Just in case you missed me...

Hello there,

It's come to my attention that I haven't posted in ages, and I have been flattering myself, thinking that some of you are actually kind of sad about that.

In my defense, I have been incredibly busy, as I am writing and editing a magazine and we just launched our first issue.

If you want to check out our blog, where you can find the articles in our latest edition, some bonus reviews, and a print archive of all the previous issues, you can find it below 

Sometimes, the curtains aren't just blue

I like reading, and I have an internet connection.  So, it was only a matter of time before someone linked me this.

http://www.memecenter.com/fun/140145/blue-curtains

Sadly, this reflects a common attitude towards the study of English literature.  That it’s “wishy-washy”, and that English literature students just lounge around in ivory towers, wearing scarves and trying to find the deeper meaning of texts where no such meaning exists.

I completely disagree with that idea, and there is plenty of evidence to back up this view

Firstly, there are writers who have gone on the record saying that the literary devices in their work are intentional.  

When you write, you have to describe a whole universe.  You may choose to describe a world that is similar, or nearly identical to our own, but nevertheless, you have a very limited amount of words to describe this world and put your ideas across.  So if you go out of the way to point out the colour of the curtains, it’s probably significant.

Writers could also include these devices unconsciously. 

Perhaps more importantly, maybe this isn’t the question that we should be asking ourselves.  Arguably, the whole point of studying literature isn’t to determine what an author’s intentions were. If you can find a metaphor in a piece of writing that makes you think, or see the world from a different perspective, then does it really matter whether the writer wanted it to be there or not?

My Life in Formalism

If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

-Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The other day I went to a lecture on Formalism, and the lecturer explained to us how, according to Formalism, literature uses literary devices to “roughen” or alter normal language and to defamiliarize ordinary situations. 

            Formalists like Victor Shklovsky contend that in our everyday lives we become so used to certain ideas or situations that we never stop to question them, or even notice them. We stop truly seeing.

            Later on, I nearly walked past my maths teacher. I just didn’t see her, because I wasn’t expecting to see her, and I wasn’t even paying attention to the people passing me on the street.  I just assumed that they were all complete strangers.

           

Question of the day:  Is there an unpretentious way of talking about how life imitates art?