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NUMBER 1 DBZ FAN!!! posted:Have you taught any graduate-level courses? I haven't, though I've gone in for individual classes as a special guest person, proctored qualifying exams, and worked with dissertations.
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May 8, 2009 15:21
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Brainworm posted:I'm not talking about the half-baked Ayn Rand flavored mysticism. Since that's come up, if indirectly, I'd like to hear your thoughts on Ayn Rand. What do you think of her as a writer? Is there a general consensus about her? I always hear that she's terrible as a writer of fiction, but I've never heard any analysis by anyone other than people who hate her anyway.
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May 8, 2009 15:25
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Defenestration posted:I was expecting superficial certainty, but instead I got hipsters. Relativism to some extent but mostly a severe and pervasive "ironic" detachment. It's not cool to care about stuff anymore. Do you think that cultural changes (vast opening of information channels, internet culture, lots of political jadedness etc) are making for fundamentally different kinds of college students than we've had in the past? I'm not sure this "ironic" detachment is anything new -- I'm a Gen Xer, and that's (allegedly) one of the defining characteristics of my age group. That and a resentment of authenticity. Chuck Klosterman writes a great bit about this in Killing Yourself to Live, when he visits the site of the Great White concert fire that melted however many people. The people who were at that concert weren't there for the novelty; they were there because they wanted to directly (re)experience music that they had authentically enjoyed when they were younger and happier. I was a kid when Great White was big, but there's no way I could be part of that authentic enjoyment crowd. I'd have sat in the back marveling to some date about how fat everybody got, how the band should start playing the county fair circuit, how when I was a kid I still knew they sucked. And then burned to death, I guess. Point is, I'm not sure the kind of detachment we're seeing is new. It can be irritating as gently caress, though. What I can say for sure is that my incoming students distrust and resent institutional authority past the point where such attitudes are useful -- their knee-jerk response to a problem seems to be direct political confrontation, in combination with "consciousness raising" and poorly-orchestrated protest. This isn't exactly a new thing, but parts of it seem new. And they've made me start thinking that we need a mandatory freshman seminar on political efficacy.
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May 8, 2009 15:38
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JKicker posted:I'm currently in an MFA program (fiction) and am working on an MA in English simultaneously. This means I'm teaching comp and occasionally spazzing out about the job market and researching PhD / IT options until my heart rate returns to normal. I have no false expectations about the number of unemployed MFA holders and realize that if I want to move beyond the community college/comp level, I'll probably need to do a PhD...so I'll have some questions for you the next time I visit higheredjobs. If you haven't finished that MA yet, go to your department and get their access code for the MLA job list. That's nicely designed, totally searchable, and has just about every job ad there is from folks looking for employees with graduate degrees in English and related fields.
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May 8, 2009 15:44
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billion dollar bitch posted:Also, is it "There are a lot of people there" or "There is a lot of people"? "There are a lot" is incorrect because lot is singular. edit: I think the problem most people have with the phrase "a lot" is that they treat it like an adjective when it is really a noun. Drop the prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence and determine if the following is correct: "There are a lot." Alternatively, you could replace "a lot" with "a group" to highlight why using "are" is wrong: "There are a group of people." i am the bird fucked around with this message at 16:07 on May 8, 2009 |
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May 8, 2009 16:00
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dancehall posted:How do you feel about Bloom's Taxonomy? I've always thought it was pretty useful for telling students what kind of questions to come up with. It's also great for designing assignment arcs. Generally, I build course assignments around short, weekly papers that investigate (or somehow add up to) a library of thought and research that students can use to write longer, article-style pieces. Bloom's is a great vocabulary thinking about how these kinds of cumulative assignments can be parted out. quote:As a former high school teacher I always considered it a big part of my job to prepare students for college. To that end, my number one goal was to teach them how to gracefully integrate quotations into their sentences. Also I'm developing an alternative approach to vocabulary that focuses less on your verbs and adjectives and more on words (usually adverbs) that help connect ideas in different ways (theretofore, whereby, etc). Is there anything else you wish high school teachers would push? I think your working with logical and transitional relationships is right on, but please, please, please don't give me students who write "theretofore." I don't know that I can give you a list of things to do or not do -- I'm not a high school teacher. But I can give you the problems I see that seem to come out of students' high school experience. Incoming students seem to look at lit. as a sort of puzzle that needs to be solved using a vocabulary of symbols, themes, foreshadowing, and a bunch of other things I never heard of until I started teaching college. That is, students seem to think that the important things about a text are a set of abstractions somehow hidden inside it. This is especially true in Shakespeare. Not to get too hostile, but it peeves me when a student's early experience with, say, Hamlet, is just thorough enough to stomp every last ounce of joy and interest out of reading it, and all for the sake of her being able to say "Hamlet is about death." Hamlet is about a young man whose supernaturally-ordained revenge is orchestrated through an intricate series of plots and counterplots in an environment characterized by constant mortal danger and political subtlety. It's a well-told detective story with loving incredible plot twists, not an existential statement. Last time I was in China, I saw an amateur Hamlet production that finally made me appreciate how well this play can work. The people in the audience were mostly rice-farming rubes who'd been brought into Shanghai to sweep the streets and empty the garbage, and they'd never heard of Shakespeare. But this Hamlet (in translation, but uncut) kept about 1200 people on the edge of their seats for almost five hours. Totally hushed. No intermission. Nobody even got up to go to the bathroom. There were gasps when the ghost finally spoke, when Hamlet realized Claudius might be his father, and all through Act III (when we discover that Claudius is actually guilty of the murder, when he sees through Hamlet's faking insanity, and when we discover that Hamlet's really gone insane). That's the Hamlet I want my students to be able to see -- the play that's so loving suspenseful it can be five hours long and rivet the audience for every minute. And I do it. I can get there. But it saddens me that their first exposure to the play doesn't generally convey what the play does or how it works, so they go in with the surprises already killed. The same's true of Romeo and Juliet. It's supposed to have a shocking ending. More to the point, students' relationships to what they read shouldn't be clinical. They can like Hamlet or not -- some people like crazy plot twists and some don't. But they should read texts for understanding, not as some farcical hunt for well-concealed abstractions. That is, they questions they should ask are, say, "what is this character thinking? What is he feeling? Why does he do this? Why does this play or this book reveal this piece of information at this particular time?"
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May 8, 2009 16:39
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Naet posted:"There are a lot" is incorrect because lot is singular. But wouldn't its status as a part of speech change when you use it in this context?
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May 8, 2009 18:08
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billion dollar bitch posted:But wouldn't its status as a part of speech change when you use it in this context? The verb is referring to a single entity: "a lot." The prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence is irrelevant in this regard and only serves to describe what the "lot" consists of. Incorrect "There are a lot of people." "There are a stack of books." Correct "There is a lot of people." "There is a stack of books."
