Tid-bits on Critic Henry Louis Gates

A few things to know about my critic, Henry Louis Gates:
*Grew up in West Virginia
*He had a football injury when he was young, and having medical aspirations, he diagnosed himself and relayed it to the doctor. The doctor said that his condition was "psychosimatic"...because his dream of being a doctor was considered over-reaching for an African American.
*Gates' criticism focus' on the African American literature and culture. His works were an effort to establish the African American canon: he stated in the New York Times Book Review, "our efforts to define a black American canon are often decried as racist, separatist, nationalist, or 'essentialist" but he honestly feels that the African American canon needs to be established because it contrasts the Western/Euro canon.
*"He argues that most systems used to judge art are culturally specific. Black work cannot be appreciated or criticized on the basis of a Western cultural aesthetic" (Gale).
*For example: "signifying" in black culture (as far as I understand) is the questioning of the literal. Because the languages, the stories, the folktales, and the music of the early African American slaves were a form of masked communication.
*He wrote an article for Sports Illustrated saying that the black community saw success through basketball, not intellecutalism..."a very poor index to our social advancement or political progress," he wrote in the New York Times — but also by blacks' attitude toward education and athletics. "Imbued with a belief that our principal avenue to fame and profit is through sport, and seduced by a win-at-any-cost system that corrupts even elementary school students, far too many black kids treat basketball courts and football fields as if they were classrooms in an alternative school system," (Gale).

About: My Book and Heart Shall Never Part

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of My Book and Heart Shall Never Part is it's form. On the first day of class we talked about literature's pervasiveness. It's everywhere, even in Chemistry, we said. Well, I believe that literature is also in the movies, just as poetry is in music. It makes sense: a popular book will recieve the honor of a hollywood stamp and play soon in a theater near you. I.E. the Davinci Code...
Well, if literature can be found anywhere, it does make sense that you can make an essay in any form...like a movie. And then I will agree with Ben and his frustration with technology. (It's supposed to work!) A written essay doesn't skip, but there are many things that words cannot do that cute kids can.

Pyros Game

The pyros game is the sacred marriage between the "bottom" and the "top". On the charts, when you get to the bottom, there's no place to go but up.

T.S. Elliott said, "We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of our exploring we shall arrive where we stared and know the place for the first time."

More Charts!!

Anceint-- Mimentic-- World (universe)
Neo-classical-- Pragmatic-- Audience
Modern-- Objective-- Work
Romantic-- Expressive-- Artist

The Idea of Order at Key West and the above chart

The World= the sea (even though it's no longer important, it's just the place she sings)

The Artist= is the singer

The Work= is the song

The Audience= is the understood "we"/ their lives have changed because of her song

She is the poet. Poesis: "The Maker" in greek

Dante's 4 Levels of Interpretation

1. Literal-- historic

2. Alagorical-- connects old and new testament

3. Moral-- how one should act in the present

4. Anagogical-- spiritual/hell and heaven

Like the other theories we've been studying, Dante's levels are declining, with the most important--Anagogical--as the base.