I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

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?

# ¿ May 8, 2009 11:50

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:51

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

Well this is a bit much, but given that, like it or not, the grades you give out will be used to evaluate your students by third parties, it does seems quite unfair to give them grades that aren't accurate evaluations just to "motivate" them.

I think it's alright if it's just for individual assignments, but the final course grade reflects the true merits of a student's work?

# ¿ May 20, 2009 12:57

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

At least two of his books (Politics and Poetry and Origins of the English Novel) are something close to must-reads for grad students in the field.* So probably the best way to put it is that he's a well-known and highly-accomplished scholar. In Restoration Lit, that's about as good as you can get -- there aren't any Shakespeares and there's little field writing for the popular press, so he's not likely to make the Colbert Report.

*I read them for my comprehensive exams, only vaguely remember both, and briefly considered using Origins in my last Restoration Lit. section (but chose Watt's Rise of the Novel).

Speaking of "must-reads," if you had to put together a top ten list for grad students, what would you have on there? I'm in the graduate program at National Taiwan University for ancient Chinese literature, and there's a definite interest here in approaching the Chinese canon with western methods, although for the most part it ends up pretty botched . So, I'm trying to do a little research on the side to compare and contrast approaches to the two canons.

# ¿ May 23, 2009 14:19

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Thanks Brainworm, I'm going to the university library on Monday to pilfer your recommendations. I've already spent a little time looking at Bloom's writing, and it looks very useful. If I ever produce anything worthwhile, I'll post an update!

# ¿ May 24, 2009 08:05

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

Yeah, he's the best crank out there. There used to be some Charlie Rose interviews of Bloom floating around Youtube, but now they're on Charlie Rose's site. Priceless.

He seems to think many authors are secretly products of a gnostic wonderland. I wonder if he's joking, or just saying that because he knows he can get away with it. (tenure, fame, etc.) Have you come across this particular fetish of his, Brainworm?

Edit: Yet, as I listen to those interviews, I find myself more and more inclined to believe him.

Barto fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 29, 2009

# ¿ May 29, 2009 12:17

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Dear Brainworm,
I noted your recommendation of Titus Andronicus, and have just spent the last few hours reading it. The high atrocity per line ratio kept me riveted and I thought there were not a few lines which stood out quite memorably. The play did read better without my knowing anything of the ending, as you earlier suggested. The ending...was quite surprising. Yet, having enjoyed it so much, I am dismayed to find my liking of the play places me firmly at odds with most critics, for instance Mr. Bloom who suggests the play cannot be taken seriously. While Titus is certainly not Hamlet, to my mind it has an other flavor entirely, zesty BBQ to Hamlet's subtle ranch dressing. But despite the differences, I like this play rather a lot.

Is my Shakespeareometer broken? Will I discover my errors after I reread it several times?

# ¿ Jul 14, 2009 22:19

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

I'll PM you. I can email you either the article or the manuscript, depending on what I can find and when.

Also, this isn't really an active research field. There was a special issue of R************* that touched on it, sort of -- that's the issue my article was in -- but apart from that I haven't seen much theorizing or research.

I'm trying to avoid having this thread come up when someone Googles my name or my college, since I don't need my colleagues knowing what I make, my reviewers knowing what I think of my own writing, or Harold Bloom showing up at my office. He'd cut a guy.

I mean, it doesn't matter to me whether anyone in this thread can find out whatever by looking out into the world. I just don't want anybody from the outside looking in, since that kind of visibility means I can't speak as plainly as I'd like.

Sounds like you've run into Mr. Bloom before. Any anecdotes?

I was reading his take on Measure for Measure in Invention of the Human, and he seemed a little nonplussed at the Duke's behavior. From my point of view though, the Duke's decision to hide and manipulate the situation from a distance seems like a very clear reflection of Catholic/Christian philosophy's view of theodicy. The Duke's actions are cruel, but they're also in a very comfortable place for me because I was raised Catholic. I'm trying to read Harold Bloom's discomfort, and I'm wondering if it has to do with his gnosticism; does he have difficulty getting into the "cruelty" of a Christian-God figure? But perhaps I'm reading the play incorrectly, in any case, I was curious about your opinion of it.

Also: the Duke, gay or not gay? When accused of womanizing he seems to be saying "Oh, the Duke doesn't swing that way."

By the way, I noticed your mention of the arklight Shakespeare, so I got it and I've listened to Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew so far. I really love it, so thanks for mentioning that.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2009 15:36

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Pontius Pilate posted:

Yeah, I still have it bookmarked. I had just figured you forgot about poor ol' Pnin and was debating about whether to remind you. But you came through!

me too! I love this thread!

