After reading the chapter, and weighing my options carefully, I deemed the section literature as intertextual or self-reflective construct to be something that I would personally look into. This is because of the sort of paradoxical theory that (and correct me if I am wrong) every piece of literature is just a remade, reimagined version of the previous until eventually it turns into something else entirely. It had me thinking of how literature has evolved over the years, even in just the amount of time we humans could record history, because before recorded history were just stories that were eventually lost to time but may have actually been the basis for things we know and love today. A quick example that the section gives us is when talking about the sonnet by Shakespeare My Mistress, where what is written is closely connected to metaphors used in love stories, however with his own take on the matter, and instead changing the way we read it while still using those same metaphors and tropes. It’s a fun theory to play around with for sure and I do believe that in some way everything we read or write was derived from one place and then slowly started being mixed together from different places. Even today, some movie tropes stay the same while others make it seem the same, but make it have a much heavier impact on the watchers than the ones that have been done a million times over.
All posts by Jorge D. Vasquez
Blog post #1
The reading I did by Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric, is a rather long poem describing the human anatomy from different perspectives, all being generally positive as well as empowering to ones self. A good example of this can be found all though out the poem, however one stood out to me was toward the center/ end parts when Whitman begins a story about a slave auction taking place and how the slaves, who at this point were obviously treated as objects rather than people, have their own souls, wills, dreams and ambitions besides being sold off into whatever hell they are to be subjected to (My words). This really opened up a different path for the poem as a whole for me as it came to light that it was not just a poem about self empowerment and divine enjoyment, it was telling a deeper story, no matter who you are, what you hail from, or what gender you were given by the grace of god, you are a living breathing, thinking person and that should never be given up, even in times of desperation. In regards to how this can correlate with Cullers question What is Literature, Culler almost directly talks about literature as the inclusion of different writing techniques to convey or project emotion from the reader, which can be seen in multiple stages of the piece by Whitman, from how he describes a normal every day person as something divine and even when trying to pull apart the comparison between slaves and objects by stating that slaves have their own free will, even if under law that is not the case. Even when describing the men who are auctioning and being auctioned, he never lets the tone of “creator”, so to speak, dissipate, meaning that he has a sort of tone that makes him see the beauty in even the most fragile and damaged.
