think you've been overdosing on incompitent teachers, or you're just in the wrong class. Ummm so I guess if Kafka, instead of turning Gregor in a "monsterous vermin", he could've just turned him into "a product of modern industrial society". Yeah, that would've been a lot more interesting.

Symbolism makes literature more universal. The Metamorphosis wouldn't be what it is today without the unsettlingly obscure metaphor lurking at the center of it. And what about Moby-Dick might as well just trash that. Animal Farm and The Master and the Margarita wouldn't have been half as funny without its fantastical anthropomorphizations.

This is the problem with American schools today. I have no idea what the cause is, but more and more schools are producing students who seem to become highly allergic to great works of literature. You have no idea how many people my age have said that they hated The Great Gatsby or thought that The Old Man and the Sea was meaningless.

I suppose literature is just an aquired taste.



First of all, sorry that I took so long to post (haven't had time to get on)... Anyways, I'm not saying all symbols are BS, just the horrible ones that AP and IB teachers put into the work :sick: .

Thank you for clearing that up :)


Most kids get through IB with good "BS skills", and those "skills" are incredibly useful in english. I mean, we had to read Equus in theatre, and my theatre teacher went on and on about how the main character was gay, but because his dad was so strict, he couldn't be, and so his motivation was that he wanted to be gay... And that the horse was symbolizing a man or something. I told him that was horribly wrong and... wrong, but I couldn't think of a different motivation for him, so he was convinced he was right :rolleyes: (of course my gay teacher would come up with this). And finally, there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

This kind of homophobia immeidetly tells me your level of maturity.

Hey, I go to high school too, and I dislike it probably just as much as you do, but there's a big chance that what your teacher is saying isn't all nonsense. Besides, you'll never get through in literature if you are afraid to look at other peoples peculiarities and problems (i.e.Lolita, Oedipus the King, a lot of Beat generation stuff).


I like everything you said aabbc.




If an authors got something to say, why don't they just say it? Why bury it away in subtle allusions and symbols that may or may not be there? If what the author has to say is important enough to the author, I would hope they would put it right out in front for ALL to see. It would seem that if the idea is important enough, the author would make an effort to make it show through without question.

Then why should an author or any artist even waste the time with the art? If Beethoven wanted to convey nothing more than that he felt melancholy sometimes why not simply say so and forget all the effort in composing a sonata or symphony that might not clearly be understood by all. If Dickens wanted to say something along the line of "poverty sucks" why waste all that time and effort inventing characters and narratives that were completely superfluous? He could have simply said "Poverty sucks," and we'd all nod our heads in agreement and been done with it. And what the hell were all those painters thinking? All those images and colors and textures. Just say what you've got to say and be done with it. And poets! My God, those poets! They're the worst. Rhyme and form and rhythm and all that time seeking for the "perfect word"... the "perfect metaphor". What a waste of time. Surely Shakespeare could have saved himself a good deal of time and paper and ink and replaced half of his sonnets with a simple phrase that was clear and to the point... perhaps something like "When I think of you, I feel blue". Heck, it even rhymes.:rolleyes: :nod:

Lol, great point :lol:

In case some of you AP students didn't realize, but we are surrounded by metaphors. In fact you can hardly escape them. Even [I]if Dickens said "poverty sucks", that would still be a metaphor, its origin coming from you-know-what. . . ..


Also, it has been thrown around a lot in this thread that "they're [the teachers] are just pulling symbols out of their hat, that's probably not what the author even meant." Well as a matter of fact, authorical intention is quite irrelevent in these post-New Criticism days.

[glover7]

I am starting to get sick of my AP class. My teacher is referring to everything as a symbol. The character can be opening a door and the door becomes a symbol of this or a symbol of that. Not everything is meant to represent an idea.

Consider the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a work of children's literature. But my AP teacher tried to portray it as some deep allegory where the river represents freedom. Come on, that's like saying the police station in a detective novel represents security.

Absolutely ridiculous.


I think it's funny that you don't want to find symbolism in children's literature because symobls abound in it. Fairy tales and folk tales are the biggest examples in this category.


First of all, sorry that I took so long to post (haven't had time to get on)... Anyways, I'm not saying all symbols are BS, just the horrible ones that AP and IB teachers put into the work :sick: . Most kids get through IB with good "BS skills", and those "skills" are incredibly useful in english. I mean, we had to read Equus in theatre, and my theatre teacher went on and on about how the main character was gay, but because his dad was so strict, he couldn't be, and so his motivation was that he wanted to be gay... And that the horse was symbolizing a man or something. I told him that was horribly wrong and... wrong, but I couldn't think of a different motivation for him, so he was convinced he was right :rolleyes: (of course my gay teacher would come up with this). And finally, there are some works that have no symbols, they are just stories for stories sake.

Are you saying that perspectival differences shouldn't bring new interpretations to text? Perhaps you don't know the contributions that queer theory has brought not only in the fields of literary analysis but also in the world of literary writing as well as in the more practical realm of feminism.

[Haunted]

Symbols are used for a reason. Symbols went back to ancient times when many of the languages were mainly pictograms. But over thousands of years, the languages are lost, so is the wisdom. So concepts were intuitively encapsulated in symbols because as archetypes, even when the languages are no longer recognized, future generations can still access the knowledge because symbolic archetypes appeal to the universal collective consciousness.

I drew this explanation minimally based on Jung's writing and mostly on The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. It's amazing to read about the enormous, transformative meanings in symbols. The crux of The Lost Symbol is that symbols are key to learning ancient knowledge, and by tapping into this knowledge, it's a form of self-empowerment. I highly recommend this book, it's a great resource for understanding the significance of symbology and hopefully, it'll also bring you insight into the world of rich, transcendental literary symbolisms.

[Petrarch's Love]

...But if the only books with these high-brow ideas are the ones that are impenetrable to people without PhD's in literature what becomes the point? We might as well just read John Grisham, because the average person can't decipher the subtle allusions and symbols in these other works.


...This may sound elitist... but it is an elitism that is something of an elective affinity. It is not an elitism of wealth or position or even of formal education of degree...

...I never thought it could be a choice as to how one reads. That authors are writing for the reasons they have and that all books aren't created for all people. I really appreciated your comment of a chosen/self-imposed elitism, an interesting thought. All of my high school English teachers would complain that the only "good" authors were the "challenging" ones and that the rest is garbage and that you are pathetic if that's what you choose to read (ie Grisham, King, etc). They would of course always include that you are stupid if you don't get the "challenging" books as well. So, thanks for a different point of view!

Nathank--I followed the exchange excerpted above with some interest and wanted to add that I agree with St. Luke's observation that grappling with challenging literature is a choice, and "elective affinity," rather than some mysterious gift of divine interpretation. As a college instructor in English and PhD in training I am in the position of finding myself almost constantly engaged in conversations with a huge variety of people about literature, since usually what follows the common question "what do you do?" and my response that I teach college lit. is the thoughts and opinions of the person I am talking with regarding literature. What I have found from this very informal survey of the people I encounter is that, as St. Luke's suggests: wealth, position, formal education and other factors that people might assume go along with an understanding of literature are not necessarily good predictors of who you might find yourself having an engaging conversation about lit. with or who is going to be really interested in wanting to learn about the subject when they encounter a teacher of it. I am also increasingly amused, as my humble self moves closer to attaining the PhD, at the mixture of misplaced respect and resentment my position engenders as a result of the very attitudes you allude to: that "smart people" read "deep" literature and the rest are just moronic unwashed masses who don't get it. The only difference between a PhD in English and other people is that the person with the PhD has devoted years of his or her life to studying and thinking about literature, acquiring the sort of reading and interpretive skills that St. Luke's suggests in his post, in the same way that a Doctor acquires special knowledge of how to "read" and "interpret" the human body in order to help people, or the way a lawyer studies to acquire knowledge of the law.

The only mild amendment, or perhaps addition, I would make to St. Luke's post is to his term "elitism" as a way of describing the decision to grapple with challenging literature. While I think SL and I fundamentally agree on this, I would be more likely to express the choice to read "difficult" works in terms of adapting an interested and open mind. I think this may be a more useful way to think of it because I believe it gets to the root of what allows people to get the most out of almost any type of study they engage in, but especially ties into what is most rewarding about the study of literature. By an interested mind, I mean simply a person with questions and with the desire to engage with and know something or someone outside him/herself. This is ridiculously far from being an elite characteristic, and is one of the fundamental things that draws people to all kinds of stories, whether Harry Potter, Henry James, Swift or the Simpsons. Interest goes hand in hand with developing an open mind, because interest in things and people outside ourselves is the big motivating factor for opening one’s self up to the challenge of understanding something that is not immediately clear. There are two components of the open minded person that, in my experience are almost without fail characteristic of those who have the deepest and most interesting understanding of literature (or, indeed, any other field). The first of these is that an open minded person not only accepts but embraces what he or she does not know. I don’t mean by this that the person doesn’t know anything, but that, even if that person knows quite a lot, it is still with an awareness that there is always the potential to learn, the potential to receive more from a new experience, a new conversation, a new book! What you don’t know is much more interesting than what you do know. The second, related, characteristic of an open mind, is the ability to entertain all opinions, thoughts and ideas, even if they are ones you don’t agree with. This doesn’t mean accepting all ideas, but never dismissing an idea out of hand until you have taken a good look at it from multiple angles.

Like interest, this kind of openness is something that is not elite, but can be attained, in some way or another, by a large number of people. One reason that the study of art and literature is both rewarding and important is that the most basic skills necessary to even begin to try understanding it are the ability to take an interest outside one’s self and hear, perhaps even feel, some part of another’s experience: skills that can both help and enrich a person when pursuing their personal interests in fields and pursuits outside literature and in life more generally. One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people. While it is true that the reason my conversations about literature with my academic advisor are more engaging than my conversations with the bank teller because my advisor has a deeper knowledge and experience with the subject, it is also true that it was because he had a particular interest in and openness toward the subject of literature that he set out to acquire all that knowledge. And it is true that my conversations about Dante with one of the janitors at the university can be infinitely more engaging than conversations I may have with one of my students, despite the fact that the student unquestionably has, not only more social benefits and leisure time with which to study, but more formal education, even a better grounding in the classical texts that Dante alludes to and other similar knowledge. This is because the student (and this is by no means true of all my students, but of a few) may, at least at this point in his life, be a bit sophomoric and so interested in showing off what he does know that he isn’t interested in or open to exploring what he does not, while the janitor, perhaps because of greater maturity or different kind of life experience, is well aware of what he does not know, more interested in expanding that knowldege and more open to at least listening to (though by no means always agreeing with!) a different point of view because he might learn something.

[Petrarch's Love]

A response to the OP, Robert E. Lee:

I see two possible reasons for your reaction to your teacher's attempts to point out symbolism and a potential solution for each one:

1) Problem: You agree that your teacher is, for the most part right about the symbols he or she is pointing out in the books you are reading, but you feel this is a heavy handed, slow, and boring way of talking about the literature and it frustrates you!

Solution: It may be absolutely true that this is a boring class and that you are ahead of the rest of the students in grasping these simple bits of symbolism. If this is the case, you can sit and fume and feel sorry for yourself, or you can use this as an opportunity to practice how to deal with boredom and how to tolerate being in a group in which some of the people may be a bit behind your understanding. These are two things--boredom especially--which, I can guarantee you, every single person on this planet has had to deal with, not once, but fairly frequently in life. If you want to make things more pleasant for yourself and others you could, perhaps help your teacher by participating in class and helping your other students understand these symbols more quickly so that it will move along more easily for everyone. Perhaps you could also take it upon yourself to--in a respectful way and with no allusion to how boring you find the symbolism discussion--point out some of the things that you find more interesting and suggest some new questions or ideas to discuss. Most teachers, contrary to popular belief, do not take deep delight in going over the same basic, sometimes formulaic observations about a text over and over again (remember that he or she has been doing this for years) but need to make sure that students are aware that things like symbols do exist in a text before moving on to more nuanced readings. Your teacher might be delighted if one of his/her students both demonstrated an understanding of the symbols he/she is trying to discuss and helped the efforts of the class group by applying this knowledge of the symbolism to new ideas.

