Response #4

"The definite condition under which they produce, thus corresponds, as long as the contradiction has not yet appeared, to the reality of their conditioned nature, their one-sided existence, the one-sidedness of which only becomes evident when the contradiction enters on the scene and thus only exists for the later individuals. This condition appears as accidental fetter, and the consciousness that it is a fetter is imputed to the earlier age as well."

What? I think it means that when the common routine is interrupted by a new and different method, it becomes a constraint to their way of living, and is ultimately blamed on their predecesors.

# 4

Thus the communists in practice treat the conditions created by production and intercourse as inorganic conditions, without, however, imagining that it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them material, and without believing that these conditions were inorganic for the individuals creating them.

For monday

These various conditions, which appear first as conditions of self-activity, later as fetters upon it, form in the whole evolution of history a coherent series of forms of intercourse, the coherence of which consists in this: that in the place of an earlier form of intercourse, which has become a fetter, a new one is put, corresponding to hte more developed productive forces and, hence, to the advanced mode of the self-activity of individuals-a form which in its turn becomes a fetter and is then replaced by another.

Readings and Response for Monday 9/17

For Monday, read the 'General Introduction' (pp. 1-7) to Modern Literary Theory, then Marx and Engels' The German Ideology (pp. 18-23) in the same. In addition, read the Ramamurthy excerpt and the Anna Karenina excerpt listed under the important links.

The critical text here is The German Ideology, Marx and the effect of Marx on criticism ever since. It is also a knotty and difficult text and riddled with complex terms. To this end, this week we will approach the response a bit differently. Each of you are required to post a passage (no more than three or four sentences) which you find particularly difficult to comprehend, etc. Type out the passage in its entirety and explain, in no more than one sentence, your difficulty. Once you have done that, you are required to choose someone else's post and comment on their bewildering passage. Try to paraphrase it, clarify it, point out your own problems and, most especially, explain it in real world terms, with real world examples. Your comment for this week, then, will be as long as your past posts.

The rule here, of course, is only one comment per post. If you find that a post already has a comment, find another. And please, no commenting on your own post.

In addition, you will probably be doing a bit of minor research to comprehend difficult terms, etc. Try to find at least one website which might help readers new to Marx and Marxism, and copy the link here.

Response 3

The central theme I noticed in our readings of Chandler, Fish and Eagelton is that we can not be sure if the conventions of a genre make the genre recognizable or if the genre itself makes the conventions recognizable. What Eagelton is showing us in his essay about literature is that to most, something is not considered literature till it is classified as such, and there is no standard for what counts as literature because there are no universal properties which make a work literature. “Literature, in the sense of a set of works of assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared inherent properties, does not exist.” Anything can be considered literature. Literature is not objective, it is to be read in many contexts and understood in many different ways. Similarly what Fish does with the anecdote about his classes different interpretations of the same grouping of words is illustrate that once a reader is told in which way they should read a text, that reader will find what needs to be found in order to understand it in the approproate lens. The class that was looking for Christian poetry found Christian poetry in a simple list of names. As Fish says, “It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities.” Once the reader is made aware of what to look for, they will almost certainly see it and this is what makes identifying film and literature by genre difficult, or as Chandler would say, problematic to define.

More Theories

For as long as I know we have been studying genre in our class all the time and the more that we study it and read other peoples thoughts we start to understand it more. All of the readings that we have done relates to one another, like Chandler and the whole Genre theory. When you put a piece of work into a genre, you look at it differently and you expect different things. Stanley Fish’s experiment with the list of authors proves this to be true because when he tells his students “what they saw on the blackboard was a religious poem of the kind they had been studying” their perspective changed. They started to analyze the list as if it really was a poem, they used their prior knowledge of how to understand poem and they deciphered it. Fish also states that “it was the act of recognition that came first--they knew in advance that they were dealing with a poem-- and the distinguishing features then followed.”

