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Why should we even read literature?


Centrist Simon Steele

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Because if we didn't read the Bible and W.B. Yeats we would be without that so insightful so easy to remember quote, so we can insightfully describe and understand the era(s) in which we live: "The Second Coming". Without literature there would be no Achilles Heel or tilting at windmills.  Without literature there would be no Oedipus Complex.  Without literature there would be no romantic poetry, or even romance or Romance either.  We can go on an on about how even literature thousands of years old such as the  Mahābhārata or Gilgamesh continue to shape our thinking and perceptions.  Literature is continually in conversation with itself and the world around us in ways that nothing else, except perhaps some other Art can be.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Without literature there would be no Oedipus Complex.  

Not true.  Dr. Freud's "Oedipus Complex" theory was not inspired by ancient literature, but rather by his desire to have sex with his mother, and a giant ego which refused to admit there was anything even slightly weird about this.  Had the Greek stories not existed, Dr. Freud would have simply found another name for his silly theory.  

A better reason to read ancient literature might be to realize that Oedipus did not actually have an Oedipus Complex.  He married his mother for political reasons, and because he did not know she was his mother.

Which might have been Freud's real problem as well.  He was from a well-off family, and his mother possibly delegated too much of the maternal role to servants, so that Freud did not see her as his mother on an emotional or instinctive level.

Another reason to read the story of Oedipus is to read an early example of the "treacherous prophesy" theme, which we see repeated in more modern times by Shakespear's MACBETH, as well as the works of GRRM.

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On 12/29/2021 at 8:19 PM, butterweedstrover said:

I think it is relatively new because Asimov and Tolkien are relatively new. 

FYI: I think Whitman is certainly a great poet. But before hand many others like Dickens and Orwell weren't seriously considered as great literary writers because they were by nature political. 

Today capitalism and the 'elite' have created new cross boundaries. The older elite (what we think of as the pretentious aristocracy) has fallen out of favor with the new elite that favors what is most marketable. Though in colleges there is certainly a push by new professors to read stuff like NK Jemisin and other popular writers. 

So that crowd of the old elite is shrinking. People like Bezos aren't particularly snobbish. I am not a member of such societies but I was invited to a country club with a lot of old money people and many enjoyed the popular stuff, which I don't think is wrong. 

My only point is that using the analytical lens in narrative has little academic value. The scientific method used to understand historical figures like Stalin is pointless if the character is fake like Harry Potter. That is why I think the greatest literary figures like Ahab and Fortescue are relatively under described with much more ambiguity as to their inner psychology. 

Going to narrow the scope here for a moment, you've mentioned the ambiguity vs specificity angle before, and it is interesting and I'd like to explore that a bit.  How would you square that with Ishmael, for whom we have vast insight into his psychology and inner world?  

I'm not denying there is an ambiguous-ness( I am not an academic) to him- we see this in his lack of personal history, his meditations on all manner of things (those on the color white and death come to mind) that are essentially exploring the "sublime" and anomalous rather than the specific and "beautiful" (I think Burke's bifurcation of beautiful/ sublime works as a decent shorthand for analytic/ambiguous.

I'm just not sure I see the two as either mutually exclusive or indicative of literature or the lack thereof.    Surely you can have both.  

Eta: I'm not sure I understand how Whitman can't be literature because Orwell is political.  

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2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

Not true.  Dr. Freud's "Oedipus Complex" theory was not inspired by ancient literature, but rather by his desire to have sex with his mother, and a giant ego which refused to admit there was anything even slightly weird about this.  Had the Greek stories not existed, Dr. Freud would have simply found another name for his silly theory.  

A better reason to read ancient literature might be to realize that Oedipus did not actually have an Oedipus Complex.  He married his mother for political reasons, and because he did not know she was his mother.

Which might have been Freud's real problem as well.  He was from a well-off family, and his mother possibly delegated too much of the maternal role to servants, so that Freud did not see her as his mother on an emotional or instinctive level.

Another reason to read the story of Oedipus is to read an early example of the "treacherous prophesy" theme, which we see repeated in more modern times by Shakespear's MACBETH, as well as the works of GRRM.

Freud's family was not extremely "well-off" in the modern sense. His father's business was going downhill when he was born, which was why they eventually moved to Vienna from Freiberg (now Pribor, Czech Republic). Of course, even what would today be considered families of average middle-class means had servants back then, and he did have a nursemaid when he was young. 

Freud's beliefs that he had discovered childhood sexual feelings toward his mother probably had more to do with the fact that his mother was twenty years younger than his father, and his mother was 20 when he was born. His elder half-brother was about two years older than his mother. So he remembered his mother as being young and beautiful while his father seemed old and weak. He was also quite definitely his mother's favorite child. She doted on him and gave him privileges her other children didn't have. 

