I finished my paper on Kierkegaard and The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Now I only have to write one more major research essay (plus a three-page abstract for my Greek drama class) before May. So it's time to start thinking of some potential paper topics.
The class is on mediation and dictation, and all of the literature is from the modern period with a heavy emphasis on Irish literature. I think I want to write my final paper on The Poor Mouth by Flann O'Brien. This novel was originally written in Gaelic and parodies the Irish obsession with reclaiming a Celtic identity. The Poor Mouth was first published in 1941, and this especially intrigues me; I wrote my undergraduate thesis on post-WWII British literature, and love Irish literature. Ireland's neutrality in WWII is also interesting to me, and I think I understand it better now after reading The Poor Mouth, even though the novel never mentions WWII directly. The obsession with a mythicized Celtic tradition, of Irish lords locking themselves in a stone tower to wait out the Viking invasion, untouched by the foreign aggressors, played a big role in Irish neutrality, and that spiritualized national identity is mercilessly lampooned in this novel. Another aspect of Ireland's neutrality was its self image as a small, poor nation; the Irish prime minister at the time stated that small states like Ireland should stay out of the affairs of the grand powers. Ireland was a very poor nation, especially in the south; I don't dispute that, but what The Poor Mouth elucidates is the peculiar approach to poverty in Ireland (by the upper classes, of course), the pride in abject poverty, the identification of poverty and parochialism with true Gaelic-ness.
I loved the acerbic wit of this book and I'd like to read it again (it's short, only about 180 pages) and think more about the fetishization of the Gaelic language, referred to in the book almost exclusively as "sweet Gaelic," contrasted with bitter English.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Grad Life
I had an unexpected day off today; the one student I usually advise on Thursdays is travelling with his sports team, and my professor cancelled class. And as I was clicking through fashion blogs while eating my oatmeal this morning, I realized that I seriously don't get dressed when I don't have work or school. And it would be hilarious if I started a fashion blog myself. You'd see that I many, sundry patterns of pajamas and put the sweaters Jarrod doesn't like to good use.
Evidence:
This is from St. Patrick's Day, during spring break, and an accurate representation of what I wear around the house. Yes, I'm wearing leggings. I put those on when I figured that 3 PM was a little too late to still be in pajamas. Hey, at least I don't leave the house like this.
Oh, grad school. Eating a banana with peanut butter because you're out of bread. Substituting coffee for adequate hours of sleep. Leggings count as pants. Lowering standards all around.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
My Spring Break: Dutchmen and Danes
It's spring break wooooooo! In my grand tradition of taking tropical vacations and getting drunk off my face for spring break, I am writing an essay on Soren Kierkegaard and Washington Irving. (For the record, the bit about drunken spring breaks... in the past few years, I have spent spring break: taking the MTEL, preparing to defend my senior thesis, and visiting prospective grad schools. Yeah.)
Anyway, I wanted to write down a few of my main ideas for this paper, kind of sort things out here and then get cracking on secondary research.
While Irving predates Kierkegaard by a few decades, and there is no evidence of Kierkegaard regarding Irving as an influence on his writing or thought, what first got me thinking about reading these two in conjunction with each other is their use of pseudonyms and fictional sources. This is interesting to me in terms of authorial distance and textual authority. Kierkegaard's pseudonymous "editor" of Either/Or, Victor Eremita, is very careful to emphasize that he did not write these papers and functions in the text as little more than a reader, interfering as little as possible with the papers he "found" in a second-hand writing desk. Similarly, Washington Irving's narrator Geoffrey Crayon frequently references the posthumous papers of Dietrich Knickerbocker as the source of much of the New York Dutch folklore in the Sketch Book. Like Victor Eremita, Crayon regards himself primarily as a reader and an observer, not as the authoritive voice in the text, but a facilitator of a conversation between many texts. Rather than an all-seeing, detached, authoritative author capable of giving final meaning to the text as a whole, in both Irving and Kierkegaard, we get a multiplicity of voice, numerous and contradictory points of view that are impossible to reconcile. For Kierkegaard, this is very much the point, to have irreconcilable differences between texts so that the reader is forced to make an ethical choice between two mutually-exclusive absolutes. I think Irving employs numerous authorial voices and points of view to evade choice, so as to preserve the cultural multiplicity that he saw was dwindling in nineteenth century America. Irving counters the idea that there needs to be a single narrative for the nation; instead of the great American novel, he gives us a series of sketches that stretch across the Atlantic and across hundreds of years. Irving fights against homogenization of American culture by weaving together fragments of other cultures; he is especially fond of Dutch New York, perhaps because the Dutch were the first European settlers in America and he disdained the anglicization that began after the Revolution.
Geoffrey Crayon and A, the author of the first section of Either/Or, both refer to folklore frequently. Folklore and fairy tales are not authoritative texts; they come from the voices of the common people, coming to us from the indistinct, remote past. No one can identify a precise origin, a single author, in folk tales; rather, they are the result of multiple authors, each changing the myth slightly every time it is told, yet preserving something as well.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes the poet as the spirit of remembrance, and this is a very apt description for Irving's Geoffrey Crayon. Part of what makes Rip Van Winkle so comical is that he only slept for twenty years, yet in merely a generation, everything has changed so drastically that it is no longer recognizable; his community is alienated from the past, and as such, the individuals in it are alienated from each other. Rip Van Winkle, however, serves as a gathering point as the spirit of remembrance; he preserves the past that everyone has already forgotten. Rather than leaving a legacy of wealth for his own children, Rip Van Winkle leaves his stories to the community's children; he is not a father in the particular, insular family, but a patriarch of the entire community, initiating the liminal (children and travellers) into the society through his stories.
