Class #11 postgame

Good job on the presentations today! It's really helping me put the pieces together, and maybe the same for you. The only thing I would change for those who haven't presented yet is to be sure the links for your images work.

(The picture is Bauhaus, which is also the name of an 80s band somewhat similar to The Cure... or I guess you could see them as a precursor to Nine Inch Nails or contemporary versions of goth rock... I'm not sure why they chose that name, as they're British... David Lloyd George would surely not approve)

REMINDERS:

-Check the dropbox for grades & comments on paper #4... I also wrote a long comment about it in last night's email... feel free to see me in office hours if you want to discuss it further
-We will discuss (most of) the remaining Weimar "characters" on Monday
-You should revisit the Reader article about the Bauhaus (pgs. 32-35)
-Read the Paper #5 prompt so you know what we're dealing with... but the paper won't be due for another few weeks
-Discovery Task #3 is due on Monday night... it connects to the character exercise and to the paper, as you will see... you may need to do it from a library computer... upload your paper to the EEE dropbox if you don't mind
-If you want to read ahead, the midterm is supposed to go up to Reader pg. 51, which means that it will have a bit about the Nazis on it

Crazy Role Play Exercise, a.k.a. The HH 214 Revolution, Take Two

Each of you is assigned to one historical "character."

If your character is mainly an artist or aesthetic theorist, you should start by finding one piece of art he would like and another he wouldn't (the "like" could be his own art). Explain why in 2-4 sentences. Then try to figure out how that art might relate to his political stance. Theorize in 2-4 sentences... you may have to guess his political beliefs. If your character is mainly a political doer, you should start by sketching her political beliefs in 2-4 sentences, then try to find one piece of art she would like and another she wouldn't. Then explain why this would fit with her political stance in 2-4 sentences.

You should all do this assignment for Friday and post it to the blog in reply to this entry. If there is a * next to your name, I will ask you to present your images & explanations at the podium on Friday. If there isn't a * next to your name, you'll present on Monday. I know students are scared of presentations sometimes, but this really isn't a big deal, and I'll guide you with questions as you present. Just be prepared to say something about/as your character.

I recommend Artstor for finding the images... this will actually give you a head start on the next "Discovery Task"... in fact, you'll be about 1/3 done before you even start. It will also give you a head start on the next essay, which is about analyzing visual images. On the Artstor site, click "enter digital library." You have to register and make a password, and the first time you use it, you have to do it from on campus.


READING REMINDER: Be comfortable with Reader 9-42 and Guide ch. 15

Disclaimer 1: We are focusing heavily on visual art because it ties into essay #5, and because it's easier to view on the projector. But playwrights, composers, poets, etc. were equally important to these various social and political movements.

Disclaimer 2: The other problem here is what is known as the "great man" distortion... the idea that history boils down to a small number of important thinkers/makers/doers, a small number of geniuses, heroes, or villains... Moeller already warned us against that kind of thinking in his agitprop trial against Lupton... still, it's a useful shorthand... we should just remember that we're dealing with a lot of thinkers/makers/doers who rejected this idea, in particular the various socialists and communists who saw the entire people or entire working class as the "hero" or major historical actor

"Thinkers" (Political Theorists)

MARXISTS:

*Karl Marx [Sarah]

(Marx famously rejected the distinction between thinking and doing, however... these terms can be reductive)

"Doers" (Politicians/Activists)

GERMAN EMPIRE:

*Wilhelm II [Yen]
-Paul von Hindenberg [Scarlett]
-Max von Baden [x]

MODERATE SOCIALISTS: (a.k.a. "Majority" and "Independent" Socialists):

*Friedrich Ebert [Lorena]
-Philipp Scheidemann [Thao]
-Matthias Erzberger [x]
-Walther Rathenau [x]

SPARTACUS LEAGUE (a.k.a. KPD, Communists):

*Karl Liebknecht [Grant]
-Rosa Luxemburg [Connie]
-Alfred Kimenyi [x]... a.k.a. "Durus"... not a perfect fit here, but kinda

POST-IMPERIAL RIGHT-WING (a.k.a. Army, Freikorps):

-Hermann Ehrhardt [Rante]
-Wolfgang Kapp [x]

ALLIED NATIONS (a.k.a. Germany's World War I enemies, creators of Versailles Treaty):

*David Lloyd George [Chris]
-Henri Poincare or Georges Clemenceau [x]
-Woodrow Wilson
-Nicholas II [x]

SOVIET COMMUNISTS (a.k.a. Bolsheviks, October Revolution):

-Vladimir Lenin [Aidin]
-Leon Trotsky [x]

"Makers" (Artists or Aesthetic Theorists)

ACADEMICS (e.g. Dresden Academy of Fine Arts)

*Oskar Kokoschka [Nicholas]

BAUHAUS (affiliated with November Group & Worker's Council for Arts):

*Walter Gropius [Martha]
-Max Pechstein [Alyssa]
-Friedrich Wolf [x]... kinda sorta... I think he fits best here

EXPRESSIONISTS:

*Max Beckmann [Amanda So]
-Otto Dix [Amanda Hansen]
-Kasimir Edschmid [x]
-Theodor Daubler [x]
-Kurt Hiller [x]

DADAISTS:

*George Grosz [Ankita] (a.k.a. Georg Grosz)
-John Heartfield [Marko] (a.k.a. Helmut Herzfeld)
-Hannah Hoch [Alyssa]
-Tristan Tzara [x]
-Hugo Ball [x]
-Raoul Hausmann [x]
-Jean Arp [x]
-Marcel Janco [x]

NAZIS:

-Adolph Hitler [x]
-Joseph Goebbels [Aaron]

On Relativism

Relativism is a philosophical view that says all opinions are equal. (You might as well call them "opinions" if they're all equal, rather than arguments or positions. Because you can't dispute opinions.)

