Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. --Leo Tolstoy

According to Shklovsky, the technique of art is to make the familiar “unfamiliar.”  But what does that mean? Shklovsky says that in a life that has become “habitualized.” We, as a societal whole, are constantly doing the same tasks over and over again—all the while having the same fears and worries etc. So, how does an artist make the everyday task new? Shklovsky would say that the artist would have to describe or portray the “familiar object” in an unheard way. He would go on to say that writers like Tolstoy have mastered this art in his extremely long novels.

Yet, the most important part to remember—and quite possibly the only way to achieve defamiliarization—is that the object itself is irrelevant. What is important is the way the writer evokes emotion or thought from the presence of that object in the work. As Shklovsky states, Tolstoy had mastered—with the help of his lengthy descriptions—new ways to describe even the mundane. Shklovsky uses Tolstoy’s description of the theater to demonstrate Tolstoy’s unique use of defamiliarization.

The middle of the stage consisted of flat boards; by the sides stood painted pictures representing trees, and at the back a linen cloth was stretched down to the floorboards. Maidens in red bodices and white skirts sat on the middle of the stage. One, very fat, in a white silk dress, sat apart on a narrow bench to which a green pasteboard box was glued from behind. They were all singing something. When they had finished, the maiden in white approached the prompter's box. A man in silk with tight-fitting pants on his fat legs approached her with a plume and began to sing and spread his arms in dismay. The man in the tight pants finished his song alone; then the girl sang. After that both remained silent as the music resounded; and the man, obviously waiting to begin singing his part with her again, began to run his fingers over the hand of the girl in the white dress. They finished their song together, and everyone in the theater began to clap and shout. But the men and women on stage, who represented lovers, started to bow, smiling and raising their hands.

Everyone has seen a theater, and it is very difficult to evoke any type of particular emotion when describing a theater. However, Tolstoy uses such vivid detail to paint his image that it is almost impossible to not see what he’s talking about. Instead of saying, the in the theater stood two people and they sang, he uses elaborate language. Ultimately, he defamiliarizes a very familiar scene—something Shklovsky desired to see more of in literature. It begs the question, however, what would Shklovsky think of Proust? In my opinion, I think he would appreciate Proust’s extreme detail and eventual defamiliarization of everything—even butter cookies.

Work Cited 

Shklovsk, Viktor. "Art as Technique." web. 22 Feb. 2011 

Patton and Rhetoric (Analysis 1)

            This clip is from the 1970s Francis Ford Coppola film, Patton. George C. Scott plays the unforgettable WWII General, George Patton. This speech is modeled after an actual speech Patton delivered in June of 1944 in an unrecorded place in England. For the movie, the screen writers and Coppola cleaned up the expletives that were used in the original speech, due to the unknown protest and potential misinterpretation in the context of the film.

            According to the Aristotelian Rhetorical speech model, Patton’s speech can be considered to be categorized under the “deliberate” type of speech. This speech, in the film, was meant to excite and persuade the listeners into taking action during World War Two. Patton was considered to be of strong military background and an inspirational speaker for the men who had been drafted into the war.

Patton begins his speech with a short syllogism—“… no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” The next short syllogism is, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.” And the final short syllogism is, “the Nazis are the enemy.” All of these syllogisms lead to the enthymeme of: the Nazis are the enemy and it is our job as Americans to, not only participate, but to win the battle against the Nazis. Or what can be stated another way as: Americans are winners, Nazis are un-American; therefore, Nazis could only lose, never win.  

            In addition to the very persuasive enthymeme, Patton also uses many different language techniques to be as convincing as possible. First and the most used was pathos-laced language. The most often used emotion used throughout the speech is anger. He uses the idea that losing in this war is an intolerable outcome, and that if it were to happen it would never be accepted, “…Americans have never lost and will never lose a war because the very thought is hateful to Americans.” He continues to say that due to our natural ability and hunger for victory he “pities the bastards,” because we are going into battle with the desire to “spill their blood” and “shoot them in the belly.” And the most infamous line filled with the most emotion is, “We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.” These words are very emotionally powerful, and were used in this instance to stimulate the soldiers in war.    

