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Can Someone Offer Me a Prozac?
Sep. 22nd, 2005 05:03 pmHa ha, only kidding.
I just came back from my American Writers class in which we are studying Edgar Allan Poe this whole semester. Part of the class involves reading all of the assigned works and keeping a journal entry about each one. These journal entries should consist of what we thought while reading, any random notes, and our responses.
Maybe I'm insane, but I've never really felt that writing while I'm reading really was a good idea. Case in point: I still haven't gotten completely through Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" for the simple reason that I had to stop every five paragraphs and vent in my journal about how nuts this guy is (little scholar from the farm meets elitist nature writer; not a good combination). Luckily, some of my arguments held up in class and I think that, as much as I wrote in my journal on the first four chapters, I shouldn't have to comment on the rest of it and I could easily skip to the next novel that I have to read in my Period Studies in American Literature class.
Back to Poe: he wrote a number of theories on writing poetry and short stories, three of which I was assigned to read in this class. To be perfectly honest, Poe should have stuck to writing poetry and short stories rather than theorizing on the stuff. Then again, even the most able-minded literary genius couldn't make methodical literary theory exciting. Maybe if Poe put his theories side-by-side with his literature, it would be more riveting. When you think of Edgar Allan Poe, you think of gothic, horror, blood and guts type of stuff. I tell you, he was never meant to make something entitled "The Philosophy of Composition" a bestseller. It's too scientific and too calculated for my tastes.
So, I'm struggling through the literary theories of Poe. I decided to skip ahead and read what I needed for class today, which was "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains". I actually found myself inspired for my own work, which is what a writer wants when studying literature. "Ragged Mountains" is about a man who tells of a dream and one of the guys he tells his dream to says that a friend of his in India had the exact same experience many years ago. In fact, when the man with the dream dies, they misspell his name in the obituary and the name printed is the Indian friend's name backwards. I need to reread it a bit, since I'm missing a few details, but the whole premise is intriguing. Also, we started talking about gothic and supernatural literature a bit. I need to write a critical response paper for this class and while Professor Vause was going through the elements of a gothic tale, I thought of how I could tie all this in and it hit me: the gothic elements in Harry Potter (especially books five and six; Spoilers Abound!) Consider:
-- a castle with long dark corridors. Many of Harry's adventures take place at night with only moonlight or a lantern for light. Book Five: the Department of Mysteries
-- Potion classes in the dungeons, secret passageways
-- Magic, supernatural, ghosts, etc.
-- Death, Lord Voldemort, Death Eaters, the veil, dementors
-- Troubling Subjects: Death, Inferi, the Gaunt Family and intermarrying with the purebloods, Horcruxes
-- Extreme landscapes: Forbidden Forest, the lake, the forest at the Quidditch World Cup, the graveyard in book four
-- willful hero and villain: Harry and Voldemort and the Prophecy
And the list goes on. Hey, I think I have my first paper! Hot dogs! I also could tie the gothic theme in with CSI, since I've kind of got a fetish for that now. The possibilities are endless. I'm excited now. If only I didn't have my French and Family Finance classes interrupting me all the time.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
PS, While I'm on the subject of gothic lit, I must say hello to my friend Ani aka Tasuki, since I told her and the rest of the Fushigi House of Halibut and Chicken to drop in once in a while. Ani was my roommate a while ago and she was taking a Gothic and Supernatural Lit class during that time, so today's class reminded me of her. I don't know if that's how she'd like to be remembered, but...eh...
I just came back from my American Writers class in which we are studying Edgar Allan Poe this whole semester. Part of the class involves reading all of the assigned works and keeping a journal entry about each one. These journal entries should consist of what we thought while reading, any random notes, and our responses.
Maybe I'm insane, but I've never really felt that writing while I'm reading really was a good idea. Case in point: I still haven't gotten completely through Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" for the simple reason that I had to stop every five paragraphs and vent in my journal about how nuts this guy is (little scholar from the farm meets elitist nature writer; not a good combination). Luckily, some of my arguments held up in class and I think that, as much as I wrote in my journal on the first four chapters, I shouldn't have to comment on the rest of it and I could easily skip to the next novel that I have to read in my Period Studies in American Literature class.
Back to Poe: he wrote a number of theories on writing poetry and short stories, three of which I was assigned to read in this class. To be perfectly honest, Poe should have stuck to writing poetry and short stories rather than theorizing on the stuff. Then again, even the most able-minded literary genius couldn't make methodical literary theory exciting. Maybe if Poe put his theories side-by-side with his literature, it would be more riveting. When you think of Edgar Allan Poe, you think of gothic, horror, blood and guts type of stuff. I tell you, he was never meant to make something entitled "The Philosophy of Composition" a bestseller. It's too scientific and too calculated for my tastes.
So, I'm struggling through the literary theories of Poe. I decided to skip ahead and read what I needed for class today, which was "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains". I actually found myself inspired for my own work, which is what a writer wants when studying literature. "Ragged Mountains" is about a man who tells of a dream and one of the guys he tells his dream to says that a friend of his in India had the exact same experience many years ago. In fact, when the man with the dream dies, they misspell his name in the obituary and the name printed is the Indian friend's name backwards. I need to reread it a bit, since I'm missing a few details, but the whole premise is intriguing. Also, we started talking about gothic and supernatural literature a bit. I need to write a critical response paper for this class and while Professor Vause was going through the elements of a gothic tale, I thought of how I could tie all this in and it hit me: the gothic elements in Harry Potter (especially books five and six; Spoilers Abound!) Consider:
-- a castle with long dark corridors. Many of Harry's adventures take place at night with only moonlight or a lantern for light. Book Five: the Department of Mysteries
-- Potion classes in the dungeons, secret passageways
-- Magic, supernatural, ghosts, etc.
-- Death, Lord Voldemort, Death Eaters, the veil, dementors
-- Troubling Subjects: Death, Inferi, the Gaunt Family and intermarrying with the purebloods, Horcruxes
-- Extreme landscapes: Forbidden Forest, the lake, the forest at the Quidditch World Cup, the graveyard in book four
-- willful hero and villain: Harry and Voldemort and the Prophecy
And the list goes on. Hey, I think I have my first paper! Hot dogs! I also could tie the gothic theme in with CSI, since I've kind of got a fetish for that now. The possibilities are endless. I'm excited now. If only I didn't have my French and Family Finance classes interrupting me all the time.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
PS, While I'm on the subject of gothic lit, I must say hello to my friend Ani aka Tasuki, since I told her and the rest of the Fushigi House of Halibut and Chicken to drop in once in a while. Ani was my roommate a while ago and she was taking a Gothic and Supernatural Lit class during that time, so today's class reminded me of her. I don't know if that's how she'd like to be remembered, but...eh...
