Post 13

I attended Southeastern's production of The Imaginary Invalid and watched the entire play.

The Imaginary Invalid was a unique and creative production. I enjoyed a number of things:

-The creativity worked through the costumes and stage
-The overly dramatic acting from all the performers
- The modernity of a 17th century play


I will admit, I left the play with an excruciating headache and a handful of questions. I place most of the blame on the fact that I felt like there was too much going on that I could not focus on the dialogue of the play. But that is not to say it was a bad play. I just felt unsettled about the ending and the purpose of the play that I immediately, after viewing it, I went and did some research:

The Imaginary Invalid was Molière's last play. The bitter irony that comes from the play is the Moliere wrote about and played a man who thought he was dying when Moliere, himself died hours after the finale of the play. The play was made to entertain King Louis XIV. Firstly viewed as strictly comical and a joke, but throughout years of criticism the dialogue has been triumphed for its creative connection between the artist and the creator. The drama serves almost as a comical act poking fun at drama while communicating the connection with the real world.

After viewing the play and reading several critques about it, I have come to the conclusion that I wish that I could see the play at its original intended performance. I would therefore be able to compare the changes and modernization Professor Dixon added to it. But from what I could see from the play, I believe Dixon did a fair job at making it an appealing performance for the reasons I listed above and more. But for those same reasons, I feel that I did not get to experience the full intended purpose of the plot.

Post 12

So I am having difficulty finding something to write about for this post. However, I think I have now decided to look back on one of the first readings and post I did for the class and see how my views may or may have not changed.

In the story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” there were many different interpretations about love from the characters in the story. Many of the views on love which we would not consider love in our own lives. And that is because love is often reduced into personal opinion, something I put in my original post about this. And if that is the basis of our definition of love, then any love would be acceptable.

Love seems to have always been an important subject for people. We have already covered the theme of Love in almost all the readings thus far in this course. From the day we are born, we seek love and intimacy. And a lack of love causes people to resort to a lot of different emotions and attitudes. In class, many commented on how they were seeing the view of non-Christians and why they saw love in these ways. At first I saw this as a typical response to this text. However, I feel I understand the impact on a lack of love may be more destructive for a non-Christian opposed to a Christian.

But let us not fall into the trap of assuming our definitions and understandings of love are superior to that of a non-Christian. Love is a strong feeling that can hinder even the strongest of Christians. We have already read the impact both love and death had on the great theologian CS Lewis.

As Christians, we pursue an intimate relationship with our Creator by spending adequate time with Him. Whether that is in prayer or in his word, sufficient time must be spent with Him in order to develop intimacy. Our relationship with God should be a reflection of our relationships with others in our lives. However, that is not always the case. People may get lost in their own interpretation of love because of the feelings associated with their love life. In our relationship with God, it is not always about the feeling but rather the relationship. The discipline put into the development and continuous growth of the relationship shows our willingness to express love for Him. Therefore, love, whether with our Savior or our significant other, must not be degraded to the feelings but rather be built up by the willingness to commit.

Post 11

I feel that after experiencing about a month or so of blogging in this class, I understand a lot of fundamental concepts in literature that can come about from simply adapting the discipline of blogging into the curriculum. “This course emphasizes doing things with texts instead of reading passively” and I believe the majority of this “doing” comes from the work from the blog. In class, we interact as a whole class and in small groups. We have learned the importance of effective dialogue. Not just simply sitting and talking about our day, but incorporating literature into our small group dialogue. The discussions we have in both class and our small groups carry out into our blogs. I feel that this is where effective participation takes place. This is because blogging feels less restrictive then just writing an essay. As bloggers, we get to explore a range of expressions via the “blogging land”. Our interpretations of the text we read in class can be spilled out onto our blogs in many effective ways such as just simple putting our ideas and own personal interpretations on the text. We can way out different positions on the text. We can point out problematic elements to the text or give our own personal reflections. Most importantly, we allow room for comments and criticism from the rest of the class. We continue our class discussions outside the classroom. Because we have allowed these many forms of expression into our homework assignments, I have learned to engage in the text in class. I understand the effectiveness of painting in response to the Book of Joel or observing Professor Corrigan shed the layers of an onion. All of these things help us as students to participate in the text instead of letting it go over our heads. Blogging has been a major contribution to this concept. I enjoy finding connections in the text and applying it to my blog. When I sit back and think about how to reflect about the text I gather many questions and ideas. Blogging as helped me as a reader and a student dig deeper into the text and get value out of what we read and discuss in the class.

"I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes."

Post 10

Before class on Monday, I remember discussing the poem with someone else in the class. We were talking about Lincoln’s assassination and the purpose behind the poem. The person I was talking to gave great insight to the fact that we, as a generation, have yet to go through something like that. We have not gone through and mourned the death of a president. And I try to imagine how I would feel. Would I feel terribly upset? Puzzled? Would I feel as if I was left astray and abandoned by someone completely significant even though they were not someone I had a deep, personal relationship with? How do you properly mourn the life of a leading figure in our country?