So before he told his students that it was a religious poem it was just a list, kind of like what Chandler is getting at. When you know the genre of something you look for and expect certain things because in Fish’s first class the list of names was just a list of names. There is a part in Modern Literary Theory that relates to this on page 15 the last paragraph, “Language is a system of signs, the sign being the basic unit of meaning. The sign compromises a signifier and signified, the signifier is the ‘word image’ (Visual or acoustic) and the signified the ‘mental concept’. From what I understand, he is saying that once you see or hear a word you get a mental concept. So when you hear Western you think cowboys, shoot-outs, etc. The same applies to the word War Story.

As for the example drawn from life where social expectations and conventions are critical to interpreting interaction I couldn’t really think of a good one but I liked Jennifer’s example about the whole dating issue since most people can relate to it. Sometimes hanging out with someone of the opposite sex is just hanging out; it doesn’t necessarily have to be a date of whatever. The word “date” is such a cliché there are so many things that people can do and it will be considered dating but that isn’t always the case.

Post # 3: How it all ties together.

I am starting to understand more clearly as we read more information on literature and genres that Chandler is indeed accurate in assessing that defining genres "can be problematic".

All of the authors we have read seem to be on the same page though in describing what is and what makes a genre a genre, or literature literature. Eagleton proclaims that the idea of a piece of literature being bad or good rather then just being literature as a whole is very interesting. Who decides if something is bad or good? Is it because the reader doesn't understand or they just don't ike it, but why is it bad? He also says, "What was emblamatic to literature was based upon the tastes and values of a certain social class." This really ties in to what Chandler says about genres being economically influenced, that genres are a genre because they will make big money in the box offices. What is good, what is bad, what is a genre and what isn't? Who decides all of this?

I really found Fish's experiment to be very interesting in "How to recognize a poem when you see one". This experiment completely ties together Chandler's idea that we will get out of a text what we assume and make of the genre. Fish had simply wrote a list of names on the blackboard and it was as simple as this. Yet, his class full of students "whose concerns were exclusively literary and were in fact confined to English religious poetry of the seventeeth century" were told that this list of names was actually a poem and they began to make a connection of the names to a religious meaning really scrutinizing over each word knowing that in a poem every word means something. They literally made something out of nothing which I found to be hilarious!! However, this is what we as students are taught "(because they were told by their teachers), that poems are ( or supposed to be) more densely and intricately organized than ordinary communications; and that knowledge translated into a wilingness--one might even say a determi-nation--to see connections between one word and another and between ever word and the poem's central insight." The class was told this was a poem so they made it to be so because of their educational backgroung that is drilled into our heads. Why would we ever doubt a teacher or professor when they say something is what it is. That would go against the very fundamentals of our education. This is why it is so hard to classify anything, a poem, a genre, a piece of literature whether, the reader thinks it is good or bad... who are we to put such classifications, on something, anything? As a society, we are forced into thinking something and perceiving things in the way that "someone" (although we don't know who or why) wants us to.

The most perfect example I can think of is something that I actually experienced yesterday afternoon. This gentleman was sitting at my table in my restaurant by himself waving his arms all around like a freak trying to get my attention even though I was taking antoher guest's order at a different table. I motioned that I would be with him in a second. I scurried to his side to give him the best service possible ( while gritting my teeth) and he proceded to order a burger melt for his daughter and a fresh mozzarella pizza for himself adding that he was in a huge rush. His daughter finally makes it to the table and I get the food rushed out to him!!!! However, the entire order was wrong, and not because I made a mistake but because he got the enire order wrong!!!! When someone goes to a restaurant, they have a certain expectation already embedded in them of how the experience should be, and I agree that a guest should get the best experience because that is what they are paying for. However, if it didn't meet your expectations and it is your own fault, why would you call the server who is trying so hard to please you and trying to make an honest living a "STUPID B...CH"?!!! I tried to fix the problem by offering to make new, accurate food immediately and he got up and walked out saying that his dining expereinced had been compromised and he wasn't hungry anymore!!! Are you kiding me? Just because you have in your head how a meal at a restaurant should go, when did courtesy and manners and just being a normal human being go out the window?

