ENGL 3045 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Dialectic
11 Apr 2016
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Three types of history: monumental history: recreates the successes of the past, antiquarian history: stresses difference, look at the roots of your own culture and people. Take the best of your own culture and own roots (decay of monumental history) Disadvantage is that it tends towards blandness. Only preserves the community"s past, does not beget newness. So much focus on roots and you don"t create new: critical history. Builds off of the image of the roots of the tree. It"s our job to cut out the bad roots. You have to cultivate and recreate a new you. This done by combating your first nature. It"s easy to become knife-happy and cut away too much. Heavy nationalist tendency france is much better than everywhere else. Tragedy is one of the very first cultural institutions. Arch villain is socrates because socrates stands for method (an objective method that will arrive at a truth)
