Ethics, Theater, and Emmanuel Levinas' "Other"

Emmanuel Levinas was an amazing man, scholar and philosopher. It was a privilege to get to know him better and see what a great impact he made on the world. He only died 19 years ago in 1995 and left with him a lasting philosophy of our responsibility to what he called “the other.” I thought this philosophy would work well with my topic of theatre.

Emmanuel Levinas studied phenomenology, or “the study of the structures of experience and consciousness.” He was among the first philosophers to try and figure out the “I” in relation to other people and experiences. In his book Totality and Infinity he says, "Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[Levinas 21] And his quest was to prove we are not.  Being moral is how we live.

His obituary spoke clearly of his beliefs:

“Dr. Levinas's alternative to traditional approaches was a philosophy that made personal ethical responsibility to others the starting point and primary focus for philosophy, rather than a secondary reflection that followed explorations of the nature of existence and the validity of knowledge.

"Ethics precedes ontology" (the study of being) is a phrase often used to sum up his stance. Instead of the thinking "I" epitomized in "I think, therefore I am" -- the phrase with which Rene Descartes launched much of modern philosophy -- Dr. Levinas began with an ethical "I." For him, even the self is possible only with its recognition of "the Other," (Steinfels)

Levinas then had an interesting relationship with theater; in fact most sources said he despised it. It only makes sense that the man who studied a real relationship to “the other” would not enjoy watching a parade of fabricated relationships.

But I still found many articles relating Levinas’s philosophy to the stage. I don’t think it can be helped.

Levinas adopted Heidegger's argument that the logos gathers up Being and makes it accessible to us. So Levinas believes that we can logically know truth. We can logically know truth through interaction with other people. He says, echoing the sentiments of Plato, “ The exploration of the self, ... unfolds in a language that is best communicated through enactment.” (Stanford)

Based off this statement I would have thought him very keen to the idea of theatre and entertainment. It puts men on a stage to emulate what human interaction does. But, Levinas would say theatre is only fake interaction. We don’t directly engage with theater so we gain nothing from it.

In one great article I found Liza Kharoubi brings up the ethical issue posed by Levinas about theater. “On stage,” she says, “we hop from one universe to another via different screens or projections. New media theatre exposes several timelines on stage. But isn’t the question rather: What does this uphinging, this “out of joint” time and space tell us about our “contemporary” time and space?” (7) What is the purpose of theater and why does taking us out of our own time make us relate to it. Kharoubi continues by calling “theatrical space and time…cultural constructs.” (6) These productions that we put on for viewing pleasure do more than just excite emotion.  She explains, “Like an excitable atom producing energy, the erotic theatrical space creates desire and enables us to get out of ontology and reach towards ethics.” (6) it tells us something we can hardly put into concepts, it reinvents, resensibilises, and wakes up the public’s attention. (10) Kharoubi argues we can have real experience through theatre it performs a metamorphosis of the audience so they do really experience a connection with Levinas’s “other.” She even takes it a step forward, a step I would like to take by saying that theater allows us to question the ethics of the world.

I definitely think there is lots to learn from Levinas about spectacle and theater whether he personally enjoyed it or not. In fighting against the artifice he makes many defend it and it is nice to see both sides.  I would suggest Kenna and who ever is doing spectacle look into his philosophy.

Works Cited

Kharoubi, Liza. “Interfaciality: Levinas and the ethical challenge of new media theatre.”             Academia.edu. 28 Feb. 2014             http://www.academia.edu/1690139/INTERFACIALITY_LEVINAS_AND_THE_ETHIC            AL_CHALLENGE_OF_NEW_MEDIA_THEATRE

Levinas E., Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Alphonso Lingis, transl. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press), p. 21.

Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy “Emmanuel Levinas” First published Sun Jul 23, 2006;             substantive revision Wed Aug 3, 2011

            http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/#TraOthSam

Steinfels, Peter. “Emmanuel Levinas, 90, French Ethical Philosopher,” Published:             December 27, 1995

Photo credit:

http://emmanuellevinasrpt.wordpress.com/

http://streettalkin.com/jesus-christ-superstar-at-the-academy-of-music/

Power of the Language

Structuralism argues that all texts stand within a system. Saussure wrote a lot about how language is a system where the actual referent of the word or language is not necessarily part of the interpretation of the text. There is a difference between the signified and the signifier. The signifier being the word itself and the signified being the meaning of the word itself. This theory calls attention to the manner of the words and not necessarily the meaning or references made by the words.