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May 8, 2009 18:26
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Naet posted:Incorrect (Obviously if you were a slave trader and there was a lot of people up for auction that would be a different story).
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May 8, 2009 18:44
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Upright Sloth posted:1) Tell us about the various editions of Shakespeare's plays. I know that a large body of collected documents exist and that his editors had a good deal of influence in shaping how we group the plays today, but I don't really know *what* documents exist, how they have been preserved, etc. I guess my question has to do with the physical transmission of the plays from then to now, and who decided which version is 'scripture'. This is actually remarkably simple. The first document you need to know about is the so-called "First Folio," a 1623 collection of Shakespeare's plays (well, 36 of the 38 now attributed to Shakespeare). This was published by two of Shakespeare's associates because (at least from their perspective) there were corrupt versions of Shakespeare's plays in circulation, and they wanted their colleague's work to be correctly remembered. Folios were expensive books, generally printed on high-quality paper, so lots of have survived -- I think over 200 of the original print run (something around 1000 if I remember correctly). And they're not fragile; high-quality prints from this period generally aren't, since they're on vellum or rag paper (neither of which have a high acid content).* Even without special treatment, they'll certainly outlast my Riverside. The other, earlier, printings are quartos -- smaller, less expensive books. There are lots of theories about how plays made it from the stage to the page (audience plants, memorial reconstruction, authorized publication), but the bottom line is that some of these quartos correspond closely to the folio text, and some don't. When they do correspond closely, editors will sometimes go to the quartos to fix what seem to be typesetting or lineation errors in the Folio text. When they don't correspond, the quarto text is generally ignored. It's when there's a middle ground that editors need to do some serious decision making, and they generally err on the side of including everything they can (like Hamlet's "how all occasions do inform against me...," which isn't in the folio text). Generally, this process of textual conflation isn't really complicated -- you just add in all the material you can and note where it came from so your readers know. The biggest exception is Lear, where the distance between the Q and F texts is massive. At least one anthology (the Norton) prints them as two separate plays, which seems logical enough -- I'm pretty sure the two texts present the same play at different stages of an extensive revision that was never really completed, so this can give readers a good picture of how a play changed during its performance history. Textual provenance is easier for the sonnets, which only have one source: a 1608 quarto that may or may not have been authorized and may or may not be complete. But there's only one source, so there's not much for an editor to do. Some have proposed alternate orderings for the sonnets, but there's really not much reason to do this unless you're squeamish about "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" being written to a man. In the sonnets, though, modernizing spelling and punctuation can really change how a poem works, especially when it presents what seem to be deliberate ambiguities. So if you're really interested, Stephen Booth's edition prints facsimiles of the original 1608 sonnets alongside modern spelling versions. quote:2) How would you stage /Enter Ariel, invisible/? What about /Exit, pursued by a bear/? What are your thoughts on WHY he would include these moments? Easy. Philip Henslowe was the owner of a rival theater to Shakespeare's, and he kept a diary that's an excellent source for much dramatic history, including the terms on which actors and playwrights were paid. In that sense, it's really less a diary than an annotated ledger. One of the stage properties he lists is a "cloak to go invisible in," suggesting a theatrical convention in which a cloak of a certain color or cut meant the actor wearing it was invisible to everyone on stage. For Winter's Tale, I'd just use a real bear. There's a popular 1598 play, Mucedorus, that was actually once attributed to Shakespeare. In it, there's a similar stage situation (a bear chases Amandine and her fiancee Segasto). It seems clear both from the text and third party reports that the bear was real. At least one period theater also doubled as a bear-baiting pit, so access to bears was presumably not a problem; there are also records of Jacobean court entertainments involving trained bears, so Elizabethans probably had the know-how to keep their actors from pulling a Tim Treadwell on opening night. quote:3) When I was taught "Much Ado About Nothing," we discussed the idea that the Benedick/Beatrice and Claudio/Hero couples represent Shakespeare's perception of two opposing styles of love. That is, B/B represent the English notion of a 'Merry War' between spouses that arises from a deep and real friendship (his preference), whereas C/H are the Petrachan, idealized notion of love. The latter, in this interpretation, is held up to mockery through the clod-like gullibility of Claudio (Margaret, "another Hero!") and the passive, utilitarian Hero. Agree/disagree? Agree, I think. Shakespeare does exactly the same kind of relationship parallel/opposition in Midsummer, so this reading of Much Ado seems consistent with what we know of Shakespeare's go-to techniques. quote:4) Would you go to a bearbaiting with me? I'm out of dogs. quote:5) How significant do you think are the occasional breaks from pure character drama? I'm thinking about Time in "The Winter's Tale," Chorus in "R&J," and whatever other ones I can't think of at the moment. What do you mean by significant? Most Shakespearean entertainments seem to rely on periodic and asymmetrical breaking of dramatic illusion, so I'm not sure that putting a non-character onstage is that far from what many of the rest of the plays do. For example, the actor playing Rosalind breaks character as the Epilogue in As You Like It, basically riding out a series of jokes about being a boy dressed as a woman. There's also an implicit break in Midsummer when Lysander and Hermia get lost in the woods, he hits on her, and she shoots him down. The scene can of course be played straight, but it's funny in a different way if you don't buy into the dramatic illusion. Then, you've got a clearly male actor getting carried away in playing against a cross-dressed boy (in short, Hermia's rejection of Lysander is also the boy actor saying "Dude! Get off me!"). *I've got a 14th century vulgate and a bunch of 16th and 17th century pamphlets at home, plus a Geneva Bible, etc. and while I keep them in a climate-controlled room, they've done fine without for the past few hundred years. Aside from a little browning around the edges of the Geneva, they're fine. The pages in the Vulgate, which are vellum, actually retain some elasticity.
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May 8, 2009 18:54
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mystes posted:Could you provide some sort of source for this? This is certainly contrary to accepted modern usage so perhaps you can provide a historical justification? In informal speech/writing, sure, I can see it being acceptable. Formally, however, "a lot" is not an adjective and is not interchangeable with a word like "many." Once you get past that hangup, we're just with dealing basic grammatical rules. "A lot" is singular; therefore, the verb should be referring to a singular entity. Even though it sounds stupid, the phrase "a lot of people is outside" is also correct. Sorry for the derail, everyone.  Brainstorm posted:When does Hamlet start going crazy for real? We know he's faking insanity from Act I forward, and (twist!) we find out he's lost it for real when he imagines seeing his father's ghost when he confronts Gertrude. So he goes from faking crazy to real crazy at some point during II or III. The actor needs to decide when this is, and how to best pull off the surprise-I'm-actually-nuts bit with Gertrude. I had a professor that argued that even the Hamlet/Gertrude scene is ambiguous because the ghost could have just appeared to Hamlet. I think that's a bogus explanation considering multiple characters see the ghost at the beginning of the play, but hey. After reading your teaching techniques, I'm wondering if she just duped us into an argument by stating that... i am the bird fucked around with this message at 19:12 on May 8, 2009 |
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May 8, 2009 18:58
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Head Movement posted:This question pertains graduate admissions. I don't know necessarily what hand you have in it where you are, but I figure you probably still have a good bit of perspective on it. [...] I took a couple graduate level courses in the fall through their continuing education program to try and work on proving myself outside of the holes I'd put in my undergrad transcript. I was doing fine in these courses until the end of the semester when I choked putting together the papers at the end of the semester. This has been my perennial problem knuckling down and getting the big important things done. Well, I work at a college and so don't have anything to do with any graduate programs. But I'd suggest proving yourself through a manageable load of graduate coursework -- even if it's only one class a semester. If you can build good relationships that way, admission to at least that program shouldn't be a problem. But I'd see what you can do about that "knuckling down and getting big important things done" problem first. You won't be doing anyone much good if you get into a program and that washes you out. So maybe doing something where deadlines have more tangible stakes would help.