Relativism is closely entangled with our contemporary consumerist version of capitalism. Each of us is encouraged to be an "individual" with certain beliefs, tastes, or desires different from everyone else's. That's "just the way we are" or "just what we're into." I'm Jewish, you're Hindu. I like Lebron James, you like Kobe Bryant. I like pie, you like pi.

This leads to a bit of a paradox. Can we call relativism a philosophical view at all? After all, philosophy in the usual sense depends on arguing which view is more valid. And here all views are equally valid. So if we are philosophers, we can't really characterize relativism as one among many competing philosophical positions, because it rejects this framework entirely. And if we are relativists, we wouldn't want to characterize it as one among many competing philosophical positions, because applying our relativism we would consider all of these "positions" to be mere opinions, tastes, turn-ons, etc. rather than mutually exclusive arguments.

In most areas of philosophy, it is fairly easy to dispense with relativism. In ontology (the study of being, what is, including physics), we might admit that we have imperfect knowledge of what kind of stuff the universe is made out of, but we would defend one theory against another based on our best knowledge & best reasoning, supposing that there is something true or valid, whether or not we are actually capable of accessing it. In ethics, we might admit that there are many ways to live one's life, perhaps even many good ones, but we commit ourselves to one in particular and therefore choose against certain others. Aesthetics is special because, as Immanuel Kant said, it is an area in which we talk as if we are speaking of objective truths when we are actually speaking of subjective truths. Have you ever argued with your roommate about whether Band X is better than Band Y? Is one of you right or wrong?

This is an incredibly difficult question. A lot of people think that the humanities is the domain of completely arbitrary arguments, unlike the sciences where one appeals to evidence. But this is not true. You still argue and produce evidence in the humanities, and while it is difficult to say conclusively that an argument is "right," it is not difficult to say conclusively that an argument is wrong. Shakespeare did not write Hamlet as an allegory for Kobe's struggle with the legacy of Michael Jordan, or as an advertisement for pie. Those are stupid and wrong theories about Shakespeare, because you will never find the evidence to prove them. Yet, what evidence do we appeal to when arguing aesthetics? Whether or not someone likes something? It's tricky.

Some of you raised a similar question last week. Are all aesthetic theories equally valid? Are they mutually exclusive? It seems to me that some combine well and some are quite opposite. I'm going to stake out an intermediate position for the time being, by sticking with Kant. Aesthetic theories propose that they are valid and that alternate or opposing theories are invalid. And you can certainly misunderstand them, which makes you wrong. But from a strict philosophical standpoint, it is difficult to contend that an aesthetic theory itself could be wrong.

On the other hand, when you combine aesthetics with something else, then you're out of the relativist jam. Think of the relationship between aesthetics and ontology in Plato (art is a lie, a distortion of reality) or between aesthetics and ethics in Austen (reading good books will help you lead a good life, reading bad books will make it harder for you to lead a good life) or between aesthetics and politics in Lenin (art that fosters the workers' revolution is good, art that hinders it is bad). So if we attach aesthetics to any other domain, then it does become arguable, and there is right and wrong, good and bad. But aesthetics per se (in and of itself) seems to entail relativism, which is why most people with another theoretical axe to grind reject aesthetics per se or "art for art's sake." What would Lenin say to the moderate relativism of Kant (where art alone is relative, but ethics and ontology, etc. are not)? Obviously he would say that even Kant's aesthetic theory is a product of middle class ideology, capitalism, etc. He would explain aesthetics by taking it out of the aesthetic domain... he would see the insistence on aesthetics as a separate category (like Plato would for other reasons) to be a "false consciousness" or manipulative lie.

There's another way to get out of the relativist jam when it comes to aesthetics, which is to ignore the broader philosophical framework, and treat aesthetic judgments like ethical commitments. Remember, Kant says we can't help but do this. In other words, you think Brittney Spears is teh awesomest, OMG!!! and I think Radiohead is teh awesomest, OMG!!! I say you're wrong. You say I'm wrong. OK, so we have different tastes, but then why don't you have my same taste? If you're not wrong and I'm not right, then why don't I just switch my preference to Y? I won't... because I'm not being a relativist when I make this judgment, when I choose this commitment... I really think Band X is better than Band Y. Otherwise, why the hell am I listening to it?

In summary, I point you to this short clip from the 1998 movie, Big Lebowski, where we see a battle between two political positions (Lebowski as "hippie" vs. the Malibu police chief as "fascist") followed by a battle between two aesthetic positions (the taxi driver likes The Eagles vs. Lebowski prefers Creedence Clearwater Revival).

