K. Marx "Manifesto of the Communist Party"

Marx is talking here about two main social classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. As a result of the indistrial revolution all over the world, working class starts to lose their jobs, their work is being replaced by machines, value of their production depends on the machines. "All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex" (p. 18). A small portion of bourgeoisie joins the  proletariat. "The proletarian movement is a self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" (p. 20). The need for a change appeared because existence of bourgeoisie was no longer compatible with the society.

The immediate aim of Communists: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeoisie, conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theory of the Commmunists: abolition of the private property.

Capital is a social power, it's a collective product.
"Communism deproves no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations" (p. 24).

Literature

French Socialist and Communist literature enteres Germany when the bourgeoisie in that country had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism. German philosophy joint with French literature, the Germans did not practically adapt to the French social conditions. It assumed a purely literary aspect. "The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience" (p. 30).
"Working men of all countries unite!"- the slogan of the Communists, translated into dozens of languages all over the world.

A Communist Confession of Faith and The Principles of Communism are very similar documents, since they contain the same ideas, only rephrased and elaborated in the second. They talk about the new order that they hope to establish in the new society: to abolish competition and replace it with association and communal ownership of goods. "Communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and supersedes them".

Theses on Feuerbach my K. Marx

In his theses, K. Marx critises F's ideas by proposing new ways of looking at social behaviour. Marx disagrees with F. and wants a change in the order of the human society, which should be the centre of everything. His idea of changing the world is through new materialism, which in turn is based on human society.

Formalism, Structuralism, PE... some thoughts

The idea of defamiliarization (from V. Propp, Russian formalism) is understandable to me and I enjoyed reading the examples of its application in literature. Also, the role of linguistics in Literary theory and criticism seems central to me as well. However, I agree with the criticism of formalism: they did not consider the social aspect of literature. I beleive that human contrubution to the literature is very important, just like the relationship between text and culture. The article in Wikipedia was very helpful in explaining the concepts.
Metalanguage... seems like a very useful idea, but since the theories and opinions change over time, so does the metalanguage, right? So with every new approach to Literary theory we have to "adjust" to new vocabulary to talk about literary works.

Morphology of the folktale

A very interesting point of view by V. Propp. I love fairy tales, but I had never thought of their structure until I read this piece. It makes perfect sense that the fairy tales consist of the same sequence of identical functions of the caracters. The events are very predictable, but we still enjoy the colorfullness of the stories. It's amazing that hundreds of tales from different cultures can be analized according to Propp's structure.

The Little Cask by Maupassant

Here it is... thoughts on The Little Cask by Maupassant.
It's an interesting little story with an important lesson (like many of the writer's stories). He always teaches us something. This one in particular teaches not to be greedy and to watch out for people who might seem like friends, but in reality want to trick you. That little lady thought she could outsmart the innkeeper into giving her more money for her land, but happened to be weaker that the alcohol.
I'd like to read the story's original, since this version seems awkward. I'd like to give it another chance in French. If anyone has read it in French, what were your thoughts about this English translation?
The end!

Maupassant post

...coming tomorrow

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