I May Have Taken This Too Far...

I decided to do my honors contract work on a E.M. Forster's Room With A View in light of New Historical and Cultural criticism of the Edwardian time period, in comparison to the same analysis on present-day productions of the play adaptation. Unfortunately, when when I conceived this idea and attained approval from the head of the English department and facilitator of the Insignis program, I had neither read the play adaptation of Room With A View, nor had any background in New Historical and Cultural criticism. After reading said play and attaining said background, I am now obliged to beg the question "WHAT DID I GET MYSELF INTO?!" For the love of Pete, this is going to be a lot of work. Thankfully, I shall be held within the obligating bounds of deadlines, thanks to graded research project administered by Dr. Coogan.

Within the realm of the literary theory I have blindly become married to, I find myself confronted with personal dissension. The theory rejects history in the traditional sense and asserts that all accounts of "history" are tainted with bias to some degree and based in the unstable grounds of cultural subjectivity. I will grant the truth of this allegation, however, I resent the nihilism toward which this disposition leans. New Historical criticism infers that we can not actually know anything about history--that historical accounts should be viewed in the same way as fiction is viewed. New Historical criticism seeks, rather, to determine in which ways the even has been interpreted and what we can therefor conclude about the interpreters. What can we interpret from the few facts we can be (relatively) certain about--in regards to the competing ideologies and conflicting social, political, and cultural agendas of the time?
In other words, my task is to write a 7 to 10 page paper (with a thorough, annotated bibliography) on what E.M. Forster's agenda was in creating Room With A View, --what he was saying about the discourses of society, and how he interpreted those discourses. I will also discuss the agenda and social discourses brought into question by the present-day play adaptation, and why it is important to us as a theatre-goers and members of the culture.
I am game. However, I will only allow New Historical and Cultural criticism to percolate into my intellectual inclination as far as my research will allow me to uncover about these interpretations. I will not accept every facet of New Historical criticism, including Foucault's argument that "insanity," "crime,: and "sexual perversion" are social constructions implaced by the individuals in power. Furthermore, to the editor of my critical theory book, I demand proof for her claim that incest and cannibalism have been deemed admirable within certain cultures. Cannibalism and incest are ugly realities, of course, but I would like a shred of evidence of cannibalism being deemed "admirable" when it takes place within the cannibalistic tribe itself.

An behalf of mankind, I argue that human beings posses a will and an intellect, and though society does play a significant role in how we view the world, it is not indicative of our personal identities. Furthermore, the claim very atheistic and that the legacy of human history is "like an improvised dance consisting of an infinite variety of steps, following any new route at any given moment, and having no particular goal or destination." This pessimism does not sit well in my mind--it agitates me quite profoundly.

My argument is thus: human beings can sense the gradation of various levels of goodness and truth, and hence there must be an ultimate source of goodness and truth. This ultimate source is God. Because we live in this tension of God's existence and the existence of perfection, we will continually strive for that, thus giving humanity an ultimate goal and destination. I don't believe we will ever actually reach that, because mankind is wounded, but we will for sure try.