Post 5 (maybe?)---This class sucks.

[Justin Rosenthal]

Ahhh; I've got your attention now, don't I? Since Professor Reynolds said he yearned for some negativity in today's class, I figured I'd be the one to step up to the plate. On days when I'm in a questionable mood, it's easy for me to see the glass as half empty. Actually, the truth is I don't see this class as an overall negative, because I know I emerged a better student because of it, but I figured this would be an interesting post to make anyways.

So this class sucks because it involves some of the most in-depth and technical reading related to literature that I've thus encountered. It sucks because it's structured in a more abstract way that involves even more actual self-participation than most Lit courses (not relating to discussion per se, just the involvement and commitment of yourself to reading and comprehending the material). This means you have to work for yourself and the material to have a connection. It sucks because the overarching theme is, well, literature and criticism, and that often seems ethereal and difficult to categorize, understand, pin down, etc. It sucks because (interestingly enough, like a philosophy class), it invites (speaking for myself here) application that is so broad that some of our discussions and bunny-trails border on irrelevance, and is challenging to harness and discuss in a way that actively involves both the material we read for that class meeting and practical applications in actual literature. Often, I find myself wanting to raise my hand to discuss things that only tangentially relate to the paper we read, or to quickly, inconsiderately, and selfishly move off in a different direction than the one proposed by Dr. Reynolds or another classmate, but I have to stop myself, because I honestly believe that focusing effectively on what wiser writers than myself have said can, at the very least, broaden my own perspective. Finally, this class sucks because it ends with probably the largest "So what now?" I've encountered in the closing stages of a course. What do we do now? Grab our English diplomas after a few more semesters? Cross off the box that says "ENG3014 *must be taken during junior year*"?

In short, for many reasons, this class takes work, focus, and patience. The investment is pretty large before a midterm, final, and then the "so what" that we use to understand literature in (hopefully) more full ways after this semester. However, I'd argue that it's worth it. If anything, this class kicks the confident English major, or college student, or headstrong young adult off of their pedestal of complete understanding into a world where literature is complex again. It opens up new pathways to consider characters, plots, and societal impacts of novels and other aspects in totally different lights where they can have completely different effects. It opens us up to the wisdom of different perspectives that are often made invisible and marginalized in the traditional literary tradition. And it can also open up nuanced elements of literature that one would never have previously considered. Outside of the aspects or "parts" of literature, I'd say one of the most important thing that this class has done for me is that it has made me consider possibilities. What book or paper or story or movie or whatever that had once been "solved" has now become open again in my mind, because it's not as limited as it may have once seemed. Whoever thought of reading early Victorian literature from a Marxist or poststructuralist perspective? We are now. Maybe it will yield greater understanding of the book for some. These things are important. I cannot imagine understanding every book from the perspective of what I am myself, which is a 20-year old white middle-class male (although the word middle-class is silly). I want to empathize with Helen Huntingdon (Graham) as she desperately runs away from her husband in England and fears becoming a fallen woman because there are no true options to be an independent woman in Victorian society. I want to empathize with Janie Crawford as she struggles in a racist south in the early 20th century. I'd like to know what it feels like to be Tiny Tim in England when his family cannot afford treatment for a disease that could soon kill him.

I think I'm rambling. But it may not be the most structureless rambling there ever was. Maybe it doesn't matter when we embrace a poststructural analysis here (if anything, the most negative thing I've gained from this class is the temptation to embrace terrible humor from the perspective of an English critic). What do the rest of you guys think? Did you find these things while taking the class? Had you embraced a sufficiently broad perspective beforehand?

P.S., Professor Reynolds, let me know if this is on-topic enough to count as an actual post; if not, I'll make sure to write another.

[Justin Rosenthal]

Addition to P.S.: Just to be on the safe side, I responded to another thread a few minutes ago ("Problems with Theory").

[Andrew Reynolds]

Justin: I really like this post and your quiz answer yesterday. I was really struck by your statement: "You always lose in this class," which you explained in terms of us always being outclassed by the theorists. It is humbling, but on the other hand think of how many theorists attack other ones. I agree we always lose, but only if we believe there's ever a right interpretation. IMO, there's always something we're going to ignore, someone we're going to offend. The best we can do is try--and keep learning.   

[Justin Rosenthal]

Very true! Sorry; I didn't mean for that to be entirely pessimistic or that I was afraid of positing anything in class for fear of being "wrong". I think the better way of phrasing it would be to say that the class caused me to be patient enough to review my arguments so that I would be more right, or more on point, with both what we were discussing and interpreting. If anything, like I said in my post on the other thread (Problems with Theory), I espouse an inclusive mentality towards opinions towards texts, so I wouldn't call anyone wrong based on their own interpretation (unless they were egregiously off my perspective and lacked evidence). However, I truly felt at times like I was losing being a headstrong English major who forms opinions quickly wanting to ejaculate answers willy-nilly without properly considering other perspectives. In order to form a stronger, more complete opinion, I felt like a good part of this class involved being patient and not just forming opinions towards texts on our own (like we do in other classes), but considering very different perspectives.