Final Blog

First off, I've really enjoyed this class. It has been a class where all the texts we read were wonderful, and left me wanting to read more. At times, I wish I would have done more research on my own and got a more wealth view of the tales and stories that we looked at. I guess, I shouldn't have to worry about missing any opportunities because these opportunities to learn are still available to me. It is sad however that I won't be coming to this class on monday, wednesday, and friday at 2:00 anymore.
I'm also going to miss the wide variety of people that were in the class. It is quite interesting to see how class material can be enhanced by the people that are in the class with you.
I felt that Dr. Sexson did a wonderful job teaching the course. Undoubtedly, he has a passion for the subject matter as well as an extensive range of knowledge surrounding not only children's lit. but English lit. in general. Some of the connections he established were great additions to the understanding and interpretation of the material. It was an overall good experience having him as a professor.
One of my favorite quotes from the semester was the T.S. Eliot quote from the end of his "Four Quartets". "We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time. It seems crazy that when I came into the class I was really doubting the "use" that children's literature could have. Now that I have returned to the wealth of child's stories however, I will hopefully always remember that these stories are told by all of us, heard by all of us, and lived by all of us.

Pullman's Writing

"I write with a ballpoint pen on A4 sized narrow-lined paper. The paper has got to have a grey or blue margin and two holes. I only write on one side, and when I've got to the bottom of the last page, I finish the sentence (or write one more) at the top of the next, so that the paper I look at each morning isn't blank. It's already beaten. That number of pages amounts, in my writing, to about 1100 words."-- Taken from Pullman's website.

I found this little section pretty interesting. One of the most provoking passages is where Pullman notes that, by writing, the paper is "already beaten". I found this notion of the paper as something that requires it to be beater as highly revealing of Pullman's feelings towards his work. I've never really thought that a creative writer would view his/her work as "beating" it. I guess it seems that he should be saying that his writing is like "creating art" or something like that. I guess when I think of writers I don't really consider them to be at odds with the process in which they do their work, but rather in a sort of harmony with it. Perhaps though, Phillip Pullman might say that writing a novel is sort of the same as reading it: it's like a journey in which you will not always be shown the clear and obvious path. Rather, you will need to actually struggle along with it and "beat" the challanges you encounter-- the blank page. The infinite possibility. The time constraints. Everything that makes it hard to write. However, as we have learned in the class, we should trust the tale and not the teller. Maybe then, it is not "the point" to look at the context of how the story was spun, but at the story itself after it's creation.



"I write books that children read. Some clever adults read them too."-- Phillip Pullman

My Daemon

If I had a daemon it would definitely be an owl. First of all, I really like owls. I know that you're not supposed to be able to choose what kind of daemon you want but since we get to, I want an owl. To me, owls symbolize a quiet and unobtrusive movement about the world. Owls are also commonly thought of as creatures of intelligence; i'm not saying that I'm particularly intelligent, but if my owl was smart then that would be all the better for me. I consider myself to be sort of solitary, much like the owl. I absolutely love the nighttime, much like the nocturnal owl. Unlike other predatory creatures, Owls kind of seem to be calm and laid-back. They give off an air of killing only for the aspect of getting food. I also would want my daemon to be able to fly. That would be really nice for seeing and finding things.



Interesting Owl things I didn't know until I looked Owls up on the Web:

*A group of Owls is called a parliament.
*They are found on all regions of the earth except Antarctica, most of Greenland, and some small islands.
*In Hindu Mythology, the barn owl is considered to be vehicle of Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) and thus it is considered lucky if an owl resides near your house.
*In many parts of the world, owls have been associated with death and misfortune, likely due to their nocturnal activity and common screeching call.
*The reason that an Owl's flight is practically silent is due to there feathers which are serrated.

"I've read Animal Farm"-- My dream

This may not exactly be a "dream" but it was spurred on by my mind when I was asleep so I figured that it would count.
We were sleeping in the bed and all of the sudden, I began to feel slightly roused by all of my girlfriends animals. They are all making nosies, meowing and whining, because it's 7 in the morning and they haven't eaten yet. Since all the animals were hungry I did the responsible thing... try and wake up my girlfriend to feed them. (note: i'm not REALLY awake, but in that weird half-awake half-asleep state). So I try and wake her up, "Jill. Your animals want breakfast." She just rolls over and doesn't do anything. I try again: "Jill, get up and feed your animals." Nothing. No response. She's still deep in sleep. So finally, I try and rouse her from sleep by saying, "Jill. You better get up and feed your animals. I've read Animal Farm. I know what will happen if you don't." I don't really remember if I said anything after that or not, but she had woken up by that time and told me of it when I woke up about an hour later.
I thought that this story was hilarious. Somewhere amidst all of my information that I've piled up, the sleep managed to draw a parallel between the animals at our bedside whining for breakfast and the story Animal Farm by George Orwell.