You may also simply need to take a deep breath and be more patient while the others catch up in their understanding. Just think about how you feel when you are in a group in which you are not understanding things as well as the top people in the group do. Act toward your fellow students with the type of graciousness with which you would like the person who is better than
you at something to behave toward you. You may also find that, even if a lot of what's being presented in class is pretty basic to you, reviewing those basics can be helpful in allowing you to rethink some issues in the text, or there might be some things mixed in there that you really hadn't noticed before. This might also give you some empathy for your teacher who is, after all, spending much of his or her life going over things he or she mastered long ago in the interest of helping other people understand.

2) Problem: You think your teacher is wrong about the symbols in the texts you're reading.

Solution: This is an issue, not about whether the teacher is wrong or not about the symbols in the books, but about how you handle opinions you disagree with. Like boredom, encountering people you disagree with is a very common part of life and this can be an opportunity for you to practice how you want to deal with that. Yes, you can be dismissive of everything your teacher presents you with because you don't agree with his/her identification of some symbols, and you can complain and sulk about the stupidity of that instructor. It might be more productive, however, both for yourself and for the class, to consider, not what the teacher is wrong about but what you don't understand. It is entirely possible that your teacher is wrong about some of the symbolic readings he or she is presenting. I don't know. However, what I do know is that you are not understanding something: either you are not understanding your teacher's point about the symbols in the books or you are not understanding how or why your teacher came to the conclusions he or she did about the symbolism, whether those conclusions are right or wrong. Either way, the way to begin is to acknowledge and express that you are not understanding why your teacher is emphasizing these symbols in your study of the literature (note that this may or may not mean that you are having trouble understanding the book you are reading). Most teachers will be happy to explain why they are making a claim in class if a student respectfully says that they don't understand the reasoning behind it. If your teacher does explain his or her reasoning, you may be surprised to find that it does make the symbol clearer to you and that you do agree with what the teacher is saying after all. Your teacher does, after all, know more about this subject than you do or he or she wouldn't be teaching it. It is also possible that you will still disagree with what the teacher thinks is going on with the symbolism, but now you will at least understand what evidence and thought is behind his or her claim and you will be able to question that evidence or suggest different evidence that you think points to what you think is important in the book. Hearing and understanding the other person's point of view and the reasons behind that point of view before presenting your own reasoning in response involves a little more work but is much more productive for everyone than simply stating you disagree.

Whether your teacher is right or wrong, if you aren't making an honest effort at understanding his or her points and working at developing the way you understand what you're reading (regardless of whether your understanding necessarily corresponds with your teacher's or not) then you aren't putting enough work in to justify complaining about someone who is putting a lot of work in. More importantly, you are cheating yourself of the potential enjoyment of exploring the texts you are reading. If you are making a genuine effort and you still find the teaching approach uninspiring, then you're still not losing out because making a real effort to understand why you disagree with what you're being presented or what you think instead will give you a better understanding of what you are studying regardless of whether you ever agree with the teacher's points or approach.

[stlukesguild]

The only mild amendment, or perhaps addition, I would make to St. Luke's post is to his term "elitism" as a way of describing the decision to grapple with challenging literature. While I think SL and I fundamentally agree on this, I would be more likely to express the choice to read "difficult" works in terms of adapting an interested and open mind.

My use of the term "elitism" is something of a conscious decision to employ or identify with the very term often used by others in derision. In some ways it mirrors the manner in which the visual artists (especially) over the years came to embrace the various terms of derision leveled at them... the various "-isms" (Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, etc...).

Currently, there is a particularly interesting artist from Norway named Odd Nerdrum who is among the leading figures in the return to a rather old-master-ish manner of painting. He recalls an instance in which he and an uncle, also an artist, stood on a local mountain top after a long hike watching a magnificent sunset. At one point Odd remarked, "it's simply gorgeous," to which he uncle replied, "Yes, but don't get caught painting anything like that or else they won't take you seriously."

Years later, during the period of absolute control of Modernist abstraction, he began to exhibit his realistic paintings and rapidly discovered that he was repeatedly the target of abuse by the Modernists. In one instance, a group of Modernists petitioned to have his works removed from a university exhibition. He confronted them and asked, "how could you do this to a fellow artist?" One of them responded, scornfully, "You're not one of us. This isn't art, it's Kitsch." I might note that Nerdrum's paintings are far from being "kitsch" along the lines of such saccharine sweet schlock as churned out by Thomas Kinkade:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2495/4116808552_823f30d11a_o.jpg

Rather, his paintings offer a rather dark and bleak, yet unquestionably masterful vision of a Post-Apocalyptic world not unlike something out of Mad Max:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2778/4116038107_f66e2c0e23_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2508/4116040289_bcdd67e1ae_o.jpg

While still a student in art school, during the period in which Nerdrum first came to recognition, I clearly remember the derision poured upon his work by certain Modernist faculty and dutiful students.

Nerdrum now embraces the term "Kitsch," has published several essays proudly proclaiming himself a "kitsch artist" and even maintains a website in which he promotes "Kitsch art" and fellow "Kitsch artists" including various students. Of course, it is all somewhat tongue-in-cheek... but there is also a degree of seriousness. He suggests that in an era in which feces in a can, installations with endless meaningless documentation, grainy and inane video-tape loops, baroque-scaled photorealistic paintings of pornographic scenes rendered by an army of anonymous studio assistants, and gold-plated, life-sized ceramic sculptures of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp are acclaimed as serious "Art", and skillful and sensitive renderings of the human beings which attempt to convey something of human emotions are considered "kitsch", then he is proud to accept the label "Kitsch" because what is now "Art" is not something he aspires to.

In the same sense I often elect to employ the term "elitist". Definitions for "elitism" include: A recognition of the value of the opinions of those individuals who are highly educated or have otherwise attained a superior status within a given discipline by virtue of intelligence or greater accomplishment; A recognition or belief that a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes related to a specific discipline or field of endeavor are those whose views on a matter should be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight. These aspects of "elitism", from my perspective, would seem to be admirable. If we were in need of surgery we would not want an average or mediocre surgeon, but an elite surgeon. Charged with a crime we would desire an elite lawyer to argue our case. And yet the term "elitism" has come to carry solely negative connotations... especially in the political spectrum.

We are certainly all aware of instances during the last election in which Obama and other candidates who had attained highly valued degrees from well-respected universities... achievements that one might assume were worthy of recognition and respect... were instead derided as "elitist" and "un-American". The rather warped insinuation being that succeeding in academia... graduating with honors with a degree from an Ivy-League school... indeed, thinking too much is somehow a negative attribute and un-American. This would be comic, if it weren't so dangerous to the nation and the world as a whole.

A similar anti-intellectualism shows up from time to time in discussions of the arts. Comically, relativism, or the notion that all opinions regarding Art are subjective and as such hold the same value (and thus all Art is equal... there is no good nor bad) is a concept that evolved out of academia itself. certainly, there are aspects of "elitism" that are less than attractive: the notion that one is deserving of respect... that one's opinions should hold more weight simply as a result of social status or wealth... the notion that intelligence is connected with social status, wealth, or formal education... the notion that education, politics, the Arts (etc...) should be reserved for persons of a given social-economic class. These are all unacceptable.

My embrace of the term "elitism" has more to do with the notion that within the arts it is most certainly those who have made the conscious effort to invest the time and rigorous study of a particular discipline whose opinions matter most to myself... and to the development of that given discipline. We continually come across the snide dismissal of the opinions of "stupid teachers", "elitist critics" or the "snobby academics" and the pretentious and patronizing "art world", where we would never hear similar condescension directed toward the opinions of the whole of the scientific community concerning scientific questions... or that of the medical community concerning medical issues... at least not in the past... not until recently in the US where a great many having just scraped through high-school physics and biology somehow believe they are fully qualified to discuss questions of global warming or medical treatment.:confused:

What I repeatedly point out is that my interpretation of "elitism" is not about intelligence, but experience and knowledge... and not limited to just academics or critics and those with recognized formal education. It is the result of choice... an elective affinity. There are those with little or no formal education in literature or art whose opinions are still of the greatest merit because of the fact that they have a given passion for the subject and have put forth the effort to explore, study, develop an appreciation of and an ability to discuss. As such, the "experts" to my mind, when it comes to the arts include not merely the academics... the critics, the historians, the teachers, the curators, etc... but also the artists/writers and the serious art/literature lovers... the "common readers" in Virginia Woolf's sense of the term. Neither do I suggest that the opinions of the "experts" should be automatically held as sacrosanct... that they are never wrong, nor do they ever disagree with each other. On the other hand, it would seem to me that respect for one's opinion concerning Art... or any endeavor... is something that must be earned... not an automatic entitlement. Yes... everyone is entitled to their opinion; not every opinion is entitled to the same degree of respect or held in equal merit.

One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts. Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.:rolleyes:

[mal4mac]

Harping on about symbols is now the fashion in Frenchified literary circles in the School of Resentment, ever since structuralism reared it's ugly head. One of the founders analysed every fairy tale in the world to find the common symbols in each fairy tale. When I read about this, in some boring book of literary theory, it struck me that this must have been a really boring thing to do, the literary equivalent of train spotting. Wouldn't it be much more fun to just actually ..er.. read the stories! Reading that boring book of literary theory made me glad i didn't take literature at University... if that's what goes on I'm well out of it. I just like reading books, I'm half way through the excellent RSC Complete Shakespeare edited & footnoted by two modern scholars (Bate & Rasmussen) who haven't mentioned symbolism, semiotics, or structuralism once ... So there's hope...

[Petrarch's Love]

Harping on about symbols is now the fashion in Frenchified literary circles in the School of Resentment, ever since structuralism reared it's ugly head. One of the founders analysed every fairy tale in the world to find the common symbols in each fairy tale. When I read about this, in some boring book of literary theory, it struck me that this must have been a really boring thing to do, the literary equivalent of train spotting. Wouldn't it be much more fun to just actually ..er.. read the stories! Reading that boring book of literary theory made me glad i didn't take literature at University... if that's what goes on I'm well out of it. I just like reading books, I'm half way through the excellent RSC Complete Shakespeare edited & footnoted by two modern scholars (Bate & Rasmussen) who haven't mentioned symbolism, semiotics, or structuralism once ... So there's hope...

I am almost certain that the high school teacher of the original poster to this thread was not attempting to teach structuralist symbolism. The OP seemed to be complaining that his or her teacher was trying to point out that there was such a thing as symbolism or metaphor in a fictional text, which is not an unreasonable thing to observe if you are trying to understand many works of literature.

As for your assessment of literary criticism, I think the problem is that you are judging the structuralist or formalist book you read (I'm guessing Propp's Morphology of the Folktale?) by the same criteria as you are judging the RSC Shakespeare edition. Propp's book is aimed at a group of people who have a highly specialized interest in the study of literature. It is meant to engage and challenge them and help them think over their ideas and attitudes about literature so that they can do a better job of producing the best, and most well thought out ideas to students in the classroom or readers of books that are aimed to a larger audience. Because this is the aim of the book, it is not surprising that it may not be an interesting read for people who don't have a fairly detailed interest in understanding the way literature works, its history, and theories about how we should interpret it. The aim of Bate and Rasmussen in the edition of the RSC Shakespeare is to reach a very broad audience of people and to help them understand and appreciate one of Shakespeare's plays. This type of editing work is much more like the work that a teacher does in the classroom and obviously is much more interesting to more people because that it what it is designed for. However, I know for a fact that both Bate and Rasmussen have read structuralist books, along with many other books representing a wide array of schools of literary criticism and that this wide ranging scholarly reading has contributed to their knowledge and abilities for going about doing a job like editing Shakespeare.

[IceM]

Seeing as how I don't have the time to read each individual post, I'll just post my opinion and start responding later.

I find it interesting how the OP disagrees with what can be symbolism. About 3 weeks ago, our AP teacher assigned to us a 1 paragraph assignment in which we were to mimic the style of Thoreau. Unintentionally, I found myself with at least 4 different symbols and 2 allusions. Nothing's wrong with symbols. You could almost argue that, without symbols and the attention required to discover those symbols, literature would be a denser version of a bedtime story.

