Tyler Wu's Blogs RMST 202

Reading Agostino was a very unsettling but yet eye-opening about growing up too quickly, as Moravia shows adolescence not as an exciting transition, but something that I believe a lot of people can relate to which is confusing, and painful. Agosto’s relationship with his mother starts out as a very close one as they would go out to sea every morning but then eventually starts to become ruined as the summer unfolds. I believe that the beach is very important to this book as it feels very exposed in a way where there are no places to hide as nothing surrounds it which sort of resembles Agostino’s emotional state. As Agostino become more aware of how everything happens in public his insecurity about himself arises. Moreover, him encountering the older boys makes him face adulthood which involved him being mocked and them being very cruel to him which he falls into a very deep state of sadness. I think what makes this novel so effective though is its emotional restraint. Through Moravia not over explaning Agostino’s feelings, the silence seems enough to tell already. At the end, Agostino seems like he changed but for the worst as he feels more lonely and confused. I really do feel like I can relate a lot to this book as growing up is very difficult as you get more glimpses of how reality is like and that it is not all sunshine and rainbows as how I felt back before as a kid, and most especially you become to sort of feel more insecure about yourself as your actions seem more realistic and life changing in a way. Watching the lecture video, allows me to understand more of Agostino as linking the story’s emotional ambiguity to the limits of language and reality shows how Moravia’s realism caputures the realness through subtle gaps in experience and expression, which highlights the novel’s insights into growing up and becoming more self-aware. The commentary video as well helps situate Moravia as a writer who puts significant importance with realism and moral discomfort. He does this by making Agosto not really likeable but revealing how I guess we all feel and sort of resemble with. The video emphasizes emotional detachment and social observation, as Moravia exposes the quiet violence of the relationships in our everyday lives and how truly dark the process is of when one starts to become aware of their actions within society. So i guess my question for discussion is with Agostos realization, is it more caused by people being cruel or because of expectations that society has put oursevles in and the expectations that come with that if not lived by?

After reading the Shrouded Woman, it allowed me to think differently about memory and story telling. Through Bombal, memory was shown to be something emotional and sort of fragmented instead of a clear sequence of events. From the narrators reflection on her life from her own wake made me realize how much of her experience went unnoticed while she was alive, and how her death was her only being able to speak honestly.  It shows that death can somehow allow a sense of clarity, not just symbolism as the narrators ability to see relationships clearly only after death shows that “social roles” imposed on women can sort of distort their understanding of themselves during when they were alive.  I was stuck by how how the novel centers the inner world of the narrator and how her loneliness within her marriage reveals how she often ignored her desires. This made me reflect on how one’s emotional needs especially in a marriage can be seen as insignificant and be dismissed as maybe in my own personal opinion people stop addressing their partner’s emotional needs as they already “locked” for life so it is not important anymore. It also made me realize that showing feelings like regret and loneliness are just as important as outward actions as you have to address what you truly feel emotionally inside. Moreover specifically on the tone and imagery of the novel, it was effective in expressing how she was feeling as it is usually difficult in expressing these type of emotions. In addition, this book helped me better understand how Bombal uses fiction as a tool to challenge social hierarchies, especially those tied to gender and cultural “centres”. Because the novel is narrated almost entirely from the perspective of a corpse shows how fiction can go beyond realism to show emotions that are usually hidden. Viewing the novel as well as an example of peripheral modernism made me realize how innovation can come from marginalized voices, not just literary centres. After watching the conversation video about the book, it highlights Bombal’s unique narrative choices especially how she uses a conversation with a scholar to deepen our understanding of the book. It emphasizes as well Bombal’s focus on gender, class, and memory, which shows that the novel is not just about a life of a woman but how her inner experiences push against societal expectations. By watching the conversation, and them talking through the story with their own insights, it allowed me to see how Bombal’s work fits into wider literary conversations about modernism and how a female perspective changes how stories about identity can be told. I wonder though why does Bombal make the narrotor only gain clarity about her disappointments only while laying in her coffin, and in real life do we still not fully comprehend how we feel internally?

After reading Marcel’s prousts’s Swann’s Way, Proust was able to explore how memory works not as a clear and logical process, but as something deeply emotional and often triggered by everyday sensations. Much of the reading, I believe focuses on the experiences of the narrator, that shows how the bounderies between the past and present easily blur with one another. For example, when the narrator lies in bed in which the narrator is half-awake, it shows how the narrator struggles to locate himself in time and space, and memories from different periods of his life often overlaps and merges. This showed me how disorientation reveals how memory is not something we consciously control, but something that moves unexpectedly and out of our control. Moreover, I learned that memory is tied to our senses that our body feels, as Proust shows that physical sensations such as the feeling of lying on bed or the darkness of a room, can suddenly bring back vivid memories from our childhood. This suggests that our past is never “gone” but it will always exist in us in someway, that will only allow us to remember with the right “experience” that our body senses. This I believe challenges the idea that memory is simply a mental record of events, but something that exists and emotional. Moving on, the writing style was very detailed in a way that shows the process of someone remembering something. The long sentences and detialed descriptions reflect how memories slowly appear, and not just all at once. This style of writing tells the reader to slow down and experience time in the same way the narrator does. After watching the lecture video, the video emphasizes how Proust’s writing challenges habitual reading and invites us to engage more actively with text. It furthermore frames Proust’s work as a break from traditional narrative forms and instead focuses on time, memory and perspective. This makes readers rethink how stories should be told and connects directly to how memory appears through everyday sensations rather than just simply logical thought. In addition, after watching the conversation video, it deepened my understanding of how Proust’s writing explores memory and time. It showed how Proust shows how memory truly does return to our minds in unexpected ways in where we may not think of it, but because something happened to us during that day, our body will somehow “waken” it up. All of this ties in how memory is not linear or logical but truly through sensory.

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Hello, My name is Tyler Wu. I am born and raised from the Philippines, and decided to move here to Vancouver for university. I am currently a 5th year student and I am on my last semester, so hopefully I am able to graduate after this semester. Im currently in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program, primarily focusing on Economics, and currently interested in entering the investment analyst field. My expectations for this class, is to perhaps improve my writing and simply just learn deeply more about the culture of romance. After watching the introductory lecture, I now understand that romance studies is not just simply learning another language like spanish or french, or reading old literary texts, but instead it shows us the importance on how language, history and culture are connected deeply. I was able to learn too that Romance languages come from Latin, but more importantly, they show how these languages continue to change the more people use them in their everyday life. Moreover, Language is seen as something living and social but it shapes how people also think, understand who they are, and how they express themselves as well. The video was able to help me as well see that studying language also allows me to study culture, family, politics, and social history. Overall, the video sets the foundation for the course that I am excited to learn more about and see how Romance studies can show me further on understanding people and societies. After watching the commentary video, it showed me a more reflective and critical approach, as it asks us the viewers to see how Romance studies came to exist first. It also was able to explain well that it is not a “natural” discipline, but something that has been created over time. A key insight I gained was the difference between traditional, elite knowledge, and everyday language. It argues further that Romance studies truly emerges when everyday speech, popular culture, and the voices of ordinary people challenge and reshape traditional academic ideas. This means that the field should not only focus on famous authors or formal language, but also on how people actually speak and live. The commentary encourages us students to question who decides what is worth studying and whose voices are included or excluded, in doing so, it shows that Romance studies is flexible and constantly changing. Together these two videos introduces the field in which I am about to study, and challenges us how to critically thinl and how it has been shaped and why it matters