Welcome to the Five Week Panic Attack, more commonly known as the beginning of November. Finals are barely a month away and final projects and term papers are due. I've just been working on my work plan for my final Shakespeare paper and I have come to a conclusion that I know all too well.
My paper is going to be about Twelfth Night. More specifically, it's about Viola and her relationships toward Olivia and Orsino. When I read the play itself, I get the feeling that Viola respects Olivia as an equal competitor for Orsino's affection, maybe to the extent that Olivia is above her. Viola loves Orsino, but she could easily see why Orsino is in love with Olivia. It's sort of like when you like a guy, but you see what kind of girl he hangs around with and you say "Well, I don't stand a chance." That interpretation is all just from reading the play itself. The problem is that I have to bring in outside sources to support my thesis or it means fish to the rest of the world.
There's no getting around that I love literature. Poetry, short stories, novels, plays... lemme have it! The only problem is when you take a class on British lit or Shakespeare, you are ineviably required to write a research paper, which means you have to bring in some All-Knowing Expert that you've never heard of or don't rightly care what they think to make your own ideas worth something.
Now,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shellic is listening to PotterCast and I think, why do I need anything other than the text? Granted, PotterCast uses sources like interviews with Jo, jkrowling.com and things like that where Jo herself has stated certain facts about characters. In my case, however, Shakespeare has written very little (if anything at all) extraneously about his characters. Most of what people "know" comes from looking at history and how people act and putting opinion with those facts. None of it comes from the original author, so it's difficult to know what Shakespeare intended, if he intended his plays to be read this way.
Sigh... I've struggled with this in all my literature courses. I love reading the lit, but I could never be a Lit Studies major because I have to put my own feelings on the shelf and cotton to what the rest of the world. This problem is nothing new, obviously. It's not just something that came to light during my senior year, but I've never blogged about it, so there you go.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
My paper is going to be about Twelfth Night. More specifically, it's about Viola and her relationships toward Olivia and Orsino. When I read the play itself, I get the feeling that Viola respects Olivia as an equal competitor for Orsino's affection, maybe to the extent that Olivia is above her. Viola loves Orsino, but she could easily see why Orsino is in love with Olivia. It's sort of like when you like a guy, but you see what kind of girl he hangs around with and you say "Well, I don't stand a chance." That interpretation is all just from reading the play itself. The problem is that I have to bring in outside sources to support my thesis or it means fish to the rest of the world.
There's no getting around that I love literature. Poetry, short stories, novels, plays... lemme have it! The only problem is when you take a class on British lit or Shakespeare, you are ineviably required to write a research paper, which means you have to bring in some All-Knowing Expert that you've never heard of or don't rightly care what they think to make your own ideas worth something.
Now,
shellic is listening to PotterCast and I think, why do I need anything other than the text? Granted, PotterCast uses sources like interviews with Jo, jkrowling.com and things like that where Jo herself has stated certain facts about characters. In my case, however, Shakespeare has written very little (if anything at all) extraneously about his characters. Most of what people "know" comes from looking at history and how people act and putting opinion with those facts. None of it comes from the original author, so it's difficult to know what Shakespeare intended, if he intended his plays to be read this way.Sigh... I've struggled with this in all my literature courses. I love reading the lit, but I could never be a Lit Studies major because I have to put my own feelings on the shelf and cotton to what the rest of the world. This problem is nothing new, obviously. It's not just something that came to light during my senior year, but I've never blogged about it, so there you go.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