Class #9 post-game

Things we learned today:

-All credit is due to Grant and Sarah for braving the podium and to those who helped get the discussion going, but I think it's fair to say we learned that revolutions do not occur spontaneously (in this case, students will not spontaneously direct a class toward their own collective interests by simply removing the teacher)... some form of education or preparation is necessary or they will fizzle out... the question many of the artists and aesthetic theorists we are now studying will ask is, "What role does art have in preparing a social revolution?"... what sort of art helps? what sort of art gets in the way?... we know art can be used as a "weapon" for war propaganda, but what else can it be used for, or used against?

-Even though I will return to a more teacherly role in class on Wednesday (I am done with ties for the moment), I am not teaching the class to myself... the class works better when you provide some of the questions for us to discuss... we can't begin to form answers without forming questions, and those come from reading & lecture... so although your final draft is due tomorrow afternoon, I expect you to be prepared to discuss pgs. 9-42 of the Course Reader on Wednesday, along with Moeller's lectures

-This material is dense and most of us are encountering it with a somewhat spotty memory of high school history classes... we can start with Moeller's notes, study questions, and glossary (login: moeller, password: moeller), but even then we need to divide the work somehow... so I will be dividing you into social/political factions on Wednesday... each faction will need to research its social/political positions in more detail, along with its corresponding aesthetics

-As a whole, this particular class is strongly disinclined to attending voluntary office hours :( somewhat average at active in-class discussion :| , but impressively diligent and incisive in the use of the homework blog ;) so I will lean more heavily on that for the remainder of the quarter... you're going to do better, especially on the midterm and final, if you participate in this blog and read the entries by me and the other students

-Whereas a resource like Encyclopedia Britannica is edited by individual experts, and a resource like Wikipedia is edited by a collective process that involves both experts and non-experts (or calls into question the difference), Google is just an aggregator that groups searches by popularity and meta-tags without any sort of editorial plan... thus Google Images is a limited tool for serious study, though it can help brainstorm or locate unexpected connections... we're going to use some better tools like Artstor to do our research in coming weeks, much of which pertains to analyzing images (i.e. essay #5)

Class #8 post-game

OBAMA INAUGURATION PHOTOSYNTH:
-view here... you might have to download some plugins to make it work
-more on how photosynth works

REMINDER:
-Course Reader (yellow textbook) pgs. 9-28 for Monday... don't fall behind
-Answer the review question you selected
-Finish targeted peer edit by Sunday night at 9pm. (EEE Dropbox-> Working Draft #4-> Shared Student Files)

REMINDER:
-Final draft #4 is due Tuesday at 3pm to Turnitin.com,including acknowledgments and reflections

TARGETED PEER EDIT INSTRUCTIONS:

1) Read the essay all the way through.
2) Underline the three strongest sentences with a straight line.
3) Underline the three weakest sentences with a squiggly line.
4) If any references to ethos, logos, or pathos are used, do you feel that they contribute to the essay, or would it be better off without them?
5) Are the terms "aesthetics" and "art" used properly? If not, give suggestions for revision.
6) Are plurals and possessives used properly? If not, give suggestions for revision.
7) Give a revision suggestion for each sentence involving a primary quotation (i.e. quotation from the play). By suggestion, I mean actually rewrite the sentence, using the techniques from the handout I gave you.
8) Which of the three tasks (formal, historical, revisionary) is best developed in this draft? Which of the three tasks is least developed?
9) For the least developed, try to paraphrase your partner's main point in that section (or what you think is the writer's main point) in 1-2 sentences.
10) Special request (partner's choice)

Class #7 post-game

That was fun comparing the paintings. You can expect a similar type of exercise to show up somewhere on your midterm, I think.

REMINDERS:
-Bring in an unmarked copy of your latest paper draft for class on Friday
-Quotations exercise... the front of the sheet is tips & strategies, the back of the sheet is the exercise... take the two long blocks of quotation and condense them into 2-3 sentences each by using the techniques on the front of the sheet.
-Aesthetics exercise... make a grid with "Aristotle," "Alberti," "Shakespeare," and "[Your Name]" as columns and "essays," "soup," "decisions," "playing music you wrote," "playing music someone else wrote," doodles," "necklaces," "photographs," "web pages," "posters made by hand," "posters made with PhotoShop," "making people happy," "paintings," and "clothing" as rows. Mark yes or no whether the aesthetic thinker in question would consider that activity/thing to be art. Pick one of the cases that you consider to be intriguing or questionable and discuss in more detail why the four people would argue in that particular way.

FINAL DRAFT CHECKLIST (for Monday night):
-your paper should be submitted into Turnitin.com... you don't need to submit it anywhere else... I'm sending the log-in instructions to Scarlett because she asked for them, but if anyone else is unfamiliar with the website, please email me
-the classID is 2585283 and the password is istoria
-this is the UCI policy on academic honesty, f.y.i.
-your paper should include Acknowledgements (I'm quoting from the syllabus now: "If you receive any help at all with an assignment, from your classmates, roommates, study group, LARC, CWC, parents, siblings, other teachers, dead celebrities encountered through astral projection, etc., you are required to include written acknowledgment. No one else should generate the language of your papers.") Paste this at the end of your paper rather than making a separate document.
-your paper should include Reflections... the questions students usually consider are: a) what elements of the paper do you consider successful?, b) what elements of the paper do you consider unsuccessful?, c) is there anything that happened during the writing of the paper that I should take into consideration? tragedies, comedies, etc., d) what grade would you give yourself for the assignment? But you can reflect on other things as well if you like. Paste this at the end of your paper after the Acknowledgments rather than making a separate document.

