Apology for literature.

When I first heard the word ‘Criticism’, what I thought was something negative. I considered criticism as found something wrong in works and fixing etc. This is probably because I have seen ‘criticism’ which is used negative meaning- in magazine and newspaper, some people who are so called critic deal with certain works (movies, books, paintings) and point out what is wrong with the work. However, critic was not what I used to think. And especially about literature criticism, it was apologizing literature and studies the position of literature concerning with many social parts- politic, culture, society. Moreover, we might be able to think about our life or moral issues with criticism.
Aristotle’ is also literature criticisms against the anti-literatures of that society represented by Plato. Aristotle said that “Literature, especially tragedy, occurs fear and pity and brings catharsis of those feelings.” Against Plato who assert that tragedy gives people an impetus and make their morality go astray, Aristotle argued that tragedy rather improve people’s morality by achieve purification of mind. In other words, tragedy make people not do bad things by literature itself had done the bad things, so that, audiences do not need to do that. Therefore he saved literature from Plato’s argument.
I think apology of literature is worth when the point of view which consider literature as useless and immoral thing. These days in my country regard humanity study, including studying literature, is regarded impractical thing. Many high school students want to get practical major which can make them easy to have a job after they graduate. And this situation can be crisis of literature and its value. Similarly when Puritanism argued that literature made people immoral and even philosophy attacked literature reasoning its impracticalness, Sir Philip Sidney said the aim of literature is “teaching people and make them pleasure” in his .
In teaching, is function of instruction, which is not only moral but also help audience to have recognition by experience that literature gives. In Korea, when there was illuminism, literature is used to enlighten people. So, literature gives us instruction and leads us to have new or changed recognition. Literature also gives us pleasure which we can get when concentrating on the work. So, I thought about the meaning of “read for fun.” We have fun when we doing what we like. For example, we have fun when we enjoy sport or even gambling. But, the fun from literature is different kind of fun (and it should be). Pleasure from play is usually based on self-effacement, but pleasure from literature is based on self-perception. In addition, Aristotle said that we experience Catharsis through psychological comfort which came after conflict and tension that made by fear and pity. Though professional knowledge is very important these days, literature is also very important. This is because we need not only profound knowledge but also emotional mentality together. In Joseon dynasty, there was a state exam to become government official. And there, giving poetry exam was necessary. In my opinion, it might have been a reflection of thought that people who instruct and undertake administration should have intelligence, cultural background and humanness through the literature. In short, only people who have profound knowledge of literature (poetry) can be given opportunity to participate on politics.
Like above, literature is priceless even today which purchasing practical value. By literature, we can enrich our humanness, and achieve self-development. Literature, according to Plato and Aristotle, is mimicking of reality. We might see the poetry is not related to our lives but, in fact, it is mimicry of our lives. While reading, we agree or disagree with the action of character. In this way, we can share life experience, learn wisdom and finally can make our lives something worth.
There is British saying that “Shakespeare cannot be changes with India.” Through this saying, we can recognize British people’s thought about how worth literature is. And I hope people, who are now buried under practical values, can think about the worthy of literature.

( Because I refereed dictionary, and didn't write in one day.. it can be awkward to native English speaker )