Walt Whitman’s poem hits on a number of themes or emotions such as love, hope, life, despair and rebirth. And all are portrayed through the life of the lilacs. The lilacs seem to serve Whitman as a guide to deal with and accept death. Lilacs, like humans, go through the repeated cycle of life. We live, we die. But still lilacs are not humans but Whitman treats the flower as a coping mechanism and a tool into figuring out a proper way to deal with Lincoln’s death.

Was it really his death that was a big deal? Or was it the time of his death? Was America truly more upset about a man of power ceasing or the state they were left in? And maybe this is why Whitman wrote this poem. Many people said in class that the poem was difficult to read. And I agree, it was difficult to read but perhaps that was the point of the complexity and difficulty in the poem. Because death itself is not a simple subject to unfold. Many questions are left unanswered; many feelings left incapable of digesting. Yet we continously find ourselves comparing such complex things in life with something as simple as a flower.

Post 9 Onion

Readers can make three false assumptions when reading poems. “The first is assuming that they should understand what they encounter on the first reading, and if they don’t, that something is wrong.” My first attempt at reading “The Traveling Onion” by Naomi Shihab Nye I felt as if I needed to seek out the meaning behind the Onion. What exactly was the meaning Nye was trying to get across to me as a reader? And that is when I made the first mistake as a reader: I felt as if my first read through the poem should have been something where I could immedialty picked up the meaning. However, after writing down my first ideas about eh poem, it made me want to read more and try to decode the poem.

The next false assumption when reading poems “is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, the each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point.” I feel like I do not make this mistake. Or that I want to convince myself that I do not make this mistake. Because I believe if I narrow down my opinion on a poem then I being stubborn. But maybe I was being a bit stubborn when assuming that I could “decode” the poem when I was so eager to pick it up and read it again.


“The third is assuming that the poem can mean anything readers want it to me.” After evaluating different views on what Naomi was describing in her poem, and listening to other people’s opinions on the poem, I would see how people could easily fall under this assumption. I feel like poetry is unconvential writing that can be appreciated when explored in convential terms such as our “literary experiment” in class.

Post 8

The idea of reading scripture as Literature was a great transition after reading about theme in The Literary Experience last class. I sometimes find myself neglecting to view the Bible as a work or literature (possibly because it seems blasphemous or something around those lines to some people). But reading Scripture from this perspective does require “a willing surrender” in order to fully soak in the text. In reading literature, we must learn to let go of what we believe we know in order to assemble a new point of view. This should be the same as with the bible. And I also believe a particular theme or moral should not be what we seek from reading the Word. In order to get the full value and understanding from scripture we must learn to participate in it, which means being full involved in a literal and figurative sense.

While reading the Book of Joel for class, it was difficult for me to feel like I was participating in the text. I will admit I was not fully engaged with the story. However, in class on Monday we had to find a spot outside where we would read passages from the book out loud. This made me understand the story a little bit more and feel the commandment in the tone. Rereading this Book from a literary perspective helped experience the strong sense of imagery and the poetic qualities of the story.

It is important to become fully engaged in Scripture as it is to be engaged in literature. In literature, we, as readers, are trying to understand from the writer’s viewpoint. In Scripture, we are trying to understand from the Lord’s perspective, yearning for revelation through His word. We never truly receive the full revelation of all God has in store in our lives, but careful examination of the Word helps reveal His desires.

Post 7: Theme

“We want texts to mean something.” And I think this is why we, as readers, go through “an insistent search for theme.” But sometimes when we believe there is always a theme to be searched for we lose sight of the qualities that make the story what it is, like chapter 3 of The Literary Experience stated.

In Charles Perrault’s story, Little Red Riding Hood, it seems easy to pick out the theme or moral of this story because it deals with an issue that we’re familiar with. And maybe this is the reason why we should not always look for themes in stories: we begin to generalize the meaning behind the story based on our own experiences.

But sometimes the meaning behind a story is not as simple as Little Red Riding Hood. Stories are not always as easily written and understandable as Little Red Riding Hood. Sometimes the ending is unpredictable like when the girl “took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead” in James Thurber’s The Girl and the Wolf. However, sometimes it’s not necessarily the content or words of the story that build meaning behind it. It is the qualities and the techniques of the writing that help build something purposeful from the story such as in a poem.

One of my favorite passages from chapter 3 of The Literary Experience was this: “Literary works and films may well ask us to step into unfamiliar territory and see things in context of the artist’s vision. To some extent, this involves a willing surrender. We approach works of art receptive to the notion that they may offer us something new, that they may widen our experience or deepen our powers of sympathy and empathy.” We must learn to surrender what is already familiar to us in order to experience something new and unexplored.

Post 6

Pass.