Aristotle on theater

I mentioned this to a couple of you in office hours... it's a handout I gave to a class I taught a couple of years ago. Definitely not required reading, but if your paper has more of an Aristotle focus, this might help.

(The picture is a detail from Raphael's School of Athens... I thought it would be appropriate for a post about Aristotle... he's the guy in the red toga, talking to Plato. The full painting is here. It's Alberti-licious.)

I think I promised to post something else, but I can't remember what it was. Can someone remind me?

Class #6 post-game

REMINDER
-There is no lecture or discussion on Monday, which is Martin Luther King day.
-Extra credit if you watch Obama's inaugural address and give at least two instances (with brief analysis) of ethos, logos, and pathos... extra credit means I will let you skip a future homework assignment

REMINDER:
-post your group's answers to the Shakespeare motives exercise in reply to this post
-you can also read Ankita's summary of today's Lupton forum if you click on the replies

REMINDER:
-Read Alberti 89-98
-Answer the last discussion question (about Alberti & Aristotle) here and post it in reply to this post
-Find one painting Alberti would love and one he would hate... I think it would work best if you posted those as web links in reply to this post... then I could use them in class

REMINDER:
-Sign up for Wednesday conferences here
-Working draft #4 due Monday 9pm to EEE dropbox

TIPS FOR WORKING DRAFT:
-Be selective... there's no way you can include all your ideas in each section... there is no need to be complete or comprehensive... better a couple of ideas in each section, developed in detail
-Be sure to pay attention to the detail of Shakespeare's language/word choice, especially in task A & B
-Your organizational scheme (intro, transitions, conclusion) should reflect your own ideas and your understanding of the assignment... in other words, your paper needs to justify its purpose... you need to write as if you have something important to say rather than you're just doing it because it was assigned
-You can put tasks A, B, C in whatever order makes sense to you, and you can give them slightly different proportions in length if necessary

Class #5 post-game (left: classic works of art)

Sarah wondered what the point of today's exercise was (a good question). You can think of it as a model for a process of active reading (cf. Guide chapter 13). In other words, it trained you to approach the scene with particular questions in mind. This is a useful tool for reading in general, but it should also be apparent that it specifically gives you a way to actively read Act 5 of Midsummer with an eye toward Task A of your paper. Though we also ventured into some aspects of Task B, which we will revisit on Friday along with Alberti.


REMINDER: Buy Alberti's On Painting if you haven't already, and catch up on the reading that Lupton discussed (39-40, 63-85).

REMINDER: Essay #4 working draft due Monday night at 9pm, so if you still have more work to do on your ideas draft, time's a'wasting.

REMINDER: Regular attendance at office hours correlates to higher grades, and probably causes higher grades. (Does not guarantee higher grades.) Alberti, as a humanist and a follower of Aristotle, believes that virtue requires cultivation. I.e. requires practice. Wouldn't more practice, in this case promote greater cultivation of virtue? The same observation is true of working with other students in a study group... why not finish the exercise we did in class today, through the end of the scene?

BONUS: More news about the emerging science of love potions... could there be an anti-love potion? I know we have pretty much left this theme aside in our reading of Midsummer. But it's worth thinking about art as the ability to cause transformations of the ordinary to occur. This is something that festival can do, also magic, religion, or science depending on what you believe.

Class #4 post-game

Today's discussion was excellent... you guys were really on point, and I think we sorted some things out.

Please don't be afraid to ask questions in class, and please come to office hours! I'm literally just sitting here doing nothing, so if you want extra help on your paper, all you need to do is take a little initiative. All of the students who came to my office hours consistently last quarter got higher grades, because they got their specific questions answered and they got more hands-on learning. It's not that complicated.

REMINDER: Finish ideas draft. Yes, you can repost it to EEE. Is it "graded"? Not really; I believe that draft submissions accounted for 3% of the writing grade in my section last quarter, so technically Ideas Draft #4 counts for about half of 1% of your writing grade. (Completion only.) But that's practically nothing... your main motivation should be working toward a better final draft, and the more work you can do now before your other classes get more demanding, the better.

REMINDER: Read Alberti's On Painting (pgs. 39-40). This should be available at the campus bookstore now if it wasn't before. If you want to get a further head start on Alberti, the official assignment also included 63-85. Read what you can; we'll catch it up once we get a better handle on Shakespeare.

Instructions for posting ideas draft to EEE dropbox

1) Click the link on the left that says EEE dropbox, or click here
2) You may need to sign into EEE... if you don't know how, instructions are here
3) When you get inside the DropBox, you should see a series of choices on the upper left... I can't see this from my end, so I'm not quite sure what it looks like
4) Click on my class (?) and then click "Ideas Draft #4"
5) Click "Assignment Submission"
6) Click "Upload Files"... it should be on the upper right (?)
7) Upload your ideas draft file... I would prefer .doc, but .rtf, .txt, and .pdf are also acceptable... sometimes my computer has problems with .wps, so save those as .rtf
8) If you have any problem with this whatsoever, please email me over the weekend or tell me on Monday... I really want to make sure this is working before the working draft happens the next week

Class #3 post-game (and Essay #4 stuff)

First, I want to make an apology for how fast the class has been going so far. There's not a lot of leeway in the schedule because there are so many readings and assignments later in the quarter. So we have to go warp speed into Shakespeare even as we're doing meet and greet, figuring out how to use the different electronic tools, and figuring out what the class is going to be about. I anticipate that things will slow down in a week or two. I would highly recommend attending my office hours, and/or making a study group with other students, if you're having trouble keeping track of all the different ideas Lupton and I are throwing at you. And definitely read/use the blog.

