Hi there,
Well I’m kind of feeling a lot of pressure with this first blog post but I’m sure they will get incredibly phenomenal as I get the hang of writing them.
Besides this Literary Theory class, I have Creative Writing this semester, something that I’ve also never had an experience with before. So at the same time that I’m trying to learn about writing in general, I’m also reading about all of these intimidating-ly philosophical questions, like, “What is an author?” and “What does it mean to write?” My prof in writing mentioned how we should begin thinking like an author, so I find myself doing that, now along with the added layer of new ideas which we talked or read about in Lit Theory. I can just feel my mind attempting to expand, which hopefully will be the result of these classes.
T.S. Eliot compares the author to a catalyst, (I had no idea what that was so I am already learning something useful!) apparently meaning that the author has to be present in order for the elements of feelings and emotions to combine, but the end result is completely separate from the author. This idea of depersonalizing the act of writing is echoed by Roland Barthes when he says, “…writing is the deconstruction of every voice, of every point of origin….[It is] the negative where all identity is lost” (in The Death of the Author).
I’m still trying to decide what I think of these sentiments. I’m trying to keep an open mind here, but how can an author combine her or his feeling and emotions and produce an impersonal piece of work? If ones’ feelings and emotions are the things combining, how can the author not really matter? The idea of acknowledging a piece of art or writing as having merit in itself is admirable and a good point, but this way of looking at things seems to take away the beauty of the act itself of producing the work. It is like saying the words are their own entity, and use the human just as a vessel to fulfill their purpose. (kind of creepy) I can see how when a writer is so engrossed in a piece that the words just seem to flow out of them, but I believe this is because of a talent or ability, maybe a purpose. I thought it was interesting because, as I think Barthes points out, by continuing to write essays on how unimportant the author is, theorists are highlighting their importance by making them the subject matter.
Just a last comment, I thought of the idea of depersonalization in Creative Writing today when we had to read an essay by Annie Dilliard, “To Fashion a Text.” She remarks about one of her books, “So another thing I left out, as far as I could, was myself.” And she is talking about a memoir—which (I was under the impression), is all about yourself! I guess she has the opinion that a certain idea is the focus and not her personally, even in a work of Non-Fiction (although obviously in non-fiction about your experiences, you would use your own personal feelings and emotions.)
This got really long and I am honestly confusing myself, so I’m very sorry group members!
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Annie Dillard's essay seems to relate quite a bit... say more!!!
ReplyDeleteAs for your question, how can some write a piece of literature that expresses such emotional beauty without expressing his or her own emotions? Good question, but is that what Eliot and Barthes are saying? I don't think they aren't saying that the author becomes a robot. They are just saying that our appreciation of the text is not determined by the author's emotional state.
Let's imagine a hypothetical situation. Let's say I was really sad when I wrote something, but as it happens, I'm a really bad writer and really pretentious. My sadness is genuine and true, but the poem I write is really exagerrated, and you are reading it and find it totally ridiculous-- so exagerrated that it almost seems like a parody to you-- and you laugh. The poem doesn't make you feel what I was feeling at all. So the feelings I had when I wrote it really matter hardly at all as to whether the poem actually communicated those feelings very well.
Now, let's step back even further. Let's imagine that in class one day I gave you two poems, and I said "Poem #1 is by this famous author, and poem #2 is by my next door neighbor." Would you experience them differently? My guess is that you'd give the famous author the benefit of the doubt. You might be more willing to allow a famous author to write in a pretentious way, and wouldn't laugh at him or her right away. You'd instead try to understand why the poem is considered good by other people, because all you know about the author is that he's considered great. You might even feel a little anxious about your own intelligence, because you're not sure why this author is considered so great. And of course, that's Foucault's point, that when we encounter a text, that encounter is structured at least in part by our relations to various institutions such as copyright, publishing corporations, classrooms, etc.