Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!

Well, I happen to love poor Johnny Keats. I admit it. I embrace it. I breath it.  However, as I was much disappointed with the movie Bright Star, I won't speak of it here, just yet -- I'm leaning towards giving it another chance before forming a final opinion of the thing. Though, I will say that one good thing has come out of it: Ben Wishaw's reading of Ode to a Nightingale.  Give it a listen, I hardly think you'll be disappointed:

Research Yay.

I am absolutely exhausted, so I thought I'd take a break from this paper to write a bit, randomly of course :) I've been writing a paper since 6:30 this morning, breaking only at 5 to go take a History final. Now I'm back again to try and finish this "loose baggy monster". It's not that long, only ten pages, but the research was kind of intense and all over the place. Basically I'm positing that Melville's Moby Dick can be considered a continuation of the Romantic Movement. That is, the British Romantic Movement, none of this American Romance novel -- although that would have been interesting since I happen to love Hawthorne, but I feel more at ease speaking about the Romantic Poets and quoting them than I do Hawthorne and other Americans. I am including Emerson in the group though, because his "Nature" and "Self Reliance" fit well. Unfortunately I had to exclude Johnny Keats, which is sad because he's my favorite. But really, I can't go writing a book here! It has the works, from commentary on the inefficiency of language to the Byronic hero, so if I can just get it all on paper in some coherent manner, I may just get a respectable paper out of it. Anyhow, it is going rather swimmingly besides me having trouble focussing. Obviously.
My original research project was about how technology drives the American novel/ life/ ideal/ something... not a very well thought out thesis apparently. It makes sense in my head though. I was going to use the daguerrotype in The House of the Seven Gables and fingerprinting in Pudd'n head Wilson and then something in Moby Dick but I couldn't find ANY sources or work on that subject. Seems ridiculous to me! It seems kind of an obvious connection... I did look up some stuff about the automobile and American Literature, but most of the works referenced were post 1940's. So yeah I scratched that yesterday, which left me one day for the new thesis. Yay.
Well, blah blah blah :) Back to tedium :D

And now, for your general amusement :

Halelujah!

(Just quickly because I have to leave for class)

Today is the last day of classes! I am beyond excited! I still have finals, and a ridiculous amount of papers to finish by Wednesday, but other than that Im good for the summer. Yay! Also I got my job for the summer all set. Things are looking up for now :) Hopefully Ill finally have some time to post, instead of making drafts and then never publishing them.

Also, I read today that Carol Ann Duffy was chosen as Poet Laureate of the UK. 341 years of the Poet Laureate and finally a female poet -- good deal :)

Oh yeah, one more thing :) I had one of my poems published in Gonzaga's Reflection. Print. yay! Finally :)

Well, off to Metaphysics and Central Europe for one last time!

The Chair Made Him Do It!!!!

Thanks to Rhea for this one :) Rofl.

V for villian

Dr. Faustus - Chistopher Marlowe...
So I'm reading this play for Renaissance Lit. I studied it already in tenth grade, and its funny to use my old book because I have comments in the margin such as one in a passage about waxen wings that very eruditely states "like the greek guy, Icarius [sic]", which I don't even know why I wrote that, because there is a note explaining that it is in fact referring to Icarus... maybe those were the days when I was resistant to foot notes. Who knows! Anyhow, my professor is driving me crazy because she is trying to force me to find some kind of subversive meaning to the play. Now, don't get me wrong, I love subversiveness and will be the first one to jump on it, and perhaps there is an element of it to be found in Christopher Marlowe. However, I think there is something more important going on here. This is a renaissance text, and supposedly a commentary on humanist thinking. R.M. Dawkins is famously quoted as saying that Dr.F is the story of a Renaissance man who payed the medieval price for being one. Sure this is a completely orthodox reading, but I think one cannot throw it out completely, even if you think there is some kind of subversiveness going on here.
So Faustus is basically after knowledge, and sells his soul to get it. Fast forward 24 yrs and Dr. F gets dragged off to hell. Poor S.O.B. that he is. But what if Faustus' downfall is not so much his yearning for knowledge as it is his intellectual dishonesty? What if Marlowe's play is not making a hero out of Faustus as the quintessential Renaissance man, but rather condemning him for not being a good enough Renaissance man? Herein lies the subversiveness as far as I can tell. I don't think that Marlowe is reduced to either writing an medieval end for Faust in order to hide his subversive ideas regarding knowledge and heroism, nor do I think that Marlowe's purpose is to merely tell the story of the Renaissance man who pays the medieval price. I like to give Marlowe more credit than that. I mean come on, the man is rumored to have been a spy among other things and the English father of blank verse; gotta give him extra credit, right? Well, I do anyhow.
So you might ask what else is there then for Marlowe to be doing here. Well, let me compare it to Utopia, by St. Thomas More, another Renaissance man. Now Utopia is one of those books that people read and think its some kind of early socialist manifesto or something. There are some, however, myself included, who believe it to be rather a picture of a dystopia. A place where humanist and renaissance thinking, taken to its logical and full extent can only end in an idealized place that discounts human frailty, human individuality and essentially human nature. It is the ideal of Aristotle -- if a man but know the good then he will choose the good. Herein lies the Humanist downfall -- intellectual dishonesty. If More's contemporaries take their theories to their inevitable end, they cannot help but fall into the pitfalls of Utopia, no matter how good it sounds on paper. I think the same thing is going on in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus.
Here we have Faustus, a learned man, and more, the most learned, and yet he lies to himself. He possesses all the knowledge worth possessing (the bounded knowledge of the classical texts was to the Renaissance man, the foundation for all other knowledge, scientific or otherwise), and yet he convinces himself that its not enough and that there is more... So again we have a renaissance man who is being intellectually dishonest. By placing knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge above wisdom, the renaissance man lies to himself. If Faust truly knows all there is to know, and thus, the good, should he not then be able to choose the good and to know that he possesses all the knowledge worth knowing, the foundation of all other knowledge?
Truth be told, I'm supposed to be writing a paper about this at the moment. So I suppose I ought to go do that. Boo.

