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on theart of writing
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For centuries, views of the world and its inhabitants have been expressed through various ways of art or philosophy. These views can often be related to the seeking of truth to the creation of life, politics, or the problems of the world from before, now, and after. Accordingly, it is by paintings, books, or music, that words or images have an abundant effect on people. Society indicates that knowledge is power, so then why are we sometimes burdened with the errors of generations before? The quote, “writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why,” by James Joyce; points out that any novelist, historian, or author writing about our previous failures as humans in history affects any reader in a way that brings up painful memories and leaves the reader with past knowledge. To be honest, I had to grab a chair and think for what seemed like hours before I could actually comprehend what the quote was saying. I thought to myself, “How can writing about the past bring pain to the reader? I understood how writing can bring knowledge to a person, but how can it affect anything in the present?” As Vladimir Nabokov said, “In reading, one should notice and fondle details.” So, I opened up my mind and started to analyze the quote. Then, suddenly it clicked! In The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli has a similar style to this quote in which he explains that any prince should not select anything else for study but the art of war. He declares through studying the histories of the art of war, “A prince will learn of many illustrious men’s causes for victory or defeat; therefore, avoiding the latter and imitating the former.”(Machiavell...
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...s about certain things. Vladimir Nabokov writes about making connections to his reader and creating something new of what already is. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about leadership, how to act like a leader, and to learn from the mistakes of the past. My final thought about the quote and the two books was that history can affect people, but choosing what to do with the prior knowledge is our choice. Whether we feel angered from an article about the holocaust or feel encouraged by a speech that reminds us of mistakes from the past; to better the world we must continue writing about the sins and mistakes generations have made. All of this in hope that future generations will resolve our problems and redeem us; to leave a better example through history and to correct what was done wrong in the past. The quote by James Joyce has opened my eyes to the way I look at writing.
Literary history is a history of the major literary traditions, movements, works, and authors of a country, region, etc. (Barber 837). The understanding of literary history allows us insight into the past, a recognition of historical events and tensions written into the works of those who witnessed them. By including societal behaviors, political tensions, and common folklore, historical authors have indirectly provided the reader with a broader and deeper understanding of the literature and the period in which it was written. Besides insight into collective societal culture, literary history has provided future writers with models of poetic device, style and content influencing literary works and building upon past literary ideas. Literary history is a vehicle to understanding the past and plays a major role in its influence on literature up to and including the present day.
Writing 150 has been a truly enjoyable course for me. While I have always loved language and literature, this class gave me a fresh, new perspective on what it means to be a writer. From the very first class, I was redefining what writing means to me and how I could use it in my life, even if my career path isn’t centered around writing. As the semester comes to a close, I want to share with you which paper was my favorite from this course, how my identity as a writer has changed, and how I will approach future writing tasks with a new and improved writing process.
“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
Zero awoke to find himself standing, it was not something he was familiar with and he searched his memory for any recollection of it happening before. Quickly he discovered that large parts of his memory were missing, gone were the seemingly endless data bases of information. Quickly he sent out feelers trying for a connection of some sort but he drew a blank. It seemed that where ever he was now, had limited connection capacity. Instead he used his visual feed to survey his surrounding, it appeared he was in some kind of desert of discarded parts.
I am sitting in my bed, thinking about my process of writing as I am trying to go through it. It seems the more I think about it, the less I understand it. When I am writing, I don’t think. Which I know, sounds bad. But, I spend every single moment of every single day over thinking, over analyzing, and over assuming every aspect of my life. When I’m writing, I’m free from that for just a little bit. Until of course, my hands stop typing or the pencil (no pens- never pens) stops moving, then I’m right back on the carousel that is my brain. Heidi Estrem says, “...writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn’t have before.” (Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity 18). I believe my ability to write without an exact destination
The human race is known for change; it has evolved from prehistoric ‘cavemen’, ancient empires, and Vikings to aristocratic monarchies, democracies, and dictatorships. With each passing year, there are technological advancements, changing political platforms, and a progressively mobile worldwide population. Each literary era reflects the human feats, lifestyles, and changing times: Anglo-Saxon epics consist of glory battle scenes, bloodied warriors, and feuding countries; Middle English works consist of glorified knights, the chivalric code, and a greedy, materialistic court; and, modern literary classics depict worlds of which the human race is ruled by technology. From ancient Greek mythology to the next big literary classic, the era in which a work is written reflects the period in which it was penned.
