You can't escape English classes without being gnawed to death by literary criticism. It is slow and boring and before the end, you want to find a rock and bash your head in with it. Let me give you some particularly humorous quotes:
"Donne's erotology typically combines the former with the latter kinds of obscurity, which, as this essay will argue, helps to explain the long controversy not only over major love lyrics such as "The Extasie," but also over what would later be known as the metaphysical style."
If you didn't ask, "What did she just say?" and reread it, you've spent too much time around this foreign language. If you did not look up the definitions for metaphysical or erotology, either you've come across this essay before or you're lazy. I looked up erotology because I have to and I just did a basic google search. What's the first result? This essay. I'm pretty sure she made it up. It's the study of sexual stimuli and behavior. It makes sense but not in context. Did Donne study sexual behavior? Or stimuli? He was certainly cunning in his womanizing. He had to be. He had a reputation and the women knew it and so he had to learn new levels of sleaziness and sweet-talking to woo these girls. But then do frat boys have a degree in erotology? While Donne was much smarter than most fraternity members, he had the same goals and motives.
So anyway, what she's saying isn't particularly difficult here. It gets worse but this is her thesis. She practically says that. It might not make sense out of context, but it does make sense. However, the way she says it is hilarious. She's talking about obscurity in John Donne, who is a relatively straight-forward writer. He might be cunning in his innuendo and puns and double-entendres, etc, but he's very clear. You don't have to read him ten times over to understand him. You might need two or three times if you're unfamiliar with 17th century speech but is "Why must we rise because tis light? / Did we lie down, because twas night?" obscure in meaning? No. Like most great writers, he's understandable. The lady writing that essay I quoted is not and never will be a great writer. She is a failed writer. So she turned to criticism and wrote in her obscured ways there. She thinks she's so clever using the words "former" and "latter" and then pairing them together. You can tell if you read closely and have experience with these kinds of people. They revel in their "cleverness." It's actually something I did in high school before I knew how to write. She uses a negative to emphasize something that doesn't seem relevant to the essay, in this sentence or the rest of the essay. She also misunderstands metaphysics.
Metaphysics is part of philosophy that questions existence and what the real world is like. Meta means to go beyond, and physics is from the Greek word for nature. It does not question if we really exist or if the world is real. That is left for Nietzsche and other syphilitic crackpots. I'll give you an example with the ship. Every year the ship breaks down a little so they replace it and after seven years the old ship's parts have been completely replaced by the new parts. Is it the same ship? Some people say yes. Others say no. You can make a good case for either and people often do and while there is a right answer, no one can prove which is right.
So now that you see what metaphysics is, " Even the most disharmonious imagery (like for instance that found in such poems as Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle") may lack true metaphysical violence if its paradoxes are not "contaminated" with a riddling logic that produces metaphysical doubt," is a bit ridiculous.
How can metaphysics be violence? Metaphysics can question violence but it violence cannot have the property of questioning the real world and existence. She uses metaphysical twice in the same sentence, which makes me think she is just tossing it around when she can't figure out the real word she wants or when she wants to meet some daily word count.
This lady is awful but she's one of the better critics. She proves a point by saying her goal is D then she does A, B, C, hesitates, moves onto E, F, G. She gets near her topic but never addresses it straight-forwardly. Most critics talk about M and start with A, B, C then skip to X, Y, Z and you're left wondering why you just wasted your time. And they're so wordy. If I could edit their papers, I'd squeeze 10,000 words to 7,000. And then I'd tell them it was a weak argument because they don't once refer to the original text they're talk about. They don't cite evidence. They cite other people who have written on the same topic.
And universities encourage this practice! Don't worry about what your author says. Worry about what his critics say. They can explain him better. They're how you'll understand him. Don't even bother reading the original text. Just read the critics. They'll explain him so well that he'll be up in heaven or down in hell saying, "Oh, so that's what I meant."
Literary critics have psychology envy I think.
p.s. I'd give you more than two quotes to laugh at, except I'm not reading any further in her essay than what I've already read and I won't go back through to find laughable examples. I am not that eager to poke fun.
