Blog Post 1: Quotation on Writing

"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it." -Elizabeth Drew

With respect to the question of how this quote engages purpose and context in relationship to an audience, this quote is most simply trying to express that in order for a text to be meaningful to any audience, that it should be capable of influencing or impacting their lives in some way. One of the ideas behind this writing class was that anything can be considered an argument. With this in mind, we can say that in terms of purpose, Drew believes for a text to be worth while, it must effectively convey some argument, regardless of what that argument is. For example, if you watch a movie and cant really identify any meaning or plot, chances are that you wont think it was a very good movie. With respect to the quote, if you did not find any meaning in the movie, your life will not be impacted in any way because of it. When thinking about context of the text, if the goal is to in some way impact the lives of the targeted audience, the most important thing would then be for the context of the text to be relevant and meaningful. To best accomplish this, one should carefully analyze the targeted audience before creating the text. If the viewpoints, opinions, preferences, ect. of the audience are understood before hand, you can then shape the text to directly appeal and connect to who you think will be viewing it. When Drew says "live more intensely," she means that the audience either directly or indirectly shows some change in their lifestyle. This means that the audience does not necessarily have to obviously know the meaning or message behind your text, but just take something from it. There is alot of room for the writer to express ideas in whatever way he or she chooses, this includes "hidden" themes, arguments, meaning or messages. The important thing to remember about this quote is that no matter what text we create, our goal should always be to make our text powerful in terms of delivering its message, whatever it may be.