Writing can be a very difficult process for those who do not know how to go about constructing
Throughout the twentieth century a wide variety of novels began to hit the shelves of bookstores in America. Books written about anything from dystopian futures to memoirs of recent years past filled the bookshelves of Americans during the time period. Historical fiction seems to be the most significant of these genres, however, as it teaches people of the past to educate them for a better future. Men learn from their past mistakes, and when man’s mistakes are told as tales, one is more inclined to listen if the story entertains him. This is why historical fiction contributes the most to the combined literary effort of the twentieth century.
Mina Loy in “Feminist Manifesto” seeks an individual female identify free from the masculine. The three most important characteristics in her writing promote individual freedom, women roles, and feminine status. Loy, in her manifesto seems to choose a destructive path against the man and female in a struggle power of one another. She states in the beginning that women are not equal to men. “be brave & deny at the outset-that pathetic clap-trap war cry woman is the equal of man-she is not” (Loy, 2013, p.1981). She argues that men and women are enemies “the only point at which the interests of the sexes merge-is the sexual embrace” (Loy, 2013, p. 1982). Relationships between men and woman require sharing, but Loy dismisses men by stating women must “seek within yourselves to find out what you are” (Loy, 2013, p. 1982). Women need to find themselves before successfully having a relationship with a man. This would be necessary for the relationship to grow and nurture. Loy states “to obtain results you must make sacrifices” (Loy, 2013. p. 1982). However, making these sacrifices does not r...
The title of Seamus Heaney’s poem “From the Frontier of Writing” provides the first connotation as to what his following stanzas would be illustrating. As aggressive as it sounds the frontier paints a picture of war and struggle as to which can be seen through his lifetime. Heaney uses this image of war to create the concept of comparing the process a writer goes through to be published to the frontier of a war battle. We see this as a battle between two forces much like the battle being fought at the time between North and South Ireland.
Throughout the semester, Journalism has taught me various techniques in which have benefitted my writing as a whole. These techniques have taught me how to shape my papers/articles in a more organized manner while managing to state all of my points/ opinions on the certain topics I’m talking about. On top of that, learning how to structure my writing properly has changed my writing for the better. From learning so many techniques, it made me look at the way news is announced differently as well. Although it is asked to discuss what was most valuable to our learning, I have two techniques in which have been very valuable to me throughout the transition of learning how to properly write articles. These two techniques are the Inverted Pyramid and The Wall Street Journal Formula.
In the article”Narcissus Regards a Book,” Mark Edmundson states, "What has happened in the past is of correspondingly less interest... Those who represented the claims of the past should never have imagined that the apostles of newness would give them a fair hearing, or a fair rendering, either" (2). I see how some people might think readings of the past may be uninteresting. But I disagree that we shouldn't take heed to these wise warnings of the past. How does history have anything to do with literature? Well, writing these experiences down, the whole history book is a piece of literature. The former people have been through certain experiences and have written them down for a reason. Simply as a warning, to never be repeated or forgotten. The few people that do not care to read these excerpts because they are "uninteresting" will not be very successful at all. It explains how they would go into endless loops in their own lifetime, let alone centuries in the future. Most people have found the past writings have helped our country develop, and showed where we went wrong, as well as how to fix the problems. We are reminded of the hardships our ancestors have overcome, to learn from and prevent our mistakes from repeating. It is obvious that literature is our template of our country and it has great value to our
Nothing teaches us better than literature to see, in ethnic and cultural differences, the richness of the human patrimony, and to prize those differences as manifestation humanity’s multi-faceted creativity. Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure, of course; but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, on our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in a relationship that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.
While I agree it is true historical novels have the reputation of being costume period dramas, in which the author’s need to cram all the prodigious research into a single novel sometimes overwhelms the plot; I would like to point out history has produced many his...
I feel as though this class has helped me become a more polished and professional writer. When I first entered English 110, I was extremely unsure and lacked confidence in my writing. I believe that this point can be partly attributed to the fact that I had always had my instructors holding my hand and helping me through the writing process in high school. My senior English teacher always reminded us that college would be much more challenging than her class was and then she would go on to tell us stories of professors who gave out zeros for tiny oversights within a paper. This combined with general apprehension about college life left me terrified. I had always been a strong writer in high school; I know how to form an argument and support