Article on Letters to Alice Essays

Article on Letters to Alice Essays Article on Letters to Alice Essay Article on Letters to Alice Essay Advice to a Green-Haired Punker By HILMA WOLITZER | LETTERS TO ALICE On First Reading Jane Austen. By Fay Weldon. | he premise of Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen is that literature matters in the larger scheme of things, that reading can inform and alter ones life. This slender volume is its own best argument. Billed as an epistolary novel, it is more a study of a writer (and reader) thinking aloud about art and civilization. The letters, from Aunt Fay, are addressed to an imaginary niece away at school, a green-haired punker who rebels against reading Jane Austen and who is busy writing her own novel. Letters to Alice was probably inspired by a series of instructive letters Austen sent to an actual niece on the occasion of her first attempts at novel-writing. Fay Weldon, the gifted and prolific British novelist, has a clear debt to Austen; her own fiction reveals a dry wit and is devilishly incisive in its portraiture. In this book, she refers to the City of Invention, where novelists build Houses of the Imagination and readers explore for pleasure and illumination. Here in this City of Invention, the readers come and go, by general invitation, sauntering down its leafy avenues, scurrying through its horrider slums, waving to each other across the centuries, up and down the arches of the years. Critics, we are told, are mere bus drivers here. The fictitious Miss Weldon tries to lure Alice into this metropolis, between the Road to Heaven and the Road to Hell, acknowledging the competition of the local McDonalds, of certain books with empty calories and even of Alices own nervous dread of literature. She approaches the city as both a builder and a visitor, with appropriate measures of awe and trepidation. Woven into the narrative is a kind of fiction. Aunt Fay is estranged from Alices parents, and although she hopes to become reconciled with them, she deliberately gives their daughter subversive advice and aid. In the single letter she writes to her sister, Enid, Fay defends herself. Of course I am not encouraging your daughter Alice to write a novel. Of course she should concentrate on her studies. Still, she offers her niece outrageous rewards for literary effort and does encourage rebellion against the conventions that stifle the creative spirit. Most of all she makes Alice think. She draws her attention, and ours, to the inevitable connections between art and life by alternating passages from Austens novels with the facts of her real experience. In the most moving sections she describes the conditions under which women lived in early 19th-century England. The details of domesticity, the fact of womens total financial dependence on fathers and husbands and the statistics on mortality in childbirth are equally affecting. At once there is a sense of the general tenor of the times and of the particular personal history of one writer a spinster in her parents Georgian household inventing and recording other lives at a modest round table between the hearth and the window. Miss Weldon persuasively defends Austen for excluding certain worldly concerns from her work and praises her for her moral courage and for independence of thought and expression. It is true that the world of politics and power, dissent and revolution, feature a lmost not at all, in Jane Austens novels, but this was surely from choice rather than from ignorance. The main concentration in Letters to Alice is on the life and work of Jane Austen. We witness her childhood, her evolution as a writer and even her early death from Addisons disease, which is now treatable. But this is a generous book, with a broader scope one that evokes the various joys and responsibilities of the artist and the consumer of art. It defines and celebrates their shared experience, and perhaps it should be required reading, a prerequisite for students of literature. Aunt Fay writes to Alice: Only endure! Loveless marriages turn again to loving ones; unwanted children become wanted; the study that bores you today may enlighten you tomorrow. Do not change courses in mid-stream, Alice. Do not abandon Eng. Lit. for Social Studies. Simply write your own book to counteract the danger of too much analysis; synthesize as much as you analyze, and you will yet be saved. W E can only make assumptions about Alices response to such impassioned urging. (This reader immediately sought out and read Austens lesser-known Lady Susan.) We do learn that Alice plugs away at her novel and then submits it for publication, risking painful rejection. Her aunt has prepared her for that likelihood too. The eventual commercial success of Alices book it far outsells all of Aunt Fays is reported with rueful pride. Lucky Alice, to be saved from her own inclinations toward indolence and arrogance by Miss Weldons seductive invitation to the City of Invention. For anyone withou t such a wise and loving aunt, there is this splendid little book.

Essay on Speakers review (Aja Rose Bond Gabriel Saloman)