I also want to give you guys credit for the good work you've been doing in class discussion so far, even though some of it may still be over your head.

And speaking of going too fast... Am I forgetting, or did the group who had study question #7 not get a chance to talk today? They should post their answer in reply here. And you guys should read it, because it will be pertinent to your paper.

HOW ESSAYS WORK IN THIS CLASS
---------
-Step one: reading, lectures, class discussion, homework, blog, etc.
-Step two: ideas draft (due to EEE dropbox, graded as for completion only... do not concern yourself with proper grammar, spelling, etc. etc., or anything else that will inhibit you from using this to get your ideas out... often these are a kind of checklist of mini-assignments rather than one paper)
-Step three: working draft (due to EEE dropbox... graded for completion only, but do concern yourself with clear expression and with putting this in the form of a unified paper)
-Step four: teacher conference and/or student peer review
-Step five: final draft (due to Turnitin.Com... this is the one I grade... there are a couple of additional requirements, like self-reflection paragraph and an acknowledgements paragraph... I'll provide full details later)

TIMETABLE FOR ESSAY #4
---------
-Step one: generating ideas... we've already started this, and we will continue next week
-Step two: ideas draft (due Monday morning, 9am to EEE dropbox)
-Step three: working draft (due Monday Jan. 19, 9pm to EEE dropbox)
-Step four: conference with me on Wednesday Jan. 21, probably a peer review exercise on Jan. 21 or 23
-Step five: final draft (due to Turnitin.Com on Sunday Jan. 25, 9pm)

ESSAY #4 PROMPT
---------

Perhaps I exaggerated the differences between this and the official prompt. You could say the emphasis is different. But for future reference, my tweaks for Essay #5 and #6 will be smaller. As I said, I think this one is somewhat ill-conceived.

Task A. Pick a character who appears in Act 5, scene 1. Explain what his/her theory of aesthetics is (i.e. his/her theory of what artistic "making" is, what it might be good for or bad for), how it may agree/disagree with those of the other characters in the scene, and how he/she tries to make an argument for that theory. You do NOT need to limit yourself to ethos, logos, and pathos, though you may find these to be useful tools of analysis. The more you can work inductively on specific details like word choice, the better.

Task B. These characters are not real people. But the playwright, the actors, and the audience are. What do you think Shakespeare's theory of aesthetics is, and how is he using this particular character to argue for that theory (or to criticize, question, make fun of, etc. other theories... again, specific detail is helpful.) How do you define Shakespeare's rhetorical motives with respect to his audience and his time period, and how is he trying to accomplish them? (Again, ethos, logos, and pathos may be pertinent, but don't limit yourself.)

Task C. If we assume that plays are at least partly rhetorical, how could you make a restaging of Midsummer Night's Dream to accomplish your own motives? Consider who the audience would be, the occasion, whether you would change the dialogue and if so how you would change it, the stage, the lighting, the costume, the medium (play? film? something else?), and, especially, consider how you would make the notion of fairies/folk-mythology/festivals meaningful to a contemporary audience in the way it would have been in England 400 years ago. (When I say "consider," I don't mean each one, just whatever you think is most important.)

Putting it together. Tasks A, B, and C will bring their own challenges, but I'm confident that you can do them, and I give very specific suggestions below for how to start doing them in the ideas draft. But the greater challenge for this essay - much like Schwab's Essay #1, you might notice - will be fitting the pieces together into a whole. We will do a class exercise to help you with this at some point. To preview, you will need a couple of transition sentences from A to B, and then from B to C. And of course you will need an introduction and a conclusion. Vague enough? Let me explain. What you are doing in this paper is three different analytic maneuvers or we might say three different levels of analysis. The first task/maneuver/level is a "close analysis" or formal analysis, an internal analysis. It happens in a fictional forest outside of fictional Athens, "inside" the play, so to speak. Characters speaking to each other. The second task/maneuver/level is a "historical reading." This happens "outside" the play, in London in the 1590s. It's mainly about Shakespeare's world and how the play relates to it. Characters as mouthpieces for various ideas of the time. The third task/maneuver/level is a "revisionary" or reinterpretive reading. This happens in our world. You use the characters as mouthpieces for various ideas of our time. And I'm guessing your concerns are somewhat different than Shakespeare's. So your transitions will likely take the form of signaling "I am going to move from this one level/type of analysis to this other one." You might want to say why, give a justification for the move. The introduction, I should think, will say something about why Midsummer Night's Dream provides us an opportunity to think about aesthetics and rhetoric in several different ways. We'll refine it by the time of the working draft... we're being inductive, remember.

