21. In The End

This semester has been an interesting one. A lot of good things have happened offset by some bad, but overall it has been great. It's neat to look at my progression of thoughts in this blog and even to look at the chain of events that inspired each post. Looking back I can detect growth in my literary knowledge and writing abilities. Also, I've been better able to make sense of the world around me as I have gained the tools necessary to do so in English 251 as well as others classes.

To me, the area in which I have seen the most growth has been in my ability to apply the subject matter of school to the Gospel and vice versa. I'm excited about all of the possibilities that this will open up for me in the remaining years of school. I am developing this idea for my final paper with the example of looking at the Joseph Smith History rhetorically.

On a more specific note, I wanted finish my blog by going over 10 terms that I learned in my English 251 class and what they mean to me.

1. Historical Criticism—How history will help us understand the work? This is a good way to read the scriptures. What was Israel like at the time of Isaiah? What was the apostle Paul’s upbringing? Etc.
2. Formalism—Analysis based on the form. To do this we ignore the historical background or anything that we know about the author and just look at the pieces that make the work enjoyable. What devises are used in Nephi’s Psalm that make it enjoyable?
3. Mythical Criticism—Looking at mythical influence or archetypal patterns in a work. Most common in our time is the archetypal hero that we see reoccurring in scriptures, literature and movies in all periods of time. How does Christ fit in with the Archetypal Journey?
4. Rhetorical Criticism—Looking at what the author is trying to persuade us to do and how are they doing it? What is President Monson trying to persuade me to do?
5. Marxism Criticism—Criticism concerned with how a work effects economics. What was the effect of Christ’s teachings to “sell all you hath”? What is it about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight that causes so many Americans to buy it?
6. Moral or Philosophical Criticism—ideas and values, truth, forgetfulness, clarity, consistency, complexity, what ideas, values or truths influenced the writer or what ideas has this writer pushed the same values? What Kind of person is the grandmother in Grace O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find?
7. New Historicism—Looking at a text from our current view and asking what does a text do. New Historicism becomes a bit of a hodgepodge of all styles of criticism because we look a work from all angles (philosophical, historical, formal, rhetorical, etc.). What does Homer’s The Odyssey do to kids who read it today? What is the effect of Bob Dylan’s poetry on the world as we know it?
8. Organicism—A style of writing compared to a plant; a text takes it’s own unique form. A poem begins with an idea (seed) which is cultivated in the work. The ideas for my papers came as a little seed that I let grow, though I was constrained by the grading rubric.
9. Sonnet—A form of poetry. The Shakespearean form included 14 lines with three stanza’s of an alternating rhyme scheme (abab) finished with a couplet. He also wrote in iambic pentameter and separated the stanza’s subjectively by introducing the problem and ending with a resolution. This was a lot harder to do than I thought it would be.
10. Narrative paradigm—argues that the world is a series of stories that we can choose from; we tell stories not to entertain, but to pass on values and what we see as reality. The idea is that whatever I will write from here on will become a part of a collective "story" that others will write from and add to.