Meeting my Learning Outcomes: The Final Roundup

We have come to the end of this term! This means that the time has come to asses what we have done to meet our learning outcomes!

1. Know the basic literary terms and methods
2. Know the basic literary genres and representative texts
3. Write Literary Arguments
4. Engage in literature creatively and socially
5. Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods

Here is how I met them!

Behold: My Paper

Well ladies and gents, the time has come, the unveiling of my final draft! It was road with many turns and changes, which ultimately led to a finished product which I must say is far better than its predecessors.

It all began as I started musing about what topic had most captivated me during this term in my English class. I discovered that there were two themes which I was most interested in exploring: the literary worth of non-fiction and what we gain when we analyze romantic poetry in specific. Finding both subjects very interesting, I became torn as to which I would choose! My interest for the first one had arisen from rereading Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, and pondering about the literary elements that made it stand out.  The I became interested in the second as I embarked on my personal study of poetry, exploring different genres and analyzing different works.

I decided to inquire the help of my social media coupled with that of friends and roommates in order to chose between the two possible topics! First, however, I created a list of the different types of claims that I would make. I then carefully chose which I thought were best and circulated them. I tried not to do this too bluntly, though. For instance, when seeking for help in my personal blog I posed my claim as a thought that had been circling my mind and wanted to share to see if others felt the same way. When talking to my friends and roommates, I struck a casual conversation and snuck my claim in (if I would have told my friends it was for school, they most likely would have not been as engaged!)

When I finally decided on a topic that I would address for my paper (The analytical tool as observed in romantic literature), I moved on to developing it by first testing what I would specifically talk about. By using Dr. Burton's suggestions on how to develop a literary analysis, I began to move forward with my paper as I did some research on genre and literary period. I also performed a close reading that allowed me to identify literary elements that would later help me support my argument.

Having done this, I felt like I was on good ground to actually start my paper! I then went on to create an outline that greatly helped stay organized throughout the rest of the process of writing my paper. I proceeded to write a first incomplete draft to obtain feedback regarding the direction of my paper. I received great feedback from my peers, (specially Jennifer!) as well as my roommates who I gave physical drafts to.

I took their advice and fixed what they suggested, moving then quickly onto writing one of my final draft, which I again circulated amongst friends in addition to the peer review held in class (thanks again Jennifer!)

My friend's comments on my paper

Until, finally... I finished it!

Google vs. HBLL

Okay so, upon hearing that we had to choose a formal literary reference work I became a little concerned because I didn't really know how to use the library website. However, I decided to do a little experiment. I decided that I would try to find a very good reference on the library website and another one through goggle and see how easy it would be in both of them.

The Rough Rough Draft

Hello everyone! So I've drafted part of my paper, and you can check it out here. It is a very rough draft as you will see, but I think that you might still get the sense of where I am planning to take my argument (I hope!) Needless to say that I will be very grateful if you could read through it and give me some feedback on what you think I can improve. To make this a little easier on you, here is a list of things that I am most concerned about:

• Can you clearly identify my argument and what I plan to talk about?- Okay so I gave a bit of a long introduction to Romanticism because it ties to my thesis, but do you think it is too long? Do you think that works for the paper?

• Are my paragraph to paragraph transitions clear? Does my paper flow so far?

• Are my thoughts well put together and coherent?

• Is my style fitting of an academic paper?

If you find anything that you think needs tweaking outside of this, though, please let me know!

Also I wanted to include an outline of my paper, just in case you wanted to see where I was going with it.

Thank you!

Helen and Helen

One of my favorite poems that I read in high school was Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen." I loved the way in which Poe describes everything about the often mentioned "most beautiful woman in the world":

Helen, thy beauty is to me
   Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
   The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
   To his own native shore.

Poe represents  Helen's beauty not through a description of her physical appearance in this stanza, but rather how her presence would make him feel were he to behold her. The simile describes Helen's beauty as being like rescue ships bringing a man lost at sea to "his own native shore." It is this complex comparison that allows the reader to gain a sense not only of Helen's mesmerizing form, but of the speaker's complete fascination with the her.

As I was talking to a friend about this poem, she told me to check out H.D's "Helen," which I found serves as a sharp contrast to Poe's poem:

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

A very straight forward statement of the speaker's feelings towards Helen if you ask me. It is interesting, however, that though this poem is quite different from Poe's (his being from the Victorian era and hers being from the modern era) this one employs similar elements to create an image of Helen rooted from a base of emotion. H.D uses a metaphor to describe Helen's empty eyes, and as she continues to describe her appearance, she mentions that Greece reviles at her, "remembering past ills."

To me, this is a beautiful demonstration of the poet's power to control literary elements to persuade you to feel how the speaker feels. In Poe's poem, I imagined and felt how enchanting a demigoddess would be, yet in H.D's poem I could feel myself  "revile" at a stony-cold face who brings nothing but trouble.

