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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Here is a question I've always wondered about: Do creative people appear to suffer more because they manufacture their suffering to meet some stereotypical idea of the misunderstood, tortured artist or is there really some connection between creative genius and insanity? Some genetic component, some personality tic, some chemical misfire? Which comes first--the pain of being odd or the need to be odd?
i think that using woolf and joyce in the same paper is really ambitious (not that that's a bad thing), especially if you aren't being introduced/guided through either author in class.i think reading the one chapter of ulysses is a good idea--it's supposed to be sort of like "the odyssey" and if you go into the garage there are a few boxes of my books, one o f which has all the books we used for the college class i took on ulysses--reading guides, etc. they could be really helpful in focusing in on that one chapter and making it make sense out of context and in terms of your paper. Unfortunately I was so busy being confused by the book that I don't specifically remember the chapter you're referring to, but I think it sounds interesting.
If you do read Woolf, I definitely think you should read Mrs. Dalloway and look at a character in there called Septimus Warren Smith. It definitely involves the idea of torture and the book itself, though really really dense, is not that long.
Feel free to raid any of my books (they're mostly in those boxes in the garage, some in the basement) and let me know if you need me to raid AU's library for you or something.
Does American literature romanticize madness?
Do you have to be mad yourself to recognize/describe madness? And if you are mad, can your words be trusted?
more blog more blog more blog!
Why aren't you blogging anymore?
Post a Comment