On an academic level, I need to know how emotions are or aren't rational, and how that plays into meaning making.
YES. This actually brings me back to my experience of re-reading Jane Eyre in a course focusing on postcolonial criticism. All of a sudden people were telling me Jane Eyre wasn't a love story, despite the fact that that particular reading of JE was the most powerful one I'd had to that point. Suddenly, instead, I am being told that it's actually a story of the middle-class white woman's complicity in empire-building and slavery and racism and that even Bronte herself should be included in this criticism (rather than considered as a potential author of this criticism, or at least of some strain of it). I spent so much time trying to figure out why I was so angry at these new ideas about the text, and trying to work past the surface anger/frustration at having my romantic notions shattered in order to realize that I did actually have problems with these postcolonial critics' methods of argumentation.
I think I may have gotten somewhere with P&P simply because I decided to let myself operate under the idea that the love story really is important, and that perhaps Austen is saying something about how love can still matter, and can be based upon more than appearance and wealth in an increasingly commercialized world. I still feel like there's some question I'm not thinking to ask myself but I'm also realizing that I need to stand back and take a few deep breaths. After all, this is a thesis that doesn't have to be written until March or April!
One of the most common bogus remarks I hear about literature is that it's purely what a particular reader makes of it. That said, literature is meaningless if it doesn't stand in relation to some audience.
I got a book from the library the other day that I haven't had time to start reading yet but am looking forward to -- it's called Is There a Text in This Class? and it's about attempting to engage with a lot of the academic arguments about different possible sources of a text's meaning (or lack of meaning). I suspect you may also find it interesting though I can't say so for certain as I haven't read beyond the introduction. It looked like it was going to deal with this divide between meaning generated by the reader or the writer.
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Date: 2010-08-06 09:07 pm (UTC)YES. This actually brings me back to my experience of re-reading Jane Eyre in a course focusing on postcolonial criticism. All of a sudden people were telling me Jane Eyre wasn't a love story, despite the fact that that particular reading of JE was the most powerful one I'd had to that point. Suddenly, instead, I am being told that it's actually a story of the middle-class white woman's complicity in empire-building and slavery and racism and that even Bronte herself should be included in this criticism (rather than considered as a potential author of this criticism, or at least of some strain of it). I spent so much time trying to figure out why I was so angry at these new ideas about the text, and trying to work past the surface anger/frustration at having my romantic notions shattered in order to realize that I did actually have problems with these postcolonial critics' methods of argumentation.
I think I may have gotten somewhere with P&P simply because I decided to let myself operate under the idea that the love story really is important, and that perhaps Austen is saying something about how love can still matter, and can be based upon more than appearance and wealth in an increasingly commercialized world. I still feel like there's some question I'm not thinking to ask myself but I'm also realizing that I need to stand back and take a few deep breaths. After all, this is a thesis that doesn't have to be written until March or April!
One of the most common bogus remarks I hear about literature is that it's purely what a particular reader makes of it. That said, literature is meaningless if it doesn't stand in relation to some audience.
I got a book from the library the other day that I haven't had time to start reading yet but am looking forward to -- it's called Is There a Text in This Class? and it's about attempting to engage with a lot of the academic arguments about different possible sources of a text's meaning (or lack of meaning). I suspect you may also find it interesting though I can't say so for certain as I haven't read beyond the introduction. It looked like it was going to deal with this divide between meaning generated by the reader or the writer.