I’ve tried to read Austen a few times over the years but never had much luck, and I expected Northanger Abbey to be much the same as her other works. Not so! Although the first few pages were a bit tricky, I got through them and really enjoyed the read. There were a few things about this reading that surprised me right off the bat. Firstly, I think some of the points Austen is making are really interesting. She chooses to make them as part of a novel, but I think some…read more
I literally JUST remembered I was supposed to post this last night. Whoops! The Kingdom of This World is easily in my top 3 books we’ve read so far. I found the tone very conversational, the characters multi-faceted (and investable emotionally) and the plot interesting. Here are a few things I paused to think about and write down as I read: The songs/poems – what part do they play? The original language of the text is Spanish, but some of the verse used in the story is in French/Latin. I wonder…read more
This is actually my week to blog. Woohoo! So I did one of my favourite things to do when I don’t quite know what something means (it happens a lot when some colleagues use big words in seminar) – I Googled this book. And one of the first things that came up is a book review by some random with a .edu website. So I thought it looked semi-credible, and upon reading it I realized that some of his points corresponded with some of my points. Here it is. 1….read more
Disclaimer: This is not my week to blog. Oh well. So, our friend Rousseau seems to have some interesting feelings about gender etc. That isn’t the only thing I plan to address in this blog post, but I feel like it’s difficult for everyone to voice their opinions in seminar because some of us (me) have louder voices than others and we all have stuff to say! Also, I feel like gender and especially gender equality is something we’ve avoided talking about a little bit because we’re afraid it might…read more
(Perhaps we would consider the story very differently if Margarita was mentioned first?) Well, as per usual, this blog post is going to be some semblance of literary analysis formatted as a stream of consciousness ramble. What can I say? I don’t think in a linear way… The thing that struck me first about this novel is the concept of atheism and the way it is portrayed then versus how it is viewed now. This novel was written during a time of massive change and I assume that someone being…read more
The first time I read Faustus, it was pretty much completely lost on me (as were most things I read in high school). I enjoyed the read this time around, although to be honest I found the footnotes distracting to my comprehension of the text (by stopping to read the footnotes I’d lose my flow in a soliloquy and have to start again, etc). Marlowe writes some good stuff, but he’s just not Shakespeare … Format-wise, these questions are going to be half question, half reflection because that’s just the…read more
Antigone’s Claim was a really interesting read for me – I got the impression it might be a bit dry but I actually loved it! Although I didn’t entirely agree with all of Butler’s arguments, Antigone’s Claim raised some interesting questions/ideas for me, so here they are (in some kind of order …) 1. Did she or did she not have an incestuous thing for Polyneices? Butler strongly implies that she did, and Jill suggested in lecture yesterday that she did, but I’m still not 100% sure. I feel like maybe she…read more
A preliminary note of explanation: I was at Girl Guide camp this weekend (despite feeling slightly under the weather on Friday) and returned with a full-blown cold and no voice whats0ever. Me being me, I decided to do everything I’d normally do on a Monday (with the exception of field hockey practice, which I deemed a horrible idea) … the result of my usual overcommitment being that I woke up today feeling equally as gross as I did yesterday. I realized that this momentary illness could not deter me from…read more
Hmmm, Sisyphus. The only Camus I’d read before now was ‘The Guest’ (in grade 10, so it was somewhat lost on me). Having said that, I actually really enjoyed the story of Sisyphus, and it poses some interesting questions about leading a life of eternal aggravation. When Camus says that Sisyphus is ‘conscious’, I assume he means that Sisyphus is aware that his life consists only of pushing a rock up a hill only to watch it roll down again, etcetera. The whole premise of repetition for the sake of…read more
I haven’t blogged at all since I was 13 (and that wasn’t a real blog, actually) so I’m learning on my feet here! I’m excited to share my ramblings on various literary and philosophical topics and am hoping to put an interesting spin on things – one of the biggest things I took away from high school English is that I seem to interpret certain literary works (considered by most to be ‘classics’) differently from my friends and colleagues. My goal here is to share my opinions on various works…read more