Essay on Speakers review (Aja Rose Bond Gabriel Saloman) Essay on Speakers review (Aja Rose Bond Gabriel Saloman) Essay on Speakers review (Aja Rose Bond Gabriel Saloman)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Historically, art played an important part in the life of society. speakers recognize the importance and role of art still raise the question that begs whether art is still important or not and whether art has preserved its power and capacity to influence the public opinion as it once used to do. In fact, speakers offer the negative answer to both of these questions since they believe that art as a form of protest cannot gain the mass support as political movements for example. Instead, art that challenges conventional norms, that rebels and protests is likely to remain misunderstood by the audience and artists are likely to remain outsiders, whose work are unknown not only to the mass audience but also to critics. Therefore, speakers shape the main problem of the modern art, the problem of the widening gap between art that protests against the rise of the mass culture and consumeris m leading to the devaluation of basic humanistic values and degradation of the population and the enhancement of the mass culture, which steadily takes niches once held by true art.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Speakers focus on the problem of the relationship between art and profound social processes that take place in the society. They view art as a form of the manifestation of the position of artists in relations to the existing social order, culture, politics and other issues. Art was a form of the self-realization for artists and the way of the communication between artists and the audience. Artists used their creative works to communicate their ideas, messages and vision to the audience. In such a way, they attempted to share their ideas and form new values, ideals and aspirations in people. However, speakers point out that today artists have lost their impact on the audience because they slip to the marginalization in the time of the overwhelming power of the m ass culture.At the same time, speakers views art as a form of protest of artists against the emerging consumerism, the domination of material values and the widening gaps between the ruling elite and the rest of the society, especially the poor. For example, speakers stand on the ground that artists of the 1960s – 1970s basically stood on the leftist ground and attempted to draw the public attention to problems of the working class by means of their art. Protests and strikes of artists aimed at the change of the attitude of the public to art and artists. In fact, those protests and strikes were probably last attempts of artists to win the struggle against mass culture and what speakers define as ‘amateurization’ of art, when people, who are not professional artists, try to become ones, although with little success from the artistic point of view. Nevertheless, the emergence of mass culture and amateur artists resulted in the devaluation of true art and profession al artists became marginalized and lost their position as representative of the mainstream art and culture. Instead, they became in the position when they created art for the art’s sake being misunderstood by the public and being unable to attract the public to their works, because the public was just unable to understand those works.Challenging artistic forms and unusual works of art were challenging but their main point was to attract the public attention and to confront the emerging mass culture, which artists viewed as a threat to the true art and society, where individuals are individuals but not objects to mass culture and consumerism. Speakers place emphasis on numerous attempts of artists to draw the attention of the public by means of unusual and unexpected experiments in the field of art. However, their experiments still had little success because they were separated from the real, regular life of the average people. As a result, people were unable to perceive art a s artists intended the audience to perceive it because their creative work was too complicated, while people were inclined to the perception of the mass culture, which was simple and easy to understand.At the same time, speakers stand on the ground that the artistic protest is virtually impossible because art always stays aside of the real life. Art is the personification of the beauty, aesthetics and non-material world and people cannot change their view on art. As a result, people often simply fail to understand art, especially modern one. The widening gap between art and people has opened the way for the mass culture. Speakers warns against the risk of transforming mass culture into the means of propaganda of certain ideology, while art always contributed to the freedom of thought and speech and stimulated diversity in society.At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the widening gap between modern art and the mass audience became the major driver of the weakening of t he impact of art and artists on the society. More important, the widening gap between art and mass audience has opened the way for the emergence of the mass culture, which artists have attempted to struggle against but all their efforts have been in vain so far. Modern art remained and still remains incomprehensible for the average viewer, where the working class artists used to stand for has vague ideas about art and cannot understand even the most evident and eloquent artistic forms, while mass culture is almost the only artistic form that can reach the working class and the mass audience, although mass culture has little to do with true art.In addition, art has always been in the conflict between the emerging ideology and attempts of artists to stand on their ground and manifest their ideas openly and in contrast to the dominant cultural views and values, especially those shaped by the mass culture. In fact, speakers view the failure of artists’ protests against the rise o f the mass culture, consumerism and decreasing role of art as the major loss of artists and art in the 20th century but this loss was predetermined by the intrinsic inability of art to strike since any forms of art that are not conventional and beyond the understanding of the average person, remains outside the public ideological framework, while mass culture takes niches, which artists has fled from because of their protests against mass culture and devaluation of art along with the rise of consumerism. Thus, speaker develop the idea of the decline of art as a protest movement that juxtaposes to the mass culture and consumerism that prevail in the modern society.

Confucianism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Confucianism - Essay Example In fact, the Five Great Relationships are five fundamentals of noble behavior (Phatak, 2011). The first one is a good attitude of a father to a son, and the respectful attitude of a son to a father. The second rule of the Great Relationships lies in a gentle attitude of an elder brother to younger ones and respect of younger children to an elder brother. The third relationship manifests itself in a righteous treatment of a wife by her husband and wife’s obedience to him. The forth important doctrine of moral relations between people reflects in a humane attitude of older people to younger ones and respectful attitude of younger men to older people. And finally the fifth principle of morality is a generous attitude of rulers to ministers and citizens and respective loyalty of ministers and citizens to their rulers. It is obvious that Confucius has seen relations between people themselves as the highest form and main basis of successful intercourse of state rulers and average ci tizens, since men, as they are presented by nature without any statuses and social positions, serve as a premier source of morality provided by their constant development of ethical principles of life. In practice, Confucius has believed that there is a particular power in the Universe helping people to follow these rules of relationships. It can unite everybody regardless their high or low social positions in their understanding of each other, which directly leads to democratic regulation of relations. Consequently, harmony settles in every possible sphere of people’s being, for there is no place for quarrels, strife, wars, and any other conflicts in family, community and country at all. Continuing the concept of people’s moral development, Confucianism proclaims the idea of the junzi or the Ideal Person. â€Å"This idea of a model man or an ideal gentleman is a very important