6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast...

6 impossible things before breakfast...

1. It is impossible that I will have "free time" where I feel motivated to record music.

2. It is impossible to wake up when my first alarm goes off.

3. It is impossible that I will make my bed.

4. It is impossible that I will have more money than the day before... (except on the 11th!)

5. It is impossible that the ride to MSU from my apartment will not be windy.

6. It is impossible that I will actually eat breakfast.

Proposal Abstract Submitted to NCUR-- sort of has to do with children's lit...

Smear the Queer:
The Cultural Shadows of a Child’s Game


*This is a proposal abstract that I sent to NCUR in order to be considered for their conference.


Famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget suggests, “it is through game playing, that is, through the give and take of negotiating plans, settling disagreements, making and enforcing rules, and keeping and making promises that children come to understand the social rules” (“The Moral Judgment of the Child”). This may be, but how do violent children’s games fit into the understanding of social rules? Carl Jung suggests there is an element of our society called “shadows” which are the aspects of our individual and collective psyches that we do not wish to acknowledge about ourselves. I contend that violent children’s play is a portrayal of those cultural shadows found in our social rules. For a more focused evaluation of the role of violent children games, I will examine the game Smear the Queer; the specific rules of the game will be provided to the audience so as to create a standard by which to focus the reading of the game. Also, I will take the important step of having the audience understand my focus of the word Queer as referring to the broad representation of Other rather than to a difference created by sexuality. By using various schools of thought on difference such as Queer Theory, Gender Studies, and Postcolonialism, I plan to dissect the various roles of the Other and the processes in which they are formed in the game. Upon further understanding of the various parts, I will portray the in-game journey of the “Queer” under the guide of Joseph Campbell’s theory of monomyth to assert how the child’s game is didactic in the ideological formation of the Other. By doing so, I will be able to show hoe this ideological formation manifests itself in the shadow world of cultures social rules.

Adam G. Benson



*I have actually already written most of this paper for my Advanced Comp. class. I'm pretty excited to have submitted a paper to an academic conference. Getting accepted would be a really cool and unique experience. This year, the conference is being held in April in the state of Wisconsin. If I get the opportunity to go, I would have a 15 minute presentation in which to discuss my paper.
It seems like one of the most relative questions for this class is if Children's games are as relevant as children's literature? I would argue that they are as important. We have touched a little on the rhymes that children incorporate into their games and how that is a form of literature.
Piaget's statement of understanding the social rules seems fairly accurate to me; their does seem to be a connection between child's play mimicking the adult world. If this is so, that play helps children understand the adult world's "social rules", could play be one of the losses in innocence that seems indicative of adult-hood? It seems possible, though I would highly doubt that it is the primary vehicle for loss of innocence. I believe that we try too hard to explain the loss of innocence as happening instantaneously. Rather than understand it as a process, we search for ways in which it happens instantly. For example, as people we want. The instantaneous loss of innocence is definitely more literary, but I doubt whether or not it is actually valid. Even the eating of the forbidden fruit was a process; Eve had to be tempted by the snake, which must require some loss of innocence to be able to be tempted in the first place. In my opinion, the loss of innocence is always going to be a process that will be represented in the popular conscious as occuring in a single moment.

*Interesting "loss of innocence" visuals.

Thoughts on Presentations...

I found Kyle's study of lucid dreaming to be very interesting. Part of the reason that I was able to find it so interesting was that I found it could be closely tied to my own topic of mobility in dreams. One of the claims I make in my paper was that dreams are most often "recollected" rather than experienced as if they were present. Kyle's discussion of lucid dreaming really got me thinking if lucid dreams are the sort of answer I was searching for. Could lucid dreams be what I was trying to get at? It seems highly likely. One of the most intriguing things that Kyle said was that usually trying to lucid dream, the dreamer may wake up. Possibly then, what is important is to be able to actively lucid dream without actually waking up. If people commonly wake up right after attempting to lucid dream, it seems possible then that lucid dreaming and actual reality are very closely . One of the terms that come to mind is that of the "twilight state"-- the state of mind that one is in minutes before actually falling asleep. If the lucid dream is an experience closely tied to reality with an emphasis on the dream, then the "twilight state" seems to be an experience that has emphasis placed on reality.
People often find didactic value in these type of states. I would say that many types of meditation are dream-like in a way. Also, in the movements of the 1960's, people took drugs as an attempt to go into a dream-like world in which they would learn the greater truths. It can be surely asserted that dreams and being awake have much in common and that understanding one of these will lead to better understanding of the other.

Final Copy of My Paper!