To the poster who said that authors should be blatant in their writing and not create characters, plot etc., I only respond with this: are you serious? If I said, "Literature is boring," (not my actual belief) it wouldn't be as powerful as the same theme with pages upon pages of discreet argument. Deep symbolism, thematic elements, and plot are what make literature literature. Without the analysis required to evaluate the themes, the theme lacks punch; it would come across as a mundane observation. It is the description and implications that take place in the plot which add significance to the theme. Would the necessity of sacrifice seem as significant had Sydney Carton not risked his own life? Would the spiritual alleviations possibe through redemption seem as significant had Dante never traveled through Hell to understand what those who had neglected redemption suffered?

It is the implications of the plot that add significance to the plot.

At least, those are my thoughts.

[Emil Miller]

St Lukes makes an interesting case for elitism. There are, however, certain individuals who have attained their elite status through astute self-promotion but are, nonetheless, held in high esteem by their peers. An example of this appears in my novel Pro Bono Publico in which the protagonist, after a lifetime of dubious political and business practices, is feted as a renaissance man. He is based on an individual who is now deceased but was living at the time of the book's publication. The extract below deals with his retirement and give some idea of the kind of person who gives elitism a bad name:

He began to play the occasional round of golf, and took to reading books on abstruse subjects that would impress the servants and visitors.
It was now that he decided to realize his ambition of writing a life of Erasmus, which he surmised would earn him a place among the literati and seal his relationship with the liberal intellectual elite. In compiling the biography, Roger took himself off to Italy where, ensconced in his villa with numerous reference books, he lived in self-imposed exile for almost a year, except for a trip to England to research at his old university where his subject had spent some time teaching during the 16th century.
As he’d anticipated, the book received favourable reviews from the liberal literary establishment and his intellectual status was assured when he was awarded the Erasmus medal. The addition of such a prestigious international award to his Légion d’Honneur, spurred the British authorities into conferring on him the Order of Merit and his triumph was complete. Now his pretentiousness was matched by an extraordinary pomposity, but his largesse ensured he was spoken of as someone who embodied political, financial and intellectual attainments rarely seen in modern times. The following year, he was created a life peer as Baron Percival of Lea Haven

[Petrarch's Love]

Brian--I had no idea you were an author yourself. I'll have to look up the title in the library catalogue and see if it's available for perusal.

Your too true character sketch fits in with a few of my points in an extended response to St. Luke's that I posted the other day but which seems to have dissappeared!:confused::confused::confused:

The pith of my response was that, though I understand and appreciate his clever--and temptingly cathartic!--elitist defense of the arts, I would still prefer to make a claim for respect of those who are learned in their field in terms of being "expert" rather than elitist. Though I appreciate the wit and cleverness of an argument like that of St. Luke's for adopting the term "elitist" in the same way that I appreciate the fabulously named Odd Nerdrum's defense of his art as "kitsch" (and I believe in my original post I also expressed how fascinating Nerdrum's work looks and how crazy a certain clique driven branch of modernism can be!), I do tend to be a bit wary of using a term that requires a certain amount of definition or insider knowledge in order to avoid misunderstanding when using it as a defense to those outside one's own group. Partly this is based on experience I had as a young undergraduate student with employing the term "queer," which is used universally within an academic setting to refer in a positive way to the gay community--i.e. "queer studies"--but when used outside an academic setting led to my causing some very real unintended offense to people. My sense is that, outside a well defined polemic context, the word "elite," even if I tried to explain it, is going to similarly turn most people off.

My other, perhaps more personal, objection to the term stems from my own experience and position in a fairly well known university where I know that I could introduce myself as an elitist among certain groups of people who would readily embrace the term on the grounds of their own supposed academic, social or economic superiority rather than on the basis of our shared love of learning. Though this type is very far from being the majority of academics, and not at all confined to the humanities division--our law and business schools seem especially prone to the elitist syndrome, as they are more often in a position to feel smugly superior, not only intellectually but economically too--it is a very real segment of academia, and one I am very much interested in distancing myself from. (After spending enough time with a certain type of ivy league academic, I sometimes find myself almost ready to start resenting the "intellectual elite" and not a little embarrassed that this is a prominent representative of my profession:redface:).

Mostly, however, I feel that talking in terms of being elite means the conversation will go in the direction of defining groups of people rather than discussing why I love literature and helping people to understand things about my field (or hearing what they can contribute to my understanding), which is much more fun. :D


One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts. Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.

Surely the idea that taking on the challenges of understanding a complex creation from the mind of a human being can help prepare one for the process of trying to understand a complex human being cannot be too unique as one of the many arguments in favor of the value of studying the arts?

As I wrote in my now vanished post, I'm sure Kafka could give you some insights, but it might not be especially comforting. My recommendation for the situation would be to brush up your Shakespeare, whose sensitive and nuanced insight suggests this sort of reaction to the more difficult to deal with among us: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" I also find the description of the circumlocution office in Dickens' Little Dorrit especially enlightening as regards the bureaucratic end of things. :rolleyes:

[Inka]

the river represents freedom
Absolutely ridiculous.
Well, when Jim and Tom rafted down the river, it did represented freedom...
you decide for yourself what is important to you to understand the novel.
But if all a teacher do is only gets you confused, I can only sympathize with you :)

[Reread]

To the thread starter: I understand your pain. We are reading To Kill a Mockingbird in my English class. Rather than merely letting students read what is one of the first real adult literature these kids have ever experienced, we have to suck every ounce of meaning out of it until we've sucked the book dry. No one in that class will learn to love books like that because school makes reading books a chore that's monotonous and excruciating. They are ruining books. That's like murder.

[DanielBenoit]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2508/4116040289_bcdd67e1ae_o.jpg


Off-topic but there is something in this painting which intensely grabbed me. The face of the middle subject is subtly haunting. I have never seen anything like it.

[stlukesguild]

One of the many lessons that dealing with the challenge of a complex, difficult to understand poem or novel can teach a person is how to deal with the challenge of dealing with complex, difficult to understand people.

SLG (quote)-Intriguing idea... and a somewhat unique argument for the value of the arts.

Surely the idea that taking on the challenges of understanding a complex creation from the mind of a human being can help prepare one for the process of trying to understand a complex human being cannot be too unique as one of the many arguments in favor of the value of studying the arts?

Well... perhaps it is a variation of an idea that is not all that popular at present. The 19th century critics such as Ruskin were certainly enamored of the notion that art had a moral worth. The argument in support of the public funding of many of the great art museums... especially in the US... was commonly made on such grounds, with supporters all but avoiding to suggest that the art museum and the contemplation of art had replaced the role of the church in the spiritual life of the nation.

As something of a sworn follower of Wilde, Pater, Baudelaire, Gautier, Mallarme, and the other adherents of art pour l'art I have long been suspicious of the notion of attaching any moral/ethical/pragmatic use to art. The sophisticated tastes of the rapacious Renaissance lords such as the de Medici, Barberini, Orsini, Borgias, etc... seemingly put such links between art and morality/ethics in the realm of fantasy, and surely the mania for Wagner, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and old master paintings among the Nazi "elite" drove a stake through the heart of such beliefs. The destruction of the arts under Stalin and his thugs surely undermined a great deal of the artist's willingness to put his or her efforts to work in support of the pragmatic goals of the state.

Neither am I overly fond of the Romantic notion that the artist inherently has a vision which surpasses that of the average mortal... that he or she is a sort of "visionary" who has some greater insight into humanity, morals, politics, etc... The biography of any number of artists surely debunks this myth. The artist is simply one who has the ability to give an aesthetic form to his or her perceptions/ideas/beliefs/thoughts.

Of course there is something quite jaded with regard to Wilde's assertion that "All art is quite useless" and I am always moved by Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech that suggests that art does indeed have a moral worth. Yet this may not be limited to the obvious. Ruskin argued that beauty itself had a moral worth in that it gave a sense of purpose and raised the spirits. Other critics have argued, for example, that the paintings of Matisse and Bonnard created during the Second World War had a moral worth, in spite of their unbridled beauty, sensuality, and almost hedonistic embrace of sensuality, for they offered hope... a belief that the horror of the dark times would end... and in this they may have had as much if not more "worth" than that art which offered up blatant social commentary.

Your brief statement offers some insight into a person belief of why we read... why we waste our time with this thing called ART. Some have argued that we read to learn to talk to ourselves. Tarkovsky argued that the purpose of art was a preparation for death. I've always loved Walter Pater's Conclusion to The Renaissance which I have quoted numerous times before and won't quote again (although here is a link for anyone interested: http://www.subir.com/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html ). Anna Quindlen offers something of a similar expression in a much more condensed form: Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque. Books... music... art are a form of dialog with others... often with those long dead... "An intercourse with spirits," said Kafka. Certainly, I can imagine that learning to understand the beliefs, ideas, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and even prejudices of others through art may indeed serve as something of a preparation for dealing with such with real human beings.

SLG (quote)-Of course, building upon your notion perhaps I should be reading more absurdest and Surrealist literature to deal with the unreality of my career in urban public education? Kafkaesque is an appropriate term.

As I wrote in my now vanished post, I'm sure Kafka could give you some insights, but it might not be especially comforting.

Perhaps not... but as my Jewish studio-mate points out he is certainly one of the masters of a somewhat unique dark Jewish humor which grew out of the need to laugh at the absurdities and even horrors of life if only to keep from crying. Certainly there is much of that to be found in the experience of teaching in the public schools in an urban setting in America.

My recommendation for the situation would be to brush up your Shakespeare, whose sensitive and nuanced insight suggests this sort of reaction to the more difficult to deal with among us: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!"

Of course Shakespeare is no less the pessimist than Kafka. Good does not always prevail. Evil is not always punished. Was it not his amorality... or shall we say his position as an objective observer who does not draw moral conclusions that made him the target of Tolstoy's scorn? (Well that... and perhaps Leo's recognition that as great as he was he could not surpass his predecessor any more than Plato could surpass Homer).

I also find the description of the circumlocution office in Dickens' Little Dorrit especially enlightening as regards the bureaucratic end of things.

Again, Kafka offers perhaps the best... or at least the most relevant comment upon the bureaucratic nightmare in any number of his tales, but certainly in The Trial and The Castle. Of course he is merely building upon the tradition of Job: "One day J (Job/Joseph K.) awoke to discover that all that his entire life had been turned upside-down... that all he loved had been taken from him... that he had been placed under arrest for no reason... all at the whim of some nameless superiors whom he could not understand... all for a game...:(

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I am starting to get sick of my AP class. My teacher is referring to everything as a symbol. The character can be opening a door and the door becomes a symbol of this or a symbol of that. Not everything is meant to represent an idea.

Consider the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a work of children's literature. But my AP teacher tried to portray it as some deep allegory where the river represents freedom. Come on, that's like saying the police station in a detective novel represents security.

Absolutely ridiculous.

It sounds like you just want to read emmersively, which is fine, but that's not really what a literature class is for. Maybe your professor is going a little overboard, but at least you guys are talking about the literature, and just not having the professor give you a summary the whole class.

And, are you really asserting that Huck Finn is nothing but a simple children's story? I don't know if the river really represents freedom, but it sure as hell represents something. To think it doesn't is extremely short sighted.

And Huck Finn is more of a satire than allegory. One thing is for sure; it isn't a simplistic work of children's literature.

[Petrarch's Love]

Well... perhaps it is a variation of an idea that is not all that popular at present. The 19th century critics such as Ruskin were certainly enamored of the notion that art had a moral worth. The argument in support of the public funding of many of the great art museums... especially in the US... was commonly made on such grounds, with supporters all but avoiding to suggest that the art museum and the contemplation of art had replaced the role of the church in the spiritual life of the nation.

As something of a sworn follower of Wilde, Pater, Baudelaire, Gautier, Mallarme, and the other adherents of art pour l'art I have long been suspicious of the notion of attaching any moral/ethical/pragmatic use to art. The sophisticated tastes of the rapacious Renaissance lords such as the de Medici, Barberini, Orsini, Borgias, etc... seemingly put such links between art and morality/ethics in the realm of fantasy, and surely the mania for Wagner, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and old master paintings among the Nazi "elite" drove a stake through the heart of such beliefs. The destruction of the arts under Stalin and his thugs surely undermined a great deal of the artist's willingness to put his or her efforts to work in support of the pragmatic goals of the state.