IDEAS DRAFT #4 INSTRUCTIONS
---------

This is not an outline for your essay. You cannot possibly include all of this in the working draft, and you will have the additional task of organizing it and stitching it together. What this is, though, is an extremely detailed to-do list that will put you in a strong position to write your working draft, and give you lots to draw from so that, when it does come time to do the working draft, you won't experience the suffocating fear of a blank word-processing screen that we all suffer from. As I said already, you shouldn't worry overly much about complete sentences and so forth with this. Write without fear of consequence or judgement. And take heart, there are many simple yes/no questions and some that are not questions at all.

THEORETICAL WARM-UP:

1) Should an eight-year old child be allowed to play Grand Theft Auto IV?
2) Why or why not?
3) Watch this YouTube video.
4) Which debater do you most agree with and why?
5) Re-read my January 5th blog post
6) What does the term "aesthetics" mean, in your own words?
7) What is the Platonic theory of aesthetics, in your own words?
8) What is the Aristotlean theory of aesthetics, in your own words?
9) Present at least one other possible theory of aesthetics, in your own words. (It can be from Midsummer, from the Hip-Hop video in question #2 or whatever.

TASK A (FORMAL READING)

10) Read Guide ch. 13 (pgs. 104-08 only) for another good demonstration of an inductive reading method.
11) Read Guide ch. 14 for a more detailed explanation of what "rhetoric" means and how you analyze it
12) Read the play a second time, as assigned for homework.
13) Read Act 3, Scene 1 and Act 5, Scene 1 a third time. Preferably aloud, with partner(s).
14) Highlight/underline at least six bits of dialogue from this scene that are somehow weird or interesting, and copy them here.
15) Write a question that occurs to you about each one.
16) Answer it.
17) Pick a character who seems to have some kind of opinion about aesthetics.
18) Who is your character (status, profession, or what have you)?
19) What does he or she want in general?
20) What does he or she want in this particular scene?
21) Highlight/underline at least four bits of this character's dialogue that seem to relate to aesthetics and copy them here.
22) What do you think your character's view of aesthetics is, in your own words?
23) Why might your character's status, profession, or what have you, lead him/her to that view?
24) Take the four bits of dialogue from question #18 and paraphrase each one of them into the way that you and your friends talk.
25) For each of the four bits, who is your character talking to?
26) For each of the four bits, why might your character use these particular words? (Shakespeare's, I mean) Select a limited number of individual words or phrases if you want to save yourself time.

TASK B (HISTORICAL READING)
27) Read xxvi-xxxiii, xxxvi-xliii of the introduction to the Signet edition (the UCI bookstore one... or click here)
28) In your own words, what are the three most important historical facts you learned?
29) Name at least five distinct motives Shakespeare might have in staging MND.
30) What are the major aesthetic theories of Shakespeare's time?
31) Who supports them?
32) Why?
33) What do you think Shakespeare's theory of aesthetics is?
34) Which of the characters in Act 5 Scene 1 has the view of aesthetics that is closest to Shakespeare's?
35) Which has the view that is most different from or most opposite to Shakespeare's?
36) If your character is not one of those two, to what extent does Shakespeare agree with your character's view?
37) Underline/highlight, and copy here, at least three bits of dialogue from the scene from other characters that seem to relate to Shakespeare's own view of aesthetics.
38) Read Guide ch. 11.
39) This play is a comedy. Name one advantage of the comedy genre as a vehicle for getting across whatever message you think Shakespeare is trying to get across
40) Name one disadvantage.

TASK C (REVISIONARY READING)
41) What medium would you use to revise MND... play? film? something else?
42) Who would your audience(s) be?
43) Where are they and why are they watching?
44) What is your particular message or focus in this hypothetical production?
45) Would you alter/modernize the dialogue?
46) If not, why not. If yes, how?
47) Using details of stage/set/background/scenery/lighting etc., what does your "Athens" set look like vs. what does your "Forest" set look like?
48) Why?
49) What is the equivalent of fairies in 2009?
50) Why?
51) What is the equivalent of the midsummer festival in 2009?
52) Why?
53) What are the fairy costumes like?
54) What about the costumes of the Athenians?
55) The costume of the "mechanicals"?
56) Why?
57) What does Bottom get transformed into?
58) Why?
59) What is the transforming agent... is it a potion?
60) Why or why not?
61) Give at least one further detail that you would revise in your staging/production
62) Explain why.

Class #2 post-game

On Friday we'll revisit the philosophy of making (aesthetics), see the rest of your plates, and start talking about the upcoming essay assignment.

-Finish reading MND. Pay special attention to pp. 70-71 and 85-86 for Shakespeare's staging of classic/philosophical and contemporary/political debates about aesthetics
-I assigned each of you one of these study questions in class. Post your answer in reply below... we'll also discuss them on Friday.
-Read Guide ch. 12 and ch. 14... you don't need to do the exercises at the end of ch. 14, and I can't for the life of me figure out what the function of pp. 101-103, so you can skip that too

Further note on today's class discussion:

1) The thing I wanted to say when time ran out. I kept asking "what is this, what is that?" about the plates. In other words, what does the picture or some part of it represent. But not all art is representational. If so, what kind of questions do we ask about that art? And then back to music again... could it be considered representational? And what category do we put necklaces in? What's the difference between art and decoration?