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May 8, 2009 19:07
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Kommienzuspadt posted:did you ever have a love/hate relationship with English/your field in particular, or have you always loved it so much that it never seemed like that much of a chore? I'm currently an undergrand poli sci major looking down the barrel of a senior thesis, and while I really love what I study, I also know that there are moments in the depths of februrary when suicide seems much more appealing than having to slug through JSTOR for the sixth day in a row. I've only had love/hate relationships with people in the field. Never with my work. Sometimes it's interesting and sometimes it's boring, but I never find myself loathing archival research or scattershot source reading. But I'm pretty laid back and pretty lazy, so when something gets boring I just work on something else. Barto posted:I am quite interested in verse, especially meter. I read poetry, and I can feel the rhythm of it, but as how to identify the stresses in words, and their various patterns and usages, this completely eludes me. I've tried reading a lot of sonnets and writing down random lines as a sort of practice, but I can't tell if I'm fooling myself or if I'm really putting it into iambic pentameter. Can you recommend some books on the topic? Or perhaps advice of some sort? Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook is a little uneven, but her section on sound is great. If you're really just confused by stressed and unstressed syllables, read the line aloud. Your jaw will drop more on a stressed syllable than an unstressed one, so you get: Help! This donkey is eating my hat! Which you can break into a trochee, a dactyl, a trochee, and an iamb (or a trochee, two dactyls, and a trailing stressed syllable).
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May 8, 2009 19:22
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Since there's a lot of knowledge about graduate admissions floating around in this thread: How much weight does the average/median GPA and class rank play into graduate school admissions? Our average/median GPA at my school is very low compared to many other schools. Mine is above it, but relatively low compared to people who will be graduating in my class year. The only saving grace is my major GPA - which is around 3.9. I've still got two more years and expect to graduate with around a 3.3-3.4, but I'd like to start looking at graduate schools and want to know how expansive my options are. e: The low GPA isn't due to lazy students. Our school emphasizes the bell curve and we have a tremendous amount of grade deflation. psydude fucked around with this message at 19:45 on May 8, 2009 |
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May 8, 2009 19:42
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billion dollar bitch posted:Is the word "expat" pronounced with an A like in "crate" or "cat"? I've gotten different things from different sources. We have some consensus. "Expat" rhymes with "cat," even though "expatriate" (the verb) rhymes with "that crate you ate." quote:Also, is it "There are a lot of people there" or "There is a lot of people"? Well this has caused a bit of confusion. In Standard American English, use the singular ("there is a crowd of people") when the noun ("crowd") is singular* -- in this example, "of people" is actually pressed into service as an adjective, since it describes what the crowd comprises. This holds true in the phrase you gave, but some confusion seems caused by "a lot," which is the adjective, not the noun, since it designates quantity (i.e. "there are a lot of people" = "there are seventy people," grammatically speaking). As a litmus test: You can cut adjectives from a sentence without drastically altering what the sentence means. You can't do the same with nouns. E.g.: (a) We ate a lot of peyote and I think I hosed a hedgehog. (b) We ate peyote and I think I hosed a hedgehog. (c) We ate a lot and I think I hosed a hedgehog. (a) and (b) both mean that, in the depths of my hallucinations, I mistook the hedgehog for something more sexually accommodating. (c) means something completely different, which means "peyote" is the noun and "a lot" is the modifier. So for your example, our choices are "There are people there" or "There are a lot there." Clearly, "people" is the noun (and so must agree with the verb), while "a lot" is an adjective and does not affect subject/verb agreement. * In some British English, there are collective singular nouns that agree like plurals, e.g. "the crowd are on their feet."
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May 8, 2009 19:49
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Do you have a reference for that, Brain? My grammar book isn't with me at the moment so I can't really verify, but I've never seen "a lot" being recognized as an actual adjective. Lot (defined: a number of things or persons collectively) is a noun, which would make the verb "is" correct for the sentence in question. "There is a lot," is a poor sentence without context, but it is still grammatically correct. Crowd, lot, group, set, etc. are all equivalents in this regard.
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May 8, 2009 20:04
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MsJoelBoxer posted:Are there any performances you think you absolutely must see in your lifetime? I'd like to see Patrick Stewart play Prospero. He was an OK Macbeth, but he seems made for parts built more solidly around a kind of wounded dignity. I think he'd make a great Lear -- as in the Lear that defines the part for succeeding generations. But we get King of Texas instead. My dream casting, in all seriousness, is Michael Cera as Hamlet. He could really nail it as an extraordinarily clever and deeply insecure Hamlet whose fragile, nervous energy could spin into full-blown insanity in barely-perceptible degrees. Plus, Cera is a Hamlet with definite vulnerabilities (not at all like his murdered badass father), and so sticks to the character as written. He's not Laertes -- that is, not a guy (like, say, Gibson or Olivier) who would hear the ghost's accusation and rage through Elsinore looking for a Claudius to kill.
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May 8, 2009 20:07
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halesuhtem posted:Since that's come up, if indirectly, I'd like to hear your thoughts on Ayn Rand. What do you think of her as a writer? Is there a general consensus about her? I always hear that she's terrible as a writer of fiction, but I've never heard any analysis by anyone other than people who hate her anyway. Well, she seems to have written a great deal of libertarian thesis fiction where she works out a diversity of rape fantasies.* As a writer, I don't think Rand's anything special -- thesis fiction isn't generally good storytelling, since that's really not the point of it. I do like that giant gold dollar sign that marks the entrance to John Galt's secret valley, though. It's like an episode of Cribs. * And every engineer I know wishes there were more Dagney Taggarts. We're talking about a woman who soaks her panties over groundbreaking alloys and diesel engines.
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May 8, 2009 20:20
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psydude posted:How much weight does the average/median GPA and class rank play into graduate school admissions? Not much. Major GPA is the measure most programs will use, and the measure for admission is usually "over the bar" style -- it's either good enough for admission or not, and at that point other application materials (e.g. admissions essays, writing samples) matter more.