Neither am I overly fond of the Romantic notion that the artist inherently has a vision which surpasses that of the average mortal... that he or she is a sort of "visionary" who has some greater insight into humanity, morals, politics, etc... The biography of any number of artists surely debunks this myth. The artist is simply one who has the ability to give an aesthetic form to his or her perceptions/ideas/beliefs/thoughts.


Interesting. I didn't really have an especially moral claim in mind when making my little statement, though I can see how such a statement could easily lead to the sorts of moral arguments you allude and object to. I do agree that the claim that there is some inherent moral good associated with art is a highly questionable one. I think that the problem with many social or political aims for art is that they are reducing art, and defenses of art, to what art can offer to very particular social or political ends. Certainly, as you point out, art has been both used and abused many times because the praise of its abilities to elevate or enlighten are taken to mean that art and anything that associates itself with it are, by definition elevating and enlightening. I believe the thinking behind my remark was actually very much opposed to the sort of simplified claim that would imply that art is always connected to moral superiority any more than it is connected to social superiority.

I agree that it is difficult to speak in terms of a single, very clearly defined pragmatic application for art (this is one reason that defending the arts can be an uphill battle at times). Certainly this is true if we take my example of the claim that art can help us understand other people. If a person's goal is to understand the workings of the human mind for the pragmatic purpose of trying to deal with mental health issues or to help identify patterns in human behavior, then a more scientifically oriented field of study such as psychology, or perhaps anthropology, may be of greater direct benefit to these pragmatic aims in that the approach of these fields offers a very useful detachment that helps avoid the messiness of human bias, personal emotional response, etc. At the same time, this very detachment can sometimes be a weakness when it comes to dealing with people in the real world because people are not very detached. One of the many things--certainly not the only thing--that the study of art offers that something that a field like psychology cannot offer, is a recognition and engagement with all that human "messiness" because art--for better or for worse--is a very human product. It's a field of study that explicitly allows for a recognition of the "human factor." This doesn't mean that I would necessarily encourage my students to approach the interpretation of literature in a messy or illogical fashion, but that in attempting to analyze and make sense of a challenging work of art a person is going to acquire a different sort of understanding of others than he or she would performing a psychological case study because the study of art allows you to attend to things that your interest in scientific detachment wouldn't allow in a psychological study. One part of the challenge that both attracts people to and repels them from studying the arts is the fact that the artistic creations of human beings, like human beings themselves, do not fall neatly and predictably into moral or practical categories or applications, that you have to have a certain amount of patience and openness of mind and be willing to invest a certain amount of thought in order to come to any sort of understanding of them.



Of course there is something quite jaded with regard to Wilde's assertion that "All art is quite useless" and I am always moved by Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech that suggests that art does indeed have a moral worth. Yet this may not be limited to the obvious. Ruskin argued that beauty itself had a moral worth in that it gave a sense of purpose and raised the spirits. Other critics have argued, for example, that the paintings of Matisse and Bonnard created during the Second World War had a moral worth, in spite of their unbridled beauty, sensuality, and almost hedonistic embrace of sensuality, for they offered hope... a belief that the horror of the dark times would end... and in this they may have had as much if not more "worth" than that art which offered up blatant social commentary.


While I do think that one of the great benefits of art is something like the claim of "art pour l'art" and have absolutely enjoyed and appreciated many different sorts of art according to nothing more than that simple criterion, I don't think that it necessarily works very well as a single defense of the arts. One problem is, as you point out, that you can get something like Wilde's "all art is quite useless statement" which, though obviously intended to be humorous, does also reflect a rather sad way a person can start thinking if they get too wrapped up in aesthetic without any other purpose. A different, and probably more common, problem with the argument is the way it may be perceived by non art lovers. I do wonder if the "art for art's sake" argument will work as well to explain the value of the arts to those who do not have an instinctive love of art already, or who don't see the purpose in taking up the challenge of reading difficult texts or listening to complex music. In order to understand "art pour l'art" as a defense it seems to me that you may need to have experienced in some way what art has to offer in order to see that this can be an end in and of itself. I know, for example, that I'll do much better as a teacher--even when starting off with a group of willing learners who were interested enough to sign up for a college literature course--if I start off a lesson by suggesting some of the human issues and feelings a poem can give them insight into than if I begin by talking about the joys offered by an aesthetic experience of the poem. Starting off with the latter will pretty much guarantee me a one on one discussion with the eager student in the front row (possibly a few more if preceded by a spirited dramatic reading of the poem), whereas I have a decent chance of engaging the majority of the class if I lead off by introducing the idea that they are connecting with some portion of the mind of another person in reading this poem, or that it has the potential to give them some insight into, or at the very least a chance to think closely about, the feelings, thoughts and behaviors of people in general. Once I've got that attention and they are open and motivated to get into the poem and make an effort to understand it, then it's much easier to move to a discussion of the aesthetic dimension of the poem with some chance of seeing more than one person in the room really getting it.




Your brief statement offers some insight into a person belief of why we read... why we waste our time with this thing called ART. Some have argued that we read to learn to talk to ourselves. Tarkovsky argued that the purpose of art was a preparation for death. I've always loved Walter Pater's Conclusion to The Renaissance which I have quoted numerous times before and won't quote again (although here is a link for anyone interested: http://www.subir.com/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html ). Anna Quindlen offers something of a similar expression in a much more condensed form: Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque. Books... music... art are a form of dialog with others... often with those long dead... "An intercourse with spirits," said Kafka. Certainly, I can imagine that learning to understand the beliefs, ideas, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and even prejudices of others through art may indeed serve as something of a preparation for dealing with such with real human beings.

Yes, I think that the Quindlin quote and Kafka's "intercourse with spirits" probably get much closer to what I had in mind in making my statement. Incidentally, I don't know if we've ever talked about Pater, but I agree that the end to Renaissance is something of a work of art in itself. "Simply for each moment's sake" right? Not a bad way to think of it sometimes.


Perhaps not... but as my Jewish studio-mate points out he is certainly one of the masters of a somewhat unique dark Jewish humor which grew out of the need to laugh at the absurdities and even horrors of life if only to keep from crying. Certainly there is much of that to be found in the experience of teaching in the public schools in an urban setting in America....Again, Kafka offers perhaps the best... or at least the most relevant comment upon the bureaucratic nightmare in any number of his tales, but certainly in The Trial and The Castle. Of course he is merely building upon the tradition of Job: "One day J (Job/Joseph K.) awoke to discover that all that his entire life had been turned upside-down... that all he loved had been taken from him... that he had been placed under arrest for no reason... all at the whim of some nameless superiors whom he could not understand... all for a game...:(

Well, yes, of course you're right about both the style of/purpose for humor and the Job-like themes. Perhaps Kafka is more comforting than I previously gave him credit for. Clearly there's been a missed marketing possibility here for a title like Chicken Soup for the Kafkaesque Soul maybe?

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Petrarch's Love;807285]Brian--I had no idea you were an author yourself. I'll have to look up the title in the library catalogue and see if it's available for perusal.

Your too true character sketch fits in with a few of my points in an extended response to St. Luke's that I posted the other day but which seems to have dissappeared!:confused::confused::confused:

I don't think that your perusal will readily square with your own political viewpoint although I hope you find it interesting nevertheless.

[ScottyOhara]

I feel that most images that an author puts in a work of theirs represents a symbol, look at the era that "Hucklberry Finn" was written and what was going on it the world. Twain put his ideals into his works. However, how a person interprets that image/symbol, is completely different. If you would like a better example of how the image is related to a certain symbol, read "Dulce Et Decoeum Est," ("It is Sweet and Fitting"). It is a WWI poem about dying for ones country.

[stlukesguild]

Interesting. I didn't really have an especially moral claim in mind when making my little statement, though I can see how such a statement could easily lead to the sorts of moral arguments you allude and object to.

Petrarch... don't take me wrong. I merely allude to "morality" as one of the pragmatic uses that many have felt was the purpose of art... and have used as a defense of a criticism of the same.

I agree that it is difficult to speak in terms of a single, very clearly defined pragmatic application for art (this is one reason that defending the arts can be an uphill battle at times).

Definitely! Music and art teachers are continuously challenged with questions as to how we are assisting with the larger, "more important" curriculum of literacy and mathematics as well as with the "all important" state proficiency tests that are the end all-be all measure of academic success. Of course everyone known art and music and literature have no inherent worth in and of themselves.:(

If a person's goal is to understand the workings of the human mind for the pragmatic purpose of trying to deal with mental health issues or to help identify patterns in human behavior, then a more scientifically oriented field of study such as psychology, or perhaps anthropology, may be of greater direct benefit to these pragmatic aims...

As a brief digression, what are your feelings on the legitimacy of psychology (nor psychiatry)? Harold Bloom has repeatedly suggested that it nothing more than a pseudo-science founded upon the literary inventions of one man (Freud) and in its way not far removed from Islam or Mormonism which are religions founded upon the spiritual writings of one man. Psychological and Freudian theory has so pervade our culture that in many ways it is something of a religion... certainly a belief system. The obsession with the biography of the artist and the notion that the biography is virtually the key to understanding the "meanings" of the art... or vis-versa... that the art can be used to tell us about the artist (ie. the art therapy approach to criticism) at once fascinate yet repulse me as an artist.

At the same time, this very detachment can sometimes be a weakness when it comes to dealing with people in the real world because people are not very detached. One of the many things--certainly not the only thing--that the study of art offers that something that a field like psychology cannot offer, is a recognition and engagement with all that human "messiness" because art--for better or for worse--is a very human product. It's a field of study that explicitly allows for a recognition of the "human factor..."

One part of the challenge that both attracts people to and repels them from studying the arts is the fact that the artistic creations of human beings, like human beings themselves, do not fall neatly and predictably into moral or practical categories or applications, that you have to have a certain amount of patience and openness of mind and be willing to invest a certain amount of thought in order to come to any sort of understanding of them.

Yes... questions of "meaning" and "morality" in art are not always simple to define, categorize, and put in neat little boxes.

While I do think that one of the great benefits of art is something like the claim of "art pour l'art" and have absolutely enjoyed and appreciated many different sorts of art according to nothing more than that simple criterion, I don't think that it necessarily works very well as a single defense of the arts.

Pleasure is always hard to defend... and there will always be those moralists ready to attack anything they suspect of giving pleasure to others.

One problem is, as you point out, that you can get something like Wilde's "all art is quite useless statement" which, though obviously intended to be humorous, does also reflect a rather sad way a person can start thinking if they get too wrapped up in aesthetic without any other purpose. A different, and probably more common, problem with the argument is the way it may be perceived by non art lovers. I do wonder if the "art for art's sake" argument will work as well to explain the value of the arts to those who do not have an instinctive love of art already, or who don't see the purpose in taking up the challenge of reading difficult texts or listening to complex music.

Of course, art pour l'art is not a theory that is so simple as many imagine. Neither Wilde nor Pater nor Mallarme suggested that art should only be about art, or that a pragmatic, moral, social, etc... purpose inherently undermined the worth of art. William Morris proclaimed "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful". Wilde would build upon this by stating "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely." Again, Wilde is been wryly humorous... but we should note he does not make clear what his position might be upon making something that is at once useful AND beautiful. Yet just a few lines earlier (in the Introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray) Wilde states: "The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art." Art pour l'art does not limit art to being about art... but rather it challenges the notion that art should be criticized upon anything but aesthetic grounds as opposed to the older notions that art need to conform to an accepted social/political/religious orthodoxy. For this reason I am less than enthralled by demands for the pragmatic uses of art from the left or the right.

In order to understand "art pour l'art" as a defense it seems to me that you may need to have experienced in some way what art has to offer in order to see that this can be an end in and of itself. I know, for example, that I'll do much better as a teacher--even when starting off with a group of willing learners who were interested enough to sign up for a college literature course--if I start off a lesson by suggesting some of the human issues and feelings a poem can give them insight into than if I begin by talking about the joys offered by an aesthetic experience of the poem.

