"What I Don't Understand"

Here's the list of responses to Monday's "What I don't Understand" cards. I'll give enlightment, to varying degrees, to each at Wednesday's lecture:

What I Don’t Understand
• Inversion
• Woods stance
• Wood’s Argument form

What I Don’t Understand
• Dualism in Life after God
• Irony vs. lying in BAG
• Final exam concepts

What I Don’t Understand
• Why BAG is a polemic or anti-God

What I Don’t Understand
• Why Greene’s novel is praised as a work of polemical art

What I Don’t Understand
• Review concept of dust in the Amber Spyglass
• Review “dialectic” from the first couple of lecture

What I Don’t Understand
• Ironic gap

What I Don’t Understand
• sincerity

What I Don’t Understand
• in Pullman’s Amber Spyglass, what’s the relevance of the concept “world separation” (or “multi-world”)? and the sword used to cut an entrance between two worlds?
• Also, how’s multi-world and sword related to the author’s anti-God ideas?

What I Don’t Understand
• The significance of animals
• The concept of Creed

What I Don’t Understand
• Life after God ~ main theme and main vocabulary: if you could maybe brush over it a little I’d really appreciate it

What I Don’t Understand
• Brighton Rock
• Douglas Coupland

What I Don’t Understand
• The Amber Spyglass’ concepts and related definition

What I Don’t Understand
• Genre: one of the lecture you mentioned Amber Spyglass’ genre is polemical
• What to focus on in the course

What I Don’t Understand
• Plato’s cave
• Irony from The Book Against God: can you give examples (from book) and explain the intended effects? (I’m the group of audience that just don’t get the irony but I
need to get the irony but I need to get it for the exam)

What I Don’t Understand
• English pastoral literary type
• Similes and paradoxes

What I Don’t Understand
• How BAG is strictly anti-God (references, examples)

What I Don’t Understand
• You, your inability to bring light to any important issues aroused by the books. I can understand one maybe 2 lectures about genre, style, type etc.
• Maybe you should take some time out of your busy lecture schedule to lecture on things that matter. Life, love, death, time…how these topics relate…
Who cares if BAG is English Pastoral???

What I Don’t Understand
• How to avoid wordy rambling in essay exams
• How to be concise, and stick to the core concepts…

What I Don’t Understand
• The significance of Ida in Brighton Rock

What I Don’t Understand
• Imaginative truth definition (can’t remember)

What I Don’t Understand
• I don’t really understand the point of the Book against God is…
• I don’t understand why we had to read Anne Rice. That book was hard to read. It was awful .

What I Don’t Understand
• What you are looking for when you ask questions. (sometimes)
• How to learn to dissect a novel
• Some of the words you use (LOL!) I can look them up though
• Still how to deal with final exam questions breakdown

What I Don’t Understand
• Different kinds of irony like: Roman irony, dramatic irony…
• Although I attend to the lectures, I find it difficult to study the lecture notes on the web site and to follow it up.

What I Don’t Understand
• Why has Douglas Coupland forsaken us? Do we have to deny him three times or something?

What I Don’t Understand
• Your notes
• Some of your tangents however, some help me understand the text better
• Why some authors have such dissatisfying conclusions

What I Don’t Understand
• Ironic gap
• Difference between “dialogic” and “didactic”

What I Don’t Understand
• Bildungsroman
• English pastoral
• Literary distance
• London and Purnar
Immaturity vs maturity

What I Don’t Understand
• Dialogic novel
• All of the inversions?

What I Don’t Understand
• Why Life After God is a significant read?
• Is there a finite list of literary types/methods?

What I Don’t Understand
• Significance of lies
•The role of music in BAG

…………………………………………………………………………………………

What I Don’t Understand
• How one can argue against something by making it look good
• How you can draw such plausible connections between concepts that before being lectured on seem completely unrelated.

What I Don’t Understand
• Why the ending seemed to be the way it was in Life After God, almost seemed out of place

• Why the Book Against God wasn’t a more harsh polemic, title is very misleading
• Why Sam Harris looks like Ben Stiller

What I Don’t Understand
• If Sam Harris’ definition of Atheist is valid, then the proof of God falls on the believer, not the atheist. Book Against God puts everything in the contexts of belief so that Thomas is less concerned with proving that God doesn’t exist that proving that we shouldn’t humour God.

What I Don’t Understand
• Some of these books (i.e. Amber Spyglass) don’t seem to be ‘anti-God’ but rather anti-institutionalised Religion, and there is a certain amount of Spirituality. Is this valid or are we to argue that it is completely polemical in a formal setting like an exam.

What I Don’t Understand
• Why the only alternative to X-ianity is Atheism
• Is the ultimate irony in BAG that Tom is more credible than the church?
• Anne Rice as literary excellence?

What I Don’t Understand
• Even though I know the direct meaning of English Pastoral, I don’t know how to identify them.
• Irony

What I Don’t Understand
• Chesterton’s Orthodoxy
• Doctrines

What I Don’t Understand
• Literary distance (Book Against God)
• Plato’s cave

What I Don’t Understand
• Not quite clear on Greene’s ultimate message in Brighton Rock. Heaven must exist if there I hell?

What I Don’t Understand
• The significance of the end of Brighton Rock where Rose and the priest talk and
Rose’s thoughts in the end
• What duality has to do with God in Life After God

What I Don’t Understand
• Why Brighton Rock is pro-God
• Why the dialectic of setting in BAG is important

What I Don’t Understand

• Brighton Rock seems to outweigh its supposedly pro-God stance by all the negative events that transpire. I know that the idea is because there is evil there is God but it seems to be such a round about way. How is it Pro-God and not neutral or Anti-God?

What I Don’t Understand
• The difference between sarcastic and irony
• What’s the final exam is going to be like (lots of short answer questions and three essay questions?)
• Is there a similarity between Coupland & Wood’s work (both unstable)

What I Don’t Understand
• The different genre of each novel
• The difference between sarcasm and irony: sarcastic is the basic form of irony?

What I Don’t Understand
• The relationship of Max to concepts of the BAG
• Sarah’s position (mediator?)
• Wood’s an atheist?

What I Don’t Understand
• The concept of Brighton Rock being pro-God is vague to me

What I Don’t Understand
• Dogma
• Heteroglossia?

What I Don’t Understand
• Literary distance