"I do no think that word means what you think it means"

When reading this chapter I kept thinking of "Princes Bride" and the line Inigo Montoya says, hence the tittle of this blog.
The first part of this chapter felt like Bressler was saying a whole bunch of things and yet he didn't even know what he was talking about. I will give an example. On page 107 when he is talking about Derrida changing the way one looks at binary operations he says "Such a reversal is possible because truth is ever elusive, for we can always de-center the center if any be found." If that's not someone just trying to sound smart I don't know what is. Frankly I was worried that this chapter was going to be a repeat of the confusion I felt in the last chapter especially since there were a few pages that were taken straight from chapter 5.
Thankfully, in the last few pages of this chapter Bressler actually goes into what it takes to do a Deconstructional analysis of a text. I realized that I tend to read with a deconstruction point of view. I like to find new ways of looking at texts and Deconstruction allows a reader to come up with new ways of looking at a text that has been read and re-read.
Deconstruction is fun because it puts so much emphasis on the reader. It can become like a game finding new meanings by putting importance on things that the writer hasn't stressed.

Words! Words! Words! (ch5)

I'm not going to lie, I was lost at least 3/4 of the time in chapter 5. I could comprehend the words but not what each sentence as a whole was saying.
This is what I got from it though.
Structuralism.
It's not what the text is saying but how it is being said. What a reader should be studying is more of the word choice of the author and less of the meaning behind those words. The reader has to know both the definition of words and also the idioms of phrases in order to understand a text thoroughly. A native speaker doesn't usually have to think and cipher out the meanings of idioms because they are such a part of culture. I can also see that when using a structuralist approach to reading one has to look at the text within the context of the whole genre that it is in. Basically the purpose of reading is breaking the text's code and only when that code is broken can one find the true meaning.
Structuralists are interested in why and how people create symbols in literature; such as darkness equaling evil, or light equalling good, and where these ideas come from. Structuralists are interested in where words come from more than the art of the text itself.
That is all I could glean from this chapter. Please correct me if I'm wrong and I hope you both can shed some light on the chapter for me with your blogs. :)

Beware of those who read horror, they just might kill you... (ch4)

We all know that texts can impact a reader, but how much do readers impact the text? It makes sense that authors are writing for a specific audience, and it is often obvious to the reader when they are not the intended audience for a work. When a reader doesn't understand the signs and symbols in a work it just becomes confusing and tiresome, but often one can create their own meaning within a work although it doesn't necessarily agree with already established ideas.
The best thing I have learned from taking so many lit. classes and reading so much different theory is that you don't necessarily have to be the perfect audience for a text in order to find the art in it.
The problem with interpreting text is the idea that every reader has their own interpretation and often times that interpretation can be proved within the text. Often times there is no concrete answers and if the author never cares to explain it, us as readers are in the dark. I have a personal experience with this, I wrote a paper showing that the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "A Tell-Tale Heart" is a woman, I could back it up with different points in the text, yet this character cannot be proven concretely as either male or female. It is simple to create a theory with a text and often times it can be proven within that text, although it is up to each individual to agree with this theory.
Another example is Don McLean's song "American Pie" tons of critics have tried to explain what the song means but when McLean was asked, he refused to tell them the meaning because he liked hearing everybody else's interpretations.
Readers will always add their own ideas into a text and like David Bleich believed these interpretations and ideas are challenged by ones own peers and if the idea passes the test then they will be accepted as truth, and if they are not accepted it's back to the drawing board for the reader.

New Criticism (Ch 3)

The idea of New Criticism at the base line seems like a dream come true for students. You just have to read the text and nothing else, no studying history, and biographies, all you need is a good dictionary (or Internet access) and your set.
The question is, can you come to the right interpretation of a text without knowing its historical context or anything about the author. I think you can find relevance in a piece without knowing about the author or histroy. You don't need to be a Shakespeare expert to see the importants of works like Hamlet and how it deals with the struggles of human nature.
How many people though can actually be good New Critics. If you know about these theories and criticisms, most likely, you know about the works you are reading about, and the time periods these people were writing in. The question comes back to the "innocent reader" you can find meaning within works you know nothing about the history or the author, but how many critcs know nothing, and how can you forget about the details you do know when looking at a text?
I have read works that I know nothing about the context it is written in, and have come up with meanings and felt their power. I found though that often when I do find out more about what the author was going through at the time the text was written it adds more meaning and understanding to the work.

So 'n' So Begot So 'n' So Begot... (ch 2)

When I read the second chapter of Charles Bressler's book I couldn't help but feel like I was reading a family history of theory. Plato, who is, lets face it the father of a lot of things, starts us off with this idea that poetry must be the ideal. I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live in a place where poetry is helping to form the lives people. They must have been doing a pretty good job with it too, if Plato wanted all poetry to be honorable and good. It would be interesting to know how much our own lives are shaped by art,(of any medium)and how much we are unaware of it.
Just like families, Aristotle comes around and has his own ideas. He feels like poetry doesn't have to be about history at all, but should be more about human nature in general. He believed this is where the truth lies not in history but in what could have been. Throughout this chapter you see how these men built their own ideas on each other's theories. Horace believed that good poetry was imitation. Longinus by reading the others figured out how to spot a "classic", and the idea that we can be moved by a literary work. Dante wanted to bring this high art down to the level of the people and fill it with symbols. Sidney takes Aristotle's idea and makes it his own pushing harder that poetry IS truth, not just a way to get closer to it. Dryden brings back the idea of imitation. Pope came along and brought his ideas of how to criticize poetry. Wordsworth takes Dante's idea and makes poetry even more for the average person by using everyday language. The list keeps going on.
The one thing that is very clear is how you must know the ideas in order to create your own. Bressler in Chapter 1 said we bring every experience with us when we read. When we read we gain experience, and that is how literary criticism was created by knowing what was created before and seeing the patterns. When reading about these men in literary history there is always the thread of the importance of poetry. So many believed that poetry is the greatest of the creations of the human race. Arnold said that it is poetry that keeps things held together and makes the world understandable.
Like life in general you must know your past before you can move on to new things. We must know what our literary ancestors said, before we can come up with our own way of criticism.

The Joys of Reading

When I first started reading the first chapter of Charles Bressler's book Literary Criticism, honestly I was worried. The first two pages were on what people say in lit class, this was nothing new to me. I have been witnessing opposing views of students for the past 5 years and often times came up with my own arguments. I figured if Bressler is spending this much time on this, what else will he explain thoroughly. The first chapter though was a great reminder of what literary criticism and theory is all about. When reading we must interact with the text, ask questions, and become involved. Our own personal beliefs play a big part in how we take in a text and understand its meaning. Bressler also explains how the already established theories, and criticisms help us as readers define what we have read. The main theories are a good way to articulate ideas, but they shouldn't stifle the creativity of the reader. When reading a text there is room to interpret, there is room to place our own views within it, that is why it touches and moves us. The interesting and fun thing about reading is the opposing opinions that can be brought up when a group of people read the same story. Each reader connects to the story in a different way because of the filters their own experiences have created. We cannot help but bring our own world views and philosophies to everything we read, and there are so many different theories to help us as readers express these views.