Of course I might quote Mark Twain (a quote I'll steal from another debate being waged here on Lit Net): "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.":lol:

I largely concur with your position as an educator... still I pull back at any suggestions (not that you have made such) that art be used to illustrate a single orthodox position upon these issues or that a work of art should be judged as succeeding or failing dependent upon how well it mirrors the orthodoxy of the time... those of the teacher... or the student. I repeatedly make clear that I don't look to art to reinforce my own beliefs, values, or even prejudices.

Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.- Anna Quindlen

Books... music... art are a form of dialog with others... often with those long dead... "An intercourse with spirits," said Kafka.

Yes, I think that the Quindlin quote and Kafka's "intercourse with spirits" probably get much closer to what I had in mind in making my statement.

And that is what I understood you to mean. Again... Quindlen's quote equally suggests that she does not look to art as a mans to reinforce her own beliefs, values, or even prejudices. She argues that it offers a means of experiencing... appreciating... understanding... but not necessarily agreeing with the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others.

Incidentally, I don't know if we've ever talked about Pater, but I agree that the end to Renaissance is something of a work of art in itself. "Simply for each moment's sake" right? Not a bad way to think of it sometimes.

I love Pater's writings which certainly are works of art... almost poetic creations... especially The Renaissance... and I have repeatedly posted the conclusion to this book in offering my thoughts upon why I read... why I value art. I am also especially fond of the section on Giorgione in which Pater argues that all art aspires to the state of music in which form and content are inseparable.

Well, yes, of course you're right about both the style of/purpose for humor and the Job-like themes. Perhaps Kafka is more comforting than I previously gave him credit for. Clearly there's been a missed marketing possibility here for a title like Chicken Soup for the Kafkaesque Soul maybe?

I don't know that he is comforting... any more than is Mel Brooks' laughter at the Inquisition of the Nazis... but perhaps the laughter makes it bearable and does more to undermine those in power who have abused their position than any serious declaration of outrage. Chicken Soup for the Kafkaesque Soul? The man himself would probably have loved it. Quite Kafkaesque.:lol

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch... don't take me wrong. I merely allude to "morality" as one of the pragmatic uses that many have felt was the purpose of art... and have used as a defense of a criticism of the same.

I agree that it is difficult to speak in terms of a single, very clearly defined pragmatic application for art (this is one reason that defending the arts can be an uphill battle at times).

Definitely! Music and art teachers are continuously challenged with questions as to how we are assisting with the larger, "more important" curriculum of literacy and mathematics as well as with the "all important" state proficiency tests that are the end all-be all measure of academic success. Of course everyone known art and music and literature have no inherent worth in and of themselves.

Yes, the humanities division is periodically called upon to account for its existence at the university level as well, which often means coming up with the practical job skills a course on Shakespeare is going to give our eager young business majors. Nothing like the soul numbing assessment of the state proficiency test however.:cold: Certainly one of the reasons I decided early on not to go the high school teaching route.


As a brief digression, what are your feelings on the legitimacy of psychology (nor psychiatry)? Harold Bloom has repeatedly suggested that it nothing more than a pseudo-science founded upon the literary inventions of one man (Freud) and in its way not far removed from Islam or Mormonism which are religions founded upon the spiritual writings of one man. Psychological and Freudian theory has so pervade our culture that in many ways it is something of a religion... certainly a belief system. The obsession with the biography of the artist and the notion that the biography is virtually the key to understanding the "meanings" of the art... or vis-versa... that the art can be used to tell us about the artist (ie. the art therapy approach to criticism) at once fascinate yet repulse me as an artist.


Is the entire field of psychology/psychiatry legitimate? That could become more than a brief digression. :p Ah, good old HB. Not surprising that he's so adept at identifying "schools of resentment" when, so far as I can tell, he resents absolutely everything under the sun these days. I don't know that I would call psychology a religion exactly, though I do think that the appeal of it to our times is partly that it is connected with a premise of scientific method or empiricism that, on a very broad level, does seem to inspire a certain degree of faith among many because it seems to offer the comfort of a sure answer.

First of all, while Freud is obviously a founder and key figure in the history of psychology, it would be a mistake to either defend or attach the whole field as though it were still nothing but a monolith of Freudian psychoanalysis when many other approaches and modes of thinking, notably the behaviorist and humanist schools of psychology, have changed, enhanced or in some cases dismissed all together much of the Freudian foundation. I think the several branches of psychology together do offer some very useful tools for both helping and understanding people in a way that other fields do not and, among other things, psychological study has led to things like the classification of mental illness as an illness, which has allowed us as a society to break away from the old bedlam model, or the understanding of something like the stages of developmental ability in young children, which can be useful for helping to form the expectations of both parents and educators. Naturally, like any form of study, there are both pros and cons to the field and its practice, benifits and harm, and it's only going to be useful so long as people regard these theories and ways of thinking as tools rather than inherent truths. It is true that there are some adherents of psychology who do seem to need to be told that the "id" is no more real than the line of the equator around the earth (and as regards that group, Bloom may have a point), but most intelligent and nuanced practitioners in the field are more aware than that.

I find the field of psychology absolutely fascinating, partly because of its necessary blending of scientific and humanistic approaches in studying the human mind. However, in terms of the use of psychology in literary criticism, I am generally not a big fan of psychological lit. studies (and I do see where Bloom is coming from). Partly I think this is because they are written by literary scholars who are, not all, but for the most part, either not very expert or very bad psychologists. Simply reading some Freud does not make one an authority in the field of psychology, but some literary readings seem to treat it as such. The biggest pitfalls seem to be either the treatment of psychological theories or hypotheses as cold hard fact which serve to prove the critic's rather strained reading of his or her text, or the use of Freud in deciphering symbolism like some sort of code book. One begins to wonder, part way through some of the worst kind of Freudian crit, whether everything on the planet is really shaped like a phallus. You get deconstructionism piled on top of reductive readings of Freud and the greatest atrocities ever committed on a poem or novel begin to emerge as words that were once patently innocuous and of little note in a sentence suddenly take on strange and perverted (in many senses of the word) meanings. Perhaps such criticism is more profitable than one would imagine--surely The Freudian Code could outsell Dan Brown's little Art Historical venture? :idea:

This said, I don't think it's impossible that the study of psychology can sometimes have things to offer the study of literature and I have seen psychological theories intelligently brought in to bolster or enhance a literary interpretation, or even used as the impetus for opening up some thoughtful questions or insights into a literary text.

As for your excellent question regarding the ability to understand art through biography or biography through art, that naturally opens up onto a range of questions about the importance of the author's life to his or her artistic creation (which branches off into questions of intentionality, ethics, etc. as well as psychology). It is a good question, because I think most people probably would agree on at least some basic level that the artist's life and personality are evident in some way or another in his or her art and that there are things that a person's art can tell its reader/viewer about him or her. Certainly one can tell quite a lot about a person's experience and possibly his or her mind from both the content and the style of his or her writing. The question becomes, what sort of things can we tell about a person from his or her creative written work? To what degree can we make assumptions about an author's life, interior or exterior, from the evidence of a fictional and/or poetic work. For example, I recently wrote a chapter of my dissertation on Chaucer's poem, The House of Fame in which a narrator named "Geffrey" makes an allegorical dream journey. This is a clear instance in which the author is directly inviting a certain parallel between himself and a narrator who not only shares his first name, but happens to also be an aspiring poet. There are certain things in the poem that one can say with some assurance are allusions to Chaucer's biography. For example, the reference to Geffrey the narrator's labor at his "rekenynges" is most likely an allusion to Chaucer's job as comptroller of the wool custom at the time the poem was written. This is a fairly safe sort of connection between biography and work, and one that in this case is also backed by historical evidence. Yet attempts to make more nuanced claims about biography, even in a poem that so clearly invites a certain degree of connection between author and fictional narrator, become quickly complicated and unclear. Partly, of course, this is because fictional claims are often intentionally humorous, ironic, fanciful etc. It would, for example, be a misreading of the poem to say that because "Geffrey" protests he has no interests in fame, that means Chaucer has none. Other claims about an author's personal or interior life are difficult to prove. Can I say that because the narrator is whisked away by a giant eagle and makes a reference to Ganymede that this obviously means that Chaucer was in the closet? Can I say that the fact that the last house he visits is constructed out of humble materials and contains the conversation of those in the lower to middling classes means that Chaucer had a deep interest in the common man? The latter might not be such an outrageous claim given that people of all sorts are the heart and soul of his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales , but is it a more stretched claim if one takes it to mean that Chaucer held what we would now term proto-Marxist views? My attitude toward an attempt to forge a connection between author and work with the use of psychology is much like my attitude toward such attempts by other methods, which is that it must be treated with both a healthy degree of scepticism and a fair amount of other kinds of support along with an informed and sensitive literary reading of the text in question. Social science based interpretation cannot fully take the place of literary based interpretation when it comes to analyzing a poem or other literary text. I think a psychoanalytic/psychological reading of a text is a very difficult thing to do well. It is challenging enough to use a psychological approach to analyze living people we can talk to and get feedback from, and it can be quite hit and miss at that. How much more difficult to attempt to analyze the mind of a person who may be long dead via an artistic creation that was consciously created to have extended elements of fiction and play in meaning?


And that is what I understood you to mean. Again... Quindlen's quote equally suggests that she does not look to art as a mans to reinforce her own beliefs, values, or even prejudices. She argues that it offers a means of experiencing... appreciating... understanding... but not necessarily agreeing with the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others.

Precisely.


I love Pater's writings which certainly are works of art... almost poetic creations... especially The Renaissance... and I have repeatedly posted the conclusion to this book in offering my thoughts upon why I read... why I value art. I am also especially fond of the section on Giorgione in which Pater argues that all art aspires to the state of music in which form and content are inseparable.

Yes. I came, quite independently, to the conclusion that music was the highest state of art when I was about 15 or 16 (though obviously not with the sophistication or knowledge of Pater) and so it is one of those ideas that has always stayed with me, partly with the sense that it is something almost organically true, as those ideas we first discover for ourselves when very young tend to seem. With what joy a few years later did I encounter a critic like Pater, who expressed so beautifully and with such nuance an idea I had attempted to express so clumsily myself. Sometimes I think that I have amended my ideas in that regard some, that I reject the hierarchy in the arts implied by the claim that they all aspire to the state of music, but then I sit down to play Bach or listen to Beethoven's 9th...and there seems very little question about it. :)


I don't know that he is comforting... any more than is Mel Brooks' laughter at the Inquisition of the Nazis... but perhaps the laughter makes it bearable and does more to undermine those in power who have abused their position than any serious declaration of outrage. Chicken Soup for the Kafkaesque Soul? The man himself would probably have loved it. Quite Kafkaesque.:lol

Hadn't thought of it, but I think he might approve at that.:D

[stlukesguild]

I think a psychoanalytic/psychological reading of a text is a very difficult thing to do well. It is challenging enough to use a psychological approach to analyze living people we can talk to and get feedback from, and it can be quite hit and miss at that. How much more difficult to attempt to analyze the mind of a person who may be long dead via an artistic creation that was consciously created to have extended elements of fiction and play in meaning?

This largely touches on the misgivings I have with regard to the notion that we can analyze the artist from his or her biography... or vis-versa. It ignores the fact that no work of art... however complex... conveys more than a small part of the individual who created it. We continually hear of the notion of "self-expression"... but do we actually imagine that The Canterbury Tales or the Sistine Ceiling or The Well-Tempered Clavier express anything more than the mere sliver of who Chaucer, Michelangelo, or Bach were? Again, Whitman's "I contain multitudes" seems prescient. In our discussions on music you expressed some surprise at the portrait of young Bach which I posted... undoubtedly because the image of Bach that we are often presented with is quite different. Many music lovers were outraged at the manner in which Mozart was present in the film Amadeus. While the film certainly played fast and loose with the facts, there is much to support the image of Mozart as rather immature... especially with regard to social relationships. There are any number of letters written by him laden with lewd sexual comments and vulgarities of an almost juvenile manner... and yet he was also able to compose Le Nozze di Figaro:confused: Of course I might justify this dichotomy by buying into our resident "musicologist's" claims that someone else wrote it all.:rolleyes: Or it may be that the link between the art and the artist is not so easily defined.