Assignment Three

In these two writings Stanley Fish's 'How to Recognize a Poem When You see One', and the essay by Eagleton, use examples in order to convey and discuss literary elements use to explain the use of genre in an assingment. The two authors touch on the term commonsense as a way of trying to determine what a sign, or assingment is about. All of this is an example as how Chandler says that,"a genre defines a moral and social world. Indeed, a genre in any medium can be seen as embodying certain values and ideological assumption." This can be use to explain the idea each writer has of discussing the importance of the role 'genre' has in the writings of Fish and Eagleton, by discussing the use of it in more broad understanding.

In Fish's 'How to Recognize a Poem When You See One', Fish explains the difference an assignment wrote on the board had by the eyes of his two different classes. Although, one class was focussed more on 'Literary Criticism', while the other on 'English Religious poetry of the seventeenth century'. The first class would only see the assignment as a list of authors who have influence in the discussion and meaning of Literary Theory in their own assumptions. The Other class saw the assignment as was teached by an instructor as a poem. The words diin't follow a meaning, but the class use their own assumptions in trying to figure out the meaning; some touched on the religious significance of the names listed in order. In the end, Eagleton said, "The conclusion, therefore, is that all objects are made and not found, and that they are made by the interpretive strategies we set in motion." This is an example of this work, how the list wrote on the board interpreted for the first class only writer names in a list not following an specific order or significance, and the second class saw the list as a poem and made their suggestions on what it meant. On the essay by Eagleton, he is talking about the use of consious and non-consious in literary theory, how genre works in trying to explain what the writer talks about in the specific text of writing, he says, "The important point to grasp here is that language is not a simple naming process." This means that the importance of language is not only for a specific reader to understand, it is use as a way to interpret genre, how language is seen in different ways by people, because not all people understand the same language, their are many as also many genres.
Therefore, the connection between these writings is the signs of interpretation obtained, first by Fish's class where right away they would see the assignment as a poem, and in the essay the use of language to determine the genre. An example of everyday life is going to school, and try to learn something new each day by the instructor, and putting into practice when an assignment is given, this is where Fish's class example comes to mind where we need to interpret in or own words what the assignment is all about, and how in Eagleton's essay the use of language is helpful to understand and interpret the assingnment we are given.

# 3

In the readings ofLiteracy Theory Eagelton attemptsto touch basis on the complexed language of conscious and non-conscious social class norms. Eagelton states, " The important point to grasp here is that language is not a simple naming process". Fish too shared part in this theory that we fall preyto letting others dictate what a social norm means to us. For example, Fish says,"Thus while it is true to say that we create poetry (and assignments and lists), we create it through interpretive strategies that are finally not our own but have their source in a publicly available system of intelligibility".

In both of the readings one of Eagelton and the other of Fish both pick a part the genre of what is the social norms of life expectancies.

The interaction in Fish' classroom was amazing for the simple fact that a simple list was made out to be an array of things. Fish had two classes one being a Linguistics and Literary class and the other a English religious poetry class. The fist class was given an assignment which was a list of names and the second class walked in while the assignment was still on the board. The second class than began to pick a way at the simple list. One of the things that was interesting while the class was coming up with the meaning of the poem as well as where it derived from was that it had to be biblical but only because of the name usage along with a couple other factors. Truthfully if I had seen the same list I would've thought it to be just a simple list.

A social expectation can usually always be found in a group setting especially at a concert. For example, If a performer at a concert tells you to throw your hands in the air everyone would just do it because it would almost be considered a norm in a concert setting. If while walking home from that same concert in the middle of the night someone screams throw your hands up you would think your being robbed. Why couldn't have been that they to just came from the same concert.