            In the end, the use of these powerful words and commanding enthymeme are influenced heavily by Patton’s use of the two of the three important qualities of an effective Aristotelian speaker. First was his employment of eunoia—acting the part. At the time of WWII  Patton was an older gentleman, and had been recognized for his impeccable leadership skills. Therefore, in the film we first see Patton dressed in army fatigues giving directions—“Ten-hut. Be Seated.” Being that he is a General in the U.S. Army, if he had come onto the stage saying, “hello folks” the soldiers wouldn’t have taken him seriously.  

In addition to Eunoia, he also used Arête language. Patton’s language eluded that his intentions were to better the world. He used several phrases to elude to the fact that he was of good character and the opposition was not. However, one sentence in particular encapsulates his entire view of the war. It follows immediately after the question of what will happen if a soldier finds himself unsure if he can fight or not. His answer is, “The Nazis are the enemy…When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that was a moment before your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.” Some would view that war is an unnecessary brutality in the world; however, Patton refutes this by saying that the Nazis will kill, and that it is our job to end the violence. It is not a matter of whether it’s wrong, but rather, in this instance, if the victory will better the world.

            Ultimately, Patton’s speech in the film is filled with very emotional, or pathos, language. It was meant to persuade the men in the military to go into war wholeheartedly, knowing that their sacrifices will have a positive effect. The speech was, in the end, very influential with the use of the very basic Aristotelian models of rhetoric and that of a ethical rhetorical speaker.

 Works Cited

Farago, Ladislas. "Patton Script - Transcript from the Screenplay And/or George C. Scott

Movie." Drew's Script-O-Rama: Free Movie Scripts and Screenplays, Baby! Web. 111

Feb. 2011.

Leitch, Vincent B. et al., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton,

2001. Print.

Province, Charles M. "The Famous Patton Speech." Patton Society Homepage. Web. 10 Feb.

2011.

Plato and the Cave of Questions

            Of course, Plato would have a cave in which prisoners of sorts would be held against their will and shown only shadows. I say of course, because, in his philosophy, everything was in fact a mere imitation. A replication, a shadow. And to have seen the object in its true form was something we, as puny humans, simply could not do. His philosophical story/question, from what I gather, is this, can we really use words to describe something that is in fact intangible? And if we use these words to imitate the imitated, can those words be trusted as truth?

            

           Being a narrative writer, and a novice poet, I was immediately and selfishly offended. How could he question the use of a word; a word that was so carefully chosen by the writer? In short, his quick dismissal and scrutiny of these creative words was really irking me. But why? Why was I so hung up on some centuries old philosophy? Then, I thought, was there really some truth to this Cave business? Are we really just the audience in a higher order’s puppet show? All these questions flooded my mind, cutting off the circulation to the vocabulary parts of my brain. Why were we choosing certain words? Was there something to this idea that words are really meaningless? Or rather, that words are misleading. I thought back to all of the Shakespeare I’ve read; and the beautiful poetry the Bronte sisters published; and the stunning novels about war and coming of age. I’m sure that Plato wouldn’t have had a very profound love for these texts, as I do. But was owning and claiming the Writer title synonymous with the Liar title? 

            I’m still unsure about the truth of words. I can’t wrap my mind around the concept of words being nothing more than arbitrary sounds and letters stigmatized with definitions and connotations. And that these “definitions” are used to convey misconceptions, or inaccurate descriptions of something so indescribable. Perhaps more reading of Plato’s Republic will clarify or resolve this conflict I’m having.

Hermaneutics--From Herman to the Bible

I had heard the word Hermeneutics before, but I never really knew what it meant. Whenever the word came up in conversation with my intellectual superiors, Herman Munster’s face flashed in my mind. And when it was introduced on the first day, one thought came to mind—I was going to be thoroughly horse whipped. But alas, I’m starting to really understand what the whole business of Hermeneutics is—and in fact, it has nothing to do with the Munsters at all.

