Summer Reading, Continued
So, I’m up to about August now and I finally started in on some of the reading for my field exams…
48. Ion - Plato
It’s been a while since I touched anything by Plato and was surprised to find that a) I hadn’t actually read this before and b) I really enjoyed it. Basically, Socrates runs in to a cool hep cat who works as a Rhapsode, performing Homeric classics. Ion’s a one-trick pony but he thinks because he really really gets Homer that he’s also a master of the crafts and skills portrayed by Homeric characters. Socrates points out the faults in that claim for the readers but, sadly, Ion never really gets it. I wonder sometimes whether I’m a big Ion or not.
49. The Republic - Plato
This I have gone through before, in part and going back over my notes from the summer, I think I’ll have to tackle it again before writing my field exam. The key thing I pull out of it is the attention to ethics and morality and how they apply to the social, or political. The use of morality as an externally regulated code created and maintained by political structures underlies pretty much everything I work on these days and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of investigating how the ethics of the individual must respond to those moralities.
50. Poetics - Aristotle
I’m probably going to have to read this book every couple of years just to maintain familiarity with the structures so that all that other structuralist stuff makes sense. Frankly, there is a time and place for the sensational, just as there’s a time and place for the ironic detachment from plot - but without this work as a touchstone, these critical reactions haven’t got much juice. Interestingly, I think that I still enjoy a tale with a clearly defined plot and a cathartic ending best. Damn him.
51. On the Sublime - Longinus
One of my keystone texts, along with Cixious’s Laugh of the Medusa. This text continuously circulates in my mind whenever I engage with any theory that requires some sort of access to the liminal space, or any other interstitial movement between defined places. The artistic sublime, that miraculous void that lets us attempt to speak the name of god is a reason to be an artist - something always to strive for and die trying to attain. This shit gives life meaning. Literally. Read Walter Benjamin’s Task of the Translator and anything by Rushdie.
52. Institutio Oratorio - Quintillian
So I was supposed to read book VIII, Chapter V. I wound up accidentally reading all of book X instead. 832 pages of crabbing about how, yeah, the Greeks were okay at rhetoric but man, look at us fucking Romans. Every strain in this effort tries to convince audiences that a good fake beats legitimacy and that a good rhetoritician will never keep reality in mind, unless it aides in the fabrication of an argument. BAH.
~ Colin