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I do have to say if Freud had seen the content on popular free internet pornography sites the last 10 years or so he'd probably feel quite vindicated.  The modern family is not ok.*

Eta* apparently they are all banging all the time all over the house everyway possible while constantly reminding each other loudly of the specific relationship to each other.

Eta2: or so I've heard

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11 hours ago, Ormond said:

Freud's family was not extremely "well-off" in the modern sense. His father's business was going downhill when he was born, which was why they eventually moved to Vienna from Freiberg (now Pribor, Czech Republic). Of course, even what would today be considered families of average middle-class means had servants back then, and he did have a nursemaid when he was young. 

Well, it is only a theory.  But it does not require any particularly extreme level of wealth.  It only requires the use of a servant for child care (which you concede) and for the mother to be rather distant at whatever early age maternal imprinting occurs (which I admit is speculative).

11 hours ago, Ormond said:

Freud's beliefs that he had discovered childhood sexual feelings toward his mother probably had more to do with the fact that his mother was twenty years younger than his father, and his mother was 20 when he was born. His elder half-brother was about two years older than his mother. So he remembered his mother as being young and beautiful while his father seemed old and weak.

Okay.  But I wonder what the ancient Greeks would have thought of this explanation.  They lived at a time when a 20-year age gap between mother and son was relatively normal -- more-so than today, and probably even more-so than in 19th century Europe.  But they seem not to have regarded erotic feelings of a son for a mother as normal.  Rather, if the story of Oedipus is any indication, their attitude seems to be that a son would never want to have sex with his mother, the only way he would do this is that he did not know she was his mother, and that if he found out he had accidentally had sex with his mother, not knowing she was his mother, he would be so horrified he would tear his own eyes out.

11 hours ago, Ormond said:

He was also quite definitely his mother's favorite child. She doted on him and gave him privileges her other children didn't have. 

Well, again, I was not there.  But if she failed to imprint with him as his mother at a younger age, and began to dote on him as he got older, Freud's reaction might be the natural result

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The important point of Freuds theory is that everyone represses the knowledge of this, and erases it from the conscious mind. And most insistently denies that it is true. Thus Oedipus blinds himself. So if Freuds theory is right (a very big “if”), then it follows that every civilization would most insistently claim that it is unnatural and doesn’t occur.

Also, isn’t the focus of the theory more on the wishing to murder the father as the rival of the mothers love, than on sexual feelings for the mother herself. 

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15 minutes ago, Mister Smikes said:

Well, it is only a theory.  But it does not require any particularly extreme level of wealth.  It only requires the use of a servant for child care (which you concede) and for the mother to be rather distant at whatever early age maternal imprinting occurs (which I admit is speculative).

Okay.  But I wonder what the ancient Greeks would have thought of this explanation.  They lived at a time when a 20-year age gap between mother and son was relatively normal -- more-so than today, and probably even more-so than in 19th century Europe.  But they seem not to have regarded erotic feelings of a son for a mother as normal.  Rather, if the story of Oedipus is any indication, their attitude seems to be that a son would never want to have sex with his mother, the only way he would do this is that he did not know she was his mother, and that if he found out he had accidentally had sex with his mother, not knowing she was his mother, he would be so horrified he would tear his own eyes out.

Well, again, I was not there.  But if she failed to imprint with him as his mother at a younger age, and began to dote on him as he got older, Freud's reaction might be the natural result

In regard to "imprinting" -- I myself am not Freudian enough to believe that things that happen in the first two years of life, before we have the capacity to create true long-term memories, have a huge impact on one's adult personality. So I'm really skeptical that whatever his mother did or did not do with him as a baby (and we know that she did breastfeed him) had a big impact. 

One aspect of Freud's personality that is relevant to this is that he revelled in the image of being the "beleaguered genius." He greatly exaggerated the extent to which his ideas were rejected by others, focusing on bad reviews of his books and ignoring the positive reviews he did get. Since part of his theory was believing that those who more successfully dealt with their Oedipus complex also more fully repressed memory of it, he used the fact that the idea of infantile sexuality was strongly rejected by people when they first heard it as evidence that his theory was true. :)  So he probably would have interpreted the ancient Greek culture's horror of mother-son incest as actually showing they had particularly strong unconscious inclinations toward it. 

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1 hour ago, Ormond said:

In regard to "imprinting" -- I myself am not Freudian enough to believe that things that happen in the first two years of life, before we have the capacity to create true long-term memories, have a huge impact on one's adult personality. So I'm really skeptical that whatever his mother did or did not do with him as a baby (and we know that she did breastfeed him) had a big impact. 