# ¿ Oct 16, 2009 17:44

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

I haven't read Waugh, actually -- one of about a million authors on my I'm-getting-to-obscenely-late list. David Foster Wallace was a long-time resident there, too.

So were I going to read Waugh soon, where do you think I ought to start?

Decline and Fall is quite funny (I think...heh)

# ¿ Jan 12, 2010 15:42

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Hey Brainworm,
I really respect your opinion, (I've enjoyed and been quite pleased by your opinions in the rest of the thread), so I wanted to ask you if you think Joyce's Ulysses is worth all the hype. I wouldn't trust most academics with that question, because they're too interested in their street cred to give a straight answer, but you seem like an honest guy (how impertinent of me haha). From what I can see, judging by what I've read (of the book and of critical reviews) it's almost as though Joyce was just loving with everyone and Finnegan's Wake was when everyone realized that "The Emperor hasn't a stitch on." I almost get the feeling that it was included too quickly in the canon, and that in older times the fact no one really reads it (or wants to read) would have sent it into the musty attic of history, there to rot for all time. It's just that academics went for it too soon, and are now oh-so-carefully attempting to extricate themselves. I mean...any novel that needs to have an explanation chart secretly given to critics by the writer in order to approach sensibility can't really count as an artistic success can it? That's the kind of finished project that crazy old catladies writing erotica in their basements end up with- although, I of course know I could be entirely wrong. . But I do have to say, I was not impressed with part 1. Joyce packs it full of Catholic references (I am Catholic so I caught them pretty easily) but he doesn't use them well. In fact, the first one "introibo ad altare dei" is misused...after all, that's the prayers at the foot of the altar, but he's satirizing the offertory of the mass, so should use something from the "lavabo." I don't really want to study Joyce's life (edit: what I mean is, I don't feel like I should have to totally understand the man's every fart and poo experience in order to read a book), he seems to have been a rather nasty man, so what's the deal with this book? I'm willing to put in the time to really understand it- if someone could tell me WHY it might edify, enlighten, or improve me in some way. You know...art.

Barto fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Feb 17, 2010

# ¿ Feb 15, 2010 16:46

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

z0331 posted:

I don't know how much exposure you have to other humanities, but does the same hold true for, for example, foreign literature PhDs? For example, I'm planning on doing Japanese Literature through a Japanese L&L department. In my mind I generally equate this with an English Literature degree except that it's in a different language. Do you have any idea if those kind of PhDs have greater luck in the job market or is it all pretty much the same?

As soon as the Otaku fad is over, say goodbye to your job.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2010 04:02

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

z0331 posted:

I wasn't aware there still was an otaku fad. Even if there is I doubt it'll last for the next 7 years or so so I won't have to say goodbye to a job since I'll probably never get to say hello.

Lately, I've heard that the magna/anime industry in Japan itself is in serious trouble (but I don't know, I don't read that stuff). The entire Japanese department thing has been driven by Otakus and their Japanese classes/minors, so I don't see it lasting much longer. But then, that's just my very subjective impression of the situation.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2010 05:16

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

PlasticPaddy posted:

Do you see many instances of students being acutely aware of these cliches and making a rather ham-fisted and obvious attempt to go the polar opposite route? Like an Anti-Mary Sue sort of thing.

Literature students are not the most self-aware of people at times (hence the all-black wardrobes)

# ¿ Apr 22, 2010 05:47

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

she drank herself into a kind of petulance and stubbornness I've for some reason only seen in half-asian women.

You should come to Taiwan for some real petulance.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2010 04:54

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Raimundus posted:

But why?

Fake edit: Yeah, I get the imprecision part, but it's not like we're trying to end the discussion this way.

Some people just don't like talking like that, and I imagine that your professor hopes to not only improve your understanding of the text, but also your ability to express yourselves in general. I think in a formal context (such as a classroom) or in a situation where the preferences of the people talking aren't known, it's generally better to maintain a slightly more formal tone.

# ¿ May 2, 2010 03:05

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Hey Brainworm, could you tell us more about your trip?
I think you mentioned the experience of watching a bunch of Chinese people watch Hamlet for the first time a few hundred posts back (from a previous trip?) which sounded pretty interesting.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2010 09:31

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Hey Brainworm,
If you wanted to follow "the flow" of English poetry for a few hundred years, say from Shakespeare onward, what would be the easiest way to connect the dots without either: a) getting bogged down in mindless details or b) getting a view of things which is far to anthologized to provide any particular insights?
Thanks!

# ¿ Jan 19, 2011 15:24

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

I'ma suggest two things, and you can skip the first if you feel you already have the matter covered:

1) Read the anthology introductions to the various periods and movements of the last 500 years: The Renaissance, Restoration, Enlightenment, Romantics, Victorians, Realists and Naturalists, Modernists, and Postmodernists, for example. That should give you a rough understanding of how periods relate to one another.

