May 22, 2010

**THANKS FOR YOUR PAPERS!!!

Hey Y'all -- I wanted to thank every one of you for an awesome semester. I can't say I've ever had an experience like that! You guys are amazing!

Also, though -- I've never enjoyed reading a stack of essays more than the ones from this class. You guys stepped up. Each paper was unique -- right down to the topics you chose and the philosophy and literature you wove into your discussions. I'd say Sartre won the popularity contest -- a few people pit his philosophy against his drama in creative ways. We also had papers on Freud and Hitchcock (Does the film endorse F's notion of hysteria?); PK Dick and Berkeley Protagonist as Perceiving Mind Spirit!!!); Boethius and Orphic poetics (How can dominatrix Lady P banish the muses and still keep poetry around?); Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence vs. Sartre's Eternal Damnation (How do we get from "over and over" to "forever and ever" and how does "No Exit" have to do with the spirit of art N. advocates?); Borges, Hume, Calvino and Anaxagoras (all in ONE! -- a fascinating treatment of philosophic principles that invade the short story); Calvino, Heraclitus and Heidegger (How does Calvino use art and humor to deliver the goods that Heidegger only promises us?); Calvino, Sartre, and PK Dick on the question of subjectivity (How do these stories problematize and affirm (despite themselves) a ground for shared experience?); and Cosmicomics, Anaxagoras and Descartes (on the mythologizing of traditional philosophic principles). The combinations were fascinating. BRAVI BRAVI!!!

[significant casualty: kierkegaard. we must have lost him up on mount moriah!]

I read all the papers carefully, and I wish I had had time to meet with you to talk in person about them before the term concluded. Now that all the administrative red tape is taken care of, I DO have time. If you're around this summer -- or even next fall -- I'm free to get together and go through your ideas. Also, you can drop off a self-addressed stamped envelope to the department and I'll get the paper back to you with comments. Alternately, you can email me and we'll find a way to chat -- I can either share my comments over email or in a facebook chat or whatever. The point is that I was excited about all your pieces -- they got me pumped to keep thinking about these writings and to brainstorm for future classes.

Cheers and Thanks Again! I HOPE WE GET TO STUDY TOGETHER AGAIN. WE COULD PUT TOGETHER ANOTHER ROCKIN' CLASS!!!

Davy

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Comparative Literature 100, Spring 2010 (Walter)

“Philosophic Fantasies”

Final Essay Assignment

Write a 6 to 7-page essay that examines one of the following subjects. Your project may be informed by research—historical, critical, biographical—on your chosen subject. But you should focus on issues that surface from the primary text(s) you have selected.

Intertextuality. Give an example of how one of the philosophers on our syllabus speaks to earlier thinkers through debate or appropriation. How do you see an idea re-emerging in a new historical/political/intellectual context? How does that new context reshape the idea?

Form. Discuss an aspect of form in one of the philosophic works we have studied. How does formal innovation—or inventiveness—help to address a particular problematic with which the philosopher is concerned? What sorts of demands or pressures create the need to rethink form in the instance you chose?

Poesis. Analyze the way in which a particular philosopher borrows from literary techniques to explore a philosophic idea, or to argue a point. Does the choice to use these techniques reveal anything about the limits of philosophic discipline in the context of the philosopher’s own work, or in his contemporary traditions?

Mythmaking. How does one of the pieces of literature or film we have studied recast a philosophic concept in artistic terms? How can you read a particular literary work as reflective of a philosophic problematic? What new ways does the work provide us to think about the concepts it takes up?

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Hey Y'all--

Just thought I'd let you know how to hand off your essay next Monday. There are two choices:

1. Come to my office, 4317 Dwinelle, BY 11AM on Monday 5/10, and hand it to me.

2. Any time BEFORE 11AM on Monday 5/10 you can put it in my MAILBOX in the Comparative Literature office 4125 Dwinelle.

Good Luck!

D

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