Monday, March 22, 2010

Midterm: Sublime Love

When Longinus developed his concept of the sublime, it is impossible to imagine that he had any notion of the impending world of pop culture and mass media. When Longinus set down his rules for what could be considered sublime, “The first and most important is the ability to form grand conceptions . . . Second comes the stimulus of powerful and inspired emotion . . . the choice or words and the use imagery and elaborate language . . . and elevated word arrangement”, he probably was not taking into consideration the possibility that young adult literature could meet these requirements (Murray 121). In fact, it’s probably difficult for many to see that a mere “children’s” book could possibly meet the requirements to be considered sublime.

When it comes to identifying the sublime, it is impossible to say that it is only one thing. Many would argue that the sublime, in the sense of Longinus, can only refer to “great books”, those traditionally associated with the literary canon. As Karen Swann states in her article, “Urbanization, the rise of a mass media and a mass press, and a general falling-off of interest in the fate of institutions are all developments that might seem to threaten both the continued privilege of traditionally privileged books” (18) However, I think that the sublime is a personal issue. What may be sublime to one person may not be sublime to another. The ability to identify something as sublime depends on a person’s age and background. Therefore, even though the wildly popular Twilight series may be seen as trite nonsense to many, in reality, nearly all teenage girls would clearly see this vampire love story as the most sublime literature ever written. While “for Longinus sublimity is the quality which gave pre-eminence and eternal fame to the greatest poets and prose authors,” the Twilight series written by Stephanie Meyer has been labeled as having this quality by millions of teenage girls around the world (Innes 261).

When considering the sublimity of the Twilight series, one has to take into account the teenage girl. A teenage girl is a completely different entity from all other humans. As Caitlin Flanagan states in her article exploring the appeal of the series, “. . . she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs – to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others- are met precisely by the act of reading” (Flanagan 3). Because of this, the Twilight series hits a nerve of sublimity like no other modern day romance story does for the teenage girl. While the story may not seem very sublime, or even well-written to any real literary critic, to the teenage girl, the story fits all of Longinus’ sublime requirements, therefore making one of the most sublime literary available on the mass market level.

Longinus’ first requirement for sublimity is that the writing must include “grand conceptions.” Now the story behind Twilight is nothing more than a simple fairy tale, high school romance. Yet, when it comes to the mind of a teenage girl, what concept could be bigger than first love? To many teen girls, finding a boyfriend, and the dream of one day marrying that first boyfriend, is the grandest of all concepts. As Flanagan says, “the Twilight series is not based on a true story, of course, but within it is the true story, the original one” (3). In others words, true love, the concept that teen girls spend their days thinking about more than any other single idea, love. This may not be a concept that is grand or extraordinary to most literary critics, but if discovering the sublime is related to whom you are, then finding love with the boy in your science class, is as sublime an idea as any. If literary critics cannot see that high school love is a grand concept, then perhaps they are simply too far removed from who they once were, from most everyone’s teenage reality, to effectively see grand concepts in the average person’s life.

Longinus’ second requirement for sublimity is powerful and inspired emotion. Teenage girls are nothing but a bundle of powerful emotion, and the one emotion they feel most inspired by, love. As Flanagan points out, “The erotic relationship between Bella and Edward is what makes this book- and the series- so riveting to its female readers” (Flanagan 5). When reading this particular series, girls lose themselves in the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob. “What is interesting is how deeply fascinated young girls, some of them extremely bright and ambitious, are by questions the book poses, and by the solutions their heroine chooses” (Flanagan 6). Ask any teenage reader of the series as to whom Bella should choose, and you will receive a near dissertation on the subject. The fact that a mere young adult fantasy love story can evoked such powerful opinions in such a wide population is proof that the Twilight series meets this particular requirement for the sublime. Now some may not agree that a love triangle between a human, a vampire, and werewolf constitutes “powerful and inspired emotion”, but as a teen girl, what more is there to life than dreaming about your soul mate? For a teenage girl, there is nothing that could be more sublime, more powerful emotionally, then having to choose between two boys who are willing to do anything to maintain your undivided and undying attention.