Within this argument, the language becomes the system within which the text must be interpreted. The text itself is the effect and not actually the content of the text. Sanford Scribner Ames writes about this effect of language.

One system that is commonly addressed is that of language. All English speakers with completely different backgrounds and life styles and cultures can understand the same language. The influences of a set of language, or a system, are the same independent of the person. This is a system. But also the theory argues that the system  be understood collectively in order for the text to be understood and interpreted. The language must be a system. Sanford Scribner Ames writes about the effect of language in the structuralist theory:

Pragmatism and Practical Criticism (Disambiguation)

Why We Need Disambiguation

Because literary theory is frequently connected to larger schools of philosophy, and because some theories are easily confused, here’s a little background on two very different theories that are not as related as their names appear. First we’ll do pragmatism, a comprehensive philosophy, then practical criticism, a specific literary method, then we’ll see how the two do or do not connect to a specific research question.

Pragmatism

William James, whom you may remember from a Psych 101 class or associate as the brother of novelist Henry James, helped found a school of philosophy called pragmatism. This is around the turn of the 20^th century in America.

Pragmatism puts a problem (philosophical or otherwise) up to a test: it traces “the practical consequences (the difference it would practically make to anyone)…and if no practical difference whatever is found, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle” (Wheeler 76).  James put it this way: “There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere.”

The Intricacies of Language

Kenneth Burke was a literary theorist, who had a powerful impact on 20th century criticism, rhetoric, and so forth.  He analyzed the nature of knowledge and of language.  Creative commons license. 

As a starting basis, Burke believes that when we think, we use images, or symbols.  More on that later.  Burke believes that we have two main planes of thought: an absolute plane, where everything is absolute and set, and a conditional plane, where everything is fluid and there are no absolutes.  What we do when we use figures of speech, then, is take these two planes and place them next to each other, connecting two ideas in a certain way to create a third new image, a completely separate idea.  Burke claims (and no one after him has been able to disprove him) that all figures of speech can fit into four categories.  These four categories are “metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.  And my primary concern with them here will not be with their purely figurative usage, but with their role in the discovery and description of ‘the truth’” (Grammar, 503).  This “truth” that Burke speaks of is how we make sense of the world through language.

Lebensphilosophie: The Balance between Biology and the Human Spirit

Photo source

Introduction

I chose to research the theory behind Simmel’s life-philosophy, otherwise known as Lebensphilosophie, in relation to my research concerning memoirs. I thought that his philosophy would be pertinent to what I’ve been studying because it deals with finding meaning and value in life, a pursuit that memoirs tend to be completely centered around. As I demonstrated in this post, I’m exploring the sense of awe that results from reading these memoirs, or encapsulations of people’s lives, and also the awe that is captured within these memoirs as pertaining to the life of the individual. Because of what I am striving to discover, it is important for me to deconstruct what we consider to be life in itself. 

Lebensphilosophie Theory

Basically, Simmel’s theory serves as the middle ground between two trains of thought regarding life. The first train of thought it stands between is that of reductionism, where the meaning and value of life is reduced to simply the fact that something is alive. Under this train of thought, it is easy to reduce life “to genes, DNA, or organism” (Pyyhtined 79). Those who see life under this train of thought are those who deal with technoscience, slowly revealing life’s mysteries through the power of technology and science. On the other side of the spectrum is the train of thought that deals with mysticism. Under this train of thought, life is seen to be as an ethereal thing dominated by the acts of the soul. These ideas come from religious ideologies and other institutions dealing with the things in life that are largely unseen. 

Language in Tiers

Language is a tool that allows societies to communicate, organize, and, also creates unity within a culture. At its basic form it can further progression and connections within society by its unifying characteristic. But even recognizing language at this elementary level generates interesting questions. How was the word tree decided, especially because you cannot objectively associate the name with the object itself? This question of what language truly is points to the idea that language has a higher purpose; Ralph Waldo Emerson restates this idea in his book titled Nature. He claims in this book that language is a powerful. If taken at face value, communication is the most basic function of language, but, he adds, there is more. He states, “We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature” (35). One word can be interpreted by what it literally means, but it also can mean something deeper. Although language is a helpful tool, there are different tiers of significance that allow language to reach its true nature. Achieving this requires engaging the senses. According to Emerson, the three tiers of language are

1. Words [as] signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts [as] symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature [as] the symbol of spirit. (39)

