literature

What to do with William James?  His writings on psychology formed the primary textbook for that discipline.  The school of philosophy he developed, pragmatism appeals to philosophers and scientists alike.  Jacques Barzun identifies him as an American hero.  So it would seem that the works of William James have been assimilated into American culture and intellectual life.  If this is true, then what is the point of reading his original writings?  Or why should one use “The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive

Preface and Explanation

The following paper originally included photographs of pages from Marjane Sartrapi’s graphic novel “Persepolis.” I used these images to demonstrate my points to the reader. Upon glancing over the images, however, it occurred to me that I might make an even more effective point by attempting to describe the images in prose, rather than to demonstrate them in their original form.

For this project, I took one of what Gertrude Stein calls her “plays,” and considered what would happen if I were to try to stage and direct it. After reading through it, I attempted to break it down into characters, lines, and to imagine a setting in which it would logically take place.

But first, let’s look at “Captain Walter Arnold” just the way Gertrude Stein wrote it, without any additional directions from me.

Captain Walter Arnold

By Gertrude Stein

Do you mean to please me.

I do.

Do you have any doubt of the value of food and water.

I have not.

Can you recollect any example of easy repetition.

“From the very start, the brain’s capacity for making new connections shows itself… as regions originally designed for other functions – particularly vision, motor, and multiple aspects of language – learn to interact with increasing speed. By the time a child is seven or eight, the beginning decoding brain illustrates both how much the young brain accomplishes and how far we have evolved… These three major distribution regions will be the foundation across all phases of reading for basic decoding, even though an increasing fluency… adds an interesting caveat to the unfolding portrait of the reading brain.” (1)

-Maryanne Wolf

Perhaps this is a stupid question…  Especially for someone who has taken almost enough literature courses to be an English minor… An avid reader of novels, graphic narratives, biographies, and texts on philosophy and science… 

WHAT IS LITERATURE?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 

Is it the texts of the Western Canon?  Is it global?  Is it any kind of artist writing?  What about important articles? Comics? Papers? Speeches? Films? Recipes?