After our rigorous discussions on Scott and Greenblatt, we’ve finally reached a point where we’re ready to begin bringing new literature into our learning and discussions. We’ve spent the past week reading selections of work by Lucrietus, Genesis, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” I was so excited to read these, “Paradise Lost” and “Metamorphoses” especially; I’m very familiar with “Paradise Lost” and I’ve wanted to read it throughout most of high school, and Ovid’s works have always been fascinating to me as a lover of Greek mythology. I went into both of those pieces mostly expecting to find themes similar to, or at comparable in some way, to Greenblatt, particularly related to Greenblatt’s messages about authority and autonomy. This was something we spent a great deal of time discussing in class and so I was eager to find more points of view and ideas to consider and add to our thinking.
“Paradise Lost” was especially fascinating. Trying to find all of Milton’s ideas and untangling the complexities of his writing was a very rewarding experience, and I can already tell we’re going to have many, many great discussions regarding his work in the future. As expected, autonomy and authority are both very prevalent themes in “Paradise Lost.” While the piece was far too intricate for me to completely unravel in the relatively short amount of time I had to focus on each section of the poem, I was still able to find overlap with Greenblatt in many places, as well as contrast. Trying to understand exactly what Milton was saying about authority and autonomy was difficult, though, and I attempted to relate it to Greenblatt as much as I could without hampering my understanding of it. Reading Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” was quite different than I expected. Ovid’s characteristic anti-authoritarianism wasn’t quite as prevalent as I thought it would be. His representation of the gods did carry some relation to Greenblatt though and presented some interesting questions about Ovid’s views on authority. I’m very excited to begin our discussions of these works, as well as Lucretius and Genesis. They were all fascinating to read and I know there are so many things to learn and discuss. I think we’re very well prepared for this and, even though they seem confusing and complex at first, we’ll be able to break these works down and find their meanings. I’m sure there’s an endless number of connections and themes that I’ve missed in my first read-through, so being able to go back and consider every possibility along with my classmates and sharing ideas with them will be a great experience. I’m very optimistic about what is to come, and I can’t wait to get started and continue our look into new literature and new ideas. I’m excited about reading Frankenstein in the future as well, and I’m already anticipating several themes and ideas that will be very relevant to Scott and Greenblatt’s works. Overall, our reading this week was a challenging yet exciting experience, and I think the next few weeks are going to be very rewarding.
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As of now, it’s been three months since the beginning of school and our deeper look into the works of A.O Scott and Stephen Greenblatt. Although it felt slow going through, and there were certainly times where I felt like I wasn’t making any progress, looking back on it now makes it easy to see just how far our understanding has come since August. Back when we first began, we all had so many questions and we couldn’t even guess where we should begin. There was confusion and frustration and nothing seemed to make sense. When we were going through Scott, it felt the same way for a while. Finding Scott’s arguments and ideas was a difficult challenge, but it greatly benefited us in the end. We spent weeks learning how to share ideas and look extremely closely at every paragraph, sentence, and word that an author used. These are skills that served us very well when we got to Greenblatt. We diagrammed sentences and picked apart every piece of his writing to try to find as much value from it as we could. Although we were once again starting at the beginning, it didn’t feel nearly as frustrating as it had with Scott. We had been practicing for this, and the payoff was easy to see. Greenblatt’s work was invigorating to read and analyze, and the messages he gives to his readers were fascinating to find and consider.
Our last discussion on Greenblatt was one of the most unique and rewarding experiences I’ve had all year, and by far the most memorable moment we’ve had so far. It’s almost impossible to explain, but it felt like all of those hours of effort and thinking finally came together when we began to examine the idea of Greenblatt giving his readers agency. It seems like such a simple concept now, yet it feels like we stumbled onto it completely on accident. It started with an investigation into Greenblatt’s usage of the word agency, and eventually led to this discussion. As soon as we arrived at this idea, it felt like everything just clicked into place. It completely amazes me that such an important idea could come from such an unexpected place. What seemed like a completely different tangent led to us connecting so many pieces and ideas of Greenblatt’s writing. His purpose, his reasoning, and his ideas all made sense once I began to look at them from this viewpoint. Although there are still so many questions left to answer regarding Greenblatt and Scott’s works, I’m very happy with the progress we made, and I’m nothing but excited about what we’ll do going forward, especially now that we’re so close to beginning to read new literature like “Paradise Lost” and “Frankenstein.” I’m certain that all of the lessons we’ve learned from Scott and Greenblatt will be used countless times as we go forward. There’s an endless number of possibilities for thought and questioning to be found, and with Greenblatt and Scott as our tutors, I know we have so many rewarding experiences ahead of us. “Renaissance Self-Fashioning,” by Stephen Greenblatt was the final of the 3 major texts included in our AP Lit summer reading work. Just as the texts by A.O. Scott and Warren Berger, this text brought many new fascinating ideas and questions to consider. In the small portions of the book we read, Greenblatt presents an intriguing history, as well as his own perceptions and ideas, on the nature and development of the notion of the self, and how it can be shaped. One of the first things that stuck out to me about Greenblatt’s writing was his rhetoric and phrasing. More so than any of the other authors we’ve read up to this point, I enjoyed Greenblatt’s word choice and phrasing. During my commonplacing, I wrote down many more quotes than I had previously done for the other authors. Greenblatt’s descriptive writing and ways of detailing his ideas and the history he spoke of stood out as far more unique. Phrases like “The most sustained and relentless assault upon the will,” and “Extraordinary subtle and wry manipulations,” are just a few examples, and demonstrate the vivid and illustrative wording Greenblatt