The End of Art and Awe: Hegel in the Digital Age

From the title, you are perhaps expecting this post to be a depressing, cynical attempt at tearing down our modern notions of art and wonder, and if that's the case, then I have to apologize: this will surely disappoint. To understand what I really mean in saying "the end of art" or "the end of awe," though, we have to have a foundation in German Romanticism and, more specifically, in the art
istic philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel is perhaps best known for the eponymous Hegelian dialectic, which suggests that through the recursive struggle and interplay of thesis and antithesis--of action and reaction--mankind has, at various times, been able to arrive a state of synthesis or resolution, wherein he is able to achieve real progress. In his Introduction to The Philosophy of Art, Hegel applies the dialectic to the progression of art, stating essentially that the highest form of art is that in which the sensuous form (the work of art itself) and the spiritual form (the ideas conveyed by the work of art) find harmony or resolution. "[T]he perfection and excellency of art," he writes, "must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate" (376). Hegel suggests that in lower forms of art, such as sculpture or architecture, the thesis and antithesis of spiritual and sensuous forms have yet failed to reach an equilibrium. The highest form of art--the end or aim of art in Hegel's view--is in poetry, wherein the art itself is capable of conveying the full import and meaning of the spiritual or philosophical idea. This was not to imply, however, that art had or would come to an end or that poetry represented the final destination of human expression and artistic representation. Rather, poetry was the degree of synthesis to which mankind had climbed up until that point.

Psychoanalyzing Awe

Psychoanalytic theory takes the psychology of people and puts it into literature. Whether you are looking at the author, the characters, or the reader, psychological analyses of people will help us understand the text and the people involved with a text. Understanding the psyche is key in understanding awe; more specifically, it will help us understand how one becomes susceptible to experiencing and re-experiencing awe by what they experience in reading or within life.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud Iceburg Model for the State of Mind
Wikipedia Creative Commons License

Psychological or psychoanalytic theory and criticism is based on Freud's analysis of the human psyche. There are three different models for analyzing the human psyche (Cowles):

1. The Dynamic Model: examines the relationship and interactions between the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious mindset; it looks at how what we are unaware of affects what we are aware of and vice versa.
2. The Economic Model: focuses on the relationship between the pleasure principle (the unconscious seeking/getting instant gratification) and the reality principle (the conscious deciding what is realistically available/obtainable).
3. The Topographical Model: looks at the interaction between the id (unrepressed, pure desire), the superego (the hyperactive conscience controlling us via morality and social norms), and the ego (the intermediary which keeps both the id and superego under control).

The Collective Unconscious and Awe

The Theory

After our class discussion on Monday, I began thinking about how people who hope to create awe in others might be able to do so through an appeal to Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Jung defines the unconscious as

"everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious" (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 185).

He states that there is a personal unconscious, but also a deeper collective unconscious:

"In this 'deeper' stratum we also find the . . . archetypes . . . The instincts and archetypes together form the 'collective unconscious.' I call it 'collective' because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence" (p. 133).

Considering the Reader-Response When Using Language

What is Reader-Response Theory?
Reader-Response Theory refers to the engagement that occurs between reader and text.  It focuses on the readers' reaction to literature, and considers these reactions vital to the interpretation of text.  It is also one of the most dramatic changes that literary theory as incurred.

Quick history
Regarding where the focus lied when interpreting literature, the 1920s saw very Romantic preoccupations with "the author," meaning the author's personal experiences, convictions, intentions, and so on.  This approach shifted around the 1940s to New Criticism's exclusive emphasis on "the text, deriving meaning solely from symbols, rhythm, repetition, literary devices, etc. -- a very objective approach.  It was in the 1960s that people started lending particular attention to the reader's response to literature (and the idea just kept gaining more and more prominence in the 70s).

Got it -- so the whole theory is that readers engage with a text, readers respond to the text, and these responses cultivate overall interpretations of that text.  Right?

The New Criticism

The New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. New Criticism developed as a reaction to the older philological and literary history schools, which, influenced by nineteenth-century German scholarship, focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors. It became common consensus that these approaches tended to distract from the text and meaning of a poem and entirely neglect its aesthetic qualities in favor of teaching about external factors. 

