The Beauty of Inflections

I thought that this weeks reading was fairly easy to understand and pretty interesting. I think for once I actually didn't struggle with any of it and understood it pretty much completely. I found it particularly interesting when poetry was compared to humanity and the human body, stating that one cannot exist outside of the other just as poetry, despite all it's historial and sociological influences, cannot exist outside of text and it's rules of grammer and lexis.

The Touch of the Real

I dont think I understood any point out of the first 7-8 pages of Touch of the Real, it got me really confused (probably if I had read Clifford Geertz "Thick Description" it would have made the reading easier), but after those pages it has become considerably more comprehensible. There are two things, which I was particularly interested about.

Firstly a part from p. 30 that says "..there were other techniques and other texts, outside the conventional boundaries of the literary, that possessed a nearly comperable power.The greatest challange lay not simply in exploring these other texts...but in making the literary and the nonliterary seem to be each other thick description." It surey happens with film texts as well and I like the way he puts it; "making" each others thick description, because it seems to emphasize that sometimes this proccess is not natural.

Secondly, when the author talks about how literature gives an "athmospheric Historism" (I think the expression is really felicitous) he says it is a "representation of reality", but with the examples he makes he seems to emhasize that the literary writings portray their era, their reality, it seems to suggest that they reflect the historty in which the texts have been created. I do agree that in many cases this is true and most history books gives an athmospheric Historism of their age, but literary and its fantasy can do more than that. For example Mika Waltari is a finish novelist and in his book The Egyptian (Sinuhe egyptiläinen) he gives an incredibly true-to-age "athmospheric Historisim that has no direct connection to his life experience.

In all honestly, I was a bit confused about this piece, it often felt quite woolly in its attempt toput across some of its points. For example:

'If you are pumping up your bicycle tires because you are preparing to go for a bike ride, a thick description of your pumping requires a reference to your intended ride, whether that ride occurs or not; if, on the oter hand, you are pumping up your bicycle tires because you want to strengthen the muscles of your arms so that the bullies will no longer kick sand at you at he beach, the thick description of your pumping would differ accordingly'.

This little relation to literature left we detached from the piece. Additionally though, in the later stages of the text, mentions of Homer, Dante, Joyce, Madam Bovary- all texts that I haven't read- made it very context specific, and again I was left confused.

I did, however, appreciate ideas such as anthropology and literary criticism 'drawing upon their particular strengths, strengths that depended at least as much upon the differences between their characteristic texts as upo their surprising similarities.'
The contrast and comparison- the concept of a un-straight-forward correlation- was particularly interesting.

Why Angel of Death?

I found the reading quite straightforward as well as interesting. The example of Snow White resembles a lot to Freudian interretation of the story of Oedipus, but I think it is meant to be similar. I think the author draws the conlusion (if I nderstod it well) that there are two kinds of women representation in patriarchal writing: the active, loud (writing/speaking) monster, who has authority, therefore she i masculine and the passive, silent angel, who does not have authority, thus she is feminine. I only did not get the part about the how women become th "Angel of Death". and how or why they "kill themselves into art in order to appeal man". I do not see how the image of death comming into picture, though I have read page 14 through more times, which I think sort of explains it, but it did not explain it to me clearly enough.

Snow White

I enjoyed the reading and thought it was quite interesting. I was especially intrigued by the analysis of Snow White. The only thing that confused me was although it was clear that the angel and monster masks were prevalent in the fairytale, I couldn't really understand exactly why it was used as an example. I didn't draw any conclusions from the analysis maybe due to the language of the text, which was often quite complex or the fact that I'm a little bit dense.

I don't know whether Damon is describing Freud or one of the cleaners at Top B...

I acually found it to be really interesting, it grabbed my attention more so than the Freud article and the fact that I know relatively little about Baktin in general meant that my reading wasn't hindered by knowing 'context'. The opening re-enforced what we were discussing about the definition of 'feast' and allowed a form of reference to go back to but I did find the 'parody' section interesting, but the talk of Rabelais was rather lost on me.

Bakhtin

LOL at Damon's post. I found this week's reading short but sweet, as it was not as heavy-going as Freud. Like the others, I also found Bakhtin's comments on the use of parody confusing, perhaps because that part was not talked about in the lecture.

Bakhtin

I guess I'm in the same boat as the rest of you guys, i found this piece a fairly easy read and quite informative, however i am a little unsure if i have grasped the section on Parody as well as i ought to. In the main i thought the piece was fairly self explanatory, don't know if the rest of you agree...lets just say it makes loads more sense than the pretentious ramblings of an incestuous, sex crazed, misogynist cocaine addict from Vienna...naming no names...

Parody

Much like Ben and Laura (such a conformist) I struggled with the section on parody. This was mainly because that for the rest of the extract I found the language fairly easy to grasp but the section on parody seemed like a gauntlet of polysyllabic mega-words that left me a little bit crossed eyed.

Bakhtin

Reading Bakhtin was not extremely hard, because he seems to repeat his thoughts, so even if I did not completely understand a point of his, he either explained it in the following sentence or he used synonoyms. The explanation of material bodily principle is still not clear, even though he writes about it extensively. Does material bodily principle mean that ideas are turned into down-to-earth concepts? It might have been the case that I completely misunderstood this part, because I dont know how it "represents all the people" and "how can it be contained in the people".(p.47)
(I hope this made some sense, even though I am not very clear about it.)
Could I also have a question about the lecture? What is the difference between Dialogism and Heteroglossia. Sorry, but it was to quick for me to catch it.