# 3

After reading Terry Eagleton’s essay on ‘Literature’ and Stanly Fish’s “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One” it became eminent in my head that there lies some sort of a parallel connection between Daniel Chandler’s Theory on genre, and our class discussions on the subject of genre.
Hitherto, I am convinced on notion put forward by Eagleton that “we share certain ‘deep’ ways of seeing and valuing which are bound up with our social life, and which could not be changed without transforming that [social] life”(404). It becomes very important to understand that this external stimuli given off by our society shapes or predicts our internal cognitive faculties. This influence by society is unmistakable clear in Chandler’s genre theory. Chandler states that “a genre defines a moral and social world. Indeed, a genre is any medium that can be seen as embodying certain values and ideological assumption.”
A great example to clarify Chandler and Eagleton’s argument is to introduce the works of Stanly Fish’s “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One”. In this work, he conducts an experiment on his second class. These students are “confined to English religious poetry of the seventeenth century” (p, 1), who are given an assignment to somehow dismantle a poem, which consists of random names of Professors. He then made an effort to circle or box out the assignment, making it allegedly more clear to the students, stating that it is a ‘religious poem’. The students collectively made an effort to make something out of nothing, such knowledge that has been taught down to them by their previous instructors. Fish argues that it is their background knowledge of the “academic world” that led them to such actions. He elaborates, “…our tacit knowledge of what it means to move around in academic life was acquired so gradually and so long ago that it doesn’t seem like knowledge at all but a part of the world.” He adds “...your walking is informed by an internalized awareness of institutional goals and practices, of norms of behavior, of lists of do’s and don’ts, of visible lines and the dangers of crossing them; and, as a result, you see everything as already organized in relation to those same goals and practices” (p, 4).
The works of Chandler, Fish, and Eagleton are individually and collectively significant as they pertain to out class discussions on genre. Before reading Abotts’s “The Purpose of the Creature Man”, I read the assignment for class; ‘Find details and moments (scenes) with the story which clearly define the story as a ‘western.’” With this knowledge, my cognitive faculties would only trigger information as a ‘western’, especially my present knowledge of a ‘western’ genre. That only leads me to my own perception of a ‘western’, without knowing the epistemology of a ‘western’. Even till today, we as a class are striving for a better understanding of what it means for a work to be classified as a ‘western’, or a non ‘western’.
Attending the funeral of your fathers friend’s employee, where the cops never actually discovered the body, who has also been missing after his boat has sank in Rockaway, Queens would demonstrate a similar social scenario with Fish, and his students. You don’t have the slightest idea who your fathers friend’s employee is or what he looks like. You cannot really feel sorry for him because no one really knows what it feels like to be dead. So what should one do at a funeral? Don’t worry! Our society has prepared us, spiritually and emotionally. We know that that it’s perfectly legal to cry, and recommended to dress in black (where did we get that idea?), and say our goodbyes.

3: gained experience

Each and every one of us understands things based on what we already know. With accumulated personal experience certain concepts or knowledge on these concepts very well become second nature to us. But it is not enough.

I’m going to be honest. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to obtain the Eagleton text Literary Theory on time. But despite that, upon reading the comments posted before mine, I was able to determine that he basically puts in his own thoughts on the subject of our previous class discussions: What makes a genre what it is? How is it that, when we watch a movie or read a book, we are able to point out whether it’s a comedy or a science fiction adventure? The answer is experience. Either we’ve encountered these types of stories before or someone went to the trouble of explaining to us what we will expect of them. Either way, we know what category they fall under due to the prior knowledge we have of them. We see a version of this (with school assignments in the place of story genres) in Stanley Fish’s How to Recognize a Poem When You See One. His students who were trained to read into religious poetry were invited to explain the meaning of the names written on the blackboard. Based on what they had previously learned, they came up with all sorts of religious interpretations as to what they meant. They saw something completely different than what was actually written because that is what they were taught to know. “…while it is true to say that we create poetry, we create it through interpretive strategies that are finally not our own...” I really feel this sentence sums it all up. We can write a good poem or a western story but only based on western stories we have seen beforehand. And it’s the same with everything else we do, whether it be taking a bus or punching in a time card. We act according to prior knowledge and experience.