Creative writers and literary critics felt that the special aesthetic experience of poetry and literary language was lost in the chaos of unnecessary emotions and feelings. Heather Dubrow notes that the prevailing focus of literary scholarship was on "the study of ethical values and philosophical issues through literature, the tracing of literary history, and . . . political criticism". Literature was approached and literary scholarship did not focus on analysis of texts. New Critics believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately connected and should not be analyzed separately. In order to bring the focus of literary studies back to analysis of the texts, they aimed to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis.

Reading Poetry Closely

In +Carly Brown 's post on Wordsworth's poetry being worth every word, I think that she makes some great observations about how a close reading of the poem can add deeper meaning to the poetry and increase the awe that's felt while reading. Her efforts to reach into the words and text are exactly the ways in which a New Critic would go about unraveling a poem. I suggest that you go back and read that post, it has great relevance to what I'm saying.

Much like Carly, I have had a similar experience with poetry when I was required to read Keats for my British Literature 292 class. His poem "Ode to a Nightingale" is one of my favorite poems to this day. I enjoy his use of imagery, and how he is able to invoke such a beautiful scene with very few actual words. But what does it mean? There are many different ways in which this poem can be interpreted by drawing on the historical events of the time, or what Keats himself was going through at the time in his personal life, but in keeping with what I stated earlier,  when the principles of New Criticism are applied to poetry in particular, more awe can be found in the structures and words of poetry.

In and of itself, poetry is beautiful. When you apply the theories of New Criticism to poetry, new meanings are discovered. Since New Criticism focuses on the individual connotations and meanings of words and how they can add to the overall meaning of the poem, it's extremely effective to apply this literary theory to any form of poetry, or even prose, that you read. Essentially, it's applying close reading skills to any text, but it's more applicable to poetry because there is so much that is said with so little words. Take the following stanza from "Ode to a Nightingale" as an example of saying so much without using a lot of words:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Every word is measured. Every line is metered and rhymed. Each word is important. These are the things that New Criticism highlights in poetry. There isn't an unnecessary word or syllable in the entire poem.

New Criticism is something that we're all familiar with as English majors, so I won't deconstruct that passage for you; you're more than capable of doing that. Instead, can you think of ways in which understanding individual words can lend to the overall meaning of a poem? Through this process, is it possible to find more awe in the text? I know that I certainly did. In my experience with awe and New Criticism, it doesn't come on the first read-through for me. Often it's the 10th or 20th time I read a poem that the deeper meaning of the words and poem hit me. In this I am referring back to my post on delayed awe. Just because you know how to look for awe, doesn't mean you're going to find it on your first try. So what if Keats isn't your cup of tea? Look at any other poem, by any other poet, and test out the techniques of New Criticism on it. It'll bring a deeper meaning. 

How have the techniques of New Criticism helped you in your days as an English major?

Dubrow, Heather. "Twentieth Century Shakespeare Criticism." The Riverside Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Keats, John. Ode to a Nightingale. Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

The Death of the Agenda: Satire Turns to Awe

Roland Barthes' iconic essay "The Death of the Author" is a work read and known by all literature scholars. Though not in direct relation to awe or wonder, his ideas on language and authorship do influence the writing and studying of awe.

Barthes' stance on authorship and readership largely defines a huge portion of literary scholarship. Other theories like New Criticism as well as education-based reader-response theories are closely tied to many of Barthes' ideas. The premise of his essay is that authorship, a Western idea, is essentially nonexistent, and those who focus on authorship naturally limit a text and close its meaning.

He says, "Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin . . . . the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death." He refers to the shamans of older societies and their art of performance as an ancient and pure way of sharing writing, especially when compared to modernity's sole focus on the author. Barthes, however, goes beyond writing in his theory. In reference to language specifically, Barthes says:

"It is language which speaks, not the author; to write is . . . to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me’."

and:

Awe Through Experience

Reader-response theory looks at the reader's experience with a piece of literature and how the reader creates meaning with the text.

Louise Rosenblatt looked at reading as a transaction between the reader and the text. Because there are million of readers all with an individual experience, there are potentially millions of individual works. Texts remains abstract symbols until the reader transforms them into meaning. The reader then draws on past experience "to shape the new experience on the page." The reader and the text then under go a tug of war each being effected by the reader's experience and what the text has to offer and ultimately creating new meaning individualized to and originating in the reader. This is why a text can have different effects on us at different times in our lives and why the meaning of the text will be dependent on the reader's experiences. Without a sure understanding of the reader and his experiences, one would not know how the text would effect him.