09-23-08

Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian American literary theorist, cultural critic, political activist, and an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is a founding figure in postcolonial theory.[1]
Said was born in Jerusalem(then in the British Mandate of Palestine) on November 1, 1935. His father was a wealthy Protestant Palestinianbusinessman and an American citizen who had served under General Pershing in World War I, while his mother was born in Nazareth, also of Protestant[2] Christian Palestinian descent.[3]His sister was the historian and writer Rosemarie Said Zahlan.
Said referred to himself as a "Christian wrapped in a Muslim culture". He experienced much confusion growing up and was quoted as saying that:
With an unexceptionally Arab family name like Said connected to an improbably British first name (my mother much admired the Prince of Wales in 1935, the year of my birth), I was an uncomfortably anomalous student all through my early years: a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an English first name, an American passport and no certain identity at all.[4]
According to Said's autobiographical memoir, Out of Place,[4] Said lived "between worlds" in both Cairo and Jerusalem until the age of 12. In 1947, he attended the Anglican St. George's Academy when he was in Jerusalem. However, his extended family became refugees in 1948 during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War when their neighborhood of Talbiya was captured by Jewish militia groups, along with the western part of Jerusalem, which became part of the State of Israel:
I was born in Jerusalemand had spent most of my formative years there and, after 1948, when my entire family became refugees, in Egypt. All my early education had, however, been in élite colonial schools, English public schoolsdesigned by the British to bring up a generation of Arabs with natural ties to Britain. The last one I went to before I left the Middle East to go to the United States was Victoria College in Alexandria, a school in effect created to educate those ruling-class Arabs and Levantines who were going to take over after the British left. My contemporaries and classmates included King Hussein of Jordan, several Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi boys who were to become ministers, prime ministers and leading businessmen, as well as such glamorous figures as Michel Shalhoub, head prefect of the school and chief tormentor when I was a relatively junior boy, whom everyone has seen on screen as Omar Sharif.[4]
In 1951, Said was expelled from Victoria College for being a "troublemaker",[4] and was consequently sent by his parents to Mount Hermon School, a private college preparatory school in Massachusetts, where he recalls a "miserable" year of feeling "out of place".[4]Said later reflected that the decision to send him so far away was heavily influenced by the 'the prospects of deracinated people like us being so uncertain that it would be best to send me as far away as possible'.[4]Despite feeling out of place, Said did well at the Massachusetts boarding school often 'achieving the rank of either first or second in a class of about a hundred and sixty'.[4]
Said earned an B.A., summa cum laude (1957) from Princeton University and an M.A. (1960) and a Ph.D. (1964) from Harvard University, where he won the Bowdoin Prize. He joined the faculty of Columbia Universityin 1963 and served as Professor of English and Comparative Literature for several decades. In 1977, Said became the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and subsequently became the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities. In 1992, he attained the rank of University Professor, Columbia's most prestigious academic position. Professor Said also taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Yale universities. He was fluent in English, French, and Arabic.[citation needed] In 1999, after his earlier election to second vice president and following its succession policy, Said served as president of the Modern Language Association.
Said was bestowed with numerous honorary doctorates from universities around the world and twice received Columbia's Trilling Award and the Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association. In 1999, he was the first to receive the prestigious Spinoza Lens [www.spinozalens.org], a bi-annual prize for ethics in The Netherlands. His autobiographical memoir Out of Place won the 1999 New Yorker Prize for non-fiction. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the American Philosophical Society.[5]
Said's writing regularly appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterpunch, Al Ahram, and the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. He gave interviews alongside his good friend, fellow political activist, and colleague Noam Chomsky regarding U.S.foreign policy for various independent radio programs.
Said also contributed music criticism to The Nation for many years. In 1999, he jointly founded the West-East Divan Orchestra with the Argentine-Israeli conductor and close friend Daniel Barenboim. The orchestra is made up of musicians from Israel, Palestineand the surrounding Arab countries.
Edward Said died at the age of 67 in the early morning of September 25, 2003, in New York City, after a decade-long battle with chronic myelogenous leukemia.[6]
In November 2004, Birzeit University renamed its music school as the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in his honor.[7]
In January 2006, anthropologist David Price obtained 147 pages of Said's 238-page FBIfile through a Freedom of Information Actrequest. The records reveal that Said was under surveillance starting in 1971. Most of his records are marked as related to "IS Middle East" ("IS" = Israel) and significant portions remain "Classified Secrets."[8]

09-21-08

Universe - In this poetry, the world that a story is told is 'sea'. The sea in this peom is what a woman willing to imitate and something to be same. Itself is 'the real nature' different from imagination or from human. Even though the song of female singer tried to be same, the sea-"real sea"- is something never become same.

Text - One female singer is singing the sea. Thinking she is singing the same as the sea, she creates the song what she is singing. However, the teller of this poetry says the sound of the sea and the song of singer never become same.
Therefore, the sea is mere a place which the female singer is singing, her song and the sound of the sea is not harmonized. Nevertheless, the teller says "if the female singer sings exactly same as the sound of sea, what would it mean? - if it is same, the song could not have meaning itslef" That might be the simple sound; 'only the outer voice of the sea or the outer voice of the sky.' As she sings the song which is try to imitate the sea, she create another world of the sea. And teller said, the sea inside her which she thinks same as real sea is something more than the real sea.

