EricMacKnight.com

The Intentional Fallacy: it doesn’t matter what the author intended

Eric — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:31:11 +0000

First: we can never know what the author intended. Even if we ask the author in person, we cannot know whether the answer we hear is sincere, or truthful. It gets worse: the author himself cannot know with certainty what impelled him to write this or that. Why did I eat oatmeal for breakfast? [...]

Toni Morrison on teaching literature

Eric — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:56:59 +0000

I’ve always thought the public schools needed to study the best literature. I always taught Oedipus Rex to all kinds of what they used to call remedial or development classes. The reason those kids are in those classes is that they’re bored to death; so you can’t give them boring things. You have to give [...]

Aristotle on happiness

Eric — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:28:47 +0000

Bacterial Hosts

Eric — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 05:38:32 +0000

Q: What portion of the human body consists of human cells? A: About the amount from the knee of one leg down to the foot. The rest is bacteria.

This reminds me of commercial television. We commonly regard TV as a medium of art and communication financed by advertising. Actually, however, it is an advertising [...]

‘Hamlet: The Happy Ending’

Eric — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:34:57 +0000

Some of my students were devastated to discover that Hamlet dies at the end of the play, so I have obliged their tender sensibilities with this additional scene. —etm

—————————————————————————

Scene: Wittenberg. A room in an inn.

HORATIO But how is this possible?!

HAMLET ‘Season your admiration’, good friend. In short, by a hair’s breadth [...]

Ugly word of the day: “societal”

Eric — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 07:54:27 +0000

From DailyWritingTips.com:

What’s the difference between social and societal? Not much, but enough that you may become the victim of social stigma if you ignore subtle societal signals.

Societal is the pedantic alternative to social. . . .

I couldn’t agree more, having read hundreds of teeth-grating essays filled with “societal” this and “societal” [...]

People are animals, too

Eric — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:08:10 +0000

In 1968 millions of people were outraged when anti-war activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya announced that a dog would be burned alive on the UC Berkeley campus to protest the use of napalm (jellied gasoline, for you youngsters out there) in Vietnam. No dog was harmed: Kuromiya’s point was that Americans were less concerned about the Vietnamese [...]

Shakespeare changes your brain

Eric — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:06:48 +0000

“How Shakespeare Changes Us”, at lit-hum.org. The first comment is worth a look, too.

Good Advice About Bad Writing

Eric — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:47:10 +0000

“Good Advice About Bad Writing”, from DailyWritingTips.com.

Brief, clear, and to the point.

A Slow-Books Manifesto: Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.

Eric — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 05:16:08 +0000

From The Atlantic, a piece worth reading by Maura Kelly. Here’s a taste:

Why the emphasis on literature? By playing with language, plot structure, and images, it challenges us cognitively even as it entertains. It invites us to see the world in a different way, demands that we interpret unusual descriptions, and pushes our memories [...]