"Donne's erotology typically combines the former with the latter kinds of obscurity, which, as this essay will argue, helps to explain the long controversy not only over major love lyrics such as "The Extasie," but also over what would later be known as the metaphysical style."
If you didn't ask, "What did she just say?" and reread it, you've spent too much time around this foreign language. If you did not look up the definitions for metaphysical or erotology, either you've come across this essay before or you're lazy. I looked up erotology because I have to and I just did a basic google search. What's the first result? This essay. I'm pretty sure she made it up. It's the study of sexual stimuli and behavior. It makes sense but not in context. Did Donne study sexual behavior? Or stimuli? He was certainly cunning in his womanizing. He had to be. He had a reputation and the women knew it and so he had to learn new levels of sleaziness and sweet-talking to woo these girls. But then do frat boys have a degree in erotology? While Donne was much smarter than most fraternity members, he had the same goals and motives.
So anyway, what she's saying isn't particularly difficult here. It gets worse but this is her thesis. She practically says that. It might not make sense out of context, but it does make sense. However, the way she says it is hilarious. She's talking about obscurity in John Donne, who is a relatively straight-forward writer. He might be cunning in his innuendo and puns and double-entendres, etc, but he's very clear. You don't have to read him ten times over to understand him. You might need two or three times if you're unfamiliar with 17th century speech but is "Why must we rise because tis light? / Did we lie down, because twas night?" obscure in meaning? No. Like most great writers, he's understandable. The lady writing that essay I quoted is not and never will be a great writer. She is a failed writer. So she turned to criticism and wrote in her obscured ways there. She thinks she's so clever using the words "former" and "latter" and then pairing them together. You can tell if you read closely and have experience with these kinds of people. They revel in their "cleverness." It's actually something I did in high school before I knew how to write. She uses a negative to emphasize something that doesn't seem relevant to the essay, in this sentence or the rest of the essay. She also misunderstands metaphysics.
Metaphysics is part of philosophy that questions existence and what the real world is like. Meta means to go beyond, and physics is from the Greek word for nature. It does not question if we really exist or if the world is real. That is left for Nietzsche and other syphilitic crackpots. I'll give you an example with the ship. Every year the ship breaks down a little so they replace it and after seven years the old ship's parts have been completely replaced by the new parts. Is it the same ship? Some people say yes. Others say no. You can make a good case for either and people often do and while there is a right answer, no one can prove which is right.
So now that you see what metaphysics is, " Even the most disharmonious imagery (like for instance that found in such poems as Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle") may lack true metaphysical violence if its paradoxes are not "contaminated" with a riddling logic that produces metaphysical doubt," is a bit ridiculous.
How can metaphysics be violence? Metaphysics can question violence but it violence cannot have the property of questioning the real world and existence. She uses metaphysical twice in the same sentence, which makes me think she is just tossing it around when she can't figure out the real word she wants or when she wants to meet some daily word count.
This lady is awful but she's one of the better critics. She proves a point by saying her goal is D then she does A, B, C, hesitates, moves onto E, F, G. She gets near her topic but never addresses it straight-forwardly. Most critics talk about M and start with A, B, C then skip to X, Y, Z and you're left wondering why you just wasted your time. And they're so wordy. If I could edit their papers, I'd squeeze 10,000 words to 7,000. And then I'd tell them it was a weak argument because they don't once refer to the original text they're talk about. They don't cite evidence. They cite other people who have written on the same topic.
And universities encourage this practice! Don't worry about what your author says. Worry about what his critics say. They can explain him better. They're how you'll understand him. Don't even bother reading the original text. Just read the critics. They'll explain him so well that he'll be up in heaven or down in hell saying, "Oh, so that's what I meant."
Literary critics have psychology envy I think.
p.s. I'd give you more than two quotes to laugh at, except I'm not reading any further in her essay than what I've already read and I won't go back through to find laughable examples. I am not that eager to poke fun.
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