I'm not Freudian at all.  But I do find it likely that the incest taboo is to some extent natural and instinctual, and not purely cultural.  But for such a natural instinct to operate, the child must have some non-language basis for identifying a woman as being in the role of his mother.  Beyond that, I make no unnecessary assumptions.  I do not need to assume (or rule out) that the process involves conscious memories.  I make no assumptions as to whether the "imprinting" (if that's the right word) occurs only, or even primarily, during the first two years.

But perhaps there was nothing unusual in Sigmund's upbringing, and his idiosyncrasies were merely the result of natural human variation.

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

One aspect of Freud's personality that is relevant to this is that he revelled in the image of being the "beleaguered genius." He greatly exaggerated the extent to which his ideas were rejected by others, focusing on bad reviews of his books and ignoring the positive reviews he did get. Since part of his theory was believing that those who more successfully dealt with their Oedipus complex also more fully repressed memory of it, he used the fact that the idea of infantile sexuality was strongly rejected by people when they first heard it as evidence that his theory was true. :)  So he probably would have interpreted the ancient Greek culture's horror of mother-son incest as actually showing they had particularly strong unconscious inclinations toward it. 

Well sure.  Freud had a giant ego, and so created a grand theory that required the entire universe to revolve around his own private personal idiosyncrasy.  And the more people disagreed with him, the more it proved that he was right.

But I am personally inclined to be interested in the ancient evidence for its own sake, and not merely because it conveniently proves Dr. Freud right by disagreeing with him.  Unlike Dr. Freud, I have no particular inclination to assume that the world revolves around Dr. Freud.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/my-pandemic-book-club-changed-the-way-i-think-about-literature--and-community/2022/01/04/1695a34e-6cd5-11ec-b9fc-b394d592a7a6_story.html

Quote

 

.... Among other things, our book club has provided a welcome reminder of how much we stand to gain from one another, even when circumstances keep us apart. “Moby-Dick” is not easy reading, but by doing it with a group of people, about 50 pages a week over four months, it was not only feasible, it was joyful. The novel’s sparks lit up the dark winter, and its humor had us roaring.

The biggest surprise was how alive the novel is, how freshly relevant it felt in the midst of the pandemic. Written a decade before the Civil War, “Moby-Dick” seems to foresee the American ship of state being dashed to pieces because of its internal divisions, as Andrew Delbanco writes in his 2005 book, “Melville: His World and Work.” As we were reading “Moby-Dick,” Donald Trump’s supporters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, bringing Confederate flags into the halls of Congress — something that hadn’t even happened during the Civil War. Meanwhile, sea shanties were having a moment on TikTok, and we folded singalongs of “Wellerman” into our Zoom meetings. In aggregate, the experience was unlike anything any of us had ever found in a classroom or around a coffee table. It was as intimate as it was informative, giving us the space to connect with a difficult text in difficult times, and the unexpected freedom to carve slivers of joy from both. ....

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Context for some of Thomas Mann's most famous words, such as,  “Let me tell you the whole truth: if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of ‘freedom.’” 

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...To the end of his life, Mann kept insisting that any attempt to separate the artistic from the political was a catastrophic delusion. His most succinct formulation came in a letter to Hermann Hesse, in 1945: “I believe that nothing living can avoid the political today. The refusal is also politics; one thereby advances the politics of the evil cause.” If artists lose themselves in fantasies of independence, they become the tool of malefactors, who prefer to keep art apart from politics so that the work of oppression can continue undisturbed. So Mann wrote in an afterword to a 1937 book about the Spanish Civil War, adding that the poet who forswears politics is a “spiritually lost man.” The same conviction is inscribed into the later fiction. The primary theme of “Doctor Faustus” is the insanity of the old Romantic ethos.

To claim, as Lilla does, that Mann held fast to some eternal principle of artistic freedom reverses the arc of his career and unlearns his hardest-won lessons. In fact, Mann came to believe that a just social order required limits in politics and art alike. Stanley Corngold underscores this point in “The Mind in Exile: Thomas Mann in Princeton,” which chronicles the time that the novelist spent at the university between 1938 and 1941. In speeches of the period, Mann called for “social self-discipline under the ideal of freedom”—a political philosophy that doubles as a personal one. He also said, “Let me tell you the whole truth: if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of ‘freedom.’ ” He left the United States in 1952, fearing that McCarthyism had made him a marked man once again. ....

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

We had a faculty member who needed to take a sudden medical leave, and one of her classes (mythology) hadn't been claimed by other faculty in our department. The course (40 students) was about to be canceled, so I decided to take the overload.

I haven't taught literature in over half a decade--I've been teaching writing and education classes--and, I have to say, this has really reinvigorated me. While it's an LAC and full of majors who aren't English, they are so into it. They're willing to talk, engage, and there's just a level of excitement for discussing mythology. It's nice.

I still think it's an uphill battle finding this balance in public K-12 schools, but I thought I'd share since I started this thread.

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