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May 8, 2009 20:25
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Naet posted:Do you have a reference for that, Brain? My grammar book isn't with me at the moment so I can't really verify, but I've never seen "a lot" being recognized as an actual adjective. Lot (defined: a number of things or persons collectively) is a noun, which would make the verb "is" correct for the sentence in question. "There is a lot," is a poor sentence without context, but it is still grammatically correct. Crowd, lot, group, set, etc. are all equivalents in this regard. I hear your argument, but it's ignoring the collocative and idiomatic uses of "lot." Q: How much do you like him? A: I like him a lot. (very much) or Q: How much pain do you feel? A: A lot! (a great deal) or A: Lots! (ditto) or A: A little! (not much) Here, "a lot" is clearly used as a modifier (adverb/adjective) specifying an uncountable quantity, something structurally like, but opposite in meaning, from the idiomatic "a little." This is, in short, common idiomatic usage. But because it's idiomatic, it's not going to regularly appear in dictionaries for the same basic reasons you won't find most phrasal idioms like "blow a load." Meantime, on the noun side of the fence, there are differences between a "crowd," "murder," and a "bunch," even though they mean the same thing as "lot" in a general sense (a number of items collectively). There are, however, clearly appropriate and inappropriate contexts for each, defined chiefly by the nature of the items collected. I'd say "a crowd of people" but not "a crowd of pencils" (unless I was jumping into a metaphor). "Lot" seems an analogous situation. It's use as a noun meaning "a collection of things" is definitely in play when one uses "lots," as in "there are lots of senators around Caesar," meaning "there are several large groups around Caesar." The application as a singular in this sense seems to exclusively use "the" as the associated article rather than "a," as in "I'll kill the lot of them." In both these cases "lot" connotes well-defined boundaries, a sense pervasive in other uses of the term ("lot" as a parcel of land defined by the state, or as a group of items sold together at auction). With people, "lot" connotes similar boundaries -- the OED says "a number of persons or things of the same kind, associated in some way." So you might say "that lot of men in turbans" (as distinct from either turbaned women or unturbaned men) or, in context, "that lot" (when the relationship between the designated individuals is clear). So we have several distinct uses in play. 1) "The/that/this lot," suggesting a group of things with definite boundaries, i.e. with a contextually or explicitly clear connection or similarity. 2) The idiomatic modifier "a lot," (as in "a lot" or "a little") designating an uncountable quantity. 3) "Lots," as a plural of (1), designating several such discrete groupings, but also as a variant of (2). The important thing here is that the idiomatic usage of "lot" bounds the possible non-idiomatic usages. I wouldn't tell someone to close the above-aisle cargo hatch on a 747 by saying "shut up" or describe a schooner "blowing a load" across the Atlantic. At least not if I'm angling to be understood. This implies: There are a lot of people means "there exists a group of people (uncountable)" There is a lot of people means "there exists a group of people with some clearly defined relationship." This could be contextually clear -- I could point to a group of pirates and say "there's a lot," but acontextually I'd need to designate their relationship, e.g. "there's a lot of men wearing fedoras," meaning "there's (in that location) a group of men wearing fedoras, as distinct from another group of men not wearing fedoras." In practice, however, the idiomatic usage could even tread on this. "There's a lot of men in fedoras" could in practice mean "there are many men in fedoras" (idiomatic) or "[designate] a group of fedora wearing men [from either non-fedora wearing men or fedora-wearing non-men]" (non-idiomatic); the contraction "there's" often means "there are" in general usage because "there're" isn't in play: "there's about twelve bottles left in the cooler" or "there's still dozens of players on the bus." The point is that there's clearly an idiomatic usage in play when using "a lot" or "lots," as opposed to "the lot" or "that lot," which means a user has to differentiate non-idiomatic usage from idiomatic. It also seems clear that the vehicle for this differentiation is the attached article. I would say "that lot of men in fedoras" or "the lot of men in fedoras" if I wanted the phrase to be parsed non-idiomatically, and "a lot of men in fedoras" if I wanted an idiomatic parsing.
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May 8, 2009 21:56
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Naet posted:I had a professor that argued that even the Hamlet/Gertrude scene is ambiguous because the ghost could have just appeared to Hamlet. I think that's a bogus explanation considering multiple characters see the ghost at the beginning of the play, but hey. After reading your teaching techniques, I'm wondering if she just duped us into an argument by stating that... I've heard that ambiguity argument seriously advanced before, but Macbeth seems to preclude it (at least if we assume ghosts work consistently in the Shakespearean universe). Banquo's ghost (which nobody else sees) isn't there in the same sense that the blood on Lady Macbeth's hands isn't there, and in the same sense that Macbeth's floating dagger isn't there, either. Seeing things that aren't there is a Shakespearean signal that someone's losing their poo poo, even in plays with a supernatural component. I've never heard anyone suggest that the witches conjured up a vision of Banquo to freak out Macbeth (i.e. that the ghost is really there even though nobody else can see it), which seems as close an analogue as you'll get to the ghost electing to appear only to Hamlet.
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May 8, 2009 22:07
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Brainworm posted:King has some real kung-fu, even if early success means he hasn't always needed to exercise it. It's nice having a Proffesor say this about King. Even though he might be starting to sell out with weird stuf like his e-story about a guy buying a kindle he has a lot of great stuff.
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May 8, 2009 23:41
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Brainworm posted:I'm not sure this "ironic" detachment is anything new -- I'm a Gen Xer, and that's (allegedly) one of the defining characteristics of my age group. That and a resentment of authenticity.  Chuck Klosterman. I don't know music so I haven't read any of his rock books but that episode sounds very Eco to me (Travels in Hyperreality to be specific). I like a guy that can tell me something new and fascinating about Saved by the Bell even 10 years after it's over. As far as authenticity, maybe you (royal you) just can't enjoy things as they are because you're a college professor and an intellectual. Academics spend a lot of time getting taught to sublimate the original work into a lot of convoluted secondary meaning (on a simple level, like when you said people get taught "Hamlet is about death.") How would such a class on political be efficacy be composed? There's one lecturer in our department who does a lot of social justice work (this semester specifically with south america) but I don't think it's too jaded of me to think "you're a comp teacher. Your kids researching about this country is not going to solve its really nasty endemic violence." Policy and economic change is what will do that, so that's what you should be demanding. Never mind the whole bourgeois arrogance of thinking that "oh, if americans care about your problem it will totally be fixed. College freshmen on the case!" Brainworm posted:If you haven't finished that MA yet, go to your department and get their access code for the MLA job list. That's nicely designed, totally searchable, and has just about every job ad there is from folks looking for employees with graduate degrees in English and related fields.  jkicker where are you getting your mfa at? pm me if you'd rather not say Brainworm posted:My dream casting, in all seriousness, is Michael Cera as Hamlet. 
