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[ranegrrrl]

Considering that I've spent the past couple of days writing multiple emails to my students, trying to convince them not to worry about their own bad grades, it seems silly that I should be upset about getting an A- in my 18th-century class. I am upset, though. Because I thought my final paper, while not exceptionally brilliant, wasn't too bad,

Comments

The Romantic Era

[innogen]

OMG~ I LIVED 19th century lit when I worked on my MA. What did you write your paper on?

Innogen
...who is really thinking about that PhD...

BTW Northrop Frye is considered some a god to many Lit Professors, especially since he passed away. He wrote an entire book on Blake. Also, no one ever believes me when I tell them the answer to the Tyger Tyger riddle! I practically have to pull out Harold Bloom before people get it.

And WHAT is with Harold Bloom these days? Is his decaying into atrophy? Really! He either wants to write political commentary or put together 'essential' children's stories.

Well, I should close the dam on this babbling brook. I'd love to know about your 19th century lit class.

Innogen, uh, really signing off this time.

Re: The Romantic Era

[ranegrrrl]

I try to avoid Harold Bloom whenever possible, even though he's tried to make himself unavoidable by writing on all my favorite writers - most recently: Dickinson.

The class I just finished was on slavery in literature, from the 19th through 20th century. I wrote a paper on Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and how, by looking at its publication date (1861), the narrative was really a preparation for the Civil War. I said that, because she appeals constantly throughout the book to white Northern women, trying to get them to understand what she experienced, the abolitionists who tried to get the book into print were using that to convince the Northern women to sacrifice and send their kids to the Union army.

Kind of a stretch, but I think it turned out ok.

The focus of my Ph.D. is 19th-century American, so by now I can write a paper like that in my sleep. It's everything else I still have trouble with.

Do you mostly do British or American lit?

Re: The Romantic Era

[innogen]

Is his decaying into atrophy? Um, I meant to say, "Is his mind...." I've been up all night because my room mate ever so kindly woke me around 12:30 a.m., and wanted to hold real conversations. ::HeadhitDesk::

The school I attended concentrated mostly on the British Romantics. Because I have a few health problems, I joyfully repeated the undergrad seminar once to raise my grade, and when I took the graduate level seminar it seemed essentially the same course with a different textbook and more work.

We did read some American Lit from the time period, but I had a difficult time connecting Kate Chopin's Awakening with Wordworth's concept of 'Spots of Time', unless you count the fugue state Kate's main character slipped into as her depression deepened and she took more and more impulsive actions without thinking how they would affect life later on

Re: The Romantic Era

[ranegrrrl]

I'm much more an Americanist than anything, and only took the 18th-century class on the long poem to fulfill a distribution requirement. Never again! We started with Milton and Pope, ended with Wordsworth, and in between we read lots and lots of long poems by people I'd never heard of, like Edward Young and Christopher Smart. The professor was very cool and knew everything there was to know about the eighteenth-century (though the fact that I got an A- in the class has prejudiced me slightly). Wordsworth bores me. Can I admit that? I know that's an unpopular thing to say. The Romantics bore me too. They're too verbose! Give me a good Dickinson poem - three stanzas and she's said everything there is to say