2) Read sonnets specifically. For some reason, sonnets are a durable, durable form, and pretty much every major English and American poet of the last 500 years has tried them -- even ones you'd never suspect, like Edgar Allen Poe and Mr. free verse himself, Walt Whitman.

This gives you the advantage of seeing how major poets from every period approach a highly-conventional form that dictates not only structure (14 lines, etc.) but content (love). That makes it easy to focus on what's important when you want both a sweeping and a detailed understanding of literature: similarities and differences, and continuities and changes.

I just wanted to say thanks; this is a really good idea, and I'm going to start working on it soon.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2011 14:00

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

bartlebee posted:

As a theatre student/practitioner, and having been in/to quite a bit of Shakespeare, I would suggest not getting caught up too much on keeping up with every single thing that every single person says. This sounds like odd advice, but when I first started watching Shakespeare, it was difficult to keep up with because I was trying to parse out each sentence and stay abreast of what they meant. The language barrier between contemporary English and Shakespeare's language means, as a lay person, many of us aren't going to be familiar with the material. The actors should take on the heavy lifting, and you'll be able to understand more easily if you don't try to understand literally everything they say. That's just how it's worked for me, though. I'll be interested to read Brainworm's opinion.

It's worth understanding in fine detail at some point though.
There's a lot of funny stuff hiding in between the lines.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2011 06:25

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

* This isn't a knock against college students. It's that for the overwhelming majority of the students I've worked with, functional intelligence means that ingenuity and cleverness have totally outpaced certain broad classes of insight. That's not a bad thing. I think it's just a demographic function. It's why there aren't many 20-year-old zen masters.

Could you expand on this idea? It's something that I've noticed before, but was never able to put words to. For Brainworm, what is a truly insightful piece of literature?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2011 13:42

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Hello Brainworm!
You've mentioned working with ESL students before, so I want your advice on how to explain a fairly complex English concept to someone not necessarily very familiar with western culture, particularly not with literature.
How can we explain why tragedy or tragic things (which make us feel bad)
can be beneficial to the spirit and even very beautiful?
In other words, how to explain what catharsis is and why it's important to the human condition.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2013 09:23

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

This is a tough one, and it's hard to think through without knowing some of the particulars -- like which class (or level of class) this is, and exactly where the student seems to run into difficulty.

It also depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If what you really want to do is help this student understand catharsis, you've got a lot of options and I think the job's comparatively easy; one plan of first resort is to help the student track down a native language translation of the Poetics and use that as a bridge to talking about the English-language text. But I don't think that's where you're going.

If what you want to do is help this student gain some fluency concerning the general situation of tragedy in Western culture, things are a little more complicated. Rather than talking about theories of tragedy in a way that moves from Aristotle forward, you may want to start by talking about more accessible theories of tragedy. Hegel's thinking -- that tragedy is a product of equally legitimate, mutually exclusive, and irreconcilable responsibilities (to, say, government on one hand and family on the other) -- is a good starting point.

You can easily get to this by asking your student to talk about a time when he or she made a difficult decision. Of course I don't know your student, but I promise you'll get something in which conflicting responsibilities are central to that difficulty. They always are.

So Hamlet's "responsibility conflicts" (between the supernatural mandate imposed by his father's ghost on one hand and e.g. Ophelia, intellectual thoroughness, and his potential happiness on the other) are in this sense much like the typical conflicts students experience when they abandon their families and hometowns to go to school, or when they choose between academic work and social whatever. A decision is necessary, inevitable, and requires choosing one set of responsibilities over another, and while reasonable decisions in this contest are often clear, that clarity doesn't mean that they are made without cost. Hamlet, in other words, is just the music of everyday life played louder.

If you can make that connection, between common experience and Hegel's definition of tragedy, then your student has a well-anchored way of thinking both about (a) what's central to tragedy as a form and (b) how an audience identifies with elements of a tragedy through common categories of experience.

From there, it's a short leap to either Aristotle or Nietzsche; both describe specific emotional and intellectual consequences of exactly this process of identification. So once your student has a clear basis for identifying with tragic situations, Aristotle's catharsis and Nietzsche's "will of life rejoicing in it's own vitality" should be more intelligible -- they mean purging negative emotions in order to approach conflicts of responsibilities without unreasonable fear (purgation catharsis), clarifying the nature of these conflicts of responsibility (clarity catharsis), or showing that, despite these conflicts and their disastrous consequences, one's capacity to experience them is itself a too-easily-forgotten cause for celebration (rainbows-and-sunshine Nietzsche).