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May 9, 2009 07:31
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Wow, this is by far my favorite thread on the forums right now. I'm a double Slavic Lang&Lit and English major, so I have a few questions 1. Is Old Hamlet's ghost a spirit or a goblin damned? I'm taking a class now concerning the mythology of the devil in literature, and the author of a book I'm reading claims, without any reservations, that the ghost is a demon. My Shakespeare teacher disagrees and, without any reservations, says that the ghost is the genuine spirit of Old Hamlet. Old Hamlet speaks from below the ground in Act I, he only wants Hamlet to take revenge, and so on, but I'm not sure. Your thoughts? 2. What plays have the best and worst conclusions? I roll my eyes every time I read Macbeth because I think the fulfillment of the "woman born" prophecy as a huge cop-out, and plus the whole prophecy is never filled. When I read The Winter's Tale, I initially thought the ending was horrible with Hermione coming back to life, but the more I thought about it, the more I found it to be a wonderful ending with the ongoing themes of the play. 3. Have you seen Ian McKellen's King Lear? What did you think of it? 4. I'm probably going to apply for English MA programs soon. I have a pretty solid major GPA (3.75+), I will have worked at the university writing center for a couple of years, and I've already won a couple of departmental awards for some (non creative) writing I've done. Do you have any suggestions of things I can do to really help my chances for MA admissions? I'm going to a pretty bland public school with average-ish English department, but there are some solid resources available. Is there some place I can go to find particular strengths of programs around the country, for example a list of X number of schools with great programs in Shakespeare/English Romantic/Southern Literature/etc? I really have no clue of what programs are particularly strong and I'd like to start investigating grad schools soon. Thank you! You are doing an absolutely terrific job in this thread so far. An incredibly interesting read.
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May 9, 2009 09:35
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I just want to say I came in here expecting one thing and you've delivered something completely different. You come across as a very interesting and intelligent person. You really demonstrate how something that many people consider boring can be fascinating when you're around the right people. I work in IT (and I post on SA, incredible isn't it) and this point is particularly important for my industry. I'm a networking guy mostly (Cisco stuff, it's like being a mechanic of the Internet really) and the day I'm having can really depend on the people I'm around. Sometimes I'll work with contractors who are passionate about networking, have some serious experience and qualifications under their belt and we talk about great stuff like the future of our connected world and how we are shaping it. Other days I'll have to teach juniors or work with burnt-out older people that ended up in the positions they did through luck or contacts. The passion just isn't there and it's those days that make me question my love for IT. If you worked in networking, you're the sort of guy I'd want in my team.
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May 9, 2009 11:25
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Brainworm posted:I've heard that ambiguity argument seriously advanced before, but Macbeth seems to preclude it (at least if we assume ghosts work consistently in the Shakespearean universe). Banquo's ghost (which nobody else sees) isn't there in the same sense that the blood on Lady Macbeth's hands isn't there, and in the same sense that Macbeth's floating dagger isn't there, either. I didn't really have any other argument to stand on because I haven't read much Shakespeare (taking a class next fall, though!), so this is an interesting point. What's your opinion on the Ophelia death scene in Hamlet? Did Gertrude actually see the whole scene? If so, why didn't she send help? That one never really made sense to me.
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May 9, 2009 13:24
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Defenestration posted:As far as authenticity, maybe you (royal you) just can't enjoy things as they are because you're a college professor and an intellectual. Academics spend a lot of time getting taught to sublimate the original work into a lot of convoluted secondary meaning (on a simple level, like when you said people get taught "Hamlet is about death.") You have to be loving kidding me. Just because Brainworm has some pretty amazing analytical abilities it does not follow that he has a myopic "Misses the forest for the trees" view. If you haven't picked up on just how intelligent this guy is you need to get your head checked. I am not talking about his ability to talk about things that fall under his realm of expertise (Paradise Lost, Shakespeare, etc.) that is to be expected. It is the stuff he throws away on the side of his posts that paints the picture of a guy with a ton of intellectual hp.
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May 9, 2009 15:58
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Brainworm posted:
If we're talking idioms/informal language, that makes sense. I guess my whole formal argument is irrelevant, anyway, because "a lot" or "lots" are not the best word choices in a formal paper.
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May 9, 2009 16:30
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Defenestration posted:As far as authenticity, maybe you (royal you) just can't enjoy things as they are because you're a college professor and an intellectual. Academics spend a lot of time getting taught to sublimate the original work into a lot of convoluted secondary meaning (on a simple level, like when you said people get taught "Hamlet is about death.")  did you skip over all the Shakespeare discussion or what?
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May 9, 2009 16:54
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This is a really incredible thread. I especially love the insights into Shakespeare, as I never really got any of that in high school.Naet posted:I guess my whole formal argument is irrelevant, anyway, because "a lot" or "lots" are not the best word choices in a formal paper. Same goes for "a bunch". "Lord Of The Flies is about a bunch of kids on an island..."
