*Matthew Arnold, a statesman, says that in the absence of structure, we must turn to poetry to provide displacements of belief and consolation.
Canon - made by people (human and fallible)[usually loose Syracuse professors] a list of texts that are "author"ized.
1. The texts of imagination - the words on paper (or in mind) something that exists - everything you see becomes a text
2. The creator - artist, author, uses the imagination to creat something out of nothing: "Oh artificer!" this something may be artificial, or not real.
3. The reader or receiver - makes the story alive again, complicit in creating the experience of the text "audience", sometimes a magician or shaman
4. The cultural context - the WORLD
*?Stevens uses the word "maker" to describe his siren and the word that we all associate with maker is "God."
Poesis - to make
"As we beheld her striding there alone,/Knew that there never was a world for her/Except the one she sange and, singing, made."
*Somehow this song/literary work has changed sensibilities, it is a world not of mimesis but of reality
Pragmatic: what's the use of it all?
*Literature is a buffet. Each tasting is a satisfaction
Canon: (as put forth by the people at American Heritage Dictionary) 1. a basis for judgement, standard, criterion 2. an authoritative list
*The key issue in literary criticism is this: What is the most important thing in the world?
Sparagmos: to die and to come back to life
Touchstone: a piece of work that helps/comforts us that we return to it again and again
*Criticism carrries a negative connotation with it of judging. A literary critic picks apart a work of literature. There is the implication that what we say about a work is more important than the work itself.
"We murder to dissect" -William Wordsworth
Arnold's definition of criticism: "a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world"
Horace's definition of literature: it should entertain and instruct
*We need to find all that is sweetness and light in the world. We need to tend to the touchstones, institutions of religion, let us be true to one another rather than be Philistines who simply get something rather than be something
Walter Pater's definition of criticism: INTELLECTUAL EXCITEMENT! The only thing that matters is art, the only thing that matters is if literature is beautiful.
*No teacher can tell us what we don't already know. Teachers are simply a guide to helping us get our wings back.
*PLATO is the bad guy. He thinks that literature is useless, untrue, and bad for you.
*Humans are the people sitting in the cave. Culture is what binds us.
*Aristotle believed that the story is truer than the truth
*Aristotle believed it was natural to imitate
*A poem is an attempt to represent something "out there"
Rhapsode: singer/interpreter/reader of poetry
*Art or poetry is a way to manipulate the emotions
*Poets are dumb. Only the Muse can inspire. The artist is possessed, merely an empty vessel through which the Muse pours art work
Enthusiastic: comes from the Greek "en theos" the god is inside you
Logos: fact, reason, or truth
Logocentric: something that is centered in truth, reality and empirical evidence
Mythos: fable, fiction, lies, and story (part of being an English Major)
*The Republic is concerned with the education of citizens in an ideal community (excommunicating poets, of course).
*Plato is in favor of censorship
*The artist's bed is not a useful bed because the bed is merely a copy of the craftsman's bed, which is also a copy of the great idea of "bed".
*The Poet does not have the kind of skillful information that the craftsman has.