Orientalism: The Illusion of Awe

The Snake Charmer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Orientalism is a branch of post-colonial theory established by scholar Edward Said. In his words, orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." Basically, this theory searches for and examines the ways Eastern and Middle Eastern culture is stereotyped and "othered" across the vast majority of Western literature and thought. In the words of Danielle Sered summarizing Said's work, orientalism establishes the typical Western view of "the Oriental" as follows:

The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because his sexuality poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, and a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.

The goals of Orientalism as a theory, then, is to reestablish Western thought on Eastern and Middle Eastern culture on a firmer basis of reality, as well as allow members of these cultures to express themselves to Western audiences such that these stereotypes are broken and erased by the authentic voice of the people themselves.

The Illusion of Awe

Though Said may not have framed Orientalism specifically in terms of awe and wonder, look at the many terms of awe he uses when describing Orientalism's power in Western society:

The hold these instruments have on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them. For every Orientalist, quite literally, there is a support system of staggering power, considering the ephemerality of the myths that Orientalism propagates. The system now culminates into the very institutions of the state. To write about the Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write with the authority of a nation, and not with the affirmation of a strident ideology but with the unquestioning certainty of absolute truth backed by absolute force.

Orientalism certainly has a powerful, even all-encompassing hold on Western thought, in Said's terms. Combing this with the description of these Oriental stereotypes reveals that Orientalism could be framed as a theory dealing with the awful power of a false awe built around the East by the West. Looking again at the description of the stereotypical oriental given above, we see this constructed awe quite readily: words like "exotic," "threatening," "dominated," and "sexuality" reveal a view of the East shrouded in mystery and wonder.

What's most interesting to me about this, however, is that Said's premise is all this awe and wonder is entirely false--constructed only by the stereotypes. The real oriental is nothing like the Western view, but that view still holds the minds of Western people in awe and wonder at the Orient. This reminds me of two of my classmates' projects. First, +Juliet Cardon's project looking at the ways language establishes awe. Orientalism adds to her discussion as it proves language can establish awe even where the reality does not. That's an amazing (and kind of scary) thought to me. Just as Shelly showed how Willa Cather uses Romantic language to establish awe, Orientalism shows how language is used to build an image of awe.

The other project this discussion of Orientalism has reminded me of is +Andrew Perazzo's. His point on how science fiction inspires reality and vice-versa takes on a disturbing twist when considered in the terms of Orientalism creating a view of reality that is actually false, but inspires people's view of how the world actually works. Also, Orientalism shows how people can be in awe of worlds that aren't real through the power of language to create those worlds in the imagination, just as he is exploring in the works of fantasy of Brandon Sanderson.

Something that both of these projects could benefit from this discussion of Orientalism, though, is the idea of the responsibilities of awe. Namely, Orientalism proves that language can create awe and distort reality in the minds of not just a few people, but through persistent replication over time literally millions can be deceived as they are caught up in the attractive trappings of the awe promised them by language. The ethical questions of such a power are obvious. When is it right to create awe where none exists? How much of the awe promised and suggested to us by the language we have encountered in our own lives is actually false, and how do we go about identifying that and correcting it? Is it safe to create intentionally fictional worlds meant only to establish awe in the mind and thus remove people mentally from reality?

It gets more complicated when we consider that many fictional worlds, especially those of science fiction and fantasy, are actually meant to reflect the real world around us in very specific ways. Why does these authors feel the need to create a fantastical, awe-inspiring world when they really want to talk about the real world? Is it healthy to pump up the awe artificially like that? (Now I'm sure +Greg Bayles would have plenty to say about all this as well.)

We have established and documented very well all the ways language can establish awe--but what responsibilities does that power bring with it? Orientalism helps us ask and answer that question, and all the other questions that come with it.

Works Cited

Sered, Danielle. "Orientalism." Postcolonial Studies @ Emory (Fall 1996). n.p. Web. 26 Feb 2014.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Print.

Awe-Full Critics

Again, this post wasn't required, but here's my notes on some critics and critical theory that seems to work well with the theme of awe:

Karl Marx and Marxism-Marxism deals a lot with power structures and oppressor versus oppressed. Hidden through every Marxism criticism is a kind of awe at power, I think, and the struggle for it from above and below. Anytime power is unequal, there is a possibility for awe in the moments of realizing the insurmountable power of the greater from the perspective of the lesser. This breaks down, of course, as Marx demands for an uprising from those with supposedly less power, but also in the struggle of the oppressed to throw off the oppressor almost always comes at least some moment of awe at the force of will to carry on despite all odds.