"Death will dance for him, they say..."

I'm wading my way through this piece of work: Henry James' Midnight Song by Carol de Chellis Hill, and what a piece of work it is. It's not really a difficult read, but its fragmented style doesn't exactly make for quick reading. Anyhow, I am, inevitably, behind, and trying desperately to catch up (thus the logic of blogging instead of reading...well the book is open next to me and I'm in the library -- it's a start...). The number of main characters in this book is a bit head swirling, but the historical aspect helps a bit as far as keeping them straight. (Freud and co., James, Wharton, Klimt, Fleiss, Jung, Dreyfus... just to name a few) On the other hand the historical aspect confuses things because I'm never sure how much I can rely on my historical knowledge to really link things together and explain motivations for characters, spacial ambiguities, and general thematic situation. I know, big words that have little meaning. But sometimes that's how this book makes me feel! Furthermore, thats just counterintuitive to me, history being a rather important part of my schema.
Also, this book relies heavily on Freudian theory. Now, we all know at least some Freudian theory, since, after all, our society and American thought has been inundated with Freud for the last century or so without much of a check. I find that slightly handicapping because familiarity without authority often leads to false conceptions. So here I am reading along, and the very thought of Freud being a main character leads me to basically psychoanalyze everything! Again, this does not lend itself to quick reading, nor to very brilliant side notes... Now I just know when I get to the end it will all make sense, but in the mean time, I'm busy reading into things that may or may not be pivotal, writing things in the margin like "it was sheer coincidence... or was it...???", and blogging about nothing in particular except that I should be reading and not writing.
Bravo, Carol de Chellis Hill, I have now been drawn in... after all this is a song, and midnight, and Henry bloody James, for god's sake.

Gifties

Ok :) It's past Christmas (day) so I will begin to post again and you shall no longer be accosted with my Xmas list :) So, in the spirit of Christmas, however, what did everyone receive? I love hearing what people get for Christmas, don't you? It gives me hope in the world and belief in the good. Unlike teachers who don't really give a damn, even though they pretend to. Well perhaps teachers do give a damn. I don't know. But that's another story :P Well? (you may wait until Epiphany if you are expecting more :P)

Now would be the time I would like to write -- when I need to write, to get all these things out of my head and onto paper in some sort of a cohesive fashion. Get something flowing; anything, whatever it is. A poem, hiding in those deep recesses, waiting to be treated properly, brought out in the light where it belongs. A thought that has been hibernating, but never has the chance to see the spring or summer. But now is also the time when I can't write, because I haven't the time. I haven't the clarity. There is always that paper, those papers, in the back of my mind, due tomorrow, but against which my very being rebels. I don't really have the time to write it, because I'm tired and it's been a long day, but if I did have the time, would I write it? I don't even have the will. What happened to me? When did I stop loving this? It was all I had left... and now? That idealism that used to be my fuel is all but turned to cynicism... I don't know. And winter is come again...