For our "Lit X" paper, we are writing, essentially, a paper that allows us to dig into literature about a topic of our choice. Our first pre-write for that paper is due on friday. The pre-write isn't a first draft of the paper, thankfully, but just a collection of our ideas and progress. If you couldn't see it coming, here are some of my ideas and initial research. The links don't work right off, and I'm not sure if the database is accessable to other people outside of my school's network, but next to the link is the keyword that I searched, or the title of the article. I don't intend all of these to look like an annotated bibliography, but some of them need to be, others will be more of my ideas.
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=25&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Madness
I think that this is a good summary of the idea of Madness in literature, and I'm basically thinking of this as a good background knowledge/intro paragraph area.
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=8&hid=6&sid=400d3db9-baa8-4237-a371-e859d7129adb%40sessionmgr8 Linking Insanity and Creativity
This is an idea that I have thought of in terms of a thesis (that I am still looking for), but I think that this link between the two is too established for it to be a really unique idea. I am, however, keeping it in mind, because what I tend to do in papers like this and the Research Paper last year, is too get too excited, and too take on an idea that is too large for me to explore deeply enough to do the toic justice (another reason that I am excited for college, hopefully more time to explore more deeply). It seems to me that a lot of people who are truly artistic geniouses, whether it be in painting, writing or music, seem to be tortured, that their ideas and actions are often miscontsrued, only to be understood after the artist has passed away (sometimes through suicide). At the same time, it seems that the really tortured artists have declined in recent years, and whether this indicates a new ability to deal with depression and acceptance of differences, or, more frighteningly, that the quality of art and the geniouses of art have declined.
This is a list of some of the outlinish ideas of my paper.
Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=36&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Mind Style
I loved this book, but, unfortunately, I'm not sure that this book and this author is going to fit into my thesis. It's actually probably my favorite book out of all of them that I read, and maybe that means that it is the least tortured, and least mad of all of them. The ideas in it seem a little predictable, that the mad aren't as mad as we make them out to be! GASP!
Sylvia Plat
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/pdf?vid=53&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Plath and Woolf and the Self
I read The Bell Jar, but haven't yet read the second book on the list, and even though I haven't read much Poe or Woolf, she may be the most tortured, making me think that it could be a really good resource.
Virginia Woolf
“Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/pdf?vid=53&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Plath and Woolf and the Self
Like I said, I haven't read her yet, but people have been telling me that she is a really good source, that not only is she a person who I could use, but that she is an amazing writer.
James Joyce
Ulysses: “Nighttown”
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=22&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Joyce and Madness
I saw on my sister's recent post that this book is considered #1 on the list of the best 100 books of all time. I didn't know what the book was about, but this chapter is supposed to be an ideal representation of all the different kinds of madness.
Edgar Allen Poe
Selected Poems
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=12&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Madness vs. Genius
Who better to study in a madness paper than Poe? He is kind of the king of all mad geniuses, writing lots of poems that are not only brilliant, but talk about madness in them. I think that what I also need to establish in this paper is whether I am analyzing the madness of the writers, or the madness of the characters, or something else entirely. That's another tendency I have, to get too broad of a focus, and write essentially two different papers.
Charles Brockton Brown
Edgar Huntly: Or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=8&hid=6&sid=400d3db9-baa8-4237-a371-e859d7129adb%40sessionmgr8 “Insanity: A Fragment”
I wasn't going to inclue him until I found this article, because while Edgar Huntly is very "maddish" it is not a contemporary piece to most of these authors (except Poe, but his work is more timeless than Brown's). But this article is all about Brown and insanity, so its making me rethink my exclusion of his work.
I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me, and that my plan is probably too ambitious. If I could, I would love to read through all of these and pick out my favorite/best utilized parts. I don't really have time for that, however, so I will have to rely on a lot of other people's opinions and interpretations, something that I don't really like to do.
