I am a third year PhD student in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University. The content of this site was written in 1996 as I worked on a Masters degree in literature from Northeast Missouri State University.

I studied these critics primarily for the information that I thought I needed as a good little daughter of Father Western Canon, to learn the manners, the etiquette of (a hush falls over the crowd)

It seemed a thing one must, should, do. We begged for it, some of us, the very ones who probably as tots wished for piano lessons and shiny new shoes to wear to mass. (And who maybe later put stones in the bottoms of those shoes just to remind us to be humble before the great powers.) We have been baptized with Bachelor degrees and now line up for confirmation, wide-eyed, studying the catechism to prepare for literary soldierhood. Pardon the connection to religion; I mean no disrespect. But something akin to the religious permeates the whole critical enterprise for me, and causes me to hesitate in venturing an opinion. This, for instance, feels like confession; my books like a heavy scripture, the tomes of literature's sin and salvation, through critics, our lieges, amen.

I'd like to be able to say how I feel about it, but I don't know exactly. I feel a certain smallness in myself, a childishness confronted with this history of thinking. Some of it sounds as unbelievable as science fiction, but most of it is gorgeous in its design and execution. The criticism depends as much on philosophy, application of various philosophies to art, is itself philosophy and art--beautiful writing, creative and imaginative. That impresses me. I never have the nerve to attempt anything beyond the tawdry class-room stuff. What could possibly give me the right in the face of all that's been said already? For I have not the "gift of discourse, which is indispensable." [Longinus].

Art and literature, to me, records all our attempts to reconcile what we have with what we want; what we see with what we dream--especially in those waking dreams over which we have some control. You know that time, just before you're fully awake, but awake enough to know you've been dreaming; that time when you know that if you can just roll-over, or move your arm a bit, you can go back in the dream and somehow change it for the better? Or just before sleep, when you're not fully aware of thinking, slipping into sleeping, the dark behind your eyes expands and suddenly you're either the biggest thing in the universe or the smallest, yet seeing the whole thing, and you want so much to hold that feeling, but you fall asleep? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but those are my transcendent moments and those same feelings of striving or transport sometimes come to me when I'm writing or reading; that's when I think I have connected with someone else through and image or an idea. (I'm indiscriminate that way--it could be either one). And I think, "How do they do that?" I have only recently begun to wonder about my part in the transaction.

So critics coming from their own philosophies, societies, and idiosyncrasies try to answer the question how . But if the question appears simple, the answers prove otherwise. That's why I think some of us still want metaphysics, no matter the desperation in our attempts to flee it. If we want to know how a tree grows, we can get someone not only to tell us, but show us. Now science can even tell us how our brains work, literally. But no one can really say how genius works when it pulls together disparate things in such a way as to produce an instant of understanding, or recognition, in some one else. And why, outside of some shared cultural experiences provoked by the material conditions of our lives, are many people moved by the art of a few? For instance, I no longer buy into much of the Christian vision, and scripture did nothing for me (as literature) when I was younger and did believe. But now I find myself drawn to the incredible complexity of Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy. And criticism has not lessened, but rather heightened my interest in these and other works because, even in the face of the impossibility of explaining anything, it still tries. And in the effort illuminates different ways of thinking about things if nothing else. This result of the critical act resembles (maybe is?) art itself.

Looking at the continuum of criticism from Plato on, what I find most interesting is the shift from describing poetry, its characteristics, functions, and meaning, to the modern concentration on the paradox of language. Before I ever heard of Derrida, my father said that it was too bad language was the best people could do, because only in the attempt to explain ourselves and the world do we really misunderstand. That reminds me of Nietzsche's remark that "Men of philosophical disposition are known for their constant premonition that our everyday reality, too, is an illusion, hiding another, totally different kind of reality." But we never seem to get to that "other reality" with language. Maybe I take the whole thing too seriously. I think sometimes that I am actually looking for an answer to what things mean. ONE answer, but I need the proof too, that's the problem. It's exhausting, the whole business, unless you think of it as a game. Yet the stakes are high--comprehension, order, Truth.

Ultimately, from the whole jumble of educated opinions and sometimes laser-exact perceptions, we all have to decide how we think art and language work, what we will select from everything to frame our own discussions. This is what I think (I think):

1. Things really do exist outside our perceptions of them. They have the characteristics they have, regardless of what we call them. Enough people will agree on certain characteristics that things are explained by consensus, but they exist by themselves.
2. We have certain drives and emotions as human beings which are the result of biology (the will to survive), influenced by society (the organization we create to manage our material lives), and described by culture (the outcome of leisure provided by society that allows for play).
3. Art is derived from culture and will be practiced at some level by everyone with whatever materials are available.
4. Language is the material result of an arbitrary system of signing caused by biological pre-disposition to communicate which is available to almost everyone.
5. The first part of Number 4 doesn't matter anymore. It's too late to change it.
6. Art is language no matter what form it takes.
7. Criticism and philosophy are extensions of the same principles of play and seek to explain them.

Obviously, I could go on, or explain more fully what I mean, which is where we all fall into the pit of Hell and become immobile for eternity.

I still have a long way to go in trying to determine what all this means to me. I know what I like--metaphysical conceits, modern hardness, the sound of words together in poetry, clear images, impressionist paintings--I'm just not always sure why.

I'm attaching some of my favorite quotes:

"The expression of the sublime is more exposed to danger when it goes its own way without knowledge--when it is suffered to be unstable and unballasted--when it is left at the mercy of mere momentum and ignorant audacity." [Longinus].

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world..." [Shelley]

"No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar that keeps him alive today that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow." [Schopenhauer]

"The Platonic idea becomes the logos which science worships, which is the occidental god, whose minions we are, and whose children, claiming a large share in his powers for patrimony" [Ransom].

"Was philosophy then a tremendous error into which posterity was plunged by Plato?... Philosophy now seems like a dream that Plato dreamed and made a lot of others share...We did not all awaken at the same point. Some were roused by this voice, others by that, and many cannot recall how their dream ended". [Kaufmann]

This page was created using notepad and guidance from the book HTML: The Definitive Guide, 2nd ed., by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy (O'Reilly and Associates, 1997). (No sissy wysiwyg editors for this kid.) Everything I used should be included in the HTML 3.2 standard.

[I do recommend the use of HTML editors, which have many advantages over text editors alone. I used Coffee Cup Software (a very cool html editor program with Java scripts and other neat stuff--try the shareware version) for my personal homepage.

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