literary darwinism?

there's a provocative article in today's NY TIMES called 'the literary darwinists.' adherents to this [admittedly very small] school of literary interpretation -- which is a subset of the [ever-so-slightly larger] field of so-called 'biopoetics' -- claim to take a biological, even a darwinian, approach to the reading and evaluation of literary works. [they see this as, among other things, a way of uniting science and the humanities.] have a look at the essay and see what you think about all this.

HUBRIS in comedy?

kyle's email also included a p.s., related to his observation in class about 'south park's' cartman character as an example of HUBRIS:

here is article about eric cartman which demonstrates how he displays hubris.

eric cartman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cartman

on thursday we discussed HUBRIS in the context of what i call the 'calculus of moral decline' -- that gradation of human experience that can slide one into the abyss of tragic misfortune. it's worth thinking about this in the context of COMEDY, which is -- arguably -- the flip-side of tragedy. and i submit to you that cartman, like other characters on 'south park,' is a *comic* figure. how are the creators of 'south park' [trey parker and matt stone] inverting the tragic paradigm here? is it perhaps the case that the comic hero is precisely the one who can evince hubris without sliding into the abyss? and if so, does this mean that we do not take him/her seriously?

TERROR vs. HORROR

this just in, from kyle, à propos of our thursday discussions of TERROR vs HORROR as cinematic concepts/frameworks. [a word of caution: these wikipedia articles about the SAW movies are explicit and gruesome. if physical violence disgusts or upsets you, you should not click on these wikipedia URLs. NB: they also contain 'spoiler' materials for the films discussed.]

dear professor kirby,

i thought u might like to learn a little more about the saw movies just so you know how terribly creepy they are. these links will take you to the wikipedia articles about them.

saw 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_%28film%29
saw 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_II

these movies fit perfectly into the horror category but they are also terror movies also. i believe that the difference between horror and terror is that horror is something that is temporary like when we see a scary movie. we know that is not true but it still scares us. terror however is something that lasts for a long time, like the threat of nuclear war or terrorism (which
concidentally has the word terror in it). terror is a sustained feeling that even though the thing we are afraid of stops, we still are afraid that it might come back up.

i am fascinated by kyle's distinction between 'terror' and 'horrror' based on whether the effect is temporary. is this how others of you have distinguished between the two concepts? your reactions, please.