Critiques and Criticisms of English Literature

        In William Dean Howells' Criticism and Fiction, he argues that honest truth makes literature good, rather than how famous the author is. He uses English literature as his example as he contrasts Jane Austen with other authors like, Bronte, Thackeray, Dickens, and Eliot. Howells commends Austen for using simple truths and, "instructs a man to think what he likes is good, instead of teaching him first to distinguish what is good before he likes it" (Howells 1). Her work is also loved for its truthful character, not solely on her ability to write or convey her own qualities through her work. He compares her to Anthony Trollope, who also wrote with entire truthfulness, rather than the romantic-type authors of his day. Howells thinks authors should write with detail towards that which is good because it conveys truth, rather than giving of details of beautiful or ugly things, which they consider good or bad not based on the truth of the statement.

      The arguments and claims that Howells presents in Criticism and Fiction closely align with the what Berger, in "Ways of Seeing," calls bogus religiosity. Bogus religiosity in the context of Criticism and Fiction appears when Howells realizes that the authors, more than the truths they present, account for the approval or disapproval of criticizers and readers. Howells writes, "Because English criticism, in the presence of the Continental masterpieces, has continued provincial and special and personal, and has expressed a love and a hate which had to do with the quality of the artist rather than the character of his work" (Howells 1). Both Berger and Howells want and explain that readers not fall to mystification but rather engage the truths, though they may be few in English texts, that the authors build in their works.

Why is England the only European nation that Howells lists that has this specific problem addressed in the essay, rather than other authors that he mentions, like Scandinavian, Latin, and Slavic authors?

Realism and the Rights of the Working Class

       In Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills," she uses America's own short story to convey the hardships of the working class, particularly those whose lives surround the iron mills. Davis addresses urbanization, the American Dream, and economic opportunity in terms of realism. Through Hugh and Deborah Wolfe, Davis conveys how life for these and many like them suffer and are deprived of the rights that America is "so-called" built on. The story introduces an important concept of money leading to success, but also that the money that factory workers receive won't give them any opportunity. Instead, they live lives of crime, drinking, and some eventually kill themselves, as Hugh committed suicide at the end of the story.

       When Hugh's sculpting talents are found out by the group of higher class men, they believe Hugh's talents are great enough for him to make a better life for himself outside of the bonds of factory working. His description of the sculptor being hungry and its meaning shows his intelligence is greater than their stereotypical views of the workers. The Doctor tells Hugh, "Make yourself what you will. It is your right,"but they don't help him further than that (Davis 1226). This is what de Crevecoeur explains in Letters of an American Farmer.  He says that in America, men control their own fate depending on how hard they work. He claims that however hard a man works, he will be equally rewarded. They are the rights of the hardworking men of America, who really are men from many places who have come together with a common dream. "Life in the Iron Mills" shows that the same teachings and dreams of rights and economic, increasing success is still present in America. Deborah explains this to Hugh when she gives him the stolen money, but he soon learns that his rights are limited; not even Americans living here already can succeed in the dream that has been implanted in them since de Crevecoeur.

Was Mitchell of a lower class before making himself a life, since he had some tenderheartedness towards Hugh during the conversation about his sculpture?

Consumer Products = Tangible Narcissism

       In "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts," Franzen claims that technology and consumer products keep people from having an actual life, especially loving relationships; therefore people need to flock towards what causes painful emotions. Consumer products are like narcissistic people because they are manufactured "to be immensely likable" (Franzen 1). They and social networks, like Facebook, cause humans to live as narcissists because humans are focused much more on themselves and what they "like". When it's time to truly love someone, it's impossible to like all of them so you will destroy your  likable image of a person during arguments. "Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you're having an actual life" (Franzen 2). Then, Franzen explains that love will cause pain, but it will be easier to cope with and embrace when the pain is due to what you love. 

       Towards the end of his essay, Franzen describes how he came to love birds by looking for wrong in the world. The way in which he learned something about man through his experiences with nature is what Emerson conveyed in his essay, "Nature." Franzen wasn't necessarily looking to learn something about man from nature or forcing himself to think about nature's creation or harmony, but he was really wanting to find something wrong with the world to deal with his pain. "My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain" (Franzen 3). Here Franzen connects truth about a connection between nature and man, like a transcendentalist, to learn about love between men and the way love works.

Would Franzen recommend getting rid of all social networking to those who support his claims?

How Google Contrasts with Poetry

       In Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," he argues that the internet, especially Google, makes us stupid because it no longer forces us to spend time researching and reading long articles and books. Instead, we type in a few words into a search engine and find what we're looking for within a couple minutes. This was shown with the study done by the University College London. They studied the ways in which people researched by reading only the first one-two pages of an article, then looked up another resource to continue looking for answers. He also compares the effects of the Internet with the effects of the invention of the printing press and Taylorism. He concludes with proof from scientific studies that the fast ways of knowledge are actually making us stupider, or changing the way we think not only psychologically but also biologically through the new formations that the neurons make to adapt to the new ways that humans live and attain information.