When first grappling with the idea that Hermeneutics was just the study and interpretation of a work based on what and how ‘something’ is portrayed, I was more confused than ever. What did it all mean, literally? I was, to put it lightly, scared. Great, I thought, this is what we’re starting off with. I would need a whole semester to analyze all the possible answers for the one question that so condescendingly hung over my head—why? In fiction there are innumerable symbols and hidden messages cleverly hidden beneath the words, stuck somewhere in limbo between the grains of the paper and the dots of black ink. And it was now, as I understand, my job to find all of those messages beneath the sand and, without any hesitation answer the why. But first, to uncover the why, I must first discover and understand the how.

Hermeneutics, as I comprehend, is using the how (i.e. how a conversation is had, how an element is portrayed, and so on), to get to the why. Why did the author write it that particular way? And in my reading of this subject I ran across Bible Hermeneutics.  In short, the interpretation of the Bible. I wouldn’t know where to begin in exploring every symbolic detail in the Bible, but it did capture my curiosity. As I did a little research on the appropriately called Biblical exegesis, I found that Hermeneutics is considered to be a ‘philosophy’ of sorts. And even though it has been a socially accepted form of interpretation for sacred works, it cannot be misconstrued for truth.

So, in the end, I found that like Herman Munster, Hermeneutics could simply just be an important character. And even though theories are only theories, I realized that Hermeneutics can be considered the ‘umbrella’ to which all other theories flock under.  

My Theories About Life, Me and...

A little about me.

This is my third year at CSUN, and I’ve always been a Creative Writing major. I write mostly narrative fiction. No, I’m not into the current writing fad, so don’t look to me for the next series starring wizards or lycanthropes. But seriously, I love writing about people. I try to make the situations my characters are in as tangible as possible. It’s all about feeling, and well, I’m going to make my reader ‘feel’ it. I wonder if there is a theory about that.  

I would love to pen a book someday, and it be the most ‘ingenious’ published work by my generation. I’m not sure that my dream is completely not accomplishable—I mean, if Snooki could  write a book, I could too. I’ve learned it’s all in the timing.

I’m not sure I understand all that theory has to offer; however, all I know is that I really like uncovering all of the historical or social significance of the symbols used in a particular text. For example, I once took Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and tracked down every ‘symbol’, if you will, and found that each had a particular meaning. I found that the rivers correlated to a myth created by a tribe in Sierra Leon; Sethe and Amy’s heroic journey across the Ohio River, can be considered a metaphoric Middle Passage. And, that the tree on Sethe’s back is part of a poisonous genus, symbolically poisoning her from the inside out. I love making symbolic connections.

On that note, I love reading. If I could, I would read every moment of every day. But I can’t, and that is one depressing understanding I have to accept. I’ll read just about anything. I put the qualifier ‘just’, because there is one genre I can’t get into—harlequin romance novels. Other than the repetition of words to describe the human anatomy, harlequins simply don’t provide any literal substance. There are no hidden meanings or symbols to uncover. And, complicated plots are nonexistent, and only over simplified plots are present to fill in the space between trysts. So, there you have it, my only literary Kryptonite.

I guess in the whole scheme of all that is theory, I can’t help but be a little skeptical. Perhaps I need to study the subject more.  Yet, as I read the Classical theories, I find that all they really wanted was a boring society. Imagining a life without narratives or poetry is, is just a life I couldn’t live. To conduct my life as if I were in a philosophy book, as Plato would’ve liked, is not ‘right’.

In the end, I’m really looking forward to reading and understanding, to the best of my abilities, all of the major literary theories. And by the size of the book, I have quite a bit of reading to do. Ultimately, by the end of this semester, I hope to really hone my analyzing abilities and become an even better reader and writer.