A Little Pre-Analysis

Using this technique to get a better feel for the direction my paper is taking is a bit ironic considering the fact that I am evaluating the effectiveness of analysis as applied to the understanding of the theme. I suppose, though, that I do need to qualify what I think works and doesn't work! Anyhow, I decided to proceed by loosely analyzing "The World Is Too Much With Us," one of the two poems I plan to use to support my thesis. Here is a picture of my product:

So I found a couple of elements and decided to see what function they had on the piece:

The Whole Deal with Romanticism

William Wordsworth is a very well known romantic poet. The elements associated with this genre are very present in the two poems that I plan to analyze for my final paper: "The World Is Too Much With Us" and "I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud."

Yet, how did I recognize that these poems belonged in the genre of romanticism (aside from looking at the dates they were written in)? Well, this genre comes with some general characteristics that I was able to recognize and that helped me in understanding the themes of these poems and even discover some incompatibilities.

The Romantic Movement was a response to the Enlightenment, or the age of reason. Romanticism argued that emotion was more important than logical thought when interpreting the world around us. It therefore emphasized the natural world and the feelings that we derived from our interaction with it.

When Do We Go Too Far?

I have begun reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley as part of my personal reading. I read part of this novel a couple of years ago, and though I had enjoyed it, I never finished it. The reason why Frankenstein caught my attention is because I kept thinking about my thesis for an upcoming English paper, dealing with going too far into analyzing poetry so that it ends up losing its meaning, or one is "murdering to dissect" as William Wordsworth once said. Somehow this translated into remembering how Dr. Frankenstein violated the laws of science as he pursued knowledge that was beyond his grasp and obsessing with creating life.

Of course, this ends up haunting him when he creates The Monster, who seeks revenge for the injustices he felt Dr. Frankenstein had committed towards him.

In a sense, this Gothic novel, part of the Romantic movement, which Wordsworth is known for initiating, mimics Wordsworth's thoughts. In a sense I feel like both Mary Shelley and Wordsworth opposed the Enlightenment movement that preceded them by hinting at the dangers of viewing human nature as science and of not considering the whole. They both seem to share the idea that nature should be regarded by the relationship that is felt between humans and their environment, rather than treating this through rational thought.     

And The Winner Is...

My Evaluation Claim!-

Although it is important to analyze the literary elements in "The World Is Too Much With Us" in order to understand the underlying theme that is emphasized through this, if the breaking apart is taken too far, one might lose meaning instead of finding it.

That is the one that I had posted in this post, and I've slightly revised it to this:

It is important to analyze the literary elements in poetry, such as that of William Wordsworth's, in order to understand the theme at a deeper level; however, as the taking apart of a poem progresses, one may reach a point in which the essence is lost and in which one is "murdering to dissect."

Well there it is so far! Thank you guys for your input! It helped me to choose between the two that i was thinking of and it helped me narrow my claim.  I received feedback from my peers through the comments posted on my blog post, and I used one of my personal media websites (Tumblr), from which I received some great feedback too:

And also a literature blog follower!-

I also made some of my roommates personally offer feedback throughout the weekend:

Overall, I felt pretty good about sharing the process of writing my paper with others!

The Quest For a Great Thesis

Hello Everyone! I am scrambling to choose the right thesis for my paper, and I would really love your help! As I wrote a blog post reflecting on the topics that have interested me the most from English class, I narrowed them down to claiming that nonfiction should be formally considered as a genre of literature and arguing that there is a limit to which poetry should be analyzed before you actually lose its theme. I framed these in different formats as shown below:

An Afternoon When I Was Seventeen

It's 4:00 pm. My bus drops me off about one block away from my house. It's another sunny, warm afternoon in Florida. Not too warm though. There is a breeze that is cooling off the day, and making the palms do a dazzling dance. Not that I would notice, though. I am on my new Galaxy Android, a birthday present from my parents (whom I forgot to call to ask if I could stay in school for longer.) Not to worry though, neither of them should be home yet.

What Has Struck Me

As I have looked back at the posts I have made in this blog, all the works that I have discussed and all the genres that I have explored, I have pinned down certain topics that have caught my interest (which have also appeared in posts from our English class bubble) and which I would like to further explore:

Exploring Different Genres of Drama

As a way working on LO #2 I explored some different genres as a part of drama week for my personal study. I read some new works and revisited older ones. Here is a summary of what I checked out!

• Tragedy: Hamlet. An all time favorite! I Personally think it's Shakespeare's best. I loved this work so much in high school that I tried to memorize one of Hamlets soliloquies (but failed miserably.) 
• Observed Literary Element: Why, Hamlet's soliloquies of course. These are important facets of the play because they give the audience peaks into the main character's thoughts, something that without this could be hard to achieve in a drama.

