Class Notes 1/29

We talked about what is on Adam's blog! Go read Adam's blog.
- Joyce started with epocleti then moved to epiphany
- Irish paralysis......in 'Sisters' the paralized man dies. Joyce putting his characters in a position of paralysis to reveal the true charater........to evoke epiphany. Dubliners afflicted by paralysis.
-Karen Armstrong

Then we talked about Hericlitus, presocratic, an ancient Greek philosopher:
'It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things.'
and another one I think works:
'The sun is new everyday.'
For Hericlitus the Universe is in motion, changing.
Hericlitus to Vico to Joyce.
divinities dissapear as the ordinary and industrial encroached. Now we have a secular epiphany.
In the beginning pages of Joseph Campbell's Mythic Worlds, Modern Words he says of James Joyce's Ulysses: "Ulysses takes place mainly on Thurday--Thor's day, Jeudi, Jove's day; the Day of Thunder--and in the exact middle of the book, a thunderclap wakes Stephen's heart. In Sanskrit, the work for "thunderbolt" (vajra), also signifies "diamond" and connotes transcendent illumination. As the lightning shatters phenomenal forms, so too does transcendent illumination; and as the diamond can be neither cut nor marred, so neither can Illumination by any cut of phenomenal experience."

Dr. Sexson talked about Ulysses, where the book starts on an ordinary day. Buck Mulligan (Stately plump) an atheist is shaving in the morning. Makes fun of communion.
Common, ordinary words are arranged in a certain way to where there is still an epiphany. Also see Ulysses ch. 3.

Dr. Sexson began speaking about Dubliners:
Dubliners - Joyce is showing not telling
phanos is a showing, epiphany
Joyce is finding the divine in the secular/ordinary world.
triviality & trivial conversations are important to Joyce, Joyce Teaches us to listen to what people say.
And with Joyce every single word counts. He spent 16 hours on 6 words.
Joyce is not a naturalist, more a symbolist, and understands that every word operates on the reader.

HW: Find diamonds(small epiphanies) in 'The Dead'...

a diamond

Dubliners page120
"the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout."

Links

Go to:

http://photographydublin.wordpress.com/category/dublin/
scroll to the Finn's Hotel picture and read!





This website works well for the literary sense of epiphany:
http://www.mrbauld.com/epiphany.html

Here's an insightful study of epiphanies in Dubliners (esp. The Dead) in this essay:
http://www.themodernword.com/Joyce/paper_valente.html

Class Notes 1/27

Homework for Friday: Read 'The Dead' and pay attentions to the 'ohs' because the 'ah' is obvious. Blog how many diamonds you find. We need at least one diamond for everyone!

Looking at the poem, God's Grandeur by Hopkins it communicates something to the effect of the worlds changed with the grandeur of God. While reading this poem an image of God bent over the world, protecting it, or caring for it is evoked. (See an original sketch illustrating this on Lisa of the Little Legs' blog) Much like in The Wind in the Willows when Ratty and Mole see Pan holding the sleeping otter, Portly. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest, also had some issues, to put it nicely I suppose. Joyce had a Jesuit education. In Joyce's Ulysses Stephen Daedalus realizes everything has God in it in Ch. 3.

sublime - blend of terrible & positive

How did Joyce get from writing Dubliners to Finnegans Wake?

things are there in the everyday world, evolved out of epiphanies. Inevitability between Araby/The Dead linking to Finnegans Wake.

all human history is epiphanized - apply to all works of Joyce

Daylight language of Ulysses, with some nighttime language

Erin and Sam - furniture

So Erin found the Hero link where Joyce gets led to the theory of epiphanies through street furniture, an inventory of furniture (she also made a great link with Nabokov!), and for Emergent Lit. I am working with pages 183-4 of Finnegans Wake, and guess what my passage ends with:

"Tumult son of thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an ineluctable phantom (may the Shaper have mercy on him!) writing the mystery of himsel in furniture."

I wonder if 'mystery of himself' could be 'history' - his story, his mystery

To end the class period we were all treated to an epiphany! Jennie Lynn performed the last few pages of Finnegans Wake. The performance was moving, beautiful, and emotional. Thank you Jennie Lynn!