There is a contemporary painter named Eric Fischl who came upon the scene in the mid-1980s. He rapidly became known as something of the "bad boy of painting". He earned this reputation for the creation of paintings dealing with psycho-sexual dramas played out in the suburbs... paintings such as:

(edited for content)

... painted on a grand scale, were... and continue to be... quite unsettling. Endless essays were written in which attempts were made to analyze the artist's "deviant" sexual obsessions. Suggestions were made that he had a "mommy complex" (Oedipal) or something equally unnatural. When the artist came to speak at my art school the students were shocked to discover that Fischl was well-spoken, eloquent, intelligent, knowledgeable about art history,
and quite conscious of the "mechanics" that he employed in his paintings... and how they would likely be perceived by others. In other words... the students were surprised to discover that the paintings did not come near to defining the whole of the artist.

Yes. I came, quite independently, to the conclusion that music was the highest state of art when I was about 15 or 16 (though obviously not with the sophistication or knowledge of Pater) and so it is one of those ideas that has always stayed with me, partly with the sense that it is something almost organically true, as those ideas we first discover for ourselves when very young tend to seem. With what joy a few years later did I encounter a critic like Pater, who expressed so beautifully and with such nuance an idea I had attempted to express so clumsily myself. Sometimes I think that I have amended my ideas in that regard some, that I reject the hierarchy in the arts implied by the claim that they all aspire to the state of music, but then I sit down to play Bach or listen to Beethoven's 9th...and there seems very little question about it.

I don't think of it in terms of a heirarchy... but rather with the sense that music, of all the arts, is an art form in which form and content are fully interwoven to the point that they are inseparable. The author deals with a subject and there is the notion that the subject carries a certain weight or frivolity. The same is true of painting... at least until recently. It is impossible to ignore that this painting presents an image of a nude woman, a beautiful landscape, or an apple. The "meaning" comes from both the subject matter an the art... or the manner in which it was presented. But there is no "subject" matter in Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Interestingly enough, music... or at least what we know of what we define as "serious" or "classical music" has the least history. About the earliest music that has come down to us (was given written form in notations) dates from the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Visual art and literature of the greatest merit far predates this... and yet an artist as sophisticated as Paul Klee willingly admitted that painting was immature in comparison to music in that it still depended upon external subject matter or narratives. He imagined that someday one might be able to construct paintings of a collection of "colors" and "textures" and "lines" in much the same manner in which the musician constructs a work of music solely from the abstract elements of sound. Abstract painting... of which Klee was a major innovator... made major steps in this direction... but the results left many (myself included) pondering whether such was the appropriate language for visual art.

[Petrarch's Love]

This largely touches on the misgivings I have with regard to the notion that we can analyze the artist from his or her biography... or vis-versa. It ignores the fact that no work of art... however complex... conveys more than a small part of the individual who created it. We continually hear of the notion of "self-expression"... but do we actually imagine that The Canterbury Tales or the Sistine Ceiling or The Well-Tempered Clavier express anything more than the mere sliver of who Chaucer, Michelangelo, or Bach were?

Absolutely. I think this is another part of the problem with some psychological readings. While a person's art may give us some insight into one facet of that person, it may not be a key facet, and it may be leaving out a lot of other very important characteristics that make up the whole person.


There is a contemporary painter named Eric Fischl who came upon the scene in the mid-1980s. He rapidly became known as something of the "bad boy of painting". He earned this reputation for the creation of paintings dealing with psycho-sexual dramas played out in the suburbs... paintings such as:

... painted on a grand scale, were... and continue to be... quite unsettling. Endless essays were written in which attempts were made to analyze the artist's "deviant" sexual obsessions. Suggestions were made that he had a "mommy complex" (Oedipal) or something equally unnatural. When the artist came to speak at my art school the students were shocked to discover that Fischl was well-spoken, eloquent, intelligent, knowledgeable about art history,
and quite conscious of the "mechanics" that he employed in his paintings... and how they would likely be perceived by others. In other words... the students were surprised to discover that the paintings did not come near to defining the whole of the artist.

I have to confess that I'm a bit surprised that the students were surprised. Though they are obviously weird, unsettling paintings, I've always assumed that the artist who painted those subjects in that way was controlled, perhaps slightly intellectual in his, at least partial, detachment and not terribly amazed that he was a fairly eloquent and knowledgeable speaker. There's a lot of conceptualization going on in those scenes, though there's also a lot of strangeness and it's the detached thoughtfulness, the premeditated character of those paintings, that gives them that especially unsettling sense. Perhaps the surprise was in the assumption that people who exhibit strange or disturbing thoughts will automatically act or look strange and distrubing when the majority of people, regardless of what's going on in their heads, look rather normal? I'll agree that is one drawback about psychological labels like an "oedipal complex": they tend sometimes to create caricatures of the people they describe, or to lead to the assumption that a person is defined wholly by the label of having a "complex."


I don't think of it in terms of a heirarchy... but rather with the sense that music, of all the arts, is an art form in which form and content are fully interwoven to the point that they are inseparable.

Oh yes, I think that is the main point and merit of the argument, but it does tend to rather elevate the position of music n'est pas?


About the earliest music that has come down to us (was given written form in notations) dates from the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Visual art and literature of the greatest merit far predates this... and yet an artist as sophisticated as Paul Klee willingly admitted that painting was immature in comparison to music in that it still depended upon external subject matter or narratives. He imagined that someday one might be able to construct paintings of a collection of "colors" and "textures" and "lines" in much the same manner in which the musician constructs a work of music solely from the abstract elements of sound. Abstract painting... of which Klee was a major innovator... made major steps in this direction... but the results left many (myself included) pondering whether such was the appropriate language for visual art.

Yes, I'll agree that each of the arts may be able to do something in a way that the others cannot. Klee is not, of course, alone in imagining that dependence on external subject matter is somehow hampering for an art form. In the paragone debates of the Renaissance (the period, not the book) this was given explicitly moral valence in debates in which the visual arts were associated with the mortal body and literature or music with the soul (I seem to recall some of the Renaissance Neo-Platonists associating the art, literature and music with the appetitive, rational and spirited souls, respectively, though I can't think where that is.). In emblem literature, the image was commonly referred to as "the body" and the words "the soul," with much attendant moralistic play on the terms. One does tend to wonder if "the body" is being given a bad rap, since clearly there is much that can only be expressed with some reliance on an external subject. Is this objection to external subject matter partly rooted in an older moral attitude toward the mortal matter of this world? Or is it simply that a more abstract form like music allows for an escape from the corporeality of the world that people sometimes long for?

Naturally, if we're going to be really serious, the reason that literature is clearly the greatest of the art forms is that it has the capacity to describe both the external and the internal, the concrete and the abstract. In poetry we have the soul of music and the body of imagery: what more could one ask for? :D

Anyway, thanks for helping me make this "garbage" thread a little more interesting.

[stlukesguild]

I have to confess that I'm a bit surprised that the students were surprised. Though they are obviously weird, unsettling paintings, I've always assumed that the artist who painted those subjects in that way was controlled, perhaps slightly intellectual in his, at least partial, detachment and not terribly amazed that he was a fairly eloquent and knowledgeable speaker.

I think there was... and continues to be something of an assumption that an artist who deals with emotions or physical sensations is somehow less intellectual than the artist who deals more with ideas. Certainly, in literature, there are many who imagine that Romanticism was less rigorous or intellectually demanding of the artist than some 18th century poetry. By the same token... there is often the prejudice against the "lack of feeling" of classicism... as if Ingres or Mozart were inherently less expressive than Van Gogh or Richard Strauss. If we take a painter like Van Gogh, his entire biography revolves around emotionally charged issues: his "madness", his emotional outbursts, his struggles with Gauguin, his suicide. The image many walk away with is that of a painter just in the throws of inspiration born of his emotional turmoil... not that of a painter who carefully studied the work of the French Impressionists, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Rembrandt, and other sources... not that of an artist whose calligraphic brush work owed much to Japanese and Chinese art... not that of a painter whose mastery of color reveals an artist quite conscious of color harmonies.

There's a lot of conceptualization going on in those scenes, though there's also a lot of strangeness and it's the detached thoughtfulness, the premeditated character of those paintings, that gives them that especially unsettling sense. Perhaps the surprise was in the assumption that people who exhibit strange or disturbing thoughts will automatically act or look strange and distrubing...

Yes... isn't the the usual response to the latest mass murderer something along the lines of "He was quiet... kept to himself... we never suspected this..." Of course certain critics are driven to explain why an artist focused upon this or that subject matter. Degas has been repeatedly analyzed as a misogynist (fueled by his having never married) in spite of the fact that his paintings clearly suggest a love of his subjects... his dancers or his women at the millinery shop or his bathers... for who they were... and not for some unrealistic ideal... and in spite of the fact that he repeatedly took on female students including Mary Cassatt. And then there was the highly regarded feminist critic who imagined penises everywhere in Matisse (his goldfish were imagined to be penises)... a clear proof of his misogyny and immature sexual obsessions.:lol: Just as with the fundamentalist fanatics who rail about the gay agenda being put forth in Sponge Bob and Teletubbies, I suspect such criticism tells more about the viewer than it does about the artist.

Quote:SLG- About the earliest music that has come down to us (was given written form in notations) dates from the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Visual art and literature of the greatest merit far predates this... and yet an artist as sophisticated as Paul Klee willingly admitted that painting was immature in comparison to music in that it still depended upon external subject matter or narratives. He imagined that someday one might be able to construct paintings of a collection of "colors" and "textures" and "lines" in much the same manner in which the musician constructs a work of music solely from the abstract elements of sound. Abstract painting... of which Klee was a major innovator... made major steps in this direction... but the results left many (myself included) pondering whether such was the appropriate language for visual art.

Yes, I'll agree that each of the arts may be able to do something in a way that the others cannot. Klee is not, of course, alone in imagining that dependence on external subject matter is somehow hampering for an art form. In the paragone debates of the Renaissance (the period, not the book) this was given explicitly moral valence in debates in which the visual arts were associated with the mortal body and literature or music with the soul

Leonardo took part in the debate of art vs poetry and certainly he... along with Cellini, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, and Alberti... all artists who were also excellent writers and quite knowledgeable of the the history of art... and not merely the technical "craft" issues... were influential in the eventual acceptance of the visual arts as one of the "fine arts" and not merely a manual craft.

(I seem to recall some of the Renaissance Neo-Platonists associating the art, literature and music with the appetitive, rational and spirited souls, respectively, though I can't think where that is.).

Actually... I believe that there were those for whom music was even more linked with the physical and sensual. I believe there were various Catholic figures who denounced music as sensuously seductive... and Martin Luther concurred as to its power. Intriguingly, the Lutheran church was commonly quite sparse and lacking visual art... but they had the best music (Bach!)

In emblem literature, the image was commonly referred to as "the body" and the words "the soul," with much attendant moralistic play on the terms. One does tend to wonder if "the body" is being given a bad rap, since clearly there is much that can only be expressed with some reliance on an external subject. Is this objection to external subject matter partly rooted in an older moral attitude toward the mortal matter of this world? Or is it simply that a more abstract form like music allows for an escape from the corporeality of the world that people sometimes long for?

Intriguingly, this prejudice has carried over to the present where we find the development of Conceptual art (following Duchamp) in which the artists sought to negate the physical art object (which they felt connected art to craft... and to the sensual and corporal... as opposed to the intellectual. There are several intriguing books and essays which explore the Modernist obsession with the intellectual and the apparent rejection of traditional, sensual beauty with a notion that the intellectual and masculine was to be seen as inherently more rigorous than the sensual and feminine (Male Culture vs Female Nature?). There were no end of critics who felt that Matisse was at his best where he was closest to Picasso and avoided sensuality (as if Picasso himself were not the greatest sensualist!). One even suspects a similar prejudice at play among those who championed the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ligetti, Cage, Boulez, etc... while deriding Rachmaninoff or Pucinni or Richard Strauss or Aaron Copland as lacking the rigor and taking the easy route of embracing traditional concepts of beauty and playing upon the emotions.