• Greek Tragedy: Antigone. After having read Oedipus Rex, I became very interested in the other Theban plays. Though I have not finished Antigone, I did very much enjoy this continuation of the story as far as I read it. I specially love that Antigone attempts to defy the male-ruled world in which she lives in. I must say, though, it is indeed quite tragic. 
• Observed Literary Element: The chorus. At first I did not understand what the purpose of the chorus was, and then I noticed that it is mostly to emphasize the theme of the play, which is an important role and one that helps the audience to connect that to the actions in the play.

• Comedy: Cyrano de Bergerac. This is also a work that I revisited. I love this play so much! It is easier for me to read than some of the others, and it's overall lightheartedness really makes it stand out from my other favorite works of drama which are mostly tragedies. 
• Observed Literary Element: The symbolism behind Cyrano's nose, which stands for the vanity of the society of the time.

 What is your favorite genre of drama?

The many possibilities of nonfiction!

I was excited to think that as a part of nonfiction week I would get to talk about something I love to spend countless hours procrastinating on: travel blogs. 

I really cannot begin to describe how addicted I am to travel blogs and how much I've come to view them as actual literary pieces as we've talked about social media in English class. What I love about travel blogging is the accessibility of it. The bloggers are able to instantly share their experiences pretty much as they are happening, and the readers are able to embark on journeys with them sometimes seeing real-time pictures of places that are thousands of miles away.

Of course, there is also the literary component of them. I have noticed that the blogs that I love most are those which are crafted in a way that reels me in, through the literary elements they employ to convey how they feel about their travels to their readers. One of my favorite travel blogs is Anywhere But Home:

"How can I even describe why? Maybe it’s the look of the city – beautiful, ornate buildings crumbling in the old town, towering blocky church towers, secret courtyard gardens and grape vines hanging off every house. 

Maybe it’s the friendliness of the people I’ve met – the family who spent 15 minutes bartering with taxi drivers on my behalf at the airport, the monk who blessed me in the metro station and enlisted passers-by to translate so we could talk, the women in the market who break into smiles when I attempt Georgian, or even my adorable new roommates."

A device, for instance, that is seen being used here is anaphora, the repetition of the phrase "Maybe it's the..." The blogger uses this device to create a sense of an enumeration of the countless things that one can find in Tbilisi, Georgia to love.

Do you follow any travel blogs you think I should also check out?  

Why did I write it?

This was the question that Elie Wiesel asked himself about his memoir Night, which recounts the story of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp as a young boy. This haunting and impacting piece was my introduction to a genre of non-fiction in high school. Prior to having read this, I mostly enjoyed
literature in the form of fiction and drama. I perceived these hypothetical and imagined stories to be a defining element of literature. I felt comfort in being able to escape in these crafted works and would have dreaded the thought of reading something more connected to reality.

I experienced a BIG change of mind when I read Night, nonetheless.

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

I know that poetry week is over BUT

Our study of poetry has come and gone, but not for me! This is because my personal learning plan centers around poetry, and in an effort to work on it during this drama week, I found some very interesting cross-overs between it and poetry. Having talked about Hamlet in my last post, I couldn't help but delve into some other works of Shakespeare. I chose another one of my favorites, Othello, The Moore of Venice. 

Othello and Iago

Although not of all the play is written in poetic form, I found many instances where Shakespeare used iambic pentameter:

"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:
For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane,  
If I would time expend with such a snipe.
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor:"

I began to wonder why Shakespeare would structure parts of the play in this way. Then, as I was reading, I noticed that the shifts between meter and no meter often correlated  with who the character is speaking to and what they were speaking about. For instance, in the excerpt above Iago is first commenting on his use of Roderigo (where there is iambic pentameter,) but then there is a transition to a sort of rant about his hatred for Othello (which is followed by prose.) In other words, Iago is at first more calm, paralleled by his structured language, but as his emotions grab a hold of him he begins to speak more freely.

I though that this was an interesting thing to point out, because it shows that an element usually associated with poetry can also have an effect when used in other genres, such as drama in this case.  This also helped me in that I:

•  recognized poetic elements portrayed in unusual means---->
•  which is helping me better understand how they work to have an effect on the literature they are presented in ---->
• In turn, this relationship will help me to make claims about the intentions authors have in using these elements to create a theme or make a point. 

Have you observed any crossovers like this?

O that this too too frail post won't fail!

... and resolve itself into a horrible description of my love for the play Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which I am sure most of you are very familiar with. I have not read it in a long time, and I probably won't be able to clearly explain why I love it so much. This was the first actual play that I read in its entirety, and it was really one of my inspirations to explore genres of literature aside from fiction. Many claim that Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers in the English language, and while I lack depth to join in this claim, I would certainly point to this play as a support of that statement.

Here is an element of the play that I will help you agree:

The Language

 "To be, or not to be,that is the question: 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-..." 

