After reading George Will's Literary Politics and Stephen Greenblatt's The Best Way to Kill our Literature is to Turn it into a Decorous Celebration of the New World Order I came to the conclusion that both authors have different opinions on the content of literature. George Will believes that literature always reflects political beliefs. For example, in his essay he states that "all literature is, whether writers are conscious of it or not, political." Will also argues that people read too much into the meaning of the text and interpret it in their own way. This leads to the reader making false conclusions of what the text was supposed to mean. Stephen Greenblatt has an opposing view. He believes that readers should look for underlying meaning of the text. I think that he wants readers to analyze stories so that they can come up with their own opinions. To argue both of their points they use The Tempest. Will states that “The Tempest reflects the imperialist rape of the Third World.” Greenblatt on the other hand believes that the Tempest is “full of conspicuous allusions to contemporary debates over the project of colonization.” He believes that if we relate colonialism to The Tempest then we will better understand what it “has to teach us about forgiveness, wisdom, and social atonement.”
I think that both authors make good arguments, but they are very extreme about their opinions. I agree with Will in some ways because I think that sometimes people over analyze things and come up with things that do not reflect what the author meant for it to be. Although I do believe that Greenblatt made some good points and that it is important to be aware of when the text was written so that you can better analyze the meaning. Both articles had good arguments.
I agree with you Jillian. I think people often do read too far into texts. Sometimes they analyze something and then analyze that until the whole text is mutilated into something it never was. The artist who originally wrote the text wouldn’t be able to get their point across. This sort of reminds me of the video we watched about Girl Talk. How he totally warped others peoples songs to fit his ideas. Some people also do not agree with what he is doing. Although the original meaning of the text could be lost, I think we should continue to analyze texts. I think forming your own opinions and ideas based or other people art is good. It is creative and interesting. As long as the obvious meanings are understood, we should be free to read and interpret the text however we want to.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jillian and Haley about reading too far into the text, because sometimes the author writes short and straight to the point. On the other hand sometimes they write their passage with a hidden messege in it and you have dig apart the passage and look deeper into what the meaning of the passage is. From reading your blog i understood more things that i was confused about in the beginning.
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