Q&A #5: Question 2

The second question I am interested in is whether the similarity used in a metaphor is created by the metaphor. My first inclination is to say no, given the following example "Richard is a lion". The comparison here is to say that Richard has some quality usually attributed to a lion, lets say for the sake of the example it is bravery. Clearly something Richard has done or will do will explain why such a comparison, i.e Richard is already brave. Rather than simply use the adjective brave, the metaphor is used to extend what type of bravery that is. It is not simply courage, it is an animal like impulse driven to action with disregard for phsyical harm in the face of dangerous situations. It seems that the fact Richard was brave was already established, but that in order to intensify the trait of bravery, the comparison is made to the lion. My example is obviously crafted with my conclusion in mind, but what do you guys think? Does the metaphor establish a similarity or simply provide new perspective on the attributes of the principal subject?

Q&A #5

The first question I wished to contemplate this week is whether there was a difference in verbal sentences being metaphors, and more symbolic ones like the example I mentioned in class. For those who may have forgotten I mentioned in a famous American Gothic short story, an old house is meant to literally represent the decaying former Antebellum South. This metaphor it seems would only work if the reader had a specific background understanding of when the story was written, and recent American history around that time. In many novels settings, objects, and characters are used to symbolize something not explicitly told to the reader. It seems that in both cases, the verbal and the symbolic, there is still that interaction between thoughts, however it seems the latter requires some sort of pretense to the piece itself. What do you guys think? Would a metaphor fail if the reader is not informed of its origins, or would many of use be able to recognize the symbolism used by context alone?

Q&A #4: Question 2

The second question I considered this week was wheteher the emotion we feel in reponse to literature is similar to those we have in other artistic mediums. I am basing my understanding of emotion of one used by Malcolm Budd in invetsigating the realtionship between music and the emotion. He states that an emotion is a "positve or negative response to the content of a thought". In litertature the thought we are reacting too seems more obvious than in other forms of art, we are explicitly told what the characters do and feel and thus react to the state of affairs stipulated by the text. However in music, the case seems to be not so clear as to what exactly a partciular song references in terms of a concept or thought is often difficult to discern. Most would say that our recognition of an emotion within the song itslef causes an emotional reaction within the listener, however as some of you may already know I am skeptical of such a claim. Thoughts, opinions, and criticisms are always welcome so please comment away.

Q&A #4: Question One

The first question I had in regards to the relationship between emotion and literature is that if we take the thought theory that emotions are reactions to thoughts, and we consider thoughts to be real, what does that say about the nature of a fictional character? It would seem that a fictional character under this concept would be considered real, and thus the paradox of why we respond to an unreal entity is resolved. However does this mean that our conception of fiction which we discussed predominantly as seperating the real from the fictitious need amednding? The role that truth played in fiction was a highlighted aspect, and perhaps while the idea of a character may be real, the truth is not in their existence but rather in the qualities attributed to them (height, weight, hair color, styles of speech etc). being real. I am interested to see what some of you think about our understanding of fiction, if we do consider that thoughts are real and thus the ideas of fictional characters actually exist.

On emotion in literature

I think Feagin may be on to an accurate understanding of the role our emotions play in literature. The theory is that we recognize morals and facts about humanity within the work and can appreciate them knowing they are making claims of concepts relative to human society. As we discussed early this semester, a more full understanding of morality comes with an understanding of emotions, it forces abstract notions of freedom, justice, love, equality, etc. to face the material world and be planted into concrete situations, these situations often show us more about these concepts than simply positing them hypothetically.
One of the reasons I believe we may enjoy tragedy in literature is that is shows the other side of the emotional spectrum, it reveals how much more there is to a persons emotional capacity than simply happy and sad. There are moments of ecstasy and also ones of deep grief and isolation, but these are part of the human experience and the combination of a number of emotions is what makes human life so vivid. It is not enough to constantly be happy, being afraid and being sad, they provide a release and experience for us other feeling cannot, they are essential to our existence, and thus must be essential to some of our arts.

QA #3: Question 2

The second question I was debating came from a quote in the Thomasson reading, it was a theorists claim that fictional characters exist within the very language which creates them and are thus independent of conciousness. This seemed perplexing at first as how can a character exist if no one is thinking about them? I then later thought about how I cannot say Sherlock Holmes is not real just because I am not familiar with those texts, I have just yet to perceive such texts and thus also the character of Holmes. In the same way speculations about elements and other components of space etc. are claiming that these substances may exists but have simply yet to be accessible to human sensory perception and measurement. The idea that fictional characters is independent of conciousness still seems problematic, but perhaps it is because the text preserves the character so that it could be potentially discovered is a better way to understand such a claim.

QA #3: Question One

The first question I speculated about this week was to what degree truth takes a role in non fiction? Someone had entertained the thought in a conversatuion about media, he asked me whether I was certain that newspapers were telling me the truth. While I understand his positon that in some cirumstances the media is censored and regulated to prevent the exposure of certain facts or perspectives, but for the most part the events reported by news outlets can be verified in that they actually occurred. Whether we can understand the full motives of the persons involved or in what order the events transpired may be blurred or altered by some news outlets, however there are other that will not. Again I can entertain the thought that media is biased, but it does not create the stories, it distorts the story. The events may be presented in a partcular way, but they are not conceived by the news outlets, they are only adopted by the news outlets and then transmitted in the form to which the organization believes is best.

Pretense

We have discussed throughout much of this week has been about a pretense to approaching fiction, in which we either are aware of the author's intention or the text's function (i.e as a prop). But what exactly does this pretense entail? Is it an explicit statement made by a parent or educator that says "This story is not real and thus you should not take is to be so"? Or is a connotative assumption we make when first being introduced to a text in which we can determine it to be fiction? If so what are those assumptions based on? Style and form or on the chracters and settings? I am unsure of when I was taught such a pretense, but yet I am conciously aware that when I select something from the fiction section of the library, I should not anticipate finding a text which reflects an actual state of affairs in the material world. I wanted hear your thoughts on what this pretense would look like and it affects our conception of fiction.

Q&A #2: Question 2

My second question for this week was similar to one Jacob posted on his blog, whether an attempt to define literature was for its previous uses or its contemporary understanding? I would think that it must be for the pieces already labeled and taught as literature, as creating a list to embody works not yet seen would probably exclude some material worth consideration.

Just a point unrelated to the Q&A was our discussion of whether there was a concept of something "new". I will assume I can safely define new as something unrecognizable to the observer. We need to remember that the purpose of catergorization is to generalize. The term dog only covers the shared properties of all dogs, but it does not specify every possible instance a dog may take shape. This is something I think is necessary to remind ourselves, for if nothing is new than this blog post has been posted by me before and I am wasting my time imitating a post I have already typed.

Q&A #2: Question One

My first question in response to whether literature was denfinable, was to try and create a few conditions that seem to fit into most conceptions of the term. I will borrow Nicole's definition of the term aritfact in that litertaure is something made by human intentionality. I believe that all literature regardless of genre, uses words and word phrases as its basic material (obviously there is no universal language which all texts are written in, i.e the words do not have to be in English). The skill of using such material is the final condition I arrived at, meaning that speeches, sermons, and other oratory instances could be considered literature. The reason being is that they have the capacity to meet the two previously stated conditions, and often does. I am certain there are more conditions I could come up with, but I concede that I agree with several of Stecker's conditions for litrature and will not retype them here as they are available for reference in our textbook. Questions, critiques, and comments always welcome.