Artist - The susceptibility about some object of each poet is different and even same poet's susceptibility is differnt by when or where he is. So, even though people are looking ar same 'thing' , the color ans smell of the thing will be differenciated by people and by the place or the time.
Steven thought the poetry should satisfied men when religion cannot do it. To him, relation between reality and image is something to inquire. In his poetry, 'real reality' is reality combined with imagination. the reality without combining imagination is just reality. So the poetry itself is not an objective realtiy but its transformation.

Audience - While reading, whole sense was focused on 'the sea' and 'the female singer'. However, ironically the figure of female singer singing the song is more imazinable rather than the song itslef. The singer exists but cannot be seen. But without the sensible image of sight, I could see the figure of female singer. The most precisely acceptable presense was existance of female singer. Audience(people) is all creater, not only the singer. And audience can learn that the creation from trying to imitate the real is more valuable than the reality itself.



reference : http://www.enotes.com/idea-order/
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/keywest.htm

09-15-2008

Myth- collection of study that help people to live.
Western and Christian culture - 'not God did, but God spoke'

Creation of myth comes from spoken language.

In my country, public transportation is well developed. So, many people use it and we can usually can see little child sitting near a window and reading what they see- especially a sign board. What was that mean when they read? they can recognize there is some word they know.
Even though they do not know the meaning, but it is be able to become another world to them.
In Korea, when we see the rainbow, we say their is 7 colors in rainbow. But in a country which has distinction of less color, they may say there are fewer colors in rainbow. What I experienced here is something similar. In Korea, there is some pronounciation that English does not have. So, English speaking people usually cannot recognize the pronounciation. I think people understand as much as they can present in their language.

Archetypes of literature

09-10-2008

"the poem is one of a class of similar forms" -so many poets use so many of the same image.

Today, we cannot use other's work without certain permission because every written work is preserved by the right. Than, every writing should be different and has its own unique characteristic. However, every book (in this case, writing) in the world shares some words or phrases. Like this, the literature seems to have some similarity relating its period-when it occurs. What I mean by mentioning "its period" is the characteristic of society. For example, when Korea was colonized, there appeared several poems and novels which have the purpose of independence. They claimed independence of Korea and strongly desired it.
Although "independece" can be treated as a subject by many author at anytime , what made it had become those days' significant and predominant topic?
In my opinion, it was that they sufferd same thing. When we see many literatures of that time, some of poets admire the 'sun'. and the sun usually translated 'meaning independent nation'. Even though we do not regard the 'admiring sun' as 'independense', what they have in common is 'it'. However, we do not say later one followed former one because each literature treated as itself and it has its own value. So, we just admit that. When considering 'Forems', I think it also can be understood in same way.
Human assert "we are all different." What I really recognize after being foreign country, people have different skin colors, hair colors. And not only the appearance, there is difference in way of thinking ans some kind of behavior. But, if we think about as a point of "gene" , are we really different? We are genetically almost same! there is much more similarity than differense. Therefore, I thought the similarity occurs similiarity in thinking. And some people reflect it in their work. As a result, each literaty works seems affect each other-or it might really make influence each other.
So, if there are some litertature share similarity even though they did not appear simultaneously, we might be albe to make sense of it.

"the argument of our essay, however, led to the principle that all structures in words are partly rhetorical, and hence literary, and that the notion of a scientific or philosophical verbal structure free of rhetorical elements is an illusion.”


I was very nervous because this is my first time to take English class. (I mean class in English.) Everything was so confusing and when professor asked “what does the sentence mean?”, I have to do my best to translate in my language. Because English is not my mother tongue, I regretted about not having dictionary with me. I was confused because I did not distinguish the meaning of ‘literary’ and ‘literally’. Literary means concerned with or connected with the writing, study, or appreciation of literature. And literally means ‘to the letter’. After looking for dictionary, I could finally make sense.
In short, everything is based on literary. Even in scientific and philosophical verbal structure. This assumption is nice for me because it means what I study is the most fundamental thing of all. So, I would like to guess how the literary could get that important position. After human use language, people could write something. And this ‘something’ might be able to become a literary. It can be a daily life of someone, issues about some society or record of important event. A bunch of records can be a foundation of each part of science. I just imagined how the author argued that way.