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May 9, 2009 20:20
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vegaji posted:1. Is Old Hamlet's ghost a spirit or a goblin damned? I'm taking a class now concerning the mythology of the devil in literature, and the author of a book I'm reading claims, without any reservations, that the ghost is a demon. My Shakespeare teacher disagrees and, without any reservations, says that the ghost is the genuine spirit of Old Hamlet. Old Hamlet speaks from below the ground in Act I, he only wants Hamlet to take revenge, and so on, but I'm not sure. Your thoughts? I'm not certain, but I lean toward the Ghost being a real ghost rather than a devil. But I think there are interesting cases to be made both ways: Spirit * The ghost doesn't lie to Hamlet. We see evidence of Claudius's guilt in Act III, where he also confesses to the murder. Hamlet's thinking on the matter seems to be that if the ghost were a "goblin damned," it would lie about the murder to spur Hamlet's murder of Claudius, who Hamlet already seems to dislike. * The ghost specifically tells Hamlet not to harm Gertrude. You'd figure an evil spirit would go for the twofer. * The play is set in Denmark. This might not men much now, but to the 17th century English, Denmark was the place that coastal raiders and vikings came from (historically), so an ethic of revenge seems perfectly appropriate. The same kind of displacement happens in Kyd's earlier and incredibly popular Spanish Tragedy, which is set in Spain precisely because the English see the Spanish as practitioners of an old-world (read: Catholic) lex talionis flavor of justice -- the idea in both of these is that the foreign setting allows the English audience to endorse a revenge morality that (allegedly) has no place in a rightly-organized civilization. Goblin Damned The Ghost doesn't lie to Hamlet, but tells a him a truth that drives him to a murder he would not have otherwise committed. We also generally assume that, because of what the Ghost says, that Gertrude isn't directly implicated in her husband's murder. But Gertrude certainly has every reason to be -- she's been having a long-running affair with Claudius, after all. Also, if we put some weight behind Hamlet's fear that Claudius is really his father, the Ghost drives Hamlet to semi-unknowing patricide. To play Devil's advocate for a moment: Old Hamlet was an irresponsible king -- he wagers his kingdom on a single combat with Old Fortinbras and generally runs around killing people. Claudius, on the other hand, is a generally peaceful king. He solves the problem of Fortinbras's invasion diplomatically, and seems to genuinely love Gertrude in a way that Old Hamlet didn't. I mean, the guy was away all the time smiting Polacks and increasing the world's store of amputees. In short, Old Hamlet was driving Denmark and his marriage into the ground, so Gertrurde heroically turns to Claudius and says "you're the father of the prince, so act like it. I need a good marriage and the country needs a good king." So Claudius kills Old Hamlet and starts trying to connect with his son -- you know, "don't go back to Wittenberg. Let's go out back and toss the ol' pigskin." The Ghost steps in, (eventually) drives Hamlet crazy, gets Gertrude and Claudius killed, and makes sure Denmark ends up under the thumb of Fortinbras, and all by telling Hamlet the truth. So there's a case to be made for the Ghost being evil, but I just can't buy it with a reading. But you could absolutely stage it that way without doing real violence to the text. quote:2. What plays have the best and worst conclusions? I roll my eyes every time I read Macbeth because I think the fulfillment of the "woman born" prophecy as a huge cop-out, and plus the whole prophecy is never filled. When I read The Winter's Tale, I initially thought the ending was horrible with Hermione coming back to life, but the more I thought about it, the more I found it to be a wonderful ending with the ongoing themes of the play. I've railed on Lear, but it has the best ending -- Lear lapses back into insanity and dies thinking Cordelia's still breathing, which is a pretty tragic extension of tendency to manufacture self-serving delusions. So, in other words, he dies unredeemed, not really having learned from his earlier mistakes. At the same time, he recovers some dignity in rescuing Cordelia. I mean, look at Lear's character. He gives some of my favorite lines near the end of the play: Lear posted:I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion With that admission, Lear's character makes sense. Here's a heroic king who, in his youth, really deserved obedience and respect -- not so much for his position as his deeds. And this bred a personality in him that fit the respect he deserved. But now that he's aged, the virtues of his youth don't fit his station. His decisiveness has turned to stubbornness, and his confidence to a pathological sense of entitlement. His kingly penchant for useful violence (a virtue if you're heroic with it) gets beat down until it's an impotent rage that eats his sanity from the inside out. And this is what makes the end so tragic. Lear is able, for just a moment, to recapture the warlord-style greatness of his youth by killing one enemy soldier when it really matters. But it's not enough, Cordelia dies, and Lear is still so wrapped up in the illusion of his own greatness that he can't grieve for his only faithful daughter.* The worst ending is tough. I might go with Measure for Measure because the marriages at the end are unprecedented by the first four and nine-tenths acts, and not in a way that's interesting. quote:3. Have you seen Ian McKellen's King Lear? What did you think of it? I haven't, but it's in the queue for this Summer. quote:4. I'm probably going to apply for English MA programs soon. I have a pretty solid major GPA (3.75+), I will have worked at the university writing center for a couple of years, and I've already won a couple of departmental awards for some (non creative) writing I've done. Do you have any suggestions of things I can do to really help my chances for MA admissions? [...] Is there some place I can go to find particular strengths of programs around the country, for example a list of X number of schools with great programs in Shakespeare/English Romantic/Southern Literature/etc? I really have no clue of what programs are particularly strong and I'd like to start investigating grad schools soon. I wouldn't worry about your MA admission.** I'd check your languages, since you're going to want a firm grounding in at least two to make most good PhD programs -- in advising my students, that's the one thing that most often comes close to hanging up their applications. You could go to US News if you want field rankings, but https://phds.org is still the best tool I've found -- it lets you sort programs with incredible granularity using an avalanche of data. * Oddly enough, it wasn't until I understood this about Lear that Donald Trump's combover made sense to me. Its the same game played for lower stakes. ** Most terminal MA programs now basically serve high school teachers, so I'd really apply to PhD programs and quit after two years if an MA is all you want.
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May 10, 2009 00:37
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Naet posted:What's your opinion on the Ophelia death scene in Hamlet? Did Gertrude actually see the whole scene? If so, why didn't she send help? That one never really made sense to me. Well, I think this breaks into two basic questions: what's the nature of Ophelia's madness and suicide -- that is, what would Gertrude understand about Ophelia's madness? Second, who's Gertrude? What's she like? The idea is that in order to understand Gertrude's actions, we've got to understand what she knows (or suspects) and what kind of person she is. The second's the easy prey, so I'll hit that first. Who's Gertrude? I don't know if you've ever seen Slings and Arrows,* but during the company's production of Hamlet, the director gives a summary of how Gertrude's generally been read: she's not exactly naive, but not exactly cunning, and as happy to be with the bad king as the good one. This is generally how Gertrude's been played, but I think it misses some of the most important elements of her character and (frankly) of the plot. No matter how you spin her character, Gertrude has some hard edges -- a point that's easy to miss when you see how much latitude she gives her son. Case in point: maybe she's been having a longstanding affair with Claudius. This takes more than naiveté, and it's more than simple opportunism. Cheating on a king's a dangerous game. Look at what happened to Anne Boleyn. It's also possible that Gertrude knows, or suspects, something about Old Hamlet's murder -- the Ghost says that Gertrude's going to be punished for her guilt, but the ghost talks around whatever Gertrude might be guilty of. But no matter what you think of the affair (Hamlet seems to think it likely), or of Gertrude's possible complicity in Old Hamlet's death (which the text allows but doesn't encourage), it's clear that she's capable of betrayal -- if not of Old Hamlet, then at least of old Hamlet's memory. And this is understandable. Old Hamlet was an almost godlike warrior, but we never see anything that suggests his virtues as a husband. And, of course, she seems as wrapped up in spying on Hamlet as Claudius and Polonius are, though her motives seem more personal than political. Point is, Gertrude's more than just a changing piece, and she's capable of making some pretty cold-blooded decisions. Ophelia's Madness Ophelia, like Gertrude, is often misunderstood. Bad productions use her as a sort of prop -- as a way of making Polonius think that Hamlet's mad for love, and as a vehicle for interrupting Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. But Ophelia has hidden depths. These show themselves most clearly during their conversation during the play-within-a-play. Here's how it starts: quote:GERTRUDE The important things here are probably obvious: 1) Everyone (most importantly Polonius) can overhear the conversation between Ophelia and Hamlet. 