Becoming and Retaining the “Queen”:
the unique perspective of dreams in the Alice texts




Dreams open an immense portal of imagination and fantasy in the human mind. The subject of dream has fascinated human discussion and been pursued by both academic intellectuals and creative artists in a wide variety of mediums that attempt to “portray” dream and “understand” its functions. However, a problem surrounding the discussion of dreams is that too often they are “recollected” and not transcribed or presented as if the dream was presently occurring. Sigmund Freud states how “we very often have an impression that we have dreamt a great deal all through the night and have forgotten most of what we dreamt. On this view, the dream which we remember when we wake up would only be a fragmentary remnant of the total dream-work: and this, if we could recollect it in its entirety, might well be as extensive as the dream-thoughts” (Freud, Sigmund. “The Dream-Work”). Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, perhaps two of the most memorable dream-based texts , display the dreams of Alice in this rare form. The understanding of the dreams of Alice as being “entire” provides the reader a rare opportunity to view the dream from this perspective.
One of the key characteristics of this “entire” dream is how it is framed in the present. Instead of being in the more common form of dream “recollection” which is past-based, the dreams of Alice are laid out for the reader in a linear fashion; this gives the reader the ability to experience the dream along with Alice. In the recollected dream, which is the way we often think of dreams, the listener is passive; the listener does not attach the story to himself or herself. However, in the present-based dreams of Alice, the observer of the dream has an active role. This allows the reader to view the dream as an experience that they’re involved with rather than the retelling of a story to them. By becoming involved in the story the person is able to have a sense of “ownership” of the story. The story becomes engrained as part of the “self”. This “ownership” of dreams is a similar to the idea with which people attach history, religion, and other myths to themselves.
The similarity in all of these is the way in which people cast themselves and their interests into the stories. Often times, an observer of history or religion will note that this is the history of his/her people, or that by understanding the certain dictates of a religion they will live a better life. The observers of these types of myths will contend that they play a role in the formation of their future life whether it is through the understanding of history or religion. Yet, the notion of “my dream”, the acknowledgment of attachment, does not seem to be as prevalent in the mind of contemporary humanity as these other similar sorts of myths; the dream seems to have been demoted to a realm of “fantasy”, with a conception that the dream was not a part of them, but rather something imposed upon them. This view of an experience of a dream leads the dreamer to categorize it as being “untrue” due to its fantastical nature. With this view of the dream as “untrue” the dreamer also becomes persuaded that the dream is useless and cannot be used to help them understand their “future self” in the same way that other myths like history or religion can.
In the chapter “Advice from a Caterpillar”, Alice finds herself in a conversation with the philosophical hookah-smoking caterpillar. The caterpillar asks Alice “who are you?” to which she replies “I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then” (Carroll). Alice is acknowledging that she has changed since her departure from her normal world and her arrival in Wonderland. Although she states that she knew the state of her “self” in the morning, she now understands that she has changed, but appears at a loss of an exact answer to who she is—the loss of understanding of “self”. One of the reasons for this loss of understanding of the “self” could be because of her adventures thus far, which had shaped her “self” but without her having noticed. Upon further reflection, she would discover that the events in Wonderland had changed her and that she was becoming an entirely different person altogether.
The loss of “self” seems to be countered by an aspect of learning. By looking at Through the Looking Glass, it seems that much didactic value is to be found in the realm of dreams. Alice reveals her desire to move forward on the chessboard when she states how much she wishes that she “was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, at best” (Carroll). Not only does this seem to be hinting at becoming a Queen, but also it actually portrays Alice as desiring to become a Queen; she has set a goal for herself to attain and only through the process of working towards that goal can she find it reachable.
In a game of chess, the Pawn can only move forward and has a goal of trying to reach the end of the board and gain the status of a Queen. The idea of moving across the board suggests that this process is reminiscent of the learning process. By becoming the Queen, the former Pawn is then able to move back and forth across the board with ease. The Queen then, with her ability to navigate the board fully, could be seen to represent the application of knowledge. The only reason the Queen can move anywhere on the board is the Queen, while under the status of Pawn, has been there before. As learners, we can only successfully apply knowledge that we had learned of prior to its application. By moving across each square, the Pawn has gained “experience” in the journey of moving from one end of the board to the other. By moving across each square, Alice seems to be learning, for her movement is not aimless—it is directed forward, in a “progressive” manner that will lead her closer to the status of Queen. This progressive nature of movement suggests that the shift from Pawn to Queen does not only occur on the move from square 7 to square 8 but that the shift occurs during the movement over all the squares; the movement from square 1 all the way to square 7 is just as important as the final move. By “being closer” at square 4 than at square 3 can be understood to mean that the Pawn is different on square 4 than on square 3. As each move “gets closer” to Queen status the Pawn becomes more “Queen-like”.
The didacticism of dreams seems to be common to the theory of monomyth, which argues that all human journey consists of the three parts: Separation, Initiation, and Return. These three parts of journey are easily identified in the Alice texts. Separation occurs when Alice falls down the rabbit hole and when she enters the looking glass. When she goes through these “portals” she is removed from her world and placed into a new one that is unfamiliar to her, meaning new possibilities. Initiation occurs upon her exploration of the new world. Return occurs when Alice awakes from her dream, thus leaving the world to which she was transported, and returning to the one she left in the first place. The purpose of the journey is to learn. Upon Separation, the adventurer is removed from their world and placed into a new world, open to new possibilities for learning; the portals lead not only to a new physical world, but a new educational world as well. Initiation occurs in the immersion of the adventurer in that world. Having entered this new educational world, the adventurer will be able to go through many different “experiences” that come along with being immersed in a foreign place. Upon Return, the person who has undergone Separation and Initiation will be able to use the “experience” gained during those stages to apply it in future actions and decisions that come with the Return.
Is her journey really different than the one that we make each night? We subject to Separation when we fall asleep, Initiation while we dream, and Return when we wake. What then is our objective? Our task seems to become the Queen (during Initiation) and retain our ability to move freely across the board (upon Return). We are to do this by becoming active dreamers— by being able to recall dreams in their entirety and understand them in relation to our lives, not only through the lenses of past and present, but also of future. Perhaps this task is too difficult. Perhaps one may say it is an unattainable goal. But why is this so? We have seen it done with the Alice texts. Alice dreams become “real” and “true” through the daydreams of Lewis Carroll. If Lewis Carroll, who is not so unlike us, can dream actively then why would we view this as something unattainable? . It could be that we need to act more like the song and row our boats gently down the stream—with great care, caution, and attention. Lewis Carroll knows that life is dream-like. He concludes Through the Looking Glass with the line “Life, what is it but a dream?” (Carroll). Why do we not understand this? How often have we sung “life is but a dream” to ourselves and to others without questioning those infamous lines of wisdom? When we are able to view our dreams from a “present” perspective and understand our dreams as an active experience, we will be like Eve eating of the tree of knowledge, like Lyra with the Aliethiometer who remembers what was forgotten, and like the child who has just discovered the letter “A”.
T.S. Eliot writes in the last of the Four Quartets that “we shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring we will be able to arrive at the place we left and know it for the first time” (Eliot). In the morning, during our waking, we should view the world with the new perspective allowed to us by the new outlook of our dreams. We should view waking as the return from a long journey in which our minds were illuminated by the new sights, feelings, and experiences gained during the course of our journey. Like what Dorothy discovers in Oz, the only way for her to understand “there’s no place like home” was to leave Kansas and go to the dream-like land. Likewise, a necessary way to discover what our lives are made of is to fall asleep and dream and discover what our dreams are made of.



Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Ann Arbor: Borders Group, Inc. 2007
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. pg. 39.
Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.” The Critical Tradition. 3rd ed.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007
Freud, Sigmund. “The Dream-Work.” The Critical Tradition. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2007

Blog 11/9

Reminders--

*Test Wednesday

*11/10 have questions for test








*My revised paper topic*

I'm going to look more closely at the relationship between dreams and mobility. In "Through the Looking Glass" one of the more important themes seems to be the relationship between how we move through the dream. Note the significance of the chess pieces. Alice begins as a pawn which, chess players will know, that can only move forward one square at a time except the first move in which the chess player
can move two. What is so interesting about the pawn though is that upon reaching the "end" it becomes a queen and is able to move . This is why the queen characters in the story could run so fast compared to Alice. They have this freedom of mobility to move from one end to another either in a linear or diagonal fashion. The question of Separation, Initiation, and Return also seems useful to this study. Could I view leaving the first square as Separation? The passing through the board as initiation? And finally the transformation into a omni-directional mobile queen as return? The use of separation, initiation, and return could even be looked at more broadly as falling asleep (separation), dreaming (initiation), and waking back up (return). This view of the process as cyclic seems to lend itself to the thought that to make an end is to make a new beginning. Could the mobility found in dreams contribute to the formation of our identity?
I plan to note a couple instances from the Alice texts (don't forget the drifting down the river part), "Row Row Row, Your Boat", a few quotes on the subject of dream, and perhaps some other cool things! It should be an interesting pursuit for sure.