2) We did some shovel work on rhetoric and some on setting, but we treated them as separate topics. How do they relate? For one thing, settings provide occasions. Social rules operate differently (or not at all) in certain places and at certain times. That's the whole point of the midsummer holiday in European culture. It's what the Romans called a "saturnalia"... cf. to Mardi Gras, Carnival, Spring Break, etc... it means the usual rules are suspended. You can smart off to your social superiors (dukes, teachers, parking directors). You can hang out with people you're not supposed to and do things you're not supposed to. As with time, so too with places. The "liberties" or red light district on the outskirts of London is a place where the usual laws do not apply. You can even socialize (touch? more?) with people from other social classes. Occasions, as we saw, relate to rhetoric. Certain kinds of ethos or rhetorical persona are fitting for certain occasions, certain situations. Or, to look at things from a very different perspective, you could see Shakespeare's use of folk holiday traditions, folk mythology about fairies, etc. as a form of rhetoric, like a tool that he is employing towards some purpose. But what purpose?

3) Every Rose Has Its Thorn (not actually Guns and Roses as it turns out). Do yourself a favor and watch this... it's completely hysterical.

4) Maybe the love potion in MND isn't that far-fetched.

Online Literacy Quiz

There were a lot of plagiarism cases last quarter (one in my class in fact), so the HumCore directors asked us to give you guys this exercise.

In a nutshell:

1) ask me if you feel that you have wandered into a gray area

2) It's better to cite things
-especially if they provide specific information or ideas that you use
-especially if they make original interpretive claims

3) Some sources are better than others
-if they're more recent
-if they're more reputable
-if they're more pertinent to what you're arguing/writing

All the questions are kind of tricky on purpose to make you think through the situations. It would probably be hard to get each one right on the first try, but do go through the answer key when you finish.

The one that I feel I should clarify is #12. They're not saying that properly citing a student paper from the internet constitutes plagiarism. How could proper citation be plagiarism? What they're saying is, it would be better for you to consult other resources, because this is a resource that's particularly hard for freshmen to use properly.

Plato/Aristotle Rant

I had intended to express this in plate form, but I left the magic markers in my office on Monday, so you are spared a demonstration of my (lack of) artistic skill.

Speaking of which, check out the plates that your classmates made... we'll be looking at these on Wednesday.

If I recall correctly, my objective was to link some of last quarter's philosophical concepts to the issues we're going to discuss in Winter quarter, in particular Shakespeare's MND. Here goes:

As you may have discussed with your instructor last quarter, there are many different areas or branches in philosophy, including ethics ("what is the good life?"), ontology ("what is everything made out of?"), and epistemology ("what do we know and how do we know it?"). Most philosophers deal with all of these areas (Aristotle is a good example), though some have particular concentrations or avoidances (note Descartes' concentration on epistemology and avoidance of ethics). And obviously these areas relate together; for instance it makes sense that Aristotle views ethics as developing oneself towards a telos just as he views physics (sub-branch of ontology) as a system in which non-human objects develop towards a telos, or that he views biology (sub-sub branch of physics) in terms of which things are more or less self-sufficient and also politics (sub-branch of ethics) in terms of which people are more or less self-sufficient. And furthermore, you can look at a writer like Austen or Morrison and see them exploring issues of ethics, epistemology, ontology, etc. even though they don't use the typical forms of philosophical expression.

There is one particularly tricky branch of philosophy that relates to these others, called aesthetics, which is the study of art, or as some philosophers put it, the study of beauty (Western art stopped trying to be beautiful about 100 years ago, so one has to be careful using this term.) You can go back to all of the major philosophers and they will have something interesting to say about aesthetics. Indeed in many cases it's what they say about aesthetics that either helps them clarify some of their other ideas or kind of screws up some of their other ideas. Think about Morrison's version of aesthetics in Bluest Eye, for instance, and how it relates to her ideas about ethics, politics, and epistemology. Are the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls in the 1940s movies really beautiful? Why? To whom? Etc. That's an aesthetic question.

In Shakespeare's time, many of the classic Greek and Roman books were being reintroduced into Europe (a.k.a. the Renaissance... many of these books were preserved by Arabs during the Middle Ages which is an interesting story in and of itself). And you know from reading Descartes that Aristotle, and to a lesser degree Plato, were read by intellectuals (i.e. Catholic clergy) all along anyway. So the point being, people be loving their Plato and their Aristotle in Shakespeare's time (circa 1600 A.D.). These two philosophers were still considered authorities on a wide variety of topics, including aesthetics.

What does Plato say about aesthetics? The Symposium gives you a bit of a clue because it provides a theory of ethics. He argues (through Socrates and Diotima) that to be a good lover, you must move from concrete, physical objects of love (like hot young boys) to abstract, philosophical objects of love (like philosophical concepts). Thus you lead a better life. But this is also a theory of ontology, because he's implying that IDEAS are more real than OBJECTS. Which is an odd way of looking at things, but he has his reasons. This is Plato's ontology, more or less, and you will recognize that it fits with the idea of a "ladder of love" ascending upwards.

Real: concepts/ideas/forms (e.g. "love," "justice," "truth," "courage," the treeness of trees, the dogness of dogs, the chairness of chairs)
Almost Real: mathematical figures and forms (e.g. "six," "eleven," "triangle," "oval")
Not that Real: physical objects (e.g. this table, that chair, this tree, that dog)
Fake Fake Fake: art (painting, sculpture, theater, etc.)