employs, despite discussing a very abstract concept. In addition to his phrasing and word choice, I greatly enjoyed Greenblatt’s references and discussion of the history related to his subject matter. History is one of my own personal favourite subjects, and I’m always happy to find new historical connections in the text that I read. In this particular work, I found myself thinking back to the notion of mentalate, the idea of studying history not just by studying what happened, but what the people of the time perceived to be happening. Understanding how the people of the 1500s viewed themselves, and the notion of self, was a very interesting subject and is certainly a perspective that I plan to keep in mind next time I study this particular time period. Reflecting on this, I can see this is an excellent example of how the learning and thinking I have done, and that I will do in AP Lit, can be extended far beyond the classroom and work we do. The new ways of learning and questioning that we discover and cultivate in AP Lit can easily be applied to many other parts of life, such as, in this case, studying history. I noticed Greenblatt's to be more similar to Scott’s work than Berger’s, along with having its own unique traits. A.O. Scott focused on a very abstract concept and his writing style and ideas encouraged his readers to ask questions and deeply ponder the ideas he presents without a central question or problem being solved necessarily. Berger’s writing was much more focused on informing his readers of and looking over several solutions and answers to a given problem. Greenblatt's work drew on history and his own experiences to create an overarching look at the nature and notion of self, and his ideas can be very open-ended at times, allowing his audience to ask their own questions and make their own conclusions. I greatly enjoyed his work overall, and I think it was an excellent way to end this section of our summer reading. I look forward to discussing Greenblatt, as well as both of the other 2 authors, and sharing my ideas and questions with my classmates once the school year begins.
When reading Warren Berger’s “A More Beautiful Question,” as part of the summer reading, I immediately began to draw comparisons between Berger’s work and A. O. Scott’s. I found Berger’s work to be fascinating to read, albeit for many different reasons than Scott’s work. Like Scott, Berger approaches his central idea from several different perspectives, although he maintains a much more narrow topic of discussion throughout. Whereas Scott rapidly shifted from question to question, topic to topic in his writing, Berger stayed very closely focused on examining the causes and effects of questioning. I found his writing intriguing for completely different reasons than Scott’s. I found his method of examining his topic to be more informative and less abstract and philosophical. He cites scientific studies and research, building his arguments and ideas more on solid evidence and facts rather than abstractions and speculations. Rather than approaching something as vague and expansive as the nature of criticism and personal taste, he aims to answer a much more grounded and concrete problem: curiosity in children and adolescents. As a result, my own observations followed along these lines too. My commonplacing generally tended to be a record of incredible statistics I found shocking or my own thoughts on the problems and solutions he presented, rather than deeper philosophical questions. My “guiding questions” section, which I previously added to my commonplacing while reading Scott’s work, reflected this as well, as they were generally related to solving a problem or questions that would easily be answered by more statistics. As such, I decided to refer to them as “Central questions” for this particular work, as they served more to frame the central ideas of Berger’s writing, rather than guide my own thinking. In general, I found myself to be in a much more problem-solving and critical thinking mindset instead of the inquisitive, self-reflecting mindset I held while reading Scott’s work.
Reading “Better Living Through Criticism” by A. O. Scott was a fascinating and thought-provoking way to begin preparing for the school year in A.P Lit. Scott begins by taking a seemingly straightforward subject, personal taste, and by the end has expanded the discussion to an endless slew of topics and areas of inquiry, giving the reader far more questions to ask and ponder than are answered in his writing. Scott pulls history, art, philosophy, and science, synthesizing a thousand different perspectives and ideas to create a unique and extensive view of the nature of criticism. Scott constantly presents new ideas and questions to his readers, and oftentimes leaves them to draw their own conclusions and thoughts rather than give a single answer. When reading his writing and writing my commonplace book, I found that I always had a new question to consider, and I eventually decided to try to find generalized, guiding questions to focus on as I went through Scott’s work. I focused on things like “What does taste say about you?”, “What is culture? How is it defined?”, and “What gives something meaning beyond its form?” Just these questions alone are a reflection of how varied and inclusive Scotts view of criticism is.
Every page brought something thought-provoking with it, new things to learn or connections I never expected to make. I was always finding new categories and subjects I wanted to incorporate into my commonplacing. I wrote down interesting word choices and new vocabulary, connections I made while reading, quotes, key themes and ideas, and an array of miscellaneous thoughts and ideas I could barely fit into categories at all. The question and answer style portions Scott included after each chapter were also very interesting to me. They provided a glance into the closer details of his writing. They let the reader look into the thought process and work that went into his writing, as well as find a more personal side to Scott, as his writing was generally separated from his own personal opinions and tastes. They served as a place for Scott to be reflexive about his research and ideas and encouraged me to do the same. Overall, I found Scott's work to be an exciting entry into AP Literature. It allowed me to begin to prepare for the year ahead and got me started on asking as many questions as I can come up with, many of which I didn’t know I had. Going further into the summer reading and AP Lit as a whole, I plan to take many of the lessons and approaches I learned from Scotts writing with me. What questions to ask, which parts of the writing I should look closer at and focus on, organizing my thoughts in my commonplace book, all of these are things I’ll be holding onto in the year to come. I greatly anticipate the many ideas we’ll be exposed to this year, both from the works of literature we read and the ones we share with each other. Just as Scott did, I hope to find as many unique perspectives and thoughts as I can and ask far more questions than I can ever answer. |
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