Favorite Chapter in "Alice Books"

It's really hard to choose my favorite chapter from these wonderful texts. Honestly, I really don't think I had a "favorite" one because what I found to be my favorite was the continuation of the story by more and more nonsensical and fantastic events filled with great characters. However, the chapter on Humpty Dumpty was pretty funny. I loved his lines like "When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean-- neither more nor less." The other line I really found to be great was when he said "I can explain all the poems that were ever invented-- and a good many that haven't been invented just yet." Being an English major and spending a great deal of time attempting to make meaning of various texts . In fact, the whole character of Humpty Dumpty sort of seems to be a slap in the face for all of the critics in the world who have the "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude. Also, the character of Humpty Dumpty seems to reveal some sort of relationship between portrayal of self and . In this fantasy world, Humpty Dumpty claims to essentially hold the key to knowing all and being able to create meaning from all of it's various "texts". In the post-modern view of the world in which all "things" are "texts" that are open for "reading", Humpty Dumpty would be lord of all knowledge because of his ability to explain everything ever invented.
The character of Humpty Dumpty reminds me of two guys I worked with this summer. One would always ask a nonsense question like "How many tires fit on the shovel handle in the middle of a rainstorm?" The other guy would always stop what he was doing and provide some answer like "the answer is one-half times the number of pop cans that are in a library covered in red sheets underneath the house of Frodo when looked at in the month of June." Of course the guy who asked the question would always go "that's exactly right!" It really frustrated me for a while because I had no idea what they were trying to get at. After a while I began to participate in creating the questions and providing answers and found it quite enjoyable. When I gave up trying to "find the answer"is when I really "understood" what was going on. What I learned from these guys is that the point of the question was not to arrive at some logical answer, but instead to exercise the imagination and who could come up with the most interesting nonsense answer. I was transformed from Alice, who was concerned with the logic of the whole matter, into someone who found pleasure in ignoring the "rules" of logic and embracing the nonsensical.


Definition for "nonsense"
1. words or language having little or no sense or meaning.
2. conduct, action, etc., that is senseless, foolish, or absurd: to have tolerated enough nonsense.
3. impudent, insubordinate, or otherwise objectionable behavior: He doesn't have to take that nonsense from you.
4. something absurd or fatuous: the utter nonsense of such a suggestion.
5. anything of trifling importance or of little or no use.

*Obviously the dictionary people have no tolerance of fun.


Definitions for "nothing"
1. no thing; not anything; naught: to say nothing.
2. no part, share, or trace (usually fol. by of): The house showed nothing of its former magnificence.
*My favorite 3. something that is nonexistent.
4. nonexistence; nothingness: The sound faded to nothing.
5. something or someone of no importance or significance: Money is nothing when you're without health.
6. a trivial action, matter, circumstance, thing, or remark: to exchange a few nothings when being introduced



Some funny poems I found at http://www.funny-poems.co.uk/kids/humorous-poetry/q07-bud.asp

What Do You Want Bud?

I saw a Buddhist monk today
At a hot dog stand
The cook stood at the griddle
Doing his thing
“What can I make you” was his
Gruff demand
The monk replied, “Make me one
With everything”.



Macho Pursuits

Sliding, slipping, gliding, tripping
If ice skating's too exhilarating
Try cake icing, it's quite exciting
Slapping, slopping, frosted topping.




Is This Art?

Martin Creed or Damien Hirst
Collins, Gormley which one's worst
A pickled sheep in formaldehyde
A light goes on and off inside
The truth about salt and paper crumpled
Painting by numbers and things untitled
A pile of bricks, an unmade bed
Is this art or is art dead?

Dark Side of The Rainbow

We talked slightly about listening to the "Dark Side of the Moon" Album by Pink Floyd while watching the Wizard of Oz. This phenomenon has garnered so much attention that it has been dubbed by some as "Dark Side of the Rainbow". Although, at times the coincidence is astounding, the notion that Pink Floyd composed this album to match up with the Wizard of Oz is ridiculous. However, as wikipedia states (so it must be true), fans of the phenomenon have accrued over 100 instances in which there appears to be a synchronization of the two texts. On wikipedia also the phenomenon is stated as a cultural reference point with many references made to the effect. The fact that it does seem to "fit" at times is fairly interesting however. The power of coincidence in our world is astounding and often overlooked. The website also claims that Pink Floyd's later album "The Wall" syncs up with the Disney version of "Alice in Wonderland". This leaves us with one question... what do these people do with their lives?


http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Voting!

Although by the time anyone reads this the election will be over here is my political remark on the election. Personally, I don't believe that the president of the United States is going to fix all the "problems" that plague the U.S. What bothers me most about John McCain is his perception of himself as a "Maverick". What the United States does not need right now is a candidate who claims to be able to "fix" all of America's problems. To me, Barack Obama seems to embody the principles of collaboration-- the remedy to the issues confronting America today. We don't need a "maverick" who will lead the blind, we need a candidate willing to inspire people into creating a better America through cooperation and collaboration.

Musing about term paper topic...