Authorship requires some distance, then; in order to be a storyteller, Rip Van Winkle abandons his domestic and work duties. He is not a man of business. Victor Eremita's name implies his distance from society as well; eremita is Latin for recluse, hermit. A also writes that he does not spend much time in society. Instead, he swoops down and retrieves pieces of it from time to time, bringing these scraps back to his nest to weave a tapestry of them.
There's a lot more that I'm going to write about this, but I need to do some more research first. I'm really enjoying this paper so far, though!
Anyway, I wanted to write down a few of my main ideas for this paper, kind of sort things out here and then get cracking on secondary research.
While Irving predates Kierkegaard by a few decades, and there is no evidence of Kierkegaard regarding Irving as an influence on his writing or thought, what first got me thinking about reading these two in conjunction with each other is their use of pseudonyms and fictional sources. This is interesting to me in terms of authorial distance and textual authority. Kierkegaard's pseudonymous "editor" of Either/Or, Victor Eremita, is very careful to emphasize that he did not write these papers and functions in the text as little more than a reader, interfering as little as possible with the papers he "found" in a second-hand writing desk. Similarly, Washington Irving's narrator Geoffrey Crayon frequently references the posthumous papers of Dietrich Knickerbocker as the source of much of the New York Dutch folklore in the Sketch Book. Like Victor Eremita, Crayon regards himself primarily as a reader and an observer, not as the authoritive voice in the text, but a facilitator of a conversation between many texts. Rather than an all-seeing, detached, authoritative author capable of giving final meaning to the text as a whole, in both Irving and Kierkegaard, we get a multiplicity of voice, numerous and contradictory points of view that are impossible to reconcile. For Kierkegaard, this is very much the point, to have irreconcilable differences between texts so that the reader is forced to make an ethical choice between two mutually-exclusive absolutes. I think Irving employs numerous authorial voices and points of view to evade choice, so as to preserve the cultural multiplicity that he saw was dwindling in nineteenth century America. Irving counters the idea that there needs to be a single narrative for the nation; instead of the great American novel, he gives us a series of sketches that stretch across the Atlantic and across hundreds of years. Irving fights against homogenization of American culture by weaving together fragments of other cultures; he is especially fond of Dutch New York, perhaps because the Dutch were the first European settlers in America and he disdained the anglicization that began after the Revolution.
Geoffrey Crayon and A, the author of the first section of Either/Or, both refer to folklore frequently. Folklore and fairy tales are not authoritative texts; they come from the voices of the common people, coming to us from the indistinct, remote past. No one can identify a precise origin, a single author, in folk tales; rather, they are the result of multiple authors, each changing the myth slightly every time it is told, yet preserving something as well.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes the poet as the spirit of remembrance, and this is a very apt description for Irving's Geoffrey Crayon. Part of what makes Rip Van Winkle so comical is that he only slept for twenty years, yet in merely a generation, everything has changed so drastically that it is no longer recognizable; his community is alienated from the past, and as such, the individuals in it are alienated from each other. Rip Van Winkle, however, serves as a gathering point as the spirit of remembrance; he preserves the past that everyone has already forgotten. Rather than leaving a legacy of wealth for his own children, Rip Van Winkle leaves his stories to the community's children; he is not a father in the particular, insular family, but a patriarch of the entire community, initiating the liminal (children and travellers) into the society through his stories.
Authorship requires some distance, then; in order to be a storyteller, Rip Van Winkle abandons his domestic and work duties. He is not a man of business. Victor Eremita's name implies his distance from society as well; eremita is Latin for recluse, hermit. A also writes that he does not spend much time in society. Instead, he swoops down and retrieves pieces of it from time to time, bringing these scraps back to his nest to weave a tapestry of them.
There's a lot more that I'm going to write about this, but I need to do some more research first. I'm really enjoying this paper so far, though!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Cough Cough Wink Wink
I'm sick and I'm failing to concentrate on reading at the moment. So I thought I'd post.
I'm working my way through Either/Or and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm using it for my research paper (due in two weeks, good grief!!!) in my class on American literature, read in conjunction with Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. I know, it's a weird combination-- an early American short story writer and a Danish philosopher. But it makes sense (I swear); I'm writing about authorship, the writer's contentious relationship with larger society, aesthetic distance and pseudonyms. It's going to be a good time.
If only I could stop coughing.
:-(
I'm working my way through Either/Or and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm using it for my research paper (due in two weeks, good grief!!!) in my class on American literature, read in conjunction with Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. I know, it's a weird combination-- an early American short story writer and a Danish philosopher. But it makes sense (I swear); I'm writing about authorship, the writer's contentious relationship with larger society, aesthetic distance and pseudonyms. It's going to be a good time.
If only I could stop coughing.
:-(
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