Art is the furthest thing from reality to a Platonist. It's like making a copy of a copy of a copy. It's just a way to manipulate stupid people, more or less. If philosophers are doing the manipulating, that's probably OK. Some people are just hopeless anyway, like sheep. But if non-philosophers are doing the manipulating, that's bad. Even sheep need to follow true ideas rather than false ones, and if the only place they're getting their ideas is art, then those sheep are going to graze in the wrong direction. That's why Plato proposes that all artists be thrown out of Athens. They're good for nothing, or perhaps worse. Plays, for instance, merely excite people's emotions with images of sex and violence. (Sound familiar? This is a common argument against Hollywood, video games, etc.) Plato is OK with music, but only because he considers it a sub-category of math. (If you know anything about music theory, this will probably make sense to you.)

Aristotle disagrees with Plato's view of aesthetics. You might expect this, given his disagreements about ontology. He doesn't believe in pure ideas or concepts, but rather that the idea must be embodied and that the body must be animated by the idea (soul, telos). Potentiality plus actuality. Hylomorphism. So likewise for an art form like theater, the body here is the actors and the stage, the costumes, the lighting, the dialogue, etc. etc. And the soul, the telos, is the plot. The idea that animates and actualizes the whole thing. So in that way, art can be educational... an indirect method of conveying ideas. Even if it deals with irrational images of sex and violence, at the very least it provides an emotional release for those impulses so that people can think more clearly afterwards. So art isn't good in and of itself, like philosophy is, but it is fairly good if it can be kept within certain boundaries.

As you know from reading Morrison, there are other views of aesthetics, some which question the distinction between the body and the spirit that Plato proposes and Aristotle kinda sorta preserves. Some philosophers have even argued that anything people do is "art," even philosophy. (Friedrich Nietzche is a good example of this position, or the playwright Oscar Wilde.)

In Shakespeare's time, though, it's Plato vs. Aristotle. And this isn't just some intellectual debate. It has real political consequences. Who's in London, or in England more generally? To make things really simple, five groups of people. The monarchy, the aristocracy, the middle class, the urban laborers, and the rural peasants. The middle class is gathering power... you see what this trend looks like 200+ years later in Persuasion. One of the main factions in the middle class is the Puritans. Remember them from American history class? They are trying to reform British religion and British politics, and so far as art goes, they are Platonists. They want to close down the theaters, for instance. They think they're a health hazard (fire and disease transmission). But they also think they're morally dangerous (again, sex and violence).

It makes some sense to see plays as hazardous in this way... most of them are performed on the outskirts of town, in the area known as the "liberties" (i.e. red light district). Where some of the other artistic entertainments include prostitution and bear-baiting. And where much of the audience is urban laborers. Classes even mix together. The horror.

Shakespeare, as an artistic professional, a theater writer, director, and performer, obviously has a vested interest in defending his profession from this attack. (How would you feel if someone called you a "caterpillar of the commonweal" and threw recycled arguments from Plato at you? I'd be pissed, personally.) One way he can do this is by aligning his professional interests with those of the upper classes, especially the monarchy. Which is why his company of actors is basically the queen's house band. It may seem strange that the queen is down with this illicit activity that usually takes place in the bad part of town, but that just goes to show you the rising influence of the Puritan middle class (who have major issues with the monarchy). This is a fight over zoning, in effect. (We'll study this notion in more detail when we read Jacobs.) So you might think of Theseus & Hippolyta as representations of monarchs. They're equivalent to the audience that the play was first performed for (at an upper class wedding).

The faeries are more complicated. Because as Lupton is showing us, they also relate to "the old England," the ancient traditions, and so on. But they're also kind of sexy and magical and live in the outskirts of town. In the liberties. Where there are no rules. So that's another way Shakespeare can try to make his profession more legitimate, is to appeal to ancient folk traditions.

What's another way? Why am I writing this rant?

Aristotle. He can, and does appeal to Aristotle as an answer to the Puritan attack on art, which is an attack on his very livelihood.

So as you read the play, see if you can detect places where this intellectual debate between Platonists and Aristotleans is peeking through, and places where the political debate about who should control the city, and what kind of art is permissible, creeps through. I'll point to some examples in class.

Welcome

Here is the blog I was talking about. Please post a comment below so I can make sure it's working. It was nice meeting all of you today!

Other Reminders:

-Read Midsummer Night's Dream Acts I-II
-Read Make a Plate syllabus and bring in any questions
-Ask a question to the class listserv
-Take the EEE quiz on Online Information Literacy

Footnote: I mentioned in class on Monday that Shakespeare's audience generally knew the plot of his plays before even seeing them. (For instance, Julius Caesar is going to get assassinated. He just is. He is not going to, you know, form a dance crew with Marc Antony and persuade Brutus and Cassius that anyone with such outstanding choreography deserves to be emperor.) But check out pp. 89-91 of the Signet edition of MND that most of you bought at the bookstore. Apparently, this is one of a small number of Shakespeare's plays that do have semi-original plots, although it is cobbled together out of bits and pieces of other plays and stories. Interesting, but does it invalidate my argument that those who have read the play before should do so again? Uh, no.