Dover Beach

I literally found myself reading this poem by Matthew Arnold more than a several times and each time I read over the poem I did find different meanings. In the first stanza, I feel like he was explaining the mood of the beach.  The very first line of the poem gives me a clue; The sea is calm tonight.  Then he goes into detail how the tide is full and on line 9 he grabs the reader attention; Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling. He gives us the sound and sense of Dover Beach. Another thing that caught my attention is line 15.  You know how you go to the beach and just reminisce about certain things in your life or how a certain smell reminds you of a specific place in life.  Arnold did a great job in his poetry giving the example of Sophocles.  Sophocles long ago Heard it on he Aegean, and it brough Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery;  This specific beach brought unclear memories to Sophocles but it wasn't the best.

Feminist Criticism

James Joyce, I think is a perfect example of a feminist. He touches on subjects, such as Lily referring to the men only being palaver and only getting what they want out you.  Joyce touch bases on how a female feels but he also made us as readers think critically about the message he was getting across in " The Dead".  I had a hard time figuring it out.  Just like us women, were hard at figuring out at times.

The New Historicism

I found this text interesting to read because as it says in the beginning, its still evolving. There's a new event add to history everyday that goes unnoticed if its not being exposed on the news. This text enlighten me on several things. In order to inform future generations, the previous generation has to criticize their wrong doings without having an ongoing conscious.  This essay was amazing like the others and very valid.


Reading Living History gave me linear view on what exactly Joyce was writing about and why.  What I gained from this text is writing historical writings includes experiences that we as humans go through in our lifetime and the historical background of a religion or culture. 

Reader- Response Criticism

I think as readers, we all go through the experience of interpretive vertigo, which creates a wall of not knowing enough information about what were reading or not comprehending.  On pg. 126, Stanley Fish argues that any school of criticism that would see a work of literature as an object, that would claim to describe what it is and never what it does, is guilty of misconstruing what literature and reading really are.  Though it is true because literature is more of history and reading it is what brings literature alive. For instance, if you visit an art museum you not only visit but try to interpret what the artist has drawn.  You may look at the colors to figure out the mood of the work of art or maybe the drawing itself to find something significant about the artist. I am a true believer of what we live through is the guidance of comprehending a text and making it relevant to understand it even more.

Life

Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack.  This quote caught my attention in various ways.  First it brings up hospitality, which is a polite way to get to know someone and show the manners we've learned. This generation in a way does lack hospitality. Everyone now-a-days take life so seriously and has so much animosity towards one another, allows the anger to build up and loses the relation of humanity.  We forget that were human and we make mistakes but those mistakes can be prevented and forgiven.

My Personal View

While reading INTO THE MEME and AFTER THE FLOOD, Gleick is clearing stating that there are resources available to be knowledgable but it's useless. On page 337, at the bottom of the page, Gleick states, ''' If the universe is a computer, we may still struggle to access it's memory. If it is a library, it is a library without shelves."' Now that technology is taking over, we'd rather run to a computer first than read what's been left behind and sooner or later we'll forget the passwords. I'm guilty of that. The second sentence it's like a history that never existed if no one picks up the books. Eistein also states something similar to my personal view on page 401, "'mankind is faced with nothing short of the loss of it's memory, and this memory is history. ''' We lose memory because we don't allow ourselves to remember those hurt things that hurt us but mold us. That's the whole start of history. It's written.

Before words, their was just an empty space that belonged but had no usage. According to Walter J. Ong, "' a culture where no one has ever ' looked up' anything." pg 28 Anything could be a combination words and their meaning into day society. Gleick is saying that, no one ever takes the time to look up the history of words nor no their background. We all know that words are formed from the alphabet but its never described like this. According to Havelock, he describes it as a cultural warfare, a new consciousness and a new language at war with the old consciousness and old language. He then goes on to say that "' Their conflict produced essential and permanent contributions to the vocabulary of all abstract thought. Body and space, matter and motion, permanence and change, quality and quantity, combination and separation, are among the counters of common currency and now available." I agree with this 100% because time is cumulative and with time of a consistency of change. If we don't follow up on new language then how could technology and things of that nature progress?

Before words, their was just an empty space that belonged but had no usage.  According to Walter J. Ong, "' a culture where no one has ever ' looked up' anything." pg 28  Anything could be a combination words and their meaning into day society. Gleick is saying that, no one ever takes the time to look up the history of words nor no their background.  We all know that words are formed from the alphabet but its never described like this.  According to Havelock, he describes it as a cultural warfare, a new consciousness and a new language at war with the old consciousness and old language.  He then goes on to say that "' Their conflict produced essential and permanent contributions to the vocabulary of all abstract thought.  Body and space, matter and motion, permanence and change, quality and quantity, combination and separation, are among the counters of common currency and now available."  I agree with this 100% because time is cumulative and with time of a consistency of change.  If we don't follow up on new language then how could technology and things of that nature progress?