I was personally fascinated by the excerpts we read of Renaissance Self-Fashioning from the start. This text captured my attention almost immediately, and I could not quite comprehend why I was captivated by it until very recently. I realized that as readers, we do not often have the chance to directly read about the author's experience creating their work. In his preface, Greenblatt puts his relationship with writing Renaissance Self Fashioning on display. We are able to learn about how the process of Greenblatt’s own self fashioning through writing has made him a more conscious thinker and a more intentional human being. His ideas, though they are his own, were shaped and influenced by the places that he has been and the “local opportunities that happened to spring up at that early point in [his] career.” This window into Greenblatt’s own journey that appears both in the preface and in the epilogue is what I found so unique about this work. As I flipped through the Greenblatt section of our AP Lit course pack during the first few days of the school year, I came to understand the concept that is self-fashioning through the lense of a conversation I had two years ago with Mr. Allen, an art teacher who I loved and admired. One day at the beginning of class, Mr. Allen spent a considerable amount of time explaining the concepts of free will and determinism. He then proceeded to ask each student, as he called their names and marked them present, whether they believed that we as humans retain our own free will or if we live in a determinist world. In true Rose fashion, I never took a side. When it was my turn to answer Mr. Allen’s question, I stated that I wanted to believe that we have our own free will, but I was not entirely sure that was true or possible. Reading Greenblatt brought these old thoughts back to the forefront of my mind. Greenblatt’s staunch belief that our actions and choices are formed based on a blend of our own internal thoughts and desires and the outward forces of our culture shocked me initially. I was compelled to disagree with him because I wanted to be in complete control of my own self. In fact, his argument almost made me angry, as I am and have always been a very black and white, logical thinker (working on this!). I could not grasp the notion of having some autonomy over the formation of my identity, but not complete autonomy. I first began to make sense of this theory that inward forces and outward forces could be at both be present in identity formation when we drew Greenblatt’s argument, cut it out, and taped it to the ceiling. I replicated this green spiral in my common place book, as it helped me visualize the messiness of dialectics and stopped my brain from thinking in such straight lines. I predict that this concept of dialectical thinking is something that will appear in many, if not all, things we will think about in AP Lit in the future. In order to objectively and truly take advantage of the opportunities and new knowledge each text will bring me in this course, it will be important for me to retain a dialectical approach. I also anticipate that we will continue to work through different modes of self discovery and life improvement, as Scott’s A Better Life Through Criticism discusses changing our lives based on aesthetic experiences and learning why we like what we do, while Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning includes identity formation and the impact that cultural forces have on that process.
This is another thing that I wrote about in my common place book when answering a QTTA that I had for both Scott and Greenblatt. I chose to include this particular entry from my common place book in this blog post because I am proud of the way I was able to synthesize what I have learned from both Scott and Greenblatt. This is an example of me working towards one of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this course: practice synthesizing information from texts. I am also excited that I was able to find a common thread through Better Living Through Criticism and Renaissance Self-Fashioning. I hope we will continue to explore other themes that occur in the literature that we read and examine the purpose of each narrative as we have with these two texts. I look forward to continuing to challenge and expand my thinking through writing, reading, and discussion in AP Lit.
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