If there's a language barrier to that conversation -- especially one that keeps you from talking about a student's experience with conflicting responsibilities -- you've got an entirely different class of problem, and one which is probably going to need a third party to successfully resolve. That might mean coordinating with an ESL tutor to help work with this student, or (in case this is a first-year writing course) finding a seat for your student in an ESL section.

If that's the situation, your actions should be guided by your commitment to the best education of every individual student. I'm sorry if that seems obvious, but it's easy to forget. So if (and this is a big and long-distance if) the college doesn't have the support systems this student needs to do the work he or she is expected to do, the right course of action is to recommend that the student transfer, and to support that process as far as you are able. More likely, it means doing some footwork to coordinate with an ESL tutor and setting clear and responsible expectations for your student's work.

Thanks a lot Brainworm: this is really useful for me.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2013 17:16

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

Extra credit for the best joke about Boston, 4/18-4/19,* e.g.:

Q: What do you call a Russian Muslim?
A: I don't know, but keep him away from track practice.

Three Chechens walk into a bar.
BOOM!

Q: How many Chechens does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. Two to bomb a soft target and lead police on a violent, theatrical chase through a major metropolitan area that terrorizes thousands of people and results in injuries and deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians, and one to screw in the light bulb.

Q: Did you hear about the Chechen premiere of Dark Knight Rises?
A: It was in Boston.

I'm doing this here because (a) I can't do it at work and (b) if I don't, I'm afraid my brain will explode.

This happens a lot. And My intuition is that something about this happening a lot is somehow connected to signatures of my best teaching.

Normally, I'd talk this out (i.e. have this joke making contest) with some colleagues, but none of the right ones are here. I'd also do that with Mrs. Brainworm, but right now she'd probably record it and play it back in divorce court.

Normally, I'd also turn something that produced that kind of feeling into a student writing exercise, but in this case that's completely off the rails.

Someone told me once that if heaven were real, there'd be no humor because humor is by its nature laughing because of an unkind thought.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2013 15:30

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm,
What's good way to learn about the structure of novels and short stories?
There's a lot of stuff out there about the theoretical/thematic structure of the things, but I rarely see anyone get into the nitty gritty of it. Over the last few years, I've started paying more attention to story structure in general (movies, novels, TV shows), and I've learned a fair bit about how things work that way. But the actual process of putting together the structure of some huge book is fascinating to me- and it appears this isn't a very big focus for researchers, or at least I haven't seen anything much yet. Looking at a novel like War and Peace or Lolita, I find myself really curious how the intricately designed sentences turn into paragraphs that aggregate into chapters that form a coherent whole. It almost seems too large to hold in the conscious mind at once!

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is the relationship between image and word. I sometimes wonder: when good novelists write, do they work from a complex mental image or from a sort of stew of verbal concepts? I'm not sure if I'm expressing myself correctly, but it seems that doing it one way or the other would yield very different results.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2014 06:17

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

That is a really great question.

What I'd love to be able to say is that there's a book or article that lays out some agreeable method for charting out plots' structures and provides a whole bunch of useful terms in service of that method. But as far as I can tell, there's nothing of the sort. The article that I think lays out the best starting method, though, is Vladimir Propp's "Morphology of the Folktale" -- it's heavily anthologized and usually easy to find.

Also, when writers write criticism they tend to do a lot of abstracting that can be really helpful. Think of what Stephen King does in Danse Macabre, for instance. And the New Critics did this kind of thing all the time, so if you can find an early 20th-century piece of criticism on whatever you're working with, the odds are good that it'll map out something like plot structure in service of genre criticism.

This is a horrible answer, but if my experience talking to writers is any gauge, the process is sometimes specific to the writer and sometimes specific to the passage.

And it may be none of the above. I can remember J.M. Coetzee talking about how he thought of some books (like Michael K) as a set of character responses to the visual and sensual, and of some (like Waiting for the Barbarians) as a set of character responses to the intellectual and abstract. In that case, things like visual and linguistic concepts are really subordinate to a deep concept of character. That might be an outlier -- Coetzee spends more time in his characters' heads than, say, Dickens does. But it could very well be that the things that strike us most as readers (rich description, linguistic style) aren't actually identifiable players in a writer's process.

That last point is sometimes why I still love "The Intentional Fallacy." It forces a critic (whatever his or her motives) to think of the relationship between reader and writer as deeply complicated.

This is really useful, thanks. I'm going to spend the weekend reading up on this.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 14:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:51

Barto: Dec 27, 2004

Brainworm posted:

What's the point of this redtext? I mean, I'm an English professor. Emotional wounds would just make me sexier.

So thanks, I guess.

It's alright Brainworm, we all like you.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 22:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.