2) Hamlet's being aggressively, but elliptically, perverted: the "lay in your lap" bit's pretty clear, as are his "country" matters. Ophelia's not sure how to deal with this -- it's all "yes sir," "no sir." Her tone changes, though, once the play starts and Ophelia's dad can't hear them talking: quote:HAMLET Again, the ways their conversation has changed are probably obvious: 1) Hamlet's still full of innuendo. 2) Ophelia is much more comfortable with it, and with him. She starts off by teasing him about how he watches the play, which is a playfulness we haven't seen between her and Hamlet before. And instead of all the "yes sir" and "no sir" stuff we saw earlier (both different ways of saying "shut up"), she plays along with Hamlet's innuendo -- we don't know whether Hamlet's last bout of wordplay is "better" because it's affectionate or "worse" because it's perverted, but either way Ophelia seems to be at least halfway happy with it. 3) Ophelia's also quite clever. Hamlet's line about the "puppets dallying" could be paraphrased (translated) like this: I could understand how your love for me worked if I knew who was playing the puppet and who was pulling the strings. Remember, this play opened (well, after the ghost bit) with Polonius ordering Ophelia to stop talking to Hamlet, and the most recent interaction between Hamlet and Ophelia was him finding her reading in a hallway (perhaps a little too conveniently, tipping him off that Polonius might be listening in). Either way, Hamlet lets Ophelia know that he knows that somebody's been monkeying with their relationship from the outside. Ophelia's "you are keen" is a confirmation of that. This is important because it's the only time we see what Ophelia and Hamlet's relationship is like. And the most important part of that is that their relationship is a least a little conspiratorial. I mean, this is right after Hamlet's whole "get thee too a nunnery" bit, which at the time seems to have greatly upset Ophelia. But the first time they have a chance for a private conversation, she seems at least non-resentful about it if not downright friendly. If we wanted to follow this a bit further down the rabbit hole, we might wonder exactly how much, or to what degree, Ophelia's deceiving her father -- after all, it's Ophelia who first tells Polonius that Hamlet's gone insane, and gives him exactly the information he needs to conclude that it's for love. Likewise, a close rereading of III.i allows (if not outright suggests) that Ophelia's dialogue is playing a double purpose; exclamations like "Oh what a noble mind is here overthrown" can mean that: 1) Ophelia is lamenting 2) Ophelia is telling the eavesdropping Polonius and Claudius exactly what's going on, in case they can't hear or see everything (and possibly feeding them a sort of misinformation in the process) 3) Ophelia is telling Hamlet how to act (crazy), consequently implying that they're not alone. Anyway. The important thing here is that Ophelia's betraying her father's trust, either a little or a lot, at least by confirming Hamlet's suspicion that there's a certain puppeteer pulling the strings of her affection. And this is where we get to Ophelia's madness, which seems to come out of grief over her father's death. But it could also come out of a few other things, depending on how you read her relationship with Hamlet: 1) Ophelia's just basically told Hamlet that someone's messing with their relationship and, from her perspective, the very next thing Hamlet does is kill her father. So she's probably feeling a little guilty over that. I mean, she just told her insane boyfriend that they couldn't be together because her dad said so, and then boyfriend kills dad. 2) Ophelia may feel responsible for Hamlet's insanity in the first place. Polonius has made no secret of thinking that Hamlet's mad for love of Ophelia -- or, more specifically, mad because he's told Ophelia to stop seeing Hamlet. If Ophelia believes this, she's got to feel pretty awful too. Not only did she just inadvertently drive her insane boyfriend to kill her father, but she drove him insane in the first place. 3) Ophelia probably resents her father (for telling her not to see Hamlet, who she seems to genuinely love), and may or may not feel guilty about her continued relationship with Hamlet. At the very least, remember, she acts one way when she and Hamlet are in public (read: watched by her father) and another when their conversation can't be overheard, so she's disobeying Polonius at least a little and maybe a lot. Either way, Ophelia's got to think Hamlet's murder of Polonius is all her fault. And she might feel even more guilty because she resents her father and significantly disobeyed him to boot. So What Does This Have to Do with Gertrude and Ophelia? Let me toss out a few options, which mostly depends on what you think Gertrude knows or suspects. Ophelia's suicide could be Gertrude's revenge, sort of. If Gertrude buys Polonius's idea that Hamlet's mad for love, then she can't feel great about Ophelia -- O's the one who's, perhaps inadvertently, driven her son insane. If that's not bad enough, Gertrude pretty much has to think that Hamlet's insanity is the reason he murdered Polonius. And Gertrude's no idiot. She has to know that Hamlet's got to pay the price for Polonius's death, and so agrees to have Hamlet shipped to England. Again, she's no idiot. She's got to suspect that this is so Hamlet can be conveniently executed or at least exiled. So from Gertrude's perspective, Ophelia's at least partly to blame for Hamlet's insanity, and the reason she'll never see her son again. So Gertrude might be a little slow to jump in the river after Ophelia. Gertrude, for complex psychological reasons, thinks O's better off dead. I mean, Gertrude's got to understand how guilty Ophelia feels about Polonius's death and Hamlet's insanity, since she feels the same way. Earlier in the play, Gertrude think Hamlet's insanity might be due to her and Claudius's quick marriage, and (from her perspective) Hamlet still seems obsessed with it right before he stabs Polonius -- remember, when he confronts her (right before he sees the ghost), he's harping on how their marriage is lust-driven and incestuous. And her agreeing to have Polonius eavesdrop on their conversation is, indirectly, what got him killed. So if Gertrude feels responsible for Polonius's death, then she has to feel responsible for Ophelia's insanity. And now, because she went along with Hamlet's eavesdropping, Hamlet's going to get shipped off to England for either execution or exile. That's a lot to feel guilty about, setting aside for a moment the loss of her first husband. So when Gertrude sees Ophelia drowning, her knee-jerk reaction might be, "I get it. Life's poo poo, and you're better off." Or it could be "I get it. You and Hamlet were deeply in love -- so in love that you chose him over your father. And that love's been taken away from you, and you feel guilty about your father's death. I feel the same way, because I gave up everything for love, too. If I'd lost Claudius in the bargain, I'd be not-swimming with you." Or it could be "I know how guilty you feel, and I feel guilty too, so I'm not going to rescue you so you can feel as terrible as I do." Or it could be more like "that's a relief. I'm losing my son, and Polonius is dead, and Ophelia's insane, and this is all a result of my marriage, but at least this last visible reminder of all the problems I've caused is gone." * You might want to, because it's generally excellent.
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May 10, 2009 22:34
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Brainworm posted:As a rule: Satan makes PL readable, since he's the only character with any interior and, frankly, any fathomable motivations. Everyone says that a familiarity with the Bible is a vital component to anyone interested in Western literature if for no other reason than because of the dramatic influence that text has had on all literature produced in the past two millenia. As an atheist, I can't read the Bible or any commentaries on the Biblical text without throwing my hands up in frustration. It's like reading every entry in the Star Trek wikipedia, except even less interesting. It all seems so stupid and pointless. What do you recommend to anyone who hates the Bible but wants to gain a greater appreciation of literature?