Bakhtin

I wasn't sure, like Ben, about the ideas of parody on pg 48. I have always thought of parody as a comic device which is quite light - hearted but Bakhtin seems to claim that medieval parody is unique in this and that 'formalist literary parody of modern times' has a 'solely negative character and is deprived of regenerating ambivalence.' Otherwise i thought Bakhtin's writing was clear but sometimes i felt that i wanted more evidence to exemplify what he was saying but this might be because i haven't read Rabelais. 

Bakhtin

I found this weeks reading far easier to understand (unsurprisingly). i don't really understand the ideas of parody discussed e.g the idea of paody previously being one that wasn't negative (p48). apart from that, i found it all pretty clear. ben

Freud and dreams

I find Freud's work to be highly interesting and appealing as it allows an insight into a realm of which we are not equipped to analyse ourselves. From my reading of the piece, and prior study of Frued, i found that his ideas are not perticularly hard to grasp. Yes, he does use very lengthy examples, which can seem contrived, but they are not at all difficult to follow and they back his argument up sufficiently. The main point in which i began to get confused was the introduction of his terminology; i had to keep checking what the terms meant in order to follow his writings. I agree with his 'psycho analysis' approach and i find his 'discovery of the trains of thought' very interesting. i would argue though that these interpretations will differ hugely from person to person, as we interpret things based on our own knowledge, understanding and experiences. Overall, i found this piece fairly easy to comprehend and it was very appealing to read.

Freud and Dreamwork

I found the reading this week very interesting and initially not that hard to read. Dream interpretations have always been a topic that I have been interested in, so much so that on my radio show here I have a feature in which I try and interpret a listener's dream each week.

Much of what Freud says makes sense, especially with regard to how dreams fulfill our unconscious desires, and this is easily recognised in children. (I remember when I was little not getting a toy that I wanted, but that night I then dreamt hat it was Christmas Day and that I got the toy as a present). When it comes to Freud finding the meaning of Adult's dreams it becomes harder to follow him. I think I grasped that through distortion and dream displacement, our unconscious desires are realised, but not in an overt way, so as not to disturb us in our sleep. Freuds language at this point, whilst in depth, did seem to meander, and the text ended up being extremely long-winded.

Freud 'On Dreams'

I found Freud's interpretation of the meaning of dreams interesting and at times very much agreed with his suggestions, particularly towards the beginning of the piece. However, I frequently felt that his arguments were perhaps too detailed and prolonged and as a result of this I often found myself going beyond the point of understanding into confusion. This most notably occurred towards the end of the section on dream-displacement, in the paragraph beginning 'I cannot leave the subject...' on page 102. Rather than concluding his argument this paragraph complicated my understanding of anything he had mentioned on the subject previously, leaving me questioning whether I had in fact understood any of the earlier material.

Freud...hmmmn

Having read both articles on dreams, i feel that the "interpretation" thesis is far more understandable than the "meaning of dreams". I enjoyed Freud's explanations, I'm especially interested in his statement that outlines that "verbal malformations resemble those which are familiar in paranoia but which are also present in hysteria and obsessions." pg 145 second paragraph. In the context of the article I'm a little unsure as to what he is trying to say, he is clarifying his interpretation of the appearance of words in dreams, past that and I'm lost unfortunately?! In the other article i was especially interested in Freud's discussion on "Censorship" alluding to the reasons we forget portions of our dreams, stating that dreams are "the guardians of sleep" as opposed to the common view that they are an obscure disturbance. pg 118

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

I fond this piece interesting, so much so that I carried on reading into the next piece The Meaning of Dreams. I agree with Ed that the last segment became too convulted and was had to follow, but then tracing back through the article saw that this was more-or-less aparent throughout, and I didn't actually understand it as much as I thought I had.The reasoning behind his dreams was vivid and well-explained but at times the over-indulgence in his explanations was apparent. Perhaps the part I followed closely and understood best at wat Freud was trying to get at was witin The Work of Condensation, as the rhetoric within the passage beginning 'How, then, are we to picture physical conditions..... purposive reflection accompanied by consciousness' provoked a lot of thought.

Freud on Dreams- Kristina

The more Freud goes on about displacement the less I understand the concept. I'm particularly lost on page 104 where he mentions the process of regression in relation to displacement. I did the bad thing and looked up some summaries on the internet, all of which make more sense than the original reading..  Most of the other arguments in the reading make sense, though some of the latent content connections in his specimen dream seem far-fetched, making it almost an exploitation of how easily objects can be linked to ideas and manipulating the process to apply to his theory. There is a line from Waking Life which contradicts Freud's argument that "no dream is prompted by motives other than egoistic ones", with the argument that "a single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another."

Displacement - Ed

I found Freud's interpretations of dreams interesting and thought that his assertions on how they were formed seemed fairly water tight. For the majoirty of the piece I found myself not only understanding what he was writing but also agreeing with it. However, the last segment, The Work of Displacement, threw me a little. I struggled to understand his conclusions and did not really grasp any of the concepts in this section other than one alluded to earlier in the piece about how repeated themes in dream-thought became the central point in dream-content.

Freud On Dreams; Ben

I found it hard to keep track of what he was saying and so didnt get past about page 105, being completely lost by then. a specific idea i couldn't grasp was the idea of 'dream displacement'. he describes it in the last paragrph on page 99. he seems to be saying something about when dream-thoughts go from being traceable back to a source to being something more unexplianable. im sure im wrong here and its far more complicated but im struggling to make sense of it.