I admit it. This class has been my favorite. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the beginning of the semester but from day one I knew it was exactly what I was interested in: the amazing religious power and purpose of literature, especially poetry ‘for she was the maker of the song she sang! The ever hooded, tragic gestured sea was merely a place by which she walked to sing!’ courtesy of Wallace Stevens. The mountainous atmospheres that we see every day don’t help us understand who we are or what the mountains are until we see them with the spectacles of literature. The mountains are surreal because I wrote them so. Every time I charge down a white slope, surfing through tress and aiming for air, I can’t share that experience unless I use literature, language.
In the beginning of class we were asked to think of the critic as a parasite, and it is exactly so. Criticism is letterally made of the same thing it criticizes! We have all become parasites: talking and writing about literature is the next best thing to reading and writing it. Maybe equal. But when you think of criticism as what we talk about when we talk about literature than criticism is natural, as natural as talking about a friend or instructor – some students are already extremely passionate critics.
This Survey of Literary Criticism class, English 300, with Dr. Sexson was too much fun. People galloped with Don Quixote, discussed anagogy and monads with Frye, impersonated previous literary critics, celeberties, DQ and Sancho, and did all this in public; all the while learning and having fun. It must be exhilarating to be Dr. Sexson and see all these innocent college students bloom into experienced literary buffs and critics. And we couldn’t have done it without him. I still plan on writing one more blog on Saturday; I’m heading to work right now. I want to explore Alice through the spectacles of anagogy. I don’t care if it’s late; it’s about the experience.