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May 11, 2009 00:03
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Keshik posted:Everyone says that a familiarity with the Bible is a vital component to anyone interested in Western literature if for no other reason than because of the dramatic influence that text has had on all literature produced in the past two millenia. I'm still only a lowly undergrad, and I don't have anything close to the OP's qualifications in English lit, but I can write as a fellow atheist who learned to appreciate the Bible. My advice would be to try to approach it as a work of literature rather than as some kind of book of morality. God is very much a literary character, and he's far from perfect; Genesis reads pretty damned well as an account of God trying to figure out what the hell he is/wants to be. And when you're ready for some serious moral ambiguity, read Job; it makes Dostoevsky look downright cheerful. There's also no reason not to read all four Gospels, but pay special attention to Luke and John. Luke shows just how hypocritical the Christian Right is, and John contains some VERY deep metaphysical speculation about the nature of the divine. Both are written in relatively simple language, but are obviously from the hands of extremely proficient writers. I'm sure the OP has other (probably better) suggestions, but that's my two cents' worth
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May 11, 2009 02:00
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Keshik posted:What do you recommend to anyone who hates the Bible but wants to gain a greater appreciation of literature? Bel_Canto posted:My advice would be to try to approach it as a work of literature rather than as some kind of book of morality. I agree with Bel, including the recommendation to start with Job; the moral struggle of that book makes it a fascinating read. My favorite is probably the story of David, though, especially if you go into it with the popular opinion of Christians that David is the model of benevolence he's not. Also, no offense, but this: Keshik posted:As an atheist, I can't read the Bible or any commentaries on the Biblical text without throwing my hands up in frustration. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 02:19 on May 11, 2009 |
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May 11, 2009 02:13
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Keshik posted:Everyone says that a familiarity with the Bible is a vital component to anyone interested in Western literature if for no other reason than because of the dramatic influence that text has had on all literature produced in the past two millenia. Can you tolerate reading The Iliad? If so, then I would think you can get through the Old Testament, at the least.* Just treat it like a mythology, which is what it is (note that I'm not using "mythology" in any sense of truth or falsity, but as reference to a type of literature). Don't worry about what's true or false, or how many times it contradicts itself, or how it verifies its claims; think of it as giving a history of a people (not a literal one), along with proving a way in which to understand the events of life for a particular culture. A mythology presents a worldview, not just in the literal events described, but in the lessons it teaches and the character types and situations it displays; it may not match up with your own worldview on many or even most points, but that shouldn't necessarily make it uninteresting (I would think, on the contrary, that the differences make it more interesting; try playing the part of the investigator, trying to figure out why this or that story would be important and what circumstances might have made it so). And if you really just can't find it relevant because it doesn't match up with your worldview or provide your idea of excitement, you might have trouble reading a lot of classic literature. But if you move beyond that, both Testaments can be fascinating (I say this as a for-all-intents-and-purposes atheist). *If you're one of the many who cannot get through The Iliad, then move along.
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May 11, 2009 02:16
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Veritron posted:
NeverOddorEven posted:You have to be loving kidding me.  s under everything I don't mean in the absolute most literal sense? I even said (royal you)
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May 11, 2009 07:55
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Naet posted:makes you sound as ridiculous as the religious nut jobs who want to burn every copy of Harry Potter and Twilight. There's more to the Bible than preachy nonsense and 30 page lineages (although there is a lot of that, too). It's not that that really is my problem. It's that it's just not interesting. The central characters are prophets or the deity himself, and the deity is omnipotent - moreover, he's pretty evil. I've never read Milton (largely because I'd like to gain a better understanding of the original text first) but based solely on what I've gleaned from derivative works over the years, the idea of Satan being the protagonist of the story resonates with me. The Judeo Christian god is, to my mind, one of the great villains of literature, and I simply have trouble proceeding through a text devoted to that character when that text is not an apologetic. I've even read (some of) Aquinas and Augustine (who are dumb as poo poo), and cannot bring myself around to the idea of accepting the premise that the Judeo Christian god is a good guy. He's a bad guy, he's more malevolent and fickle than any of the Greek gods. halesuhtem posted:Can you tolerate reading The Iliad? ... Just treat it like a mythology The question that keeps breaking my suspension of disbelief with the Bible is "Why?" There's never a satisfying answer. Please understand also that my difficulty with the Bible is not due solely to blind atheism and dislike of the subject. The only thing I want out of this book is to get an understanding of the influences it has had on better books by better authors about better characters and better subjects. The problem is that I can read the entire story of David and have gained no greater appreciation for any of the books I've ever read for having read the David story. I can be disgusted that two billion people think a murdering adulterous rapist is an example of a good ruler, but I can't perceive how it has influenced any literary works, and that's what I am after. I'm looking for recommendations of guides or advice on how to figure out how the story of the resurrection of Christ influenced the Great Gatsby. Or whatever.
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May 11, 2009 10:11
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How many languages do you speak? I assume you must have at least a smattering of Latin if you're reading in-depth into Milton (and, as you mentioned earlier, translating those insane memos the guy who last had your job left you with), but have you tried your tongue at anything else?Brainworm posted:I'd check your languages, since you're going to want a firm grounding in at least two to make most good PhD programs -- in advising my students, that's the one thing that most often comes close to hanging up their applications. I guess my question is, after I graduate would it be advisable to take a year or two off to go back to Japan to get my language skills down pat? Otherwise, was your advice more pointed toward getting a firm grounding in two languages other than English? From reading this thread, I think either way I'll have to take at least a year off to get my priorities straight before committing mentally and emotionally to something like a PhD program in English/Japanese comparative literature.
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May 11, 2009 11:43
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Keshik posted:What do you recommend to anyone who hates the Bible but wants to gain a greater appreciation of literature? quote:Lots of other Bible stuff. I think I can see where this comes from -- without a reading motive rooted in faith, the Bible can be a tough slog. The New Testament isn't bad because it's (relatively) short, but the OT is a quagmire. My first bit of advice is to approach the Bible like I did. Don't read it cover-to-cover or front to back. Instead, get one of the billion print or online companions to the Bible that list what stories get told and where they appear. Most of the stories we're familiar with show up in at least a couple different places or at least in a couple different versions (Genesis has two versions of the creation story,* Noah and the Ark come up in a couple different places, and the resurrection is told and re-told in the first books of the NT), so reading story-by-story rather than book-by-book makes sense. The second bit is to choose stories you think are interesting. Like the one in 2 Kings where God sends bears to kill all the kids who mocked Elisha's baldness. Third, go King James. If you're a student of religion, fidelity of translation matters. But if you're reading the Bible as literature, the KJ is where you want to be. It's also eminently quotable. * They're back to back. The best way to tell them apart is to look at God. In one, he creates by doing something (e.g. rib surgery). In the other, he creates by speaking.
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May 11, 2009 16:02
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