Status Updates From Evolution and Literary Theo...

There is so much literature I haven't read yet! I'm getting a Harold Bloom translation soon.

Just because fiction is by definition false doesn't follow the whole genre is useless. OK, index and reference parse, for it's due back in five days. E/ref addition

Just because fiction is by definition fals doesn't follow the whole genre is useless. OK, index parse, for it's due back in five days.

I've an aunt by that name, too! MaryEllen.

Lit crit IS trying to pore through.

I have hope that it's not pointless to press on - I have read Richardson's Clarissa and a few other novels Carroll mentioned! MAYBE Pamela, as well. It reminded me I'm much fonder of science-fiction, though I DO try to keep vague track of who loves whom and what could possibly have gotten, say, the Iraqi people upset with the west Europeans, or whatever it is going on in Tunisia now.

I meant to focus on this, but the low opinion of lit crit has held me back. I like his idea literature has two poles: what the author meant to portray and what the reader interpreted! Most times they are not the same.

Poststructuralism? I think I fall in the structural camp, personally. Let's continue.

At last, I've escaped the unending Introduction! That was an enthralling start, though. It really made me think, and explained the structure of the book pretty well, impo. The first chapter is called "Poststructuralism, Traditional Criticism, and Evolutionary Theory". What comes after structuring? Is there a new kind of criticism? How does evilution [sic] have anything to do with reading? I'll find out, maybe reveal!

Guess I'm in the realist crowd. This I also won't finish before I need to return it, but maybe I could give it a week at the end and then take it back out. "All meaning is inherently contradictory, indeterminacy eliminates coherence." Oh dear. Is reading literature an act of total futility, then? But then why have I benefited so much from its study in the past? Maybe Carroll is just being a grumpy English professor.

What is ethology? Is it related to ethnicity? "e·thol·o·gy
[ee-thol-uh-jee]
noun
the study of animal behavior with emphasis on the behavioral patterns that occur in natural environments.
1895–1900; earlier, as the study of relations between an organism and its environment < French éthologie, coined by French zoologist I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire" Ohh. If I had read further I'd have found an in-text definition.

Biology is related to literary theory? What? Do tell. After I record all my current books.