Books I Couldn't Put Down

When I think of books I couldn't put down, I suppose lowbrow books come to mind like the Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean Auel, or Harry Potter, Twilight, etc. I consider books I can't put down to be books that are easy to gobble up. You get sucked into the plot, read fast, can't put it down because you just want to know what happens! O.M.G.

The books I can put down are the most interesting to me, and they are usually my favorite books thus far, or at least my top reads. I still want to know what happens, I just don't mind taking my time to get there because it is so good. I took my time reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I never wanted it to end it was so magical. The Following Story, while I could have read it in two hours, took me nearly 10 days to finish because finishing the book meant Mussert would tell his story and it would end, I wanted more of the story, I was also interested in the connections and I like to write notes in the margins. The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk was another one like this. I wanted to read sentences outloud to Sutter on every page, and wonder about epithets. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is a read that lasted a couple months because I would pick it up and read for a bit, then when he found himself under the nooses in the morning I would pause to go do something else because it was going too quickly. All of these books came to an end, so I am happy to know that Finnegans Wake has no end as it has no beginning. I know someone who as been reading Love in the Time of Cholera her whole life because it is so good she refuses to finish it.

Sutter wants me to tell you that he couldn't put down Ulysses at the last episode because there were no periods.

Class Notes 1/25

Jan. 25th Notes, Monday

Blog assignment: What book couldn't you put down?

Dr. Sexson named too many blogs to list on here that we need to read. So read every one's blogs!!!

So there is a slight divergence of the class in terms of whether or not one should forget an epiphany. It is not that you or anyone else is asked to forget an epiphany, however, because epiphanies are too overwhelming, devastating, engulfing, overcoming, overpowering, P2C2E, you have to look at other ways that the epiphany can be revealed, after the initial impact. How do you continue life after an epiphany? Ratty and Mole are only given a sense of their epiphany because to live with the full memory of the epiphany would just be too much. Willows page 129, Mole, "I feel strangely tired, Rat...."
This is how I thought of the idea of forgetfulness: Think if you had the best meal ever on Mount Olympus (since we've been talking about food epiphanies) and the food you eat is the food of the gods and nothing on earth will ever compare to what you have eaten, and you will never get it again. To know that such a food exists would overwhelm you and when you were forced to live off of earthly food again, your life would be ruined, because compared to the foods of the gods earth food would forever taste like sand. So in order to not ruin your life, the gods might bless you with a forgetfulness so that you are vaguely aware of something divine, but you can still comfortably live your life eating tasty earthly food.
However talking about it in terms of food may be simplifying the Piper at the Gates of Dawn idea of epiphany. Ratty and Mole don't need to forget, rather they need to learn to rememeber to listen to the music in the reeds, in the willows, on the wind. Ratty is listening to what is already there, we need to train our ears to hear.

Finnegans Wake 614 -
"Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend.
Forget, remember!
Have we cherished expectations? Are we for liberty of persuasiveness? Whyafter what forewhere? A plainplanned liffeyism assemblements Eblania's conglomerate horde. By dim delty Deva.
Forget!"

van Gogh - he was so overwhelmed by colors.....it drove him mad, cut off his ear and eventually had to exit stage left.

Wikipedia: quiddity (Latin quidditas) was another term for the essence of an object, literally its "whatness," or "what it is." The term derives from the Latin word "quidditas," which was used by the medieval Scholastics as a literal translation of the equivalent term in Aristotle's Greek.

Ch. 7 Piper at the Gates of Dawn, repitition of the word imperious, defined as intensely compelling or dominant

via negativa
when we recognize what is wrong in us, we recognize ourselves

Epiphany is the theological equivilent of what in literature is called anagnorsis or "recognition." - Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake page 130

Dr. Sexson mentioned Dubliners by James Joyce (something we should be reading this week!!) the form of the story is that it starts with the details, which shrink and come together into an epiphany.