Post 3

The two readings draw on similar material, but use a different medium to express the same concept of genre that we have been talking about. Chandler and Fish talk about the same thing, except Fish uses people, specifically his class and a list of names that was written on the board. Fish’s main point is that even as go throughout our daily lives, we are trained to abide by certain rules which guide our everyday lives that we aren’t always conscious of. For instance walking on the right side of the hallway, or stopping at a red light. He writes “It would never occur to you, for example, to wonder if the people pouring out of that building are fleeing from a fire; you know they are exiting from a class…” On a college campus you would usually think that if a bunch of students are coming out of a building, that a class has let out. This same thing we do with genres, for with a genre we already anticipate certain things to happen, and we also understand things that happen within those same sorts of notions. Eagleton brings excellent evidence to the table that even before we are put into society we are framed into a certain way of thinking. He brings up Saussure’s theory. This theory shows that even with the language we speak everyday we are framed into some sort of thinking. Language deals in the realm of concepts. If you said the word car to someone, they would be able to conjure and image and tell you what one is. This idea of a car though is abstract and also there are many kinds of cars. In another language there could be a slew of different words that mean different types of cars. For instance we all know the difference between, a sedan, a coupe, and wagon, a convertible, an SUV, a pickup, and so on. All these things are cars but in another language you might not be able to interpret to the preciseness that you would in another language. Living we use these words and can understand what they mean, but because they are so common we think of them as natural when they really aren’t.

A social interaction which has certain conventions would be any type of competitive sport, or game that could be played. When people get competitive with each other they tend to talk ill, or badly of opposing players. This “trash talking” isn’t meant to be hurtful, as the players could be friends outside of this competition. The reason it occurs though is that this action is supposed to give a sort of psychological edge, and get into your opponents head by distracting him off his current task in the competition. Once the game is over, (most of the time) the two teams will shake each others hand and go off in good standing with each other, no hard feelings.

Post # 3 Connecting all three!

A connection can be drawn between the two readings and Chandler’s thoughts on genre. Each reading completes the thought of the other. Chandler, in An Introduction to Genre Theory: The problem of definition, states that “a genre defines a moral and social world. Indeed, a genre in any medium can be seen as embodying certain values and ideological assumption.” Perhaps he is striving to say that genres define the world that we live in. With in this world, we follow the norm and up hold certain expectations that are produced by genres. This thought is then continued by Fish when he claims that “For most of us these matters do not require explanation, and indeed, it is hard for us to imagine someone for whom they do; but that acquired so gradually and so long ago that it doesn’t seem like knowledge at all.” He then continues by stating that “so that they are alike in fine detail, it fills them so that no one’s interpretive acts are exclusively his own but fall to him by virtue of his position in some socially organized environment and are therefore always shared and public.” What he means is that since genres define the norm for us, we tend to ignore the concept of individuality and refuse to ask for explanations. For example: when we think about “Western” movies we automatically think about guns, a bad guy, a good guy, hats, and horses. Who established this specific notion? Why are we incapable of discarding this notion about “western” movies? According to Freud in the Literary Theory, we can not reject genres because “the human ego is not even mastered at its own house, that each of us carries a stranger within, the unconscious, which is only partially accessible.” Perhaps this stranger is the key to individually and an end to genres.
One example where the social expectations and conventions are critical to interpreting interaction is a dental office. When you enter a dental office, you expect to see the nurse, the dental chair along with its operational tools such as the drill, and of course most importantly the dentist. You expect the dentist to be wearing gloves, the office to be tidy, and the tools to be sanitized.

Assignment #3

Over the past couple of weeks we have been talking about the word 'genre' and how it can assist a reader in understanding the central theme of the story. By reading Daniel Chandlers two pieces we see how his viewpoints about genre can relate to one of the pieces we read this week. In Stanley Fish's "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One" he uses many similar techniques that we have seen Chandler talk about in both of his pieces.
In "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One" Fish tries to come up with a plan or a way for his students to realize what they are reading is a poem. Fish then came up with a plan very similar to what we saw Chandler do. Chandler told his readers the main genre of what they were about to read before they actually read it. It enabled his readers to look for main ideas that were related to the main genre of the story focusing there thoughts on one main idea. In Fish's case he wrote names on the blackboard with a frame around it and Pg. 43 above that. To him they were just names of authors, but to his students it was a religious poem similar to ones they have been studying. They immediately began to interpret what was on the board in religious terms. Fish states "It was almost as if they were following a recipe- if its a poem do this, if its a poem see it that way, and indeed definitions of poetry are recipes for directing readers as to what to look for in a poem." So by telling students it was a poem it changed all their viewpoints about something so simple to understand. As you can see Chandler and Fish both had similar techniques in analyzing a piece.
In "Literary Theory", Terry Eaglaton talks about what literature is and talks about what the exact meaning of the word. He also talks about how literature can not be categorized by one certain aspect. There are a numerous different categories for the term Literature. Who actually determines what literature is? Is it good or is it bad? These are all questions he addresses in his essay.
An example of a social expectation that you can see in life is going to a wedding. You expect to wear a nice suit go to a nice reception. Enjoy good food, drinks, and have a great time dancing and seeing family that you haven't seen in a long time. However when you get there you see its outside and people are wearing shorts, Shirts, and sneakers. You then ask yourself what is going on? So by interpreting my viewpoint of a wedding like many others would your social expectation for this wedding was completely wrong.