Jacques Derrida and Post-structuralism-awe is especially evoked in Derrida's theory of play, or that meaning in language is infinitely malleable as language is arbitrary and the universe lacks and center anchoring meaning at all. Any infinite space is full of potential for awe, so a theory that outlines that the possibility for meaning in any language is infinite is prime fuel for awe.

Edward Said and Orientalism-you could frame Orientalism as the study of false awe at the "other." Said recognized the patterns of what you could call "abusive awe" or "oppressive awe" in the West's depiction of the East. The East was seen as alluring, even seductive, and mysterious, even supernatural. The West held the East as a source of awe, and Said's theory is meant to break down that false awe, but also replace it with the authentic voices of the people from those "other" groups and reveal the truths that the West had been denying and oppressing. Obviously, the desired effect of this is to open minds to a higher plane of truth--awe is bound to tread that ground often.

Frankenstein and the Terror Side of Awe (Erin)

An important aspect of awe that I think we may not be paying close enough attention to is terror.  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I studied in a British Literary course, deeply explores terror as it tells the story of Victor Frankenstein's monstrous, quasi-human creation.  Most often, we read of Frankenstein's horror at the being of his creation. It is interesting because Frankenstein devotes roughly two years to creating the monster (unintended to be a monster, but a monster nonetheless), passionate and obsessed with the work all the while, until he finally finishes and immediately responds with abhorrence:

"I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath... I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room" (Chapter 5).

So in this case, the cause of awe is presumably a combination of the ugliness of the creature and Frankenstein's ability to create such a hideous thing.  It's in seeing an atrocious mockery of something pleasing, natural, and symmetrical (the human body). It's a perversion, and it catches us off guard.

I know Erin is looking into terror and wrote a post called The Technological Terror where she explores how photography has developed with new technology.  In it, she mentions how the development of technology is tied to a fear of us becoming more distant from nature, and that there is a terror to that.  I would like to add that I think a huge part of terror in photography technology is in the experience of seeing something similar to what we're accustomed to, but perverted in such a way that it almost horrifies us.  Photoshop's ability to grossly alter the appearance of the body is often an example of this sort of horrific experience.

For Shelly: The Awe of the Gothic

The moors that the Brontë sisters traversed daily to receive inspiration for their gothic novels.

Before reading the novel Jane Eyre, I had always written it off in my head as a book similar to the Austen novels and one that would surely spend too much time in parlors and in analyzing conversations. But once I read it as a part of my English Novel course, I was happy to discover quite a different novel all together. Although Jane Eyre is set in a similar time period and follows similar female protagonist patterns as many of Jane Austen's novels, the content takes an entirely different turn. Jane Eyre dwells in the ordinary but this ordinary is influenced and laced with the extraordinary and the often unexplainable.

Indeed it is upon this key difference that Charlotte Brontë based her chief criticism of Jane Austen in a letter she wrote to one of her literary agents after he encouraged her to read Pride and Prejudice and apply its principals to her own writing:

Murders and Awe

After thinking back to the novels, short stories, poems, and other forms of literature that have focused on the idea of awe, the short story "The Murders in Rue Morgue", written by Edgar Allan Poe, stood out.  Poe introduced us to one of the first detective novels paving the way for detectives like Mrs. Marple and Sherlock Holmes.  There are so many different aspects in Poe's short story that revolves around the idea of awe.  This story focuses on terror, the unknown, and the powers of analysis within the human mind.  Dupin, who eventually solves the crime, is able to disconnect from his emotions in order to solve the mysterious case regarding the death of Mademoiselle Camille and Madame L’Espanaye.  The murder in itself creates awe and terror as he sets up the crime, which leads to citizens questioning how this murder could have possibly happened.  Poe writes,

Awe of the Simple

There is awe of the simple and how great a message it can send. My first year at BYU, I took a class called "This I Believe." In the 1950's this was a radio program made up of personal essays written by the people, performed by the people, and heard by the people. A This I Believe essay has to be less than 500 words or three minutes when reading, that specifies a strong core belief through a personal experience. Also, it almost always uses the first person narrative and a personal tone. National Public Radio (NPR) resurrected this idea and now has a program called The Bob Edwards Show. Also, they have compiled and published several books with these essays. In Wayne Coyne’s essay, “Creating Our Own Happiness,” he concentrates on a simple moment of his life which brought awe to him and how that moment influenced (or revealed) what a strong belief of his.