I believe that in this class we have asserted that 'play' of children isn't completely physical and it isn't completely contained in texts. We have taken . The aspect of child's games that are especially intriguing to me is the notion that these games have a didactic value to them. A child 'playing' in one of these games often merges the physical with the 'textual'. Is the state of being a child the beginnings of the time in which children as people are beginning to understand the ongoing "human narrative"? Since children's lit. reveals the archetypes of humanity more clearly than more 'adult' texts, are children better masters of 'knowing' these archetypes? I guess, the topic that I'm musing around is the notion of the concept of 'play' being a combination of 'physical' and 'textual' elements. It's almost as if children playing are like the theater without the 'adult' notion that what they are doing is performing something that is not 'real'. This brings in the idea of children seeing the world in metaphors and not in similes. They are not acting "like" a character in another reality, they "are" a character in another reality.

Please tell me if I am off-base Dr. Sexson, although I believe I am getting closer and closer to a topic for our 3-100 page paper.

Notes on class 10/29

Announcements--

*Wear Costume Friday get some needed E.C.!

*Term papers-- Start considering topics, will be given in Z-A order, length between 3-100 pages.



Terminology

*Synecdoche-- a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part.




Quotes

*It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.-- Henry James

*We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.-- T.S. Eliot


Parallels and Connections between various texts

*Ending of Snow White where the Queen has to put on the red-hot iron shoes and dance to her death reminded me of a song by the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! called "Satan Said Dance". The lyrics are as follows



"Satan said dance

He says to me to shake around
And don't stop 'til you hit the ground

And I know it is not how you thought it would be
No whips no chains just dancing dancing dancing dancing
dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing
dancing dancing dancing dancing"

*This may be kind of a stretch but the concept of dancing as torture is the kind of image that doesn't really come about too often and is pretty memorable when it does. This idea of dance as torture is pretty intriguing really. It evokes images of Sisyphus, condemned to do a task, but rather than suffer for eternity as the song suggests, the fate of the queen is an eventual ceasing of her dancing but only after she dies. Torture in fairy tales seems to provide an interesting perspective into the views of "justice" and "morality" that seem to be a main focus on these tales.

Notes 10/27

People

Lewis Carroll-- Found the didacticism in fairy tales and children's lit. to be annoying so he responded with cynicism, parody, critique, viciousness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_carroll

Northrop Frye-- Literature liberates us into play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye

William Bennett-- Concerned with "morals". Secretary of Education under Reagan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bennett

Oscar Wilde-- Life is an imitation of art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

Terminology

*Sublime-impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.

*Esoteric-understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest; recondite

*Talking Head-1. Television Slang. a closeup picture of a person who is talking, esp. as a participant in a talk show.
2.Slang. a person whose talk is empty and pretentious.

*Eviscerating- to remove the entrails from; disembowel, to deprive of vital or essential parts


Other Notes

*"All art aspire to the condition of music."-- Arthur Schopenhauer

*Matrix based on "Alice In Wonderland"

*Next to Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll most quoted author in English.

*Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"-- tricking into believing that it is real.

*Communion as cannibalism-- "Juniper Tree" eating of the child. Also, "Hansel and Gretel" witch seems to want to digest the children to consume their youth. Eternal life.

*Nonsense in Carroll as hiding the moral.

*"Never trust the teller, trust the tale"- DH Lawrence

*Mary and Martha new testament biblical story Luke 10:38-42 parallel to Ant and Grasshopper in Aesop's fables. Idleness as immoral, and idleness as being the "one thing".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper

White Rabbit-- Jefferson Airplane

One of the more recent an popular culture oriented references to Lewis Carroll's Alice texts can be found in the song "White Rabbit" by the 60's psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane. The song portrays much of the song in the context as the journey being produced by hallucinatory drugs such as LSD and Mushrooms.


Lyrics to song "White Rabbit"--Jefferson Airplane


One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Recall Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said;
"FEED YOUR HEAD



This notion of drug-induced hallucination as a type of fanciful, childlike state runs through the literature of Auldous Huxley as well. In his novel "Island" he uses mushrooms as his comparison for what the Palanese people call "Moshka medicine." The children in this novel are taking the drug to symbolize their inclusion into adulthood. The use of the drug evokes Blakeian imagery with the assertion that "if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite". The connection between drug use, Alice in Wonderland, Jefferson Airplane, and William Blake seems to be an astoundingly imagistic one based on the perceptions of what appears to be "reality" and the perceptions of what appears to be the "fanciful".