Naturally, if we're going to be really serious, the reason that literature is clearly the greatest of the art forms is that it has the capacity to describe both the external and the internal, the concrete and the abstract. In poetry we have the soul of music and the body of imagery: what more could one ask for?

Music and pictures.:D

[mortalterror]

About the earliest music that has come down to us (was given written form in notations) dates from the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Visual art and literature of the greatest merit far predates this... and yet an artist as sophisticated as Paul Klee willingly admitted that painting was immature in comparison to music in that it still depended upon external subject matter or narratives. He imagined that someday one might be able to construct paintings of a collection of "colors" and "textures" and "lines" in much the same manner in which the musician constructs a work of music solely from the abstract elements of sound. Abstract painting... of which Klee was a major innovator... made major steps in this direction... but the results left many (myself included) pondering whether such was the appropriate language for visual art.
You're right, those paintings are better perceived through the ears than with the eyes. Personally, I think all art aspires to the state of perfume. Maybe we can make the Mona Lisa scratch and sniff?

[stlukesguild]

I don't know, mortal... from what I know about art history your idea brings some rather... unsavory... images to mind.:lol:

[Petrarch's Love]

I think there was... and continues to be something of an assumption that an artist who deals with emotions or physical sensations is somehow less intellectual than the artist who deals more with ideas. Certainly, in literature, there are many who imagine that Romanticism was less rigorous or intellectually demanding of the artist than some 18th century poetry. By the same token... there is often the prejudice against the "lack of feeling" of classicism... as if Ingres or Mozart were inherently less expressive than Van Gogh or Richard Strauss. If we take a painter like Van Gogh, his entire biography revolves around emotionally charged issues: his "madness", his emotional outbursts, his struggles with Gauguin, his suicide. The image many walk away with is that of a painter just in the throws of inspiration born of his emotional turmoil... not that of a painter who carefully studied the work of the French Impressionists, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Rembrandt, and other sources... not that of an artist whose calligraphic brush work owed much to Japanese and Chinese art... not that of a painter whose mastery of color reveals an artist quite conscious of color harmonies.

Perhaps some such assumptions are, in a way, compliments to the artist who has performed his art with such sprezzatura that the hard work looks effortless.


Yes... isn't the the usual response to the latest mass murderer something along the lines of "He was quiet... kept to himself... we never suspected this..." Of course certain critics are driven to explain why an artist focused upon this or that subject matter. Degas has been repeatedly analyzed as a misogynist (fueled by his having never married) in spite of the fact that his paintings clearly suggest a love of his subjects... his dancers or his women at the millinery shop or his bathers... for who they were... and not for some unrealistic ideal... and in spite of the fact that he repeatedly took on female students including Mary Cassatt. And then there was the highly regarded feminist critic who imagined penises everywhere in Matisse (his goldfish were imagined to be penises)... a clear proof of his misogyny and immature sexual obsessions.
:eek2: Wow, I had missed that one. There are some critics that almost make me ashamed of academia. A goldfish is a goldfish is a goldfish!


Just as with the fundamentalist fanatics who rail about the gay agenda being put forth in Sponge Bob and Teletubbies, I suspect such criticism tells more about the viewer than it does about the artist.

Possibly true. (Just don't suggest any such thing around the wrong academics or we'll be getting reader response psychoanalysis before long!)


Leonardo took part in the debate of art vs poetry and certainly he... along with Cellini, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, and Alberti... all artists who were also excellent writers and quite knowledgeable of the the history of art... and not merely the technical "craft" issues... were influential in the eventual acceptance of the visual arts as one of the "fine arts" and not merely a manual craft.

Ah, Leonardo's Trattato della Pittura. That defense is so great. He even plays with the art as body trope:

"Poetry arises in the mind and imagination of the poet, who desires to depict the same thing as the painter. He wishes to parallel the painter, but in truth he is far removed...Therefore, with respect to representation, we may justly claim that the difference between the science of painting and poetry is equivalent to that between a body and its cast shadow..."

And, of course, music is a merely a "sorella minore", a younger sister to the pittura because music is ephemeral. That's among my favorite statments in his defense:

"The painter makes his work permanent for very many years, and of such excellence that it keeps alive the harmony of those proportional parts which nature, for all her powers, cannot manageto preserve. How many paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress!"

Along with Raphael's epitaph, such a statement certainly suggests we could add "humility" to the Renaissance painter's list of virtues. :D


Actually... I believe that there were those for whom music was even more linked with the physical and sensual. I believe there were various Catholic figures who denounced music as sensuously seductive... and Martin Luther concurred as to its power. Intriguingly, the Lutheran church was commonly quite sparse and lacking visual art... but they had the best music (Bach!)

That is true. Assessments of music as an art form do tend to run the gamut from claiming it as something divine to shunning it as the path to temptation. Of course it was complex polyphonic music in particular that caused a lot of controversy in the late middle ages: partly because the parts of the music were so complicated that church officials were afraid the words of the service were being obscured, putting an emphasis on the enjoyment of the music (art for art's sake?). They were also very nervous about secular music blending into the sacred, something that a polyphonic arrangement could disguise slightly more cleverly (is that the theme of the latest popular tavern song creeping into the mass?!) rather than understanding the liturgy. Later, some of the protestants weren't too keen on music in general, but I suppose having been raised a good Lutheran has given me a healthy association with music and the divine. :angel:


Naturally, if we're going to be really serious, the reason that literature is clearly the greatest of the art forms is that it has the capacity to describe both the external and the internal, the concrete and the abstract. In poetry we have the soul of music and the body of imagery: what more could one ask for?

Music and pictures.

:lol: Don't buy Sidney's "speaking picture" argument as a substitute for the real thing, eh?

[Petrarch's Love]

You're right, those paintings are better perceived through the ears than with the eyes. Personally, I think all art aspires to the state of perfume. Maybe we can make the Mona Lisa scratch and sniff?


I don't know, mortal... from what I know about art history your idea brings some rather... unsavory... images to mind.:lol:

:lol: Our Mortal does bring up a cogent point. What is the place of smell in thorough-going aesthetic theory?:D

[ennison]

". I really don't thimk that there is meaning in every single thing."

Ah but there is.

[myrna22]

Twain was a highly skilled writer. He wrote Huckleberry Finn as an satirical statement on racism and society. The book is indeed full of symbolism and imagery which is suggestive of these ideas. I think it may be more your teacher's methods and approach to helping you see the subtext in the novel which is the problem, not that her/his interpretation is off the mark or over the top.

Literature is an art form, and like other other art froms, has different levels of meaning. You can read Huck Finn simply for the advernture, or you can find the complexity of meaning woven into the simple childhood adventure story. Your teacher should not be teaching you what is there but how to see and appreciate what is there. When you learn to read literature in a way wherein you, on your own, are finding various levels of meaning, it's like a light goes on and you go 'wow,' this is fascinating. It's like figuring out a puzzle.

The obvious analogy for me is a painting. A beautiful painting can be appreciated purely on the surface level. However, if you learn about how artists work, study other works by the same or similar artists, learn about the tools and techniques artists use to express various ideas, you learn to find greater meaning and depth in any work of art. When you see more in them than is on the surface, it is a great joy, at least to me it is.

Very skilled, highly talented writers never put anything in their work that is not there for a reason and is not somehow supporting, suggesting or illustrating an idea. I believe that is much of the fun, pleasure and joy they find in the the process of writing. I imagine Twain taking great joy and pleasure in the writing of Huckleberry Finn.

If we look, for example, at Heart of Darkness: the river is not just a river. The same goes for Huckleberry Finn: the river is definitely not just a river.

[mal4mac]

Isn't it obvious that the river represents freedom? Do you need some, likely boring, teacher harping on forever about obvious symbolism. Every hour you spend listening to the boring teacher could be spent actually reading Twain, or (if you feel you need some help) a great critic. Here's a sentence from a neat, two page, review by Harold Bloom:

"Huck is Adam early in the morning, a fresh start in the Evening Land that is the United States. European man is fallen; Huck ..."

.. is not just a boy.

[ennison]

"If we look, for example, at Heart of Darkness: the river is not just a river. The same goes for Huckleberry Finn: the river is definitely not just a river."

Exactly. As someone or other said, "Of course it's not straightforward dear, it's reading".

I paraphrase liberally

[Drkshadow03]

Every hour you spend listening to the boring teacher could be spent actually reading Twain

In class? You make it sound like the teacher talking about the book in class is somehow cutting into the student's reading time outside of school.


Isn't it obvious that the river represents freedom?

Not necessarily to a student still cutting their teeth on literature for the first time. They need much more guidance.


(if you feel you need some help) a great critic. Here's a sentence from a neat, two page, review by Harold Bloom:

"Huck is Adam early in the morning, a fresh start in the Evening Land that is the United States. European man is fallen; Huck ..."

.. is not just a boy.

I wouldn't really call Harold Bloom a great a critic. He had had his heyday, and I'm not saying he's a bad critic, but like JBI I am starting to find it frightening how many people here (especially you, Mac) worship Bloom like he is some kind of literary god.

Really people should be working on developing their own unique reactions and perspectives on literature rather than endlessly miming their teachers or the great critics.

[spookymulder93]

I actually just got done reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck which I got from the thrift store and it had all these notes in it about the irony and symbolism and other analysis stuff and I couldn't help but to think to myself that this must suck ALL the fun out of reading the book.

I still think that unless the author says it's something more, a river is just a river dude.

[_Shannon_]

I actually just got done reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck which I got from the thrift store and it had all these notes in it about the irony and symbolism and other analysis stuff and I couldn't help but to think to myself that this must suck ALL the fun out of reading the book.

I still think that unless the author says it's something more, a river is just a river dude.

I dunno that I would say that reading The Pearl is....fun......lol! That book kicked my butt! I have rarely wept at a book as I did when I finished The Pearl.

But I completely agree--the way that literature is taught is so divergent with how literature is read. It destroys many people's desire to read anything other than popular fiction. For summer reading now there is often a book assigned entitled How To Read Literature Like A Professor....and I just want to scream, "Nooooooooo!". I mean do want to ensure that high school kids never pick up a great book ever again after they leave school??

I don't deny that there is symbolism and allegory, theme and point of view etc. in novels and poetry--but dissecting a work of literature with such scientific precision so often seems to just destroy those parts of writing which we cannot quantify--the parts which build our souls and stretch us as human beings.

[stlukesguild]

There is a difference between studying a book and simply reading a book for pleasure. There are also different levels of reading. I've always liked the old Lex Luthor quote from Superman: Some people can read "War and Peace" and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. The professor of literature's or the literary critic's experience of reading is not the same as the high-school student's no more than my experience of painting after years of art school and years working as an artist/art educator is the same as it was when I first walked into an art museum at age 16. Reading... books change according to the experiences you bring to them. The average high-school student struggles with the language of Shakespeare or even Dickens. After years of reading older literature (including Shakespeare and Dickens... Spenser and Chaucer) what was once a struggle, is now a pleasure... and I can grasp the beauty and flow of the language. When you are formally studying a work of literature, you are developing experience in different ways of reading... learning what to look for... learning that a book is about more than plot and character... its about language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc... I don't understand the very idea that someone would imagine that having a deeper grasp of an art form would somehow take the joy out of the experience. Somehow I don't imagine that the professor of literature enjoys reading any less than the composer or the conductor enjoys music, or than the artist enjoys art. Indeed, I might suggest that they enjoy aspects and elements of reading that completely elude those with less experience.

[spookymulder93]

What if someone doesn't care about the "language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc" they just want to read a good book that may or may not give them some insight into there own life.

It's kind of like when I took my film studies class. I mean the different symbols and directing techniques the professor pointed out to us were cool and informative, but it'd be a cold day in hell before I sat down and studied a movie like that in my free time, unless by some chance I decide to direct a movie.

But it's all summed up by the fact that we're all different.