Longinus’ final three requirements for sublimity, noble diction with word choice, use of imagery and elaborate language, and elevated word arrangement, can all be combined into one similar category related to language and style. Admittedly, it is difficult to make a case for the noble diction and elaborate language of Stephanie Meyer’s work. Twilight does not contain extensive metaphors for life, dreamlike imagery, or even witty and engaging banter between the characters. However, what it does do is fully and completely engage its intended audience, the teenage girl. The language used completely encapsulates the modern teenage language. Therefore, it does contain noble diction, elaborate language, and elevated word arrangement, at least as far as the teenage mind is concerned. As Innes states in his article, “genius is preferable to meticulous craftsmanship, genius by definition makes mistakes, and in any case the mistakes of a genius are few” (262). If any mistakes are present in Meyers writing, then as Innes argues, that simply represents her genius, her genius as it relates to a writing style that teenage girls see as sublime.

The sublimity found in the Twilight may seem farfetched, but in this day and age, how can worldwide love of a novel, in competition with television, music, internet, movies, and a litany of other modern day advances in entertainment, not be seen as representing a type of sublimity. The fact is, it is important to push today’s teens into finding their love of the simple written word. As Plato thought, “The arts, as he conceives them, are charming in themselves, but more importantly are useful in freeing young minds from their instinctive infatuation with material things, thus clearing the way for attention to the ideas” (Moore 8). Therefore, shouldn’t the sublimity in Twilight be celebrated and drawn out, rather than squashing girls’ love of the book as a mere fad?

Many may agree with Karen Swann when she states, “The sublime is always in danger of succumbing to gross popularity” (9). However, I do not think that this is such a bad thing. What is the point of preventing something of “gross popularity” from entering into the ranks of the great and sublime? After researching notions of the sublime, I could not help but notice that many seem to consider the most inaccessible forms of writing as being the most sublime. Swann did note, “Nothing provokes the contempt of the philosopher quite as much as our national attachment to whatever strikes us as awesome”, but why can’t something that clearly connects with something deep inside millions of girls not be considered sublime? (19)


Works Cited
Flanagan, Caitlin. “What Girls Want.” The Atlantic Online. The Atlantic Monthly Group, Dec. 2008. Web. 27 Apr. 2009.
Innes, D.C. “Longinus and Caecilus: Models of the Sublime.” Mnemosyne 55.3 (2002): 259-284. JSTOR. Web. 4 Mar. 2010.
Moore, Ronald. “Aesthetics for Young People: Problems and Prospects.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 28.3 (1994): 5-18. JSTOR. Web. 27 Feb. 2010.
Murray, Penelope, and T. S. Dorsch. Classical Literary Criticism. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.
Swann, Ken. “The Sublime and the Vulgar.” College English 52.1 (1990): 7-20. JSTOR. Web. 27 Feb. 2010.

Annotated Bibliography
Flanagan, Caitlin. “What Girls Want.” The Atlantic Online. The Atlantic Monthly Group, Dec. 2008. Web. 27 Apr. 2009. This article focuses on the runaway popularity of the Twilight series. The author theorizes that the popularity stems not from magnificent writing or intricate storyline, but because the story strikes a chord with teenage girls, perfectly hitting the tone that teen girls look for in their sublime literature. The author even admits that even though she is a grown woman, the story managed to stir inside herself that long lost feeling of losing her teenage self within a young adult novel. This article perfectly supports my theory that the sublime must be defined by your own self and that when it comes to teenage girls, Twilight is as sublime as novels come.
Innes, D.C. “Longinus and Caecilus: Models of the Sublime.” Mnemosyne 55.3 (2002): 259-284. JSTOR. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. This article looks at the works of Longinus and Caecilius and compare their theories to that of the predecessors, primarily, Plato. The article emphasizes the fact that Longinus clearly saw flaws and imperfections in Plato’s work, and these flaws are exactly what make Plato’s work genius and worthy of the title of being sublime. For my article, I focused more on the sections regarding Plato and Longinus rather than Caecilius. The idea that Longinus saw Plato as a flawed genius, which leads to true sublimity, helps with my argument that even though the Twilight series may be seen as flawed in concept and writing style, it can still be seen as a form of the sublime.
Moore, Ronald. “Aesthetics for Young People: Problems and Prospects.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 28.3 (1994): 5-18. JSTOR. Web. 27 Feb. 2010. This article focuses on the importance of providing school-age children with an arts education. It explores all the theories that have been developed over the years, starting with Plato, that stress the importance of children studying the arts and theory. The article attempts to debunk the idea that theory is too difficult or too adult for children. This article was not as helpful as I would have liked for my research. I was happy to find an article that stresses the importance of a continued arts education in the public schools, but I was hoping it would provide more information on how to teach children to identify the sublime and not just reasons why we should teach them the sublime.
O’Gorman, Ned. “Longinus’s Sublime Rhetoric, or How Rhetoric Came into Its Own.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.2 (2004): 71-89. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Feb. 2010. This article emphasizes that Longinus’s “On the Sublime” was a key importance in the creation of the rhetorical studies. The author focuses on many Greek terms, referring to “height” and “nature” as playing roles in rhetoric’s creation. For my research, this article had limited use. The author’s use of frequent ancient Greek words and playing on those meanings made the piece a difficult read for a non-rhetoric major.
Swann, Ken. “The Sublime and the Vulgar.” College English 52.1 (1990): 7-20. JSTOR. Web. 27 Feb. 2010. This article focuses on defining what exactly can be considered sublime versus vulgar literature in comparison to literature that is classified as “Great Books.” Throughout the article, Swann refers consistently to the work of Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind.” Swann attempts to use Bloom’s work to identify the problems the American university system faces with the rise of popular literature in comparison to traditionally “Great Books”, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost. In relation to my work in comparing the Twilight series to the sublime, Swann’s overarching ideas were extremely useful, even though they were contradictory to my own. He seems to feel that the true sublime is being threatened by popular vulgar literature. In the end, Swann feels that the vulgar should be happy with its popularity and not try to take over the role of the sublime.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