       On the third page of Carr's essay, he explains how the internet essentially is everything that we used to use separately but in one. For example, it is a calculator as well as a typewriter, a typewriter, a radio, and others. He writes, "When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net's image. It injects the medium's content with...digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with content of all the other media it has absorbed....The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration" (Carr 3). This relates to poetry because poetry is the different expressions of thoughts, emotions, and feelings. It recreates the image of whatever the poem tries to convey, yet the Internet and poetry contrast in a great way. While the Internet scatters our attention and diffuses our concentration, poetry is supposed to do the opposite. Poetry causes us to meditate more on what is being argued or depicted in hopes that we have connection, not a disbandment.

Did Nietzche ever go back to the style that he wrote in before the printing press or caution others about the dangers of writing by the printing press?

A Wave of Self-Reliance

       Emerson portrays the differences between man, the mind, and society in "Self-Reliance". He says that genius is when man believes his own thoughts about himself and the application of this truth to the rest of man. Man learns things about himself in solitude, but they become inaudible as he enters the world. "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members" (Emerson 2). He doesn't want man to conform to the world, but live by his own thoughts. When he comes to this understanding, he shouldn't pay bits of charity because he is sorry that he lives in the world. The purpose of man is to live in the world, so that he can become one with it by his own accord. When all men do this, society will be like a wave. The wave represents unity and oneness but the energy of the wave continues, leaving the pasts of men behind and acquiring the lives of men to come.

       In "Self-Reliance", Emerson continues his fancy and depiction of the unity of mankind through the soul and with the Supreme Cause, the One. He writes in the first paragraph, "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius" (Emerson 1). This is similar to the arguments found in Walt Whitman's poems, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Song of Myself". In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", Whitman finds a connection between him and others through their thoughts and experiences on the ferry. Similarly, but more physical, Whitman connects men with each other through the atoms that make men up in "Song of Myself". He starts the poem saying, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you" (Whitman 8). He used the knowledge that men are all made up of the same matter to connect them and find truth within each other.

Emerson writes, "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is harder, because you will find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it" (Emerson 3). Doesn't this destroy his argument because he is telling us what he thinks our duty is (to be self-reliant)?

Purification and the Panopticon

       In his essay, "Panopticism", Focault describes a town that becomes more orderly and discipline through chaos, in the form of disease. The people of the town are always being accounted for and cannot move from their home unless they are a guard or appointed official. There's only one doctor allowed to give remedy to the sick, and he only has permission to tend to the needs of certain people that the magistrate allows him to. Ultimately, the magistrate has the power to let the sick die if he so chooses. Then, Focault describes this concept in one building, the Panopticon. It allows one person to watch all of the inhabitants, who are separated from each other, at once, but they cannot see him . Focault shows how the knowledge of someone watching a person intimidates and controls them in a way that the inhabitants will behave because they know they are watched. He relates power and knowledge in this utopia to show that more order can come to society with an understanding that people are always being watched.

       The infected town described by Focault undertook many of the precautions and mindsets as the Puritans did when they settled in New England. The infected town closed off all ways out and into the city. Even individual homes were closed off and weren't to be left or else a person would receive the punishment of death. Purification took place without leaving the town and with order. This physical purification is much like the purification and mindset of the Puritans. They viewed the outside world and Native Americans as evil, so they built up a wall around their city to separate themselves. Purification took place within a person, so that the community as a whole would be pure. They were advised not to leave the community so that they didn't have contact with evil, but they were allowed to leave in order to extend the boundaries of the community, purifying more of their evil surroundings.

How does the Panopticon work in society, if each individual isn't separate from each other because they continually live in contact with each other?

Brooklyn Ferries and Songs of Tradition

       Walt Whitman wrote many poems within Leaves of Grass and other books of his. Within poems from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," he described the beauty that man sees, makes, and is a part of in Brooklyn and Manhattan Island. He addressed Emerson's claim that beauty and truth is found in Nature by making man part of Nature. Because truth can be found in man, it can also be found in what man makes. In "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," Whitman shows that beauty isn't found in man trying to make Nature understandable by his own terms; he wrote "When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,/ How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick" (Whitman 6).

Instead, man can watch Nature in awe and find beauty in things like fire and smoke from a man-made chimney; man and Nature work together to be beautiful in the presence of each other.

       In the seventeenth poem found in "Song of Myself," Whitman described his thoughts as not original.  The first line of the poem argues a similar statement to that of T. S. Eliot in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Eliot explained that tradition isn't conforming poetry to the form of other poets' poetry   or to write in a similar style. Tradition is writing about some truth known to all in a way that has never been written before. Whitman continued summarized Eliot's tradition in one line: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me" (Whitman 11). In his poems, Whitman writes about the thoughts that have been thought by all, but they are expressed in original ways.

What is the meaning of "Song of Myself: 1"? It seems to have no connection from stanza to stanza.