[Drkshadow03]

What if someone doesn't care about the "language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc" they just want to read a good book that may or may not give them some insight into there own life.

It's kind of like when I took my film studies class. I mean the different symbols and directing techniques the professor pointed out to us were cool and informative, but it'd be a cold day in hell before I sat down and studied a movie like that in my free time, unless by some chance I decide to direct a movie.

But it's all summed up by the fact that we're all different.

This is a bit trickier though than someone sitting down and going out of their way to "study" a film or book or whatever. As someone with a literature degree, I don't just turn it on when I feel like it. I almost always notice language, symbols, formal structures, and atmosphere, etc. naturally as I read a book for pleasure. Not to mention noticing these elements makes the book more pleasurable for me.

[stlukesguild]

This is a bit trickier though than someone sitting down and going out of their way to "study" a film or book or whatever. As someone with a literature degree, I don't just turn it on when I feel like it. I almost always notice language, symbols, formal structures, and atmosphere, etc. naturally as I read a book for pleasure. Not to mention noticing these elements makes the book more pleasurable for me.

Exactly. It is just reading taken to a further level and when learned it comes natural and is not something that one is overly conscious about. When one first learns to read, one employs phonics... sounds out unfamiliar words, looks up the meaning of words that one doesn't know. With time, one no longer needs to employ such strategies much. With time and experience symbols, form, language, references to other literary works or to historical events and persons no longer make great demands upon the reader. I am currently reading Dante once again. I personally find the reading quite easy... and pleasurable... for I no longer need to struggle with all the complexities (the references, the history, the form) that once was of the greatest degree of difficulty. I might also mention that some of us do not read as an alternative to television. Some of us actually rise to the challenge of a difficult work... we gain a degree of pleasure from it... just as some garner a degree of pleasure from solving a crossword puzzle or playing a game of chess. Other simply want their pleasures handed to them... like so much mental pablum.:D

[JBI]

The goal is to get to the point where you need as few reference works as possible to understand a text to a satisfactory level, the level of course various with people. If I read, I don't even think about plot, theme, character, etc. unless I am reading something which uses different conventions, such as Spenser's Faerie Queene, whose characters are Allegorical figures, rather than realist characters, so they pose to the reader a bit of an uncomfortable grounding in interpretation.

But in general, the goal of learning all those terms, is so that you can apply them without thinking. It is not as if those are difficult terms; there are far, far more difficult terms, especially when you get into specialized fields.

In general, most people don't need to know what an anaphoric or cataphoric novel structure is. Still, the basics are required. Though the AP classes from what I understand don't teach basic terms, like Vehicle and Tenor.

[IceM]

I feel more and more like AP courses undermine their students. Although I'm off on some of my interpretations of literature, those moments are seldom; I, like many in our AP program, are advanced readers. It seems to me like teachers baby their students through curriculum, practically giving away "appropriate" interpretations of literature, if such inferences are possible.

To me, teachers should notify students of the recommeded reading ahead of time and let students fend for themselves. Essentially, give the students the books and have them make their own interpretations. My 10th Grade Honors teacher opposed my interpretation of Antigone even though both mine and his "standardly accepted one" were both equally defendable through the text.

Of course, books have intended purposes; Siddhartha wasn't meant to encourage others to be naturalists as much as it preached patience as a pathway to enlightenment. Nevertheless, I always support allowing students to deduce their own opinions rather than accept "professionally sponsored opinions," as long own's own thoughts are equally defendable through excerpts from the text. I'm tired of being force-fed opinions that aren't relevant to me because someone outside of my understanding (although being a professional in the field) thinks their understanding trumps mine.

[Evaril]

Psychology, or psychoanalysis as founded by Freud, certainly has solid grounds for its existence and investigations, but whether its present assumptions are true and precise or not, I am unwilling to comment.

[ktm5124]

What's all this emphasis on interpretation? The point of reading a book is not to create an interpretation, or arrive at a universal interpretation - interpret nothing! if a novel is written in English and English is your native language then it is already translated, already "interpreted".

The point is to say something interesting about the story in an essay, and if it is to be interesting then it must first be interesting to you, thus every essay is rooted in a personal reaction, an impression upon the reader, and the job of the essay is to reflect this impression onto the objective world. The word "interpretation" has been loaded so full of meaning that it no longer has any meaning, and it often becomes synonymous with "bull****ting".

A professor of literature once said to my class that the goal of the critic is to increase the reading pleasure of others. This is quite at odds with the lab technician image of a professor carrying forceps. And I think that as a corollary to this, the goal of the teacher - college professor, high school teacher, whatever - should be to increase the reading pleasure of his or her students. If the teacher is not doing this, then he/she is failing at his/her job.

[Drkshadow03]

What's all this emphasis on interpretation? The point of reading a book is not to create an interpretation, or arrive at a universal interpretation - interpret nothing! if a novel is written in English and English is your native language then it is already translated, already "interpreted".

The point is to say something interesting about the story in an essay, and if it is to be interesting then it must first be interesting to you, thus every essay is rooted in a personal reaction, an impression upon the reader, and the job of the essay is to reflect this impression onto the objective world. The word "interpretation" has been loaded so full of meaning that it no longer has any meaning, and it often becomes synonymous with "bull****ting".

A professor of literature once said to my class that the goal of the critic is to increase the reading pleasure of others. This is quite at odds with the lab technician image of a professor carrying forceps. And I think that as a corollary to this, the goal of the teacher - college professor, high school teacher, whatever - should be to increase the reading pleasure of his or her students. If the teacher is not doing this, then he/she is failing at his/her job.

Personal reaction/interpretation. I call BS semantic games. When you're giving your personal reaction you're giving your interpretation of the events of a book. Personal reaction is just a different way of saying "interpretation."

The point of reading a book is to enjoy yourself and possibly open yourself up more to the world around you.

[pooteeweet]

As a student you study the work -- some of your colleagues may need more assistance than you and you shouldn’t fall into the trap that most English majors do by thinking that you are above anybody else in the room. Go to class, study the work, encourage others, learn a thing or two, and move on. No need to argue or put anybody down.

Enjoy the class :)

[JBI]

Personal reaction/interpretation. I call BS semantic games. When you're giving your personal reaction you're giving your interpretation of the events of a book. Personal reaction is just a different way of saying "interpretation."

The point of reading a book is to enjoy yourself and possibly open yourself up more to the world around you.

That doesn't mean an education can't help, or at least provide the tools necessary to effectively communicate something insightful about the book, as to increase the enjoyment of the text by facilitating discussion. You make reading into such a solitary pursuit, when ultimately, it isn't.

In that sense, the discussion allowed for Shakespeare to be a cultural icon, quoted in the streets during the 19th century. The grounds to communicate were set up by the education of Johnson, who marked the beginning of a sense of cultural rethinking (my view), and began a long discussion, creating a platform.

Likewise, the New Critics seem to have generated the set of vocabulary that dominates our discussion - we get words such as metaphor or tenor that are not boring, or do not serve to limit how to read, but merely act as tools for discussion, giving people the ability to express what it is they are reading.


Ultimately, that is the goal of AP English, or a first English education anyway - to give people a functional ability to read, write, and express. Post-Secondary education takes that further, and specifies it, and then Post-Graduate education specifies it further - one is gaining a set of skills relative to expressing ones ideas - becoming analytical.


I think people forget that reading is about discussion. The cultural texts that we have, that form what we call "Good books" are nothing more than the ones we find worth discussing with each other, because of something inside them that creates a second platform for discussion - the value is post-textual, in the sense that they invite an interpretation from the reader, and welcome one to a new entertainment based on a discourse of such interpretations.

Eliot will never be the easiest poet, in that sense, but he still is a great poet, because he has a knack for being what people are talking about, for coming up with ideas that invite a sort of conversation and interpretation.

In contrast, Dan Brown can be summed up in a few sentences. "Hero who has perfect memory and is great at solving puzzles goes around the world (substitute world for a few cities relative to the book) in a chase against time, in the company of a friend who turns out to secretly be the villain at the end, in a quest to unlock "the greatest secret ever told." Plot-heavy novels with no real substance don't seem to generate any conversation beyond that, hence why they are soon forgotten.

[JBI]

As a student you study the work -- some of your colleagues may need more assistance than you and you shouldn’t fall into the trap that most English majors do by thinking that you are above anybody else in the room. Go to class, study the work, encourage others, learn a thing or two, and move on. No need to argue or put anybody down.

Enjoy the class :)

I don't no if I can subscribe. For instance, I wouldn't agree now with my high school teacher's reading of The Tyger, knowing what I know now. There is something to be said of acquiring exposure and understanding - it is an education after all, and the point of the professor is not to entertain you for a few hours and hand you free marks. You are learning skills, and are tested on skills - sometimes the texts reflect what is relevant to the material, rather than what is interesting to read. For instance, reading texts on religious controversy, such as those by Tyndale from the 16th century is not the most interesting of literature, as Gascoigne is perhaps not the most fun poet, but is still relevant for understanding the history, and intellectual climate of the 16th century.


To assume one is just being entertained gestures to the problem of the system - you can get your entertainment from reading elsewhere, outside of class. That's where I get my entertainment in subjects I don't study, and anyone can go there for it. What you go to class for, especially in the post-secondary level, is to learn things you could make use of - whether it is how to properly write, how to do research, or whatever.

I wouldn't hire somebody because they had been entertained for 4 years.

That is probably the reason for the mediocrity of so many English majors - they think of it as some useless pursuit, and as such, lose track of the purpose, have no real connection to the material, have no real interest, and ultimately make nothing of it - many ending up with bad grades, or with nothing interesting to say, even if they show up to lectures.

It's not about how much fun you can have, but about how the class gives you a fuller understanding of a said topic.

It's the same way you wouldn't go to a math class to be entertained, or a computer science class to have some fun - you are learning to do something. It shouldn't be fun, it should be challenging, and you should have to work hard through it, since, after all, Undergraduate education is not about enjoying four years, but sweating them out.

[Drkshadow03]

That doesn't mean an education can't help, or at least provide the tools necessary to effectively communicate something insightful about the book, as to increase the enjoyment of the text by facilitating discussion. You make reading into such a solitary pursuit, when ultimately, it isn't.

In that sense, the discussion allowed for Shakespeare to be a cultural icon, quoted in the streets during the 19th century. The grounds to communicate were set up by the education of Johnson, who marked the beginning of a sense of cultural rethinking (my view), and began a long discussion, creating a platform.

Likewise, the New Critics seem to have generated the set of vocabulary that dominates our discussion - we get words such as metaphor or tenor that are not boring, or do not serve to limit how to read, but merely act as tools for discussion, giving people the ability to express what it is they are reading.


Ultimately, that is the goal of AP English, or a first English education anyway - to give people a functional ability to read, write, and express. Post-Secondary education takes that further, and specifies it, and then Post-Graduate education specifies it further - one is gaining a set of skills relative to expressing ones ideas - becoming analytical.


I think people forget that reading is about discussion. The cultural texts that we have, that form what we call "Good books" are nothing more than the ones we find worth discussing with each other, because of something inside them that creates a second platform for discussion - the value is post-textual, in the sense that they invite an interpretation from the reader, and welcome one to a new entertainment based on a discourse of such interpretations.

Eliot will never be the easiest poet, in that sense, but he still is a great poet, because he has a knack for being what people are talking about, for coming up with ideas that invite a sort of conversation and interpretation.

In contrast, Dan Brown can be summed up in a few sentences. "Hero who has perfect memory and is great at solving puzzles goes around the world (substitute world for a few cities relative to the book) in a chase against time, in the company of a friend who turns out to secretly be the villain at the end, in a quest to unlock "the greatest secret ever told." Plot-heavy novels with no real substance don't seem to generate any conversation beyond that, hence why they are soon forgotten.

I agree completely. Perhaps I wasn't being clear. When I talk about reading being for entertainment or for one to enjoy themselves I'm being very expansive with those terms. One of the things I always found entertaining about literature or any art form for that matter was discussion after the fact. I think, too, that part of the process of "opening up your world" through literature involves engaging and thinking about others interpretations, not just reading the text itself.