What? Really?

Famously, the Harry Potter movies star Daniel Radcliffe. A recent production of Equus, also stars Daniel Radcliffe. Now, Harry Potter is a mild-mannered magician, a story designed for the pre-teen/teen set while Equus is the story of a mentally disturbed stable worker. Aside from both characters being British and around the same age, they have very little in common. So, why would Daniel Radcliffe, who has found tremendous fame in the role of Harry, take on a role that required him to portray a character as far from Harry as possible?

For this entry, rather than reflect on the story of Equus, I'll be rambling about why an actor would take on such a dramatically different role, especially while still in the midst of his mild-mannered fame. Clearly, Equus is a psychoanalysts dream case, but would someone like Freud think of an actor's choice to star in that particular role.

Of course, there are the commonly stated ideas. He wants to show his range as an actor. He's trying to avoid being type cast. He feels animosity towards the Harry Potter role. And maybe all those things are true, but why Equus? Why choose a role so far removed from common, "polite", society?

OK, so maybe I really can't answer the question I'm posing here. As I write, I realize that maybe I'd have to be a psychoanalyst to answer the question. Does the choice reflect back to some sort of actor issue, needing to be the center of attention? Is it a simple late teen rebellious move to go against the grain? Does he just want to prove that you never know what to expect from him? But seriously, even though Radcliffe received rave reviews, it really seems like a totally crazy career choice. Maybe it's just me, but what WOULD Freud think?

Sunday, March 7, 2010

My Prison . . . I Mean Classroom

Based on my understandings of "Discipline and Punishment" by Foucault, I think my own 8th grade classroom discipline style accurately reflects his theories.

In the beginning, the natural reaction to students that are getting out of hand, is to yell, or torture. Nearly all the student teachers I've had in my classroom, and even thinking back on my first year teaching, reflected this technique, which as Foucault points out, does not work. While it feels good for the teacher, or government body, and instills a message in the classroom, among the general population, in the end, you just find yourself yelling, or torturing, over and over again.

The key to running an effective classroom, or prison, is discipline. And that discipline must following Foucault's 4 characteristics: cellular, organic, genetic, and combinatory. To begin with, the discipline plan in the classroom must be cellular, in other words, I have to set-up the classroom in a way that allows the teacher to spatial separate the students into manageable groups. Then, it must be organic, or natural. I teach 8th grade, therefore I can't expect my students to naturally be able to analyze Foucault, but i can expect them to be able to analyze a character from a novel read in class. Third, the discipline in my classroom must genetic, I must be able to ensure the students' activities grow and change over time, to match their abilities. And finally, the classroom must be combinatory. I must be able to allow the students to join together into a single force to achieve a goal.

Once I unknowingly took these 4 characteristics into account in my prison/classroom, maintaining that never-ending gaze over my students/inmates became easy. Maybe the key to classroom management for new teachers isn't in reading educational theory texts, but rather, prison theory.