Depressing Literature

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The problem with this- though- is that authours are very much limited to the thought processes of their time even if they don't conciously understand it to be so. Which is the same with readers. Death of the authour is not about depowering the author, it is about the subjectivity of the reader- there may be a true reading of the text and it may be the authour's intention- the reader can never read it though.
This is the central problem of historical linguistics in that we're trying to recreate/relive the past but how do we do that from sources when we are infinetely removed from the mindset of the text authours.

[katiuska]

Right, and when that's the argument being made, I don't have much of a problem. All I'm saying is if I want to interpret A Dream Deferred as being about my desire to open a pizza parlour, I can do that, but I'd be remiss to ignore the input of everyone else, including Langston Hughes.

I think we're more or less on the same page here. You just seem to like counterarguing people who are essentially making the same points. :p

[BloodyMage]

I think he's just clarifying.

My only real problem with the Death of the Author is that it allows someone to ignore word of god so to speak in favour of their own opinion. For instance, Toiken's Lord of the Rings which has the well known interpretation of being a Second World War allegory despite the author repeatedly denying the idea. Yet some people stick to that interpretation and ignore the authors opinion, which just seems really stupid.

[Mondt]

My english curriculum:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - About the shitty daily life of a prisoner in a russian gulag
Langston Hughes Peotry - Often about the struggle of normal life, struggle of being black, struggle of etc. etc.
Antigone - Guy dies, sister wants to mourn, Creon says go fuck yourself, everyone dies in the end. Sophoclean (?) tragedy
Their Eyes Were Watching God - A book about a black woman in... the 20s? finding herself, going through one shitty marriage to another until she realizes she is actually in love with a nice but trashy farm worker.
Othello - Shakespearean tragedy.
The Great Gatsby - Cheating, pathetically unrequited love, death
Ake: The Years of Childhood - A light-hearted and funny approach to the awkward and sometimes shitty experiences the author had growing up
The Sound of Waves - Book about awkward japanese teenagers' sexual awakening. It was a nice break from the depressing. The author was a badass. Sepukku after holding a military general hostage in the military base, had his own little mini-following cult army thing, etc. etc.
The Metamorphosis - Gregor turns into a bug. Everyone hates him now. He dies from a rotting apple in his back that his dad threw at him.

That was junior year.

100 Years of Solitude - A bunch of family members repeat the same strange mistakes, it rained for 5 years straight, incest resulted in pig tails, etc. etc. weird as shit book but really good i would recommend it.
Hamlet - Shakespearean tragedy.
Heart of Darkness - If you haven't read it, look at the title. This is not a feelgood book. This is the most cutyourwrists book we have read easily. It's stupid as shit to read (especially the edition i used), fairly boring, and just generally bleeeeegh. I mean, thank you IB, I know racism is bad. I know atrocities occurred in africa. Why are you doing this to me?
John Donne Poetry - metaphysical movement, heavy emphasis on death and what happens after death.
Huck Finn - Kind of a fun one but still kinda bleak whenever you think about Jim's perspective.

Two books to go.

Half the shit we read has a major emphasis on racism.

Hooray IB. Hooray worldliness. Go fuck yourself, world.

[Geminex]

Hooray IB.

I didn't mind the literature that much. The essays and assessments (particularly the extremely extended one) were what drove me into a BLINDING RAGE.

Nah, IB was good. Teachers were competent, classes were fun more often than not. And assessments went well, though I lost a night's worth of sleep every time one was due.

Also, I didn't mind One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Wrote my World Lit essay about it. And the purpose of Antigone was actually to cheer people up through Catharsis.

[PyrosNine]

Too much catharsis is too much catharsis!

[Mondt]

Originally Posted by Geminex

I didn't mind the literature that much. The essays and assessments (particularly the extremely extended one) were what drove me into a BLINDING RAGE.

Nah, IB was good. Teachers were competent, classes were fun more often than not. And assessments went well, though I lost a night's worth of sleep every time one was due.

Also, I didn't mind One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Wrote my World Lit essay about it. And the purpose of Antigone was actually to cheer people up through Catharsis.

I'm not a diploma candidate so I don't have an extended essay to write but I just finished up my World Lit 2 and my Individual Oral Commentary.

Wrote my WL1 on One Day and Metamorphosis.

And I agree, too much catharsis is too much. I definitely left Antigone in some accidental attempt to empathize with Creon after he realized he just killed everyone in some way or another.

There's no cheering up in that. <.<

Edit: My thing with IB english is all the of retarded assessments (The IOC actually tests.... nothing except your ability to analyze under pressure because that situation comes up a lot), the emphasis on works in translation just to have works in translation... a few other things its too late for me to remember.

I just really dont like how IB does things. They sacrifice actual productivity in education to standardize the curriculum as much as possible, in my experience. It's all just another test to study for, instead of actually learning.

Edit2: AND THEY MAKE US READ DEPRESSING BOOKS

WHERES THE SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES

[01d55]

Originally Posted by BloodyMage

I think he's just clarifying.

My only real problem with the Death of the Author is that it allows someone to ignore word of god so to speak in favour of their own opinion. For instance, Toiken's Lord of the Rings which has the well known interpretation of being a Second World War allegory despite the author repeatedly denying the idea. Yet some people stick to that interpretation and ignore the authors opinion, which just seems really stupid.

Well yeah, everyone knows it's a World War I allegory.

That's the war Tolkein actually fought in, after all. Specifically, the way Orcs tear up the landscape comes from No Man's Land, the long belt of Europe that was torn up into a swathe of mud and corpses.

More to the general point, a bullshit reading of a work is bullshit independent of any reference to the author's mind.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by BloodyMage

I think he's just clarifying.

My only real problem with the Death of the Author is that it allows someone to ignore word of god so to speak in favour of their own opinion. For instance, Toiken's Lord of the Rings which has the well known interpretation of being a Second World War allegory despite the author repeatedly denying the idea. Yet some people stick to that interpretation and ignore the authors opinion, which just seems really stupid.

Dumbeldore is gay.

[katiuska]

Originally Posted by Mondt

100 Years of Solitude

In retrospect, we really shouldn't have read that book without any sort of guidance. In my HS class, it was independent reading, and those of us reading it did so because it was the most challenging book offered... but when you're 17 and have no context for the themes being presented, it's all dudes being tied to trees, dudes wanting to marry 8-year-olds, and girls eating dirt when they're distressed, and all we could ever discuss was, "So, does anyone else understand what the fuck is going on?"