Notes from 9/5

Have we been reading too far into the materials discussed in class? Is "American Gothic" really a portrait of Hades and Persephone or is it just a farmer and his wife. Wallace Stevens encourages seeing things as they are. What if our the ultimate depth of analysis is the surface meaning and as you progress down the triangle all you encounter are trivial details? Which analysis is better? I've provided an upside down triangle, with surface meaning at the top to counter the regular triangle, at the bottom. Which level of analysis is more powerful, the mythic or the superficial?
"All art is two things at once, surface and symbol," Oscar Wilde

What is Gothic? It's a word that we keep hearing in class yet we still need to give it a good solid definition.
Who were the Goths? They were Germanic tribes who sacked Rome; barbarians.
We have Gothic architecture, Gothic art, and we even have a Gothic style, complete with dark eyeliner and fishnet stockings.
For this class though we've decided to choose a slightly more applicable definition.
"Fiction emphasizing the grotesque"

The word sublime was brought up repeatedy during this class. It encompasses both the awesome and the aweful. It is worthy of adoration, impressive.

Daisy Miller
It's the story of a flirtatious young girl.
Flirtations- "Dancing around the boundaries of comfort."
Who's flirtatious? Almost everyone, but in this novel it is the flirtations of Italian men that are the most important. What are Italian men like? Most of us have had some sort of experience with them.