*Samuel Johnson - a continuation of Dryden and then Sydney *Longinus previews the Romantic and expressive *For Johnson, Shakespeare fulfills the definition of the author who fulfills the moral value or effect of literature.  He represented that which is unchanging in human nature. *What is most general is what is most real *The people who write about things that are not passing or ephemeral are the people whose works will endure and whose words are immortal. *Coleridge defines imagination as a godlike power.  He believed less in the world and more in the powers of the artist *Formalism is a reaction against Romanticism "Poets are the unacknowledge legislators of the world"

Plato would agree that the Presidential Debates are full of misdirection.  He believed that we need to find out the truth.  In his age, sophists were the presidential candidates (not literally, but the people debating).  They were people who argued merely for the sake of argumentation.  Plato believed that there was only one truth and that this truth could be discovered.  We can't tell if sophists are lying because they can argue both sides so we can never tell if they're telling the truth.  "Liars, when they speak the truth are not believed." -Aristotle *Interesting Fact: All the candidates for the fiction section for the National Book Award are women.  This may be an indication that the canon is changing. "A poem should not mean but be" - Archibald McLesh

Canons are measuring reeds.  We measure books, music, etc against them to determine whether they're worthy to be placed on a list.  *Eliot and Woolf have a different angle but they're talking about the same subject: depersonalization.  This contradicts the Romantic expressive tradition ("Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions") "Androgeny" - we need to focus on the work and not on the gender.  The work itself is genderless, or rather, androgenous - containing both genders. *Tevya would say "Tradition!  Because of tradition everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do." *The canon allows us a stability and identity that we would not otherwise understand. *Eliot would say that we don't come into the world as blank slates but full of a knowledge of the culture in which we live.  *We need to know other poets.  Eliot put the metaphysical poets on the map by writing an article about them.  Johnson hated the metaphysical poets and that's why they'd been in hiding for so long.  Eliot liked their comparisons which Johnson found to be ridiculous.  Eliot even took ideas from them.  "Let us go then you and I, When the evening is spread against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table" "Truth is a mobile army of metaphors" -Nietzsche *The poet refines himself out of the system according to Eliot *Joyce was the third greatest modernist after Woolf and Eliot ontology the study of being The modernist credo: "A poem should not mean but be"

Deconstructionism: texts are unstable *Modern view of literature is that it is a construct but deconstruction always pulls the rug out from under everybody *Language is forever obscuring reality.  We live in a prison house of language. *Woolf asks questions of gender - What is this "I" and where does it come from? --> "I comes from outside sources, mainly the environment *Frye is a structuralist (The literary Critical Dictator) asking what are the patterns and motifs?  He is interested in the deep structures of narrative. *Deconstructionism gets rid of the transcendental signified - less likely to have the capital T truth *For Frye, everyone is telling the same story.  He gets close to Jung but he's not a psychologist *Frye also makes the point that when one studies Shakespeare, what's being learned isn't Shakespeare but the criticism of Shakespeare.  *Literature is like a painting.  We only see the little piece.  We need to pull back in order to see the picture in its largest possible context.  Frye is a Big Picture Person. archetype: universal model *Psychoanalysis provides a version of the detective story.  Now we can't just enjoy the story, we have to figure out what happens and why. *With New Criticism, there is no more talk of biography, history, pyschology, or politics.  *Aristotle was the first New Critic. agnorasis: recognition *Frye was not an elitist.  He reads trash because archetypes in crude literature: fairy tales.  *In Structuralism, autumn becomes tragedy when things fall apart.  The spring comes and the god rises from the underworld.

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