Considerations

hopeembraced3:

humanqs:

Just last week my students and I wrapped up our study of a story by Stephen Vincent Benet entitled “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” In this story, I found an opportunity to get students to consider some human questions; that is, questions that deal with things general to the human experience or…

 I think it’s also important to remember that people were less likely to think of their thoughts and feelings because they were often incredibly irrelevant to society. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that there became an emphasis on the individual. I’m not saying that people did not have their own thoughts, opinions, or feelings, but I don’t think that exploring the inner workings of the mind was as encouraged. The monarch, aristocracy, and the Church told people what they should think and feel. I could be wrong in this, but it’s just my initial reaction. It’s also important to think about the audience and the history of the author. Who was the story written for? How could the author’s life in historical context affect his/her style?

Also, couldnt it be that writers kept their personal thoughts and feelings in a diary or journal and felt that it was more appropriate to have a more detached voice in their “professional” writing?

This is very instructive and follows my general assumptions. I do want to locate the dangers of my vague generality of speaking on perhaps centuries of literature as “old” and lacking the inner-self. I am speaking strictly from the limited viewpoint of a freshman English teacher and the texts that the student body that I operate with encounters (which includes a limited smattering of texts from Homer to the modern short story). I am unqualified to pin down that transition in literary and social history when the inner-self started to pervade literature, but my point should still be relevant: educators today have a greater task today to help students make connections to the literature that precludes the inner-self while bringing in current literature that allows for the same literary rigor, but includes a personality that is relatable and “real.” Our students live in a reality in which they can gorge themselves on personality and the inner-self. Facebook status updates, Teen Mom, Real Life, reality programming offers condensed focus on the minutiae of inner turmoil. Students simply do not envision narrative in any other way.

This is why I think Shakespeare, if taught correctly, can be such a powerful experience for students. Shakespeare exists in both worlds: it is apart of the cannon traditionally taught and also includes the inner-self. In fact, according to Harold Bloom in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Shakespeare invents the inner-self or what he calls the personality.

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare’s greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness. Insofar as we ourselves value, and deplore, our own personalities, we are the heirs of Falstaff and Hamlet, and all of the other persons who throng Shakespeare’s theater of what might be called the colors of spirit.

Also, as Shelley phrased it, Shakespeare created “forms more real than living men.” 

With this in mind, the trick remains to find a way to help the student to wade through the language of Shakespeare to get to the hyper-self of Shakespeare’s characters.

theanswergirl:

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Awesome. 

hopeembraced3:

Here’s a really good article stating why so many people love to bash him…even when he’s winning games for the Broncos!

“I could not figure out what was causing this onslaught of venom for a guy almost everybody claims to like, and I finally decided it is more about us. He makes us…

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also “about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents.” As the researchers explained, “This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.”