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rabbit_(song)

My Book and Heart Shall Never Part-- Blog on film

First of all, I would like to say how much I enjoyed the film. I was having a bad day, so I came to the Emerson with a little baggage about having such a bad day. After I watched the film however, I felt relieved of all the stress of school and work. It was just really nice being able to watch an educational film that was fun. On that note I believe that the film functioned at achieving it's most basic goal-- to entertain.
To move on, I would like to talk a little more about the production of the film. The elements that went into the film were fantastic. I especially enjoyed the soundtrack of classical guitar compositions. Like the pamphlet said, it was a traditional sound yet had room to play amongst the images. The cinematography was also very well done. I was very impressed at how the books were filmed in an interesting way. The film of the children at play was also very good.
Now onto an examination of one of the most fundamental parts--the educational value of the 'text'. I found that the film seemed to be aimed at a introductory level audience to this type of literature. However, I felt that somebody who had a deeper sense of the educational aspect could also enjoy the film. This aspect of the film appealing to both introductory kinds of people and advanced kinds of people was one of the strongest aspects to it's production.
One of the claims I felt the movie was making that by gaining literacy, a child was entering into the discourse of humanity. This could be viewed as thus being able to both listen to and adopt the human narrative and also contribute and add to it. I would like to talk a little about the role of 'narrative' in the lives of people. I just finished reading an article by Fisher about how narrative is one way in which people construct morals, values, and other things of the ethical nature. This idea seems intricately connected to the idea of how children's literature was supposed to construct morals and teach the children life lessons. Also, this claim seems to rely on the fact that each story is the retelling of other stories that came before. Although origins and originals are banned talk in this class, it could possibly be asserted that each child who learns their first letter is at the moment of eating of the tree of knowledge-- at the origins of their entering in to the conversation of the human narrative. We could possibly assert then that not only does narrative assist in the construction of morality, but it also hand in the construction of identity-- both collective identity and personal identity.

Rebuttal of Cinderalla Moral

Please let me sum up the so-called moral of Cinderella. Beautiful women are rarely intelligent or nice. If a man can find a woman who just happens to be beautiful, intelligent, and nice it's most likely some other guys girl. So if somehow you're lucky enough to end up with such a girl, you should probably make sure she's been checked for STD's. Nothing ruins grace like a case of syphilis. Also, you really have to watch out for the witty, intelligent girls. Those are the ones that trick you to spending all your money on them and then running off with some other guy. Not only that, but the concept of the fairy god parent is very shaky. I'd be a little wearisome of getting set up with a girl by some other person, especially someone with magical powers (who knows what evil could ensue?). I believe that my life can have great events without the match maker making my match (tongue-twister). What is the fairy god parent anyway? Is it like the host of some dating reality t.v. show? Is the fairy god parent some mystical wingman? I don't know. The fairy god-parent seems a little sleazy to me. So anyway, here is the short, sweet, and real truth of the story. Moral: If your friend sets you up with a beautiful girl, make sure she won't infect you or steal your money. The end.




*Look for clues that this woman could be out for your money.















*Public Service Announcement making sure you consider who your "Cinderella" actually is.

Fractured Fairy-Tales

Fractured fairy tales from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle t.v. show.-- Rapunzel. An interesting twist comes at the end when Rapunzel and the prince are talking and Rapunzel tells her new husband that she wants some of that salad. The witch says "here we go again" and laughs. This is pretty interesting. In this simple and sweet twist on the story, the witch reveals that the story of Rapunzel will be perpetual for the rest of eternity. Just as a story Rapunzel-like came before, more Rapunzel-like stories will come after.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nea6Azgh1Pk

Three is a Magic Number...

Since we talk about the number three being so important in fairy tales I thought it would be nice to post the song three is a magic number. Please watch it because Schoolhouse Rock is classic... Also, look for mythological reference, possible connections to fairy tales, and just enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11N-BD1aBo0

*Check out the Blind Melon cover of the song to. It's a little more rockin' than the original. Shannon Hoon did wonders with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVfe6rdHRKI

This is a quote taken from from the introduction of poets in a book called Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Southern Poetry. This introduction is discussing the poet Randall Jarrell. "Jarell knew that poetry, like children's tales, was a culturally recognized means by which psychology swelled into the mythical... His poems of the 1950s become a catechism of lost innocence and he often draws on fairy tales, dreams, and mythological stories to explore the consequences manifested by experience in a world not rescued by religion, community, or politics". This is very fascinating that when things such as religion, community, and politics aren't working that Jarrell found it more useful to use the language of children's tales, mythology, and dreams. Perhaps Jarrell understood that all the stories that we're contemporary to him were not original but rather the retelling of stories told already. Perhaps he found solace and comfort in being able to pursue storytelling from this angle in the confusion of a post World War II society. This could have helped him to mirror events current to him with the past so as to understand that . The two poems of his that I found to be the most interesting were "A Girl in a Library" and "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", neither of which are children's lit.. Especially in "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" it was interesting to note the childlike image of the gunner and the gore in which he died and is washed from the turret. This recalled images of chopped off toes and heels, doves pecking out eyes, dead bodies of wives hanging from the ceiling, and fingers being pared like radishes. The relationships between death and child and between gore and child is very interesting. Perhaps someone has pursued that... It is also worthwhile to note that he died in 1965 while hit by a car on an evening walk. How fascinating to know that this stuff happens.

