12/1/2019 0 Comments 12/2/19 In the selections we have read so far, they all discuss and theorize “creation”; how it looked during, before, and after and what “creation” really entails. The main thread that I picked up through almost all of them, but especially in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is that there was life and that life was then destroyed and its place was taken by new life. Specifically, in Metamorphoses, it was pretty explicitly stated what the end looked like (loss, chaos, and death), and what mother nature had planned for what the “after” would look like. Around lines 215-220, the before is described as “corpses all lay crushed beneath the great weight of each other's bodies”. Then the “during” process, “their mother earth (or so the story goes) drenched with their steaming gore, gave life to it”. The after is hoping to be “she gave them human shape’ her stock was marked by the hatred of the gods; by cruelty and eagerness for slaughter”.
Now, that was just in Metamorphoses, but the “during” themes of loss, chaos, and death are woven through almost all the passages. In Genesis 1:2 KJV, it says the “earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep”. This strays a bit from the narrative of there being a real before with characters in human vessels but does show the nothingness of the heavens and the earth before the light was brought to it. The destructive, chaotic scenes do not start until Noah's ark and the great flood , where “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, all of that was in the dry land, died” (7:22), and “every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth” (7:23). This could be considered the “during” process, and the after is when Noah is in his ark with his animals; “and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark”. The one passage which kind of confused me and I wonder about was Lucretius. Lucretius’ passage talked about creation, but in a very different sense to me, then the other passages did. He looked at it from a more worldly, secular viewpoint. At least from what I understood, it sounded like he was describing more of a big bang type of reaction and explanation to how everything was created. There was just lots of oozing, forcing, and compression. It sounds cataclysmic and like how most people would describe what would happen if the big bang were what had happened. It struck me and I really did like how he could describe something that most people consider a very scientific and exact thing, as a poetic, visual process. It really brought it to life.
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11/15/2019 0 Comments 11/15/19In AP Lit so far, we have focused on self-fashioning, the process of self-fashioning, and all the elements and characters that go into it. Self-fashioning is not an overarching, autonomous process that is the same for everyone. Greenblatt includes the relationship and correlation between self and autonomy. It explains concept or idea and then dives into the specificities and then the last parts will be like the main big idea/topic. To have an opinion on all of it, there is a dialectical process you must follow. When making claims about it it can’t just be talking, but CPBing at the same time and diving in.
We looked at the characters of self-fashioning and also how the different audiences would interpret this. Literature (lit) is reflective and constitutes of culture because texts present identities by illustrating the characters of the writers and readers' self-presentation. Historians will recognize that change over time is not linear but is dialectical and they can do this by using lit as “historical” evidence. It will make them break down the factual way they have been looking at and analyzing history. My argument in class was that culture is a reflection of history and that is why they would be interested. Anthropologists study history and the natural world. Greenblatt made anthropologists/ sociologists will have an independent and different perspective on this because the study the past world and what has happened in the past ecologically and socially to make the world how it is now. But, why does this matter on a wider scale? They look at history from a wider lens, so they should have that type of impact in what they do. The next group was curious non-experts. We fall under this and we have questions like how does self-fashioning impacts how we control and express ourselves. This has been the question that we have been trying to answer in class so far. Our own way of self-fashioning changes how we see the world, why we like what we like, and what we do in general. Another thing that we spent a long time on is looking at the commandments of self-fashioning and trying to grapple with the ones that we found particularly challenging or difficult to understand. Four gave us all pause because at times I do not know whether I am the authority that determines the alien. I did not really understand which character out of them all (stranger, authority, alien, man, etc) of them I am. Eight was also a lot to take in after four because I did not know that someone can be both the alien and the stranger and that those things were also somewhat inside them at the same time. Ten described a takedown of a physical alien, but what does a physical attack of the “alien” look like? In class, I have struggled with really connecting with the text and seeing my life in it. It is hard for me in class when it seems like we are really supposed to be immersed in it and relate it to our lives and outside of class sees it in our daily life, but I don’t really. It makes me feel really awkward in class, especially like a few days ago, when I try to express that I don’t feel like the things Greenblatt is talking about have not been “life-changing” or groundbreaking. Even though the words in it in a very complex and wordy way, I feel like the bottom line is something we have already talked a lot about in class. When I read it, I can struggle with language or the wording of it, but I just can’t see how making everything that deep would benefit someone’s life. Overthinking everything that constitutes your being and life isn’t going to make your life better, in my opinion. It just complicates it and I think it is more enjoyable to not ask that many questions about it. I imagine that in the future we will keep this kind of open classroom culture and keep asking lots of questions. I hope the texts we’ll be working with can be more openly interpreted, instead of having an end goal in the conclusions we make about them. It is difficult to explore thoughts and ideas in class when you feel like there are exactly right or wrong answers and even if something is not exactly what is the right answer, we can’t explore talking about it. |
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