Yes, it's one of the most famous soliloquies in the English language, and a believe it is so for a reason. Whenever I read those lines I do not simply think of Hamlet being there depressed and thinking: "Should I kill myself?" No. I think of the struggle, his mind wrestling the thoughts that plague him about the complexities of existence and the implications of suicide. I picture the piercing arrows of calamity that often wound our lives. I picture the brave sailor who despite the ongoing storm persists and endures, and the one that gives in to the consuming waves. The imagery woven throughout this excerpt connects me to this issue, as I feel it describes perfectly how in times of despondency I  have also wondered the same thing.

What is your favorite Shakespeare play?

Where Do I Stand Now? Personal Reflection

Well the time has come for me to evaluate my progress and learning experience for ENG 251 up to this point! I will begin by outlining the Learning Outcomes for the course:

1. Know the basic literary terms and methods
2. Know the basic literary genres and representative texts
3. Write Literary Arguments
4. Engage in literature creatively and socially
5. Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods

My goal from the beginning of the term was to fulfill these. Furthermore, after having identified in my personal learning plan my weakness in poetry, I have placed learning focus in the literary genre. Here was what I mapped out on my plan (PO):

1) Becoming acquainted with the different types of poetry
      - I will attempt to do this by studying samples of each type (LO #2)

2) Acquiring skills that will aid me in understanding and analyzing poetry (LO#1 and #3)

3) Develop a work of my own from a chosen genre after gaining enough understanding of it (LO#4)

4) And finally, learn to really appreciate this form of literature (through sharing with my experiences with people in social media and learning from others) (LO#5)

Along the way I tailored my plan to match whatever we were focusing on in class. So how have I done so far? Let's examine (as categorized by learning outcomes):

Prezi is Awesome

As I was looking at ways in which poetry is presented differently now that we have all of these technological tools with which to experiment with, I found a poem that was presented as a Prezi (like Dr. Burton's poem):

Click to go to the Prezi!

"Stop Drilling" by Natasa Bosic Grojic, a blogger who was experimenting with Prezi, showed me a new way in which to convey poetry that I had never known about before! I think that the visual way in which poetry can be presented through this medium is exciting because it really opens a new creative window into poetry. As you can see from the Prezi, the zooming in and out allows focus on a specific line of a poem. This is nice because it really helps the reader to isolate that line and perhaps ponder it with greater significance in their minds. There is then, of course, the positioning of the lines, which in of itself offers further meaning along with aesthetic quality. For instance, in "Stop Drilling," the path of the text follows a pattern around the blown up title as it moves from the left to the right, instead of a random order. This aids the reader into following the poem's story visually. One can also comment upon the design used. This specific author used a very simple template. I thought that this was effective for their poem because the words themselves, aided by the effects of the zooming, are the forced as the focus, and they begin to weigh upon the reader as they go through the poem.

I enjoyed this Prezi Poem so much that I am thinking of making one myself! 

Murdering to Dissect?

I decided that, in preparation for the midterm I would take a stab (no pun intended, haha) at analyzing a poem from the common readings of our class. I chose Wordsworth's  "The World is Too Much With Us" because when I felt it called out to me as I first read it. And so I proceeded to take it apart, perhaps to what would have been Wordsworth's dismay:

This shows the markups I made while analyzing the text

I really loved Wordsworth's overall message about our under-appreciation of nature, a theme which helped me categorize this poem as a Romantic Poem. I first looked at the poem as whole. What is it really saying? What I interpreted was that Wordsworth is complaining about how people during his time were foolish in wasting all their energy in daily matters (getting and spending,) completely ignoring the wonder that is nature. Wordsworth then express his deep frustration by saying that he wishes he was like the people of the past who worshipped pagan idols, specifically those regarding nature (hence the allusions to greek gods.)

As I gathered the message of the poem, I sought to find the devices that translated this message. For instance, I looked at the form of the poem and noticed that it was a petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter. As I discovered this, I noticed a shift that occurred both in the rhyming scheme (from ABBA to CDCDCD) and in tone. The portion highlighted in yellow on my annotations, demonstrates a narrator who is passively recounting an observation. However, midway through the poem, and throughout the blank portion, the speaker expresses his passion towards the issue. I concluded from this that Wordsworth choice of a petrarchan sonnet was suitable for conveying the message that humanity is not sufficiently attentive to the beauties of nature because through this he first introduced the problem, but then quickly took up a sharp view on the subject. I felt like the way in which this was structured gave the message a sense of urgency, and effectively transmitted Wordsworth's message.

And so, I really hope that Wordsworth would not be too upset with me. My compromise to this is that though I looked at different elements of the poem, I attempted to see what all of these elements did to create the whole, so that perhaps that way I would not be murdering "The World is Too Much With Us." 

How do you feel about this issue?