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
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I've left this post marked unread since it first came up in my newsfeeds because I wanted to say something about it, but didn't know what to say. I still don't have it worked out, but at this rate I will never respond.
I think this is what turns kids who like reading off of literary analysis, and (gasp!) what makes kids who don't like reading not like reading in the first place. I was in the former camp until English 4AP; now I'm still wary.
It's because it's so obvious that there's more to the novel than [whatever's being discussed]. Some novels really are just vehicles for their messages, but clearly there is a difference between good fiction writing and bad fiction writing beyond the clarity.
I recently came across this Calvin and Hobbes comic in a re-read of the Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat collection. I hadn't thought about it much before, but having recently watched a few old movies, I realized there was something to that last line. Movies these days are heavy with attempts to "manipulate" emotions, but I prefer that to the
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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 ( ... )
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I think this is what turns kids who like reading off of literary analysis, and (gasp!) what makes kids who don't like reading not like reading in the first place. I was in the former camp until English 4AP; now I'm still wary.
It's because it's so obvious that there's more to the novel than [whatever's being discussed]. Some novels really are just vehicles for their messages, but clearly there is a difference between good fiction writing and bad fiction writing beyond the clarity.
I recently came across this Calvin and Hobbes comic in a re-read of the Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat collection. I hadn't thought about it much before, but having recently watched a few old movies, I realized there was something to that last line. Movies these days are heavy with attempts to "manipulate" emotions, but I prefer that to the ( ... )
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