Wayne begins his essay with this:  

“I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside, and I thought, “Life is good.”

Now this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like they came from a thrift store. They weren’t wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because I’d been there.”

He focuses on the everyday experience. Wayne is sitting at a stoplight. It is not an overdramatic experience. Yet Wayne uses this experience - this small and simple moment in his life - to demonstrate his belief in happiness.

The form of the This I Believe essay emphasizes this awe of the simple. The essay in itself is limited - less than 500 words. It is meant to exist on a radio program. It calls for personal experiences and important self-reflective topics. There is no room to go into detail or elaborate very much. The best essays are simple. They focus on simple experiences. Yet they are powerful in their messages.

This reminded me of Cara’s project about memoirs in that This I Believe essays are almost always autobiographical in a different and emotional form that allows a connection between the reader and the author.

It also reminds me of Tara’s project in that a lot of these This I Believe essays talk about the impact of literature on the author - of how literature has changed what they believe. There are lots of essays about this at the website. It’d be interesting to look at the personal experiences and the influence of literature and the love of literature.

Read Wayne Coyne’s essay "Creating Our Own Happiness"

And if you’re interested, you can read the essay that I submitted to the website: just me and the piano.

Wordsworth Worth Every Word (Try saying that five times fast)

           

           

          

            “The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth is about a moment of musical contemplative awe.  It is the Awe in looking in on some one else’s life, wondering about their past, their feelings. It is about wanting to connect to others to relieve pain, reach out to help them, and just connect. In this poem this is what Wordsworth longs to do.

            I remembered Wordsworth’s poem from my 292 British Lit. Class.  I think it is a great representation of a natural wonder that humans have about each other.  A longing to understand someone’s song leads to a sense of awe of the song they sing and the life of the person who sings it. Wordsworth talks about the song of the reaper in the poem…

“A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?”

             He has a natural desire to connect to the reaper through her music. He says, “Will no one tell me what she sings?” as if to suggest that it would be better if an interpreter could translate the song into his own language and then he would be able to understand it better. He questions and is confused about the meaning of the song and what the song could be about. He actually realizes in the middle poem he can at least get the essence of the song if he stops to listen. He stops and listens, “motionless and still,” as he takes in the beautiful music. Listening is the first thing that helps Wordsworth and the reader connect to each other

            The way the poem sounds is another way Wordsworth alludes to the power of music. There is a fixed iambic tetrameter throughout the poem that gives it a sing-songy feel. Connecting the form of the poem to the topic, I think this also helps instill a sense of awe in the reader as you are hearing a sort of musical poetry as you learn about the power music can have in connecting two people. I think this poem could help anyone of us understand the connective nature of awe but I think it would help Kenna the most, possibly with the music aspect of her project.

            Just to close, the ending of the poem is great. At the end of the poem he experiences a lasting sense of awe of the reaper. It stuns him and stays with him in memory.  I think this aspect of awe, remembering how we feel in fleeting moments of awe, or in my case performances of awe is very difficult to understand. Wordsworth suggests that if we can’t record moments of awe in our heads maybe we can record it in our hearts.

“Whate’er the theme, the Maiden Sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o’er the sickle bending; -

I listen’d motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.”

Void & Awe

I went to see a close friend last Thursday.  Close Friend has two daughters.  The older one, Sav, is two.  While Close Friend was in the kitchen, I picked up a fussy Sav, draped her across my arms into my lap, calmed her, and then made the very sudden but conscious decision to stare into her eyes, drawing her to stare back at mine.  It felt oddly great. I wasn't trying to be weird.  I just had been feeling so horribly all week, and intuitively I knew that if I could create (force?) some sort of quiet but intense human connection, I would feel better.  I did feel better.  It felt amazing, and all week I've wanted to go back just to hold and look at her again that same way.  I'm almost uncomfortable with how much I feel the need to re-experience this moment.

So, awe.  Yes, I think this was an awe moment.  I believe so because I crave it the same way that I craved to re-feel what I felt after I read "In A Station of the Metro" and "We Are Seven" (awe-inspiring poems I blogged about).  But I'm more interested the mere fact that I am responding to awe with a yearning for more.   I think I've been deprived of deep human connection for a while, and that that explains why this particular moment of awe is so captivating to me.

I know deprivation is mostly a sad issue, but awe's capacity to fill a void or emotional need is something I'm thinking about exploring as I study the awe vested in language, and so I wanted to just throw it out there in case it could be of any use to you on your projects.