A link to Randall Jarrell on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Jarrell


"The Animal Family"




"The Bat Poet"
http://stuffasdreamsaremadeon.com/2008/09/30/the-bat-poet-by-randall-jarrell/http://stuffasdreamsaremadeon.com/2008/09/30/the-bat-poet-by-randall-jarrell/

"What is.." The Jeopardy Blog!

What is a child?-- Simply put, I believe a child is similar to the Colridgean reader yet different. For a child does not need to "willingly suspend" any sort of disbelief because a child has no disbelief, only belief. To willingly suspend disbelief is to become childlike. To believe is to be a child.

What is a book?-- A book is any text using symbols to tell it's story.

What is nature?-- Nature is green. Nature is clouds. Nature is what I step into when I step out my door onto grass.




*I hope these answers make some sort of sense. If not, that's okay also because I think they're my own personal answers so they should only make perfect sense to me!

Song of Adam

*Here is a song I wrote. See if you guys can find some reference to fairy tale's in it. If so, that's awesome! I didn't write it with any in mind, but rather the story of Adam and Eve. I just thought I would put it up on here because this seems like a fine place to put such things on. Hope you find it relevant and also that you like it!
SONG OF ADAM

When I was young,
Young as the earth,
From the dirt I came,
The stars foretold my birth,

When the sun came out,
I'd laugh and shout,
Running through the waving fields.

When I tilled the ground,
My plow undressed the soil,
From the center of my plot,
A tree grew from my toil,

I'd rest in its shade,
Sing and pray,
And pick thistles from my white shirt-sleeve.

When I got drunk,
Red grapes plucked from the vine,
I accused my God,
My blood was thick with wine,

All the jealous angel scarecrows,
Green-eyed and wide,
Would sway in the breeze and cry.

When I felt alone,
Alone in all this world,
From my flesh she came,
From my bones she uncurled,

When the leaves shone though,
The leaves on the trees,
I saw her hair floating in the breeze.

The angels sang...

When the salty-sweat,
rolled between her breasts,
I felt that living drum resounding in my chest.

When the voice of God,
Bellowed in my ear,
All I could hear was when she said her name was Eve.

Allusion to Fairy Tales on ESPN

I was watching ESPN at work the other day and I was shocked to hear a comparison one of the broadcasters made. While talking about a football coach in the NFL he interjected the phrase "the emperor has no clothes." I was shocked, for at this time, Children's Lit. wasn't really on my mind. I was thinking about football and not fairy tales. I won't go into the details of the story, but it essentially comes down to a coach trying to remain in control of his team after the loss of his star quarterback. This sportscaster made the connection from professional football to a child's story. To me that was simply astounding and further validated that all stories are fairy tales. This got me thinking about other things like that. On a political note that makes me wonder about the phrase "stay the course" in regards to the Iraq war (something which I'm sure somebody has considered). Does that emperor also have no clothes? I won't interject my opinion and will leave that up to you to decide. It is extremely fascinating to see how fairy tales do function in the "real world." After having people read them in class it seems easier to understand how every story is a fairy tale.

First Blog Ever!!!- Thoughts on Huxley's Island

I know that Auldous Huxley's last novel Island isn't really children's literature or even young adult lit. It is a good read though complete with a lot of pretty deep philosophical points reflecting on the possibilities of a utopian society. One of the more interesting perspectives Huxley gives us of his utopian Island is the way that children are taught about the cultures views of religious deities through oral rhyme and song. Huxley relates how "two small boys in pink loincloths and a little girl in a blue skirt were taking turns at pulling the strings that set in motion two life-sized marionettes attached to poles at either end of the narrow field. The puppets were of wood, beautifully carved and clothed, not in rags, but in the most splendid draperies... these gorgeous scarecrows were beings of a higher order. One was a Future Buddha, the other a delightfully gay, East Indian version of God the Father as one sees him in the Sistine Chapel... With each tug of the string the Future Buddha wagged his head, uncrossed his legs from the lotus posture, danced a brief fandango in the air, then crossed them again and sat motionless for a moment until another jerk of the string once more disturbed his meditations. God the Father, meanwhile, waved his outstretched arm, wagged his forefinger in portentous warning...". As the children work the mechanical scarecrow they sing "'Make them dance... Make them wiggle.' He laughed delightedly..." This little song and dance of the children is quite the interesting. In the novel, the theory is that by allowing the children to manipulate the gods that they will gain the understanding that gods have no power over them and that they rather have all the power over the gods. The point of the exercise is established in the childs mind by their joyful repetition of the "Make them dance, make them wiggle" refrain. As in so many examples of children's lit. the moral of the song and dance is the song and dance itself. Huxley understands the pedagogical implications of children's lit. by being something that children can attach themselves to and learn from. Huxley shows his knowledge of the subject by employing it in his utopian society.