The biggest issue with this paper, as I kind of said earlier, is going to be settling on a thesis, rather than just rambling on about how madness exists in the these books. I think that the time of year has kind of gotten me re-interested in this topic, as Poe and Halloween kind of go hand in hand. Also, my sister's blog about ghosts has helped. I feel weird and too slightly too bloggerish, and I don't know how much more I need, but if anyone has any suggestions, someone such as Amanda or my mom or anyone else who has read more literature than I have, feel free to comment.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
tangent? why yes, i do go on tangents
One quarter of the way done. Only three more to go. Is that a good thing though? I'm not necessarily looking forward to the last three quarters, because with the speed that this one flew by, the next three will be over in a blink too. I don't really want my senior year to end. Not just because then I'll be going off to college and leaving the people that I know, but because this is the most fun I've ever had going to school.
I mean that in the best possible way. I love all of the classes that I'm taking, every one of them is either fun to go to, rewarding, or both. Without a doubt it is the best class load that I have taken in my four years. Even though I wake up each morning already tired, I'm excited to go to school, excited not only to learn, but to experience the jokes and laughs with my friends. A lot of people say that they don't like school, but without school, my daytime would be filled with sitting around at home. Yes, I would be free to go see my friends, or to sleep, or write, but there would a large amount of my time that I would not know how to utilize.
This is one of the reasons that I like the idea of teaching. Not only do I get to go to school and be with people that I like, presumably, but also because I would get to teach the things that I love, hopefully to a few students, if not a class, of like mind. Then, I would still have my own free time at home. Yes, I know that teaching is a lot of work, that there is grading and other things that go on, but I am used to the school schedule, and I love the idea of having summer off. My sister and I are similar in that way, we both love the idea of summer, which is somehting that being a teacher would give me. It is hard for me to imagine working through the summer just like my dad does, that I would need some time off.
I also think that teaching would give me a good oportunity to write. Instead of this blog being one of my only outlet (and because of the time continuum I don't get to spend as much time as I would like on this) to express my creative writing, I could sit down and actually write a short story or a book, developing characters in the way that I long to do. Maybe it is an ambitious dream, but someday, I wish that I could sit in on a class talking about my writing, dissecting why I put this word there and that phrase there. It would so fascinating, I think, to look deeper into my own physcosis and see why I write stuff the way I do.
When I think about teaching and writing and learning, I think that I just want to learn it all, have it all, to teach, to love it, to write and to love every second of it.
I mean that in the best possible way. I love all of the classes that I'm taking, every one of them is either fun to go to, rewarding, or both. Without a doubt it is the best class load that I have taken in my four years. Even though I wake up each morning already tired, I'm excited to go to school, excited not only to learn, but to experience the jokes and laughs with my friends. A lot of people say that they don't like school, but without school, my daytime would be filled with sitting around at home. Yes, I would be free to go see my friends, or to sleep, or write, but there would a large amount of my time that I would not know how to utilize.
This is one of the reasons that I like the idea of teaching. Not only do I get to go to school and be with people that I like, presumably, but also because I would get to teach the things that I love, hopefully to a few students, if not a class, of like mind. Then, I would still have my own free time at home. Yes, I know that teaching is a lot of work, that there is grading and other things that go on, but I am used to the school schedule, and I love the idea of having summer off. My sister and I are similar in that way, we both love the idea of summer, which is somehting that being a teacher would give me. It is hard for me to imagine working through the summer just like my dad does, that I would need some time off.
I also think that teaching would give me a good oportunity to write. Instead of this blog being one of my only outlet (and because of the time continuum I don't get to spend as much time as I would like on this) to express my creative writing, I could sit down and actually write a short story or a book, developing characters in the way that I long to do. Maybe it is an ambitious dream, but someday, I wish that I could sit in on a class talking about my writing, dissecting why I put this word there and that phrase there. It would so fascinating, I think, to look deeper into my own physcosis and see why I write stuff the way I do.
When I think about teaching and writing and learning, I think that I just want to learn it all, have it all, to teach, to love it, to write and to love every second of it.
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