Good Bloggin' and my Intro Paragraph

To begin, blogs I have enjoyed a lot this semester are Rio's (always providing interesting stuff for me to look and think about) Kyle's (your dreams are very interesting, sir), and Sam's (keeping me straight on every thing Dr. Sexon says, has said, and will say).

My blogging might become a little more scarce in the coming weeks, because I am focusing all my creative energy on writing the final paper for the class. I think it might kill me. This is a rough start to what I'm going to be writing on, and I hope that I can write a paper worth reading.

“Youth cannot know how age thinks and reels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young” (Order of the Phoenix 826). While it might be strange to begin an scholarly essay with a quote from Harry Potter, the quote above draws an important parallel to the huge gap that grows every day in the realm of literary study: “high” vs. “low”, “old” vs. “new”, “vulgar” vs. “transcendent”. The distinction between various literatures is a hotly debated topic—a classification scheme which deems what should be read, and what is a waste of time is commonly touted—“We must read Hamlet, but stay away from that Stephanie Meyer!” The rhetorical questions abound: are “low” works derivative? Often. Do they simplify complex ideas and compress the aesthetic to a simple, easily marketable form? Frequently. Are they necessary, even as important, as the “high” literature they are derived from? Absolutely. A reader might be confused at this point. How is it that a work can be derivative, simple, lacking in aesthetic merit—and valid and important at the same time? If the view of literary scholarship is a linear one, in which the beginning is Everybody Poops, and the end is Finnegans Wake, then it would obviously make sense to jump right to the end and experience the best literature has to offer—rather than wasting time with the literal refuse at the beginning. While certain works are arguably more “important” than others, and there are thousands of generic pieces of literature about men fighting dragons and saving princesses that might/should be avoided, a reader does a great disservice to himself/herself when they forget that “lowbrow” literature is (returning to the quote above) a portal, not a road, to greater and more “intellectually stimulating” works—a portal that travels both ways—cyclically, rather than straight to the end! T.S. Eliot provides his insights: “In my beginning is my end” (Four Quartets 23 line 1).

Is there any evidence to back this claim? Through examinations of “high” and “low” narratives of morality, growth, kenosis, and dream, these very conventions will be challenged, reminding the reader that one does not become an adult by forgetting or moving on from what inspired or moved them as a child, nor can they remain mired in the past—childlike forever.