What it reminds me of is the music situation. It's been shown that there are two different types of music that trigger activity in two different parts of the brain: the emotional type, and the intellectual exercise type, which often appeals to the same sort of person who enjoys doing crosswords. I say "often" because my music preferences are more visceral, both in classical music and... I'm trying to think of a catch-all term for stuff from Bob Dylan to the Manic Street Preachers, and I can never really get into Bach or chamber music, and I love crosswords, in any language that I can handle
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Re: Music might be a better analogy than you know--osprey_archerMay 10 2010, 02:43:02 UTC
Why is taking personal identification as a stopping point for the reading experience necessarily bad? It's insufficient if a reader wants to write critically or have serious discussions about books, but some people don't want to do that. As long as they don't insist that their gut reaction is just as logical, valid, and worthy of consideration as someone else's carefully considered critique, I don't think that's a problem.
...actually, looking at your next paragraph about music listeners who just want to respond emotionally, I think we mostly agree.
That reminds me - I used Orlando Furioso as one of my primary texts/sources when I did my MA on Joan of Arc and woman knights/warriors.
I like the idea of transformative works. I wrote fanfiction and it helped me a lot when it came to honing my skills and knowing where I stood as a writer.
A bunch of writers have honed their skills on fanfiction and moved on. But there is fanfiction that is literature in all the ways that matter, except the issue of copyright. Most of these, or so I've found in my limited reading, tend to be cross-genre . . . which is the same sort of thing Ariosto, Spenser, Chretien, Wolfram, etc were doing. Heck, Vergil, too!
I'm working on an essay which looks at the conflict between fanfiction and copyright in the context of the ability of technology to (metaphorically) destroy space, both distance and the distinction between private and public spaces. In a nutshell, my thesis is that fanfic is basically a grownup version of the play-pretend games kids play in other people's worlds (whether copyrighted or not), and that communication technologies make it possible to do it with a far wider (and more diffuse) circle of friends than one could if restricted to the potential friends with whom one interacts through physical presence
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It's true--there is no guarantee readers will empathize, or sympathize with the characters the author wants them to. Or for that matter, what they will take away from the book.
Didn't Flaubert also say, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi?" Or is that just apocryphal?
Whole generations of educated men and women (in Europe, in the 15-19th centuries) learned to write by imitating those who had written before them. I was taught to write the same way--although my English teacher appreciated my Addisonian essay more than my my E.R. Eddisonian story (which was totally fanfic, with the names changed). And, as you say, the Arthurian cycle is basically fanfic-o-rama. People are going to do identify with and appropriate literature they love. It's part of human nature. Unfortunately, so is being critical of opposing views. This is, I'm afraid, one of those debates that will never be resolved.
He did feel those things . . . I would venture that creativity gave him that, rather than reading, though from the joyful intensity with which he analyzes books, I would say that his joy and so forth came from the examination of books, not with identifying with characters. (He also collected and pinned out butterflies for display, which seems to me to parallel his method of reading, though I could be wrong.)
But I encourage you to read the Lectures The last one, though incomplete, when he talks about genius, is some of the niftiest writing I have ever encountered.
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This is why I linked to coneycat's post--I thought she described the types of identification really well with regard to The Diary of Anne Frank.
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...actually, looking at your next paragraph about music listeners who just want to respond emotionally, I think we mostly agree.
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I like the idea of transformative works. I wrote fanfiction and it helped me a lot when it came to honing my skills and knowing where I stood as a writer.
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A bunch of writers have honed their skills on fanfiction and moved on. But there is fanfiction that is literature in all the ways that matter, except the issue of copyright. Most of these, or so I've found in my limited reading, tend to be cross-genre . . . which is the same sort of thing Ariosto, Spenser, Chretien, Wolfram, etc were doing. Heck, Vergil, too!
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Is it necessarily empathy though? It seems to me like it's a neutrality-sympathy-empathy spectrum, and sympathy is certainly social.
By identifying with characters we are encouraged at least passively to try to be better people.
I don't see how this is necessarily true. It might be true if we identify with the evil villain and are horrified by it, but otherwise...
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Whole generations of educated men and women (in Europe, in the 15-19th centuries) learned to write by imitating those who had written before them. I was taught to write the same way--although my English teacher appreciated my Addisonian essay more than my my E.R. Eddisonian story (which was totally fanfic, with the names changed). And, as you say, the Arthurian cycle is basically fanfic-o-rama. People are going to do identify with and appropriate literature they love. It's part of human nature. Unfortunately, so is being critical of opposing views. This is, I'm afraid, one of those debates that will never be resolved.
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Because if you actually want your hero to be regarded as Harry Potter with a new name, you actually have to characterize him to convince them.
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It's worth reading Nabokov's thoughts, but the short version is that reading is a kind of intellectual puzzle for him.
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But I encourage you to read the Lectures The last one, though incomplete, when he talks about genius, is some of the niftiest writing I have ever encountered.
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