Religious conflict, Paganism wins

The unknown, the transcendent, the sacred, worship, and devotion of the divine.  These are all terms that can be used to describe the sublime, and many of these are the themes of the novel "Bless Me, Ultima." 

This novel is a coming of age story.  In this book, the main character Tony must decide between the pagan religion he grew up with, and that is tangible, and the newer religion of Christianity that he has no personal connection with.

This is the scene where Tony first sees the pagan god, the Golden Carp:  
"'Behold the golden carp, Lord of the waters--" I turned and saw Cico standing, his spear held across his chest as if in acknowledgment of the presence of a ruler. The huge, beautiful form glided through the blue waters. I could not believe its size. It was bigger than me! And bright orange! . . . I could not have been more entrance if I had seen the Virgin, or God Himself. The golden carp had seen me."

Contrasting this personal experience with the one Tony has with Christianity, the reader can tell what one means more to him.  This scene occurs right after taking his first communion.
"I closed my eyes and concentrated. I had just swallowed Him, He must be in there! For a moment, on the altar railing, I thought I had felt His warmth, but then everything moved so fast. There just wasn't time to sit and discover Him, like I could do when I sat on the creek bank and watched the golden carp swim in the sun-filtered waters. . . . A thousand questions flashed through my mind, but the Voice within me did not answer.  There was only silence."

In these two passages,  the reader sees how the golden carp evokes a sense of wonder and awe in Tony, whereas Christ did not.  His understanding of the Divine is based off of his previous experiences.  This entire book can be seen as a sort of fictional memoir of his childhood experiences.  This goes along with Cara's flashcard presentation, in which we learn how memoirs can create awe.  It really has to do with life choices and how those choices will affect our future.

A Lifetime of Wonder

The example that I have chosen as my topic for this post encompasses a few different kinds of awe. Two of the biggest themes of this book are, the beauty and splendor of nature and the wonder and joy behind the human experience, as well as the connection that we have with God. The story explores how everybody is connected through the shared experiences of life, and that we are all a part of nature. 
My example is the book Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. It is the story of John Ames, and a collection of his memories that he's writing for his son. John is a pastor, like both his father and grandfather. The book chronicles his life, and describes how he was able to find God through the beauty of nature and in the actions of those around him.
As rife as this book is with references and observations about nature, this quote is my favorite. “The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.” The prose in this book is so poetic, and I think that this element adds to the wonder of this book. It certainly helps the reader feel the same kind of awe as John is experiencing. I also love how he ties a lot of his observations back to the human soul, and the inner light that we all have.  There are many instances when wonder is expressed at human nature or behavior. I love this quote from the book, as John brings up a point that all of us are familiar with, but never really think about. “It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it . . . so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.” The whole book is like this. John points out the most ordinary things about nature or humans, and he expresses the wonder that he sees in these simple acts or things. It's truly amazing. Another thing that he points out about human behavior is that, “These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.” There isn't a whole lot that I feel like I can say. These quotes just say it all for me. I think that this book would be a great thing for Cara to look at, because while fictional, it's a great example of a person's memories that are filled with awe and wonder. 

Some Good Old Fashioned Religious Awe

A while ago I studied Great Awakening Hymns—America circa 1730s and 40s. John Newton’s

“Amazing Grace” came a few decades later, and has British roots, but it still serves as one of the most iconic pieces in that genre, and proves the indelible mark that the first Great Awakening had on America and American religion.

As a rule, Great Awakening hymns are lyrical, i.e. they’re mimetic of the movement of the individual mind in the process of engaging with a question or negotiating with a problem. They use “I.” And they present a universal Christian struggle. These conventions seem to set up a welcome venue for awe—and they seriously work in “Amazing Grace.” I’ll just include the first two stanzas now:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see. 

 ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
 

The singer here is in obvious awe of Christ’s ability to save and heal. Some ways the speaker expresses that awe, aside from out-and-out saying it (such directness is another solid characteristic of the period), include juxtaposition and natural metaphor. I like this line as an example:  “The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,/ The sun forbear to shine;/ But God, who called me here below,/ Will be forever mine.”

It doesn’t seem like anyone’s current research fits with religious awe, which is kind of sad. Am I missing any obvious connections? I guess I’ll pose the conventions of religious awe for +Andrew Perazzo's consideration as he continues his research on science fiction. What does religious awe have that science fiction awe doesn’t, vice versa, and how do they compare?