No worst, there is none
NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing --
Then lull then leave off. Fury had shrieked "No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief".
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

My English Major Experience, revisited

2005 Fall Semester, Major: Environmental Sciences
English Classes:
-College Writing I, short essays and papers

2006 Fall Semester, Major: Modern Languages & Literature
English Classes:
-Intro to Literary Study

2007 Spring Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-Classical Foundations of Lit., with Michael Sexson, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lysistrata...
-British Literature I, with Gretchen Minton, Beowulf, Canterbury Tales...
-College Writing II, wrote short papers, with Sydney Rimpau

2007 Fall Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-British Literature II, Brit Lit from Romantic to Modern periods, with Lisa Eckhert, Wordsworth, Coleridge...
-American Lit. I, Puritanism, Rationalism, Slave Narratives, Amer. Romanticism, realism, with Lin Knutson, Anthology...
-Structure & Function of Lang., Diagramming Sentences, with Gwendolyn Morgan

2008 Spring Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-American Lit. II, post-Civil War American Lit., with Robert Bennett, Norton Anthology...
-Survey of Lit. Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Deconstr., New Historicism...., with Michael Beehler, The Critical Tradition by D. Richter
-Oral Traditions, with Greg Keeler, The Road...

2008 Fall Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-Child and Young Adult Lit., with Michael Sexson, Fairy Tales...
-Creative Writing, Poetry, with Greg Keeler, The Best American Poetry 2007
-Brit/Old/Mid English Lit., Drama Plays, with Gwendolyn Morgan, Medieval Dramas...
-Studies in a Major Author, Louise Erdrich, Linda Karell, The Painted Drum, Love Medicine...

2009 Spring Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-Multicultural Lit., Critical Race Theory..., with Susan Kollin, Amer. Born Chinese, House on Mango St....
-Shakespeare, with Gretchen Minton, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida...
-Emergent Lit., Metafiction: In search of the book, with Sharon Beehler, The Black Book, The Archivist...
-Text & Image, theories and histories of text & image in western culture, with Lynda Sexson, Corona, Wide as the Waters...

2009 Fall Semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-Studies in a Major Author, Vladimir Nabokov, with Michael Sexson, Pale Fire, Lolita, Transparent Things...
-Myth, Metaphor, the tale, transport, & transformation, with Lynda Sexson, Trickster Makes this World...
-Hebrew Bible, I was a grader, but learned a lot, with Susan Cohen, The Harper Collins Bible...

2010 Spring Semester, my final semester, Major: English
English Classes:
-Emergent Lit., Highbrow, Lowbrow, with Michael Sexson, Four Quartets, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Following Story...
-Capstone, Epiphany, with Michael Sexson, Four Quartets, Wind in the Willows...
-New Testament, with Mike Miles, The Harper Collins Bible...
-Mystics, Founders, Reform, with Lynda Sexson, The Upanishads, Margery Kemp...


I could not get my spreadsheet onto the blog so I had to create a list to revisit all the English classes I've taken here at MSU. All I can remember from High School English classes is reading The Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird. I had to pull out the binders I could find from previous semesters here at MSU to remember what happened in the class or get the names of texts, or in some cases remember the name of the professor. Notice in my listing I only included a couple of texts for each class because it would be very long, but that doesn't mean I don't know what they are.

Where are the epiphanies?

I realized English Lit. was my major after taking Classical Foundations of Literature with Dr. Michael Sexson. During the class I was intimidated, unsure, and unmotivated. But the end of that class sparked many small epiphanies. I discovered I did have something to offer and I was inspired by the material. I also met Sutter. If you look back into my many blogs and find my Classical Foundations Blog you will find the story of how Sutter and I met. As much as I would like to take credit for my transformation, I suppose some of it belongs to Sutter. I found a partner with whom I could be excited about literature, and not about a good book I had read recently, but of the highbrow collection. My other friends were biology majors and never liked to discuss books.
There was never an 'aha' moment, just a small 'oh,' I think I will continue with an English Lit. Major.

It would take too long to discuss each English class I've taken, but while looking back through my classes I remembered loving Lisa Eckert's Brit. Lit. II class and being introduced to Coleridge,
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

And to Wordsworth,
"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

I wonder if this is an epiphany, the flash upon the inward eye, the memory. What Wordsworth remembers from his encounter with the daffodils comes to him in the form of flashes and spurts as he is lying in the pensive, navel-gazing mood. Just as William gives himself over to this sort of epiphanic inspiration, so too do Ratty and Mole during the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. What they remember of the Deity later comes to them in little epiphanic whiffs of the scents that blow through the willows after they have been blessed with forgetfulness. The flash is a showing forth, an epiphany that is found not through looking for an epiphany, but rather for Wordsworth, the epiphany comes in a vacant or pensive mood, like Ratty and Mole are looking for Portly, while their minds elsewhere and unsuspecting they have an epiphanic experience.