Author Archives: ross mosher

Week 3, Paris Peasant

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Paris Peasant was an incredibly unique literary experience that left me in a haze of contradicting emotions and thoughts. As was stated previously in the lecture Louis Aragon does this through putting aside traditional narrative convention altogether in favour of allowing artistic expression to be at the forefront of his literature. I was struck with how such a seemingly nonchalant text, in the sense that there no traditional plot structure, was so emotionally evocative and enticing. I really felt emotionally connected to that little arcade in Paris even though I have never been to France. As I think back to this my reading of this text I really think this piece was more of an experience than a story. We as readers are brought into a place and are just allowed to feel and interpret without the intervention of the ever driving plot, although as an aside Aragon does intervene in the sense that we are experiencing this through his worldview,. As a piece of literature this fact leaves me both in awe of the execution and slightly dissatisfied. Although I believe that dissatisfaction to be more of a conditioned response to a story “without purpose” than an actual critique. The awe comes from the fact that this piece was so entertaining while seemingly being about nothing. I will say as another aside excluding the emotional characteristics of this piece I felt this story reminded me a lot of the sitcom Seinfeld insofar as a seemingly mundane topic hides excellence in its craftsmanship.

The emotions and feelings elicited throughout the text are a jumble of extremes. These ideas and feelings can swing rapidly from section to section as well as within. Yet they are all underpinned with a level of dissatisfaction and alienation that plagues Aragon’s world. Aragon is grappling with a society predicated on ever expanding and renewing consumption. This is personified through the deteriorating arcade with all its little idiosyncratic details and a slew of both reputable and disreputable inhabitants. This is a leftover from a bygone era of the city that doesn’t align with the modern standard.  Yet Aragon revels in this stagnant place and all its well worn and character filled charm. Through this he clearly rejects a capital fueled consumption freight train of a life instead pushing an understanding of life not grounded in the real and physical but through whimsy and passion and raw sensual experience.

Week 2, Combray

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This first section of Michael Proust’s Combray is to me a tangled web of meaning and tangential breaks that feels as disconnected and warped as the narrator feels when dealing with sleep. First things first that was a lot of commas. Almost every other sentence is broken apart multiple times. Which honestly as a reader was definitely very confusing, this combined with the what I believe are like allegorical tangents throughout the first couple pages makes starting this particular text a process. At first I thought he was crippled from the waist down due to Proust’ switching between his own personal narrative and these tangents without any large indications other than the switching of pronouns. But after understanding that these are more targets to explore the feelings that our narrator experiences made me much more open to them as a literary device. `Continuing on with the theme of structure the other thing I noticed was that the world order is more similar to that of French/German(these are the only two languages I have some experience with) than that of a native english writer. It takes a little bit to get used to as the overall flow of a lot of the sentences doesn’t feel natural to me. But I would not consider this a detriment I believe it fits with the themes of the narrative, although this is most likely not an intentional choice rather a quirk of translation, and adds to the overall atmosphere.

As far as the narrative goes I quite liked it yet was also strangely discomforted by it. Reading about this child and the very tangible fear and discomfort he is experiencing made me feel a similar level of discomfort. As well the ritual of kissing his mother to allow him to go asleep makes me believe that Proust is dealing with a mental illness. And as we see through the narrative as Proust has an extreme outburst of emotion causes his mother to stay with him we are exposed to Proust’s undeniable depression. This overarching angst and sadness combined with the focus on the conflict of our preconceptions and reality makes the way the narrator describes his life feel disconnected. As well Proust through the use of vivid diction really allows us to understand the through the first few pages and then later along at the dinner party the severity of his feelings. As an introduction we are thrust into the dark place of this childs mind and the combination of vocabulary, atypical sentence structure, and the tangents create a world that feels adolescent.

Week 1 Who is Ross

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Hello all,

I’m Ross obviously a second year English Lit student from the frozen wasteland that is Edmonton. I would consider myself a fairly well read person but I have not really expanded my horizons from traditional American/English literature and am I’m really excited to do so. As far as personal readings go I’m a huge Ursula K Le Guin fan and love most if not all fantasy.

As far as my expectations go I am very excited to work within a discipline that has very few boundaries. Although the so called romance world is such a broad geographical category I would say that one thing it is not is centered around North American cultural and literary norms. I am really excited to explore the differing cultures of the romance world and see these differences highlighted in the texts. With other literary studies that I have done the worst part to me is being constrained to a certain genre or location for the texts. Even though obviously Romance literature is a category it is fluid and I am excited to learn about its commonality and just how diverse the prose really is.

In response to the lecture and these so called mongrel fields I believe the most important starting point is a discussion of our ideas of categorization. Are all categories and our attempts to divide expression, specifically within this instance literary expression, inherently arbitrary? How can we effectively divided context from the  unnecessary stratification of our world? Honestly I am not entirely sure, with the Romance world’s unifying characteristic being their languages evolved from a common empire who’s heyday was almost 2000 years ago, the scoreboard is showing Arbitrariness 1, Categorization 0. Yet I have not read any of the texts so to continue the previous metaphor were still in the first quarter got a lot of game left to see if this whole Romance world thing isn’t just some made up hoopla.