The context phallacy, does genre do a story justice?

The more we explore the value of context as a tool for literary analysis the more evident the duality of its nature becomes. With seemingly innocent intentions we tend to embrace context as an aid for classification, classification being a way in which we can understand a story better.
If we know to which group a particular story belongs we can then digest the story equipped with the themes, props, characters, and overall criteria that necessitate a successful story of that genre. A well defined genre brings with it certain value standards that are either met or failed and subsequently judge the value of a work of prose. However, there is danger here as well. Much like an attorney leading a witness the inclusion consequence of a context recognized can severely limit our ability to understand a work. It places restraints and can unnecessarily bias the reader much the same way the students in Fish’s class were already dedicated to explicate a mere list of names as a poem simply because it was presented as a poem. “In other words, acts of recognition, rather than being triggered by formal characteristics, are their source. It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities.”
This phenomenon can be observed socially as well because many social situations bring with them expectations that we are sometimes helpless to obey. For example, if we were to go to a comedy club and witness a performer delivering material of a decidedly mediocre nature we would be much more likely to laugh then if the same mediocre comic material were presented to us by the person in front of us on line at the bank. Social expectations and social moray’s are constantly influencing the way we decode information and especially the way we respond to it. “With this reservation, the suggestion that ‘literature’ is a highly valued kind of writing is an illuminating one. But it has one fairly devastating consequence. It means that we can drop the once and for all the illusion that the category ‘literature’ is ‘objective’ in the sense of being eternally given and immutable.”

Post Three - Fish and Eagleton

In Literary Theory Eagleton writes about literature and who and what makes literature actually qualify as literature. The literature that is most common and that everyone knows is the literature that was just singled out by a certain class or social group. Eagleton says, "What was emblematic to literature was based upon the tastes and values of a certain social class." This is similar to Chandler because he says that a genre has certain characteristics because of what was popular or very economically positive. In this pattern of making certain things well known and others not, all levels and parts of life are not represented.

Another one of Chandler's main points is represented in the reading of "Fish". The genre that is given to a movie or piece of literature automatically provides a set of expectations for the piece. Chandler says that this means just because of the genre, the way in which we watch a movie or read a text is different. Fish writes the same idea. He had a list of writings for his students in one class just as an assignment, but when his next class came in he told them it was a poem. This automatically gave his class a perspective of where to start thinking about the words and letters arranged on the board. Fish says, "Rather, we have readers whose consciousnesses are constituted by a set of conventional notions which when put into operation constitute in turn a conventional, and conven-tionally seen, object. My students could do what they did, and do it in unison, because as members of a literary community they knew what a poem was (their knowledge was public), and that knowledge led them to look in such a way as to populate the landscape with what they knew to be poems." Simply because of the fact that they were told it was a poem and as an educated literary public we have a way to attempt to interpret a poem the students had a preset notion for their interpretations.

A social situation in which this would also be very obvious would be on a "date". If two people went out to just get dinner with two other friends of theirs it would be a situation of preset notions of simply eating and talking. However, if the same group was going to go out but the two friends were told it was going to be a date, they would act completely different and address the whole situation in an entirely new way.

Class #3 response

Chandler and Fish have similar views about Genre. Chandler states the " Genre provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select, and interpret texts. " While Fish states " --and indeed definitions of poetry are recipes, for by directing readers as to what to look for in a poem, they instruct them in ways of looking that will produce what they expect to see. These statements reflect what we've been discussing in class regarding the "Western". Each of us have similar, but varying ideas of what we consider to be a "Western" stemming from our personal experiences with this genre that we incorporate into our knowledge . Chandler suggests this as well..."Clearly one needs to encounter sufficient examples of a genre in order to recognize shared features as being characteristic of it."

With Eagleton we learn that "just as people may treat a work as philosophy in one century and as literature in the next, or visa versa, so they may change their minds about what writing they consider valuable. He considers 'value' a transitive term meaning whatever is valued by a certain people in specific situations, according to particular criteria and in the light of given purposes. This is evident in our discussions about the Western genre. In the John Wayne era of "the western" society deemed the films "valuable" so as long as that attitude remained, that type of movie would continue to be made.

An example of social expectations and conventions could be a funeral or wake. You are expected to dress appropriately, be respectful of the grieving family, and friends. It would not be appropriate to go to a funeral or wake dressed in shorts and a tank top. There is always a chance of running into someone you hadn't seen in a long time, so you shouldn't act like it's a reunion.

Eagleton claims that literature, and what is considered literature should not be categorized solely by what one specific social-economic class deems appropriate based on their experinces as a group. As he says on pg.15 what was emblematic to liturature was based upon the tastes and values of a certain social class. Rather, literature should be a compilation of writings from all aspects of life. This realtes to chandler and our discussions of genre through the need to break expectations that attached as characterisitics.
Fish states that reason we are able to discern poetry from other forms of writing is because we have an already embedded with a frame of context to identify poems. As fish says the difference that we see between poems is not inherent to its structure but to different interpretive operations. Fish and chandler are similar because they are both promoting the theory that the things we catergorize into different works of literature,art,and in genral life, are a result of a previous description of a genre and what characteristics make a piece of literature fall into each of these genres.
A restaurant is a good example of social expectations that critical to interpreting responses. When you go to a restaurant there are certain things you are expecting, relatively quick seating,polite waitress,fast service,and properly prepared food amongst other things. You want to be in control of how your dining experience goes, and have the restaurant staff attend to your needs as they arise. When these expectations are not met in any way that is where problems arise and may result in an altercation between you and the restaurant staff.

Post # 3

In Terry Eagleton writings from Literary Theory, he talks about the meaning of the word Literature. People see literature as writing “which they think is good”(Eagleton). Does that mean that the bad writings are not considered literature, but who are the judges of good literature and bad literature. It creates a debate because there can be writings I see great and useful and others may find it unimportant and not good at all, does that make the writing literature just because some people can think its great and others don’t. You can relate this idea to Chandler because what makes a certain genres that genre? Who are the judges of what makes a western a western or a war story a war story.

In Fish’s writing he speaks of poetry to his class. In the reading he talks about how he wrote names on a blackboard in a class. To the students the names on the blackboard were just names, but when he told his students that it was actually a poem, the student started looking at the text much differently. From paragraph [8] “It was almost as if they were following a recipe—if its poem do this, if it’s a poem, see it that way—and indeed definitions of poetry are recipes, for by directing readers as to what to look for in a poem, they instruct them….”(Fish). In other words telling the students that the text was indeed a poem it changed their whole approach in interpreting the text. This also relates to Chander’s idea of genre because being told that certain stories are of a certain genre will make us readers or viewers look at the story at a different perspective and search and notice expectations to make the genre true.

When trying to find an example drawn from life where social expectations and conventions are critical to interpreting interaction I can only think of one thing, cars. When people see cars they see the outside of what maybe is a Mercedes or a Volkswagen and critique just by its name. When people see BMWs driving around they see a luxury car and criticize them just because of its name, without even knowing what’s even under the hood. This globalizing world created a social expectations that the names of these “luxury” cars makes us create high expectations for them. On the other hand other car companies such as Mazda are not seen with such a high expectations can be just as good at times. You can give a person two cars that look exactly alike but put a different brand on them and it will change the value or even our expectations and conventions to interpreting the car and change our view in how good the cars actually are. Of course there can be exceptions to this for people who actually know a lot about cars and make an argument against my idea, but most of the world does not know much about cars, just that Mercedes and BMWs are really good, and that Toyota and Honda are not as good.