The Canon of Blogs
I was just reading through Tomorrow.sg earlier when a thought occurred to me.
See, in English Lit classes, one of the first things they teach you in that writers like referring to other more established writers. Its called intertextuality and its a semiotics concept that has always interested me. One text builds on another and yet another until you get a work like T.S Eliot's The Wasteland which would probably not make sense to most people without a background in the canon of western literature.( It actually still doesn't make alot of sense to me). All the texts are so interrelated that not one piece of work can stand alone, one needs the proper context and references in order to read and understand them.
The reason people do this is partly to lend them credibility, the other it to allow them to evoke certain moods and themes with fewer words.
A prime example would be Shakespeare.Every one knows about Shakespeare even if they've never read his plays. He's been referred so and talked about so much that he's entered into people's cultural consciousness.His plays have so permeated the canon of English literature that it may be impossible to read through a course of lit without coming into contact with at least some Shakespearean references or language.( Its one of the reasons I loved studying Shakepeare, his plays were so fun to read and you could go around and really spot all the ways in which his language shaped ours)
So maybe all this inter blogging linkage is really another part of intertextuality at work. The big people are the guys like Mr brown and his 'bloggerati' and I have a feeling, the day may soon come when no blog will be completely without links to the blogs of these blogging pioneers.Just like Shakespeare invented words that are still used in the English language today, phrases like being 'browned' or 'tomorrowed' are now being coined and passed around by the bloggers.
*Disclaimer: I don't know a great deal about semiotics since it was only briefly discussed in class. I never managed to take a lit theory class like I wanted cos I ran out of space in fitting extra lit classes. But here is where one could find out more. It talks about concepts like 'death of the author' and alot more about semiotics in general, plus some interesting post modernist theories.If I've made any glaring errors, someone please let me know cos this is a topic I'd really love to learn more about.
See, in English Lit classes, one of the first things they teach you in that writers like referring to other more established writers. Its called intertextuality and its a semiotics concept that has always interested me. One text builds on another and yet another until you get a work like T.S Eliot's The Wasteland which would probably not make sense to most people without a background in the canon of western literature.( It actually still doesn't make alot of sense to me). All the texts are so interrelated that not one piece of work can stand alone, one needs the proper context and references in order to read and understand them.
The reason people do this is partly to lend them credibility, the other it to allow them to evoke certain moods and themes with fewer words.
A prime example would be Shakespeare.Every one knows about Shakespeare even if they've never read his plays. He's been referred so and talked about so much that he's entered into people's cultural consciousness.His plays have so permeated the canon of English literature that it may be impossible to read through a course of lit without coming into contact with at least some Shakespearean references or language.( Its one of the reasons I loved studying Shakepeare, his plays were so fun to read and you could go around and really spot all the ways in which his language shaped ours)
So maybe all this inter blogging linkage is really another part of intertextuality at work. The big people are the guys like Mr brown and his 'bloggerati' and I have a feeling, the day may soon come when no blog will be completely without links to the blogs of these blogging pioneers.Just like Shakespeare invented words that are still used in the English language today, phrases like being 'browned' or 'tomorrowed' are now being coined and passed around by the bloggers.
*Disclaimer: I don't know a great deal about semiotics since it was only briefly discussed in class. I never managed to take a lit theory class like I wanted cos I ran out of space in fitting extra lit classes. But here is where one could find out more. It talks about concepts like 'death of the author' and alot more about semiotics in general, plus some interesting post modernist theories.If I've made any glaring errors, someone please let me know cos this is a topic I'd really love to learn more about.
posted by adinahaes at 6:46 AM
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