Who is Petrarch?

Here is a fun introduction to who Petrarch is... or at least, who people think he is. This would be a lot more fun if you could see their faces and reactions to questions. Perhaps I'll redo it when I have a camera available and working to make it better quality. But it's a bit of a promotion for our blog to discover who this guy actually is...seeing how wrong other people are.

It's Not Business, It's Personal

Nothing puts me to sleep faster than reading criticism written from the highly impersonal third-person perspective.  That, "As one reads this book, one finds..." makes me want to tear the essay to shreds.  The constant use of "one" or "the reader" is more distracting than any bias I might note by the writer using the personal "I."  That is one of the reasons I loved reading through some of the chapters in Writing About Literature in the Digital Age.  Not only did the writers use the personal "I" and easy, understandable prose, but they also addressed the very issue I mentioned above.  I especially enjoyed Ben Wagner's chapter about the need to make literary criticism more personal.  When he used a personal anecdote to demonstrate his point, not only was his point easier to understand, but I was also instantly more interested in what he had to say.  By making writing personal rather than business, we show that we care, and that makes a reader more interested than anything (as pointed out by Dr. Burton in chapter 2).

Just like the students whose pieces we read for today, we are undertaking a big task that may not receive much attention.  Or any attention.  But we have to set it apart in some way.  I think that reading through these chapters showed me that more than anything, we must make this personal.  We have to be personally invested in this because readers can tell when you are and that, in turn, makes them interested.  It's not all about the personal "I" writing either.  We should want to develop a personal relationship with our texts, like the Renaissance man was creating a personal relationship with books and (this is for you, Plough Boys) the Bible.  For me, I now want to really find a way to connect with each of my texts so that when I write about that text, readers will be able to tell that I am excited about what I am reading and writing.

It's not personal, it's business.
It's not business, it's personal.

We Are Not Robots: The Importance of Emotion in Academia

I have, for another class this semester, been studying a headache-inducing amount of Plato and Aristotle.  Plato, emotionless logician that he is, argues that art is dangerous and destructive, as it causes humans to feel emotions that distract them from their property duties or "techne."  Aristotle responds in multiple fronts:  first, that artists have their own techne, which he analyzes and critiques; second, that emotions, and more specifically the cathartic release brought on by excellent artistic creations, are a healthy part of human life.

Aristotle, in my opinion, had a much clearer concept of true human nature.

The reason I bring this up is that academia has eschewed passion and emotion in favor of reason.  They do not wish to be moved; they wish to be convinced.

While I believe logic certainly has its place in academic writing, I also believe that choking it of ethos is slowly and inexorably killing it.  Just as Plato would have poets exiled from society, academics seem to want to drive passion from their writing.  This has two negative effects:  first, the author is less interested in his or her writing (When was the last time you, as a student, were excited to write a paper for a class?); second, the audience is bored.

Humans are highly emotional creatures.  Everything we do is driven by emotion first, although we often come up with logical reasons for our actions afterward.  I married my wife because I love her.  The fact that we have similar life goals and complement each other exceptionally well gives logic to our decision, but the reasoning was not the cause.

In like manner, I selected an English major because I am passionate about stories and storytelling.  Yet the longer I remain in academia, the more I want to run screaming from it!  The professors actively try to quash my enthusiasm in an effort to enhance my arguments.  Writing has become a chore, and my reading can rarely be described as pleasurable.

This constant, soul-draining exercise is unsustainable.  College tuition is rocketing upward, while student interest is in rapid decline.   One of two things need to happen for academia to save itself from self-destruction:  either college expenses must dramatically decrease (unlikely, as professors expect nice paychecks and textbook publishers have shown little interest in making their publications available inexpensively), or professors must embrace new methods of teaching that engage and impassion students.

One of the reasons that I find this class intriguing is that Professor Burton has not only allowed, but encouraged our enthusiasm of certain subjects.  This is refreshing and shows an incredible understanding of how students process information.  While electronic media is not something that particularly interests me, I do think that relating Renaissance literature to modern literary movements--blogging, ebooks, and so forth--is a fascinating way to make the past more immediate to us students.  We have been allowed to explore topics of interest to us, we have been encouraged to write from the gut, and we have been forced out of our comfort zone--our of our academic rut--to engage with and learn from one another.

Thank God.

Welcome to the eRenaissance Project

a mockup cover
for our prospective eBook

Let's create an eBook that explores the connections between the European Renaissance of the 15th-17th centuries and the current digital renaissance. After all, doesn't one good renaissance deserve another?

That's the premise for this project, launched by students of a Renaissance literature course at Brigham Young University in early 2013. The embedded picture is a mockup cover for our prospective eBook. As we think through our book's content and form, we will make that process public on this blog.

Already we have been using the Open Renaissance Wiki to collect and organize our content and ideas. But with the blog we can interact better among ourselves and with potential readers of our finished book.

Six Themes
We have already identified six themes, lenses by which we can understand Renaissance literature. These have proven to be handy concepts for understanding our present day, and also for conceptualizing our own project: