Familiarization of defamiliarization?

Hey eveyone!

Alright, so since it was said that this does not have to be an organized essay type of blog I’ll just mentions some points that I find interesting, and some that I find a bit confusing.

In Shklovsky’s article “Art as Technique” what seemed like the main point to me was the idea of perception becoming habitual and therefore what we usually perceive loses its impact on us. Which is so true, if you think about it, when coming to class, for example, whither you drive, walk or take the bus, taking the same route becomes so habitual that we start missing things that we would notice in it were our first time seeing them. This is what came to my mind when I started reading the article. A quote that I thought was really powerful, about the importance of perception consciously is: “If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been” (page 16). This quote highlights the importance of artistic/writing techniques which bring consciousness into perceiving/ reading works of art. This is when he mentions the technique of “defamiliarization”, and if we think about this in terms of the driving example, it would make sense because if we take a new route, then we will notice more things around us and we would be driving more “consciously”. Now here’s where it gets a bit complicated in my head, the technique of defamiliarization in literature might capture the reader’s attentions and senses, but if it gets too unfamiliar, wouldn’t it lose the reader? Wouldn’t the reader get bored because of a lack in familiarity? If we take the example that Shlovsky gives, the description of private property from a horse’s point of view, it really interesting because it is describing humans’ values and way of life from an animal point of view, but then if, say, instead of having to read just this short passage we had to read a whole book with the same perspective, wouldn’t the lack of familiarity or association make us lose interest in the reading? I can’t really answer the question myself, because I did enjoy reading this short passage but I’m not sure for how long it would hold my interest. You may call me shallow but I must admit, when I pick a novel to read for fun (something that I haven’t had the time to do for a while now) I tend to prefer reading novels written from a female’s point of view, or mainly about a female (no matter what the topic is). I might be mixing the two notions of defamiliarization and relation/association though.

I hope you’re not as confused as I am by reading my blog, if you have, or you think you have, the answers to my questions please enlighten me :)

See you all tomorrow!

The Little Cask

Hola todos! Salut tout le monde!

I need to mention something before I start writing about this week’s reading. No matter how much I love theory, I’m not quite sure how to apply it to this story (yet), I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t know it all, that means I’ll definitely learn in this class :)

Having said that I’m just going to tell you about my thoughts and some reflections on the story. My reaction to Chicot’s description was, ‘wow… Maupassant is good’ He presents the same character in two different ways in such a short story: as a friendly man who cares about the elderly lady, while still wanting to get something from her, to a businessman who has such intense hatred for the same lady who, by living, stands in the way of his profit, and so he is willing to do anything to rid himself of her presence.

Another important point that is worth mentioning is the irony of the old lady’s reactions in two situations: at the beginning she is suspicious of the innkeeper and his offer, which shows that she is not all that naïve, however, when Chicot invites her for dinner and he offers her liqueur, and not just any the special expensive kind, she does not show any doubts or suspicion, even when he goes as far as offering her some to take home and saying: “The sooner it is finished the better pleased I shall be”.

The main point of the story that really got my attention is that both characters can be seen as victims as well as criminals, although not at the same level. The old lady, when she is happy with the deal, with the increase of the price of course, in order to convince Chicot she pretends not to be feeling well, she says “The other evening I thought I was going to die, and could hardly manage to crawl into bed” so she uses deception to reach her goal, while he does the same by tempting her with alcohol until she dies of overdrinking. Yes I know, obviously causing her death is a bigger sin, but we don’t really have a ‘good guy’ and a ‘bad guy’ in this story. They’re both evil to some degree.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for now.

I don’t think this was very ‘theoretical’, sorry to disappoint you all, hopefully tomorrow will help me for the next blog, so stay tuned to witness my improvement :) (Ideally it will happen)