On Senior Seminar

This wouldn't be the first time I have thought about what I would love to do for senior seminar.  From what I can gather about the syllabus, I can essentially create anything I would like--I could spend an entire semester devoted to researching and writing a book.  That would be so thrilling.

Of course, I've had several ideas and thoughts how to go about them.  I'm very fond of fairy tales and the concept of the fairy tale as I've come to believe they hold such a great value in cultures throughout the world.  They can be told again and again and again in so many forms and so many variations without losing their essence--showing that while nothing is original, everything can and almost must be originally reshaped by generations.

I do have several ideas for a manuscript, involving a rendition of the beauty and the beast tale, and a story that is a collage of several different tales co-existing in the same world as part of a high fantasy novel.  I've also entertained the idea of adapting tales into a book of poetry or anthology prose.

The tasks would require a great deal of research of all kinds.  I would be charged with the task of investigating different cultures and what their stories meant to them, not just to me, and try to link them together by cross analyzing similar texts and their variations (ex.  the French tale of 'Beauty and the Beast' as compared to the Irish version 'Brown Bear of Norway').  I could also explore the oral culture, interview those still familiar with the art of storytelling through word of mouth.  Aside from that, I've admittedly not thought much on how I would achieve these aspirations of mine.

II. On Cook

In Jon Cook's article, he elaborated on the idea of 'writing as discovery', more exclusively, creative writing as discovery.  Using example of literary pieces of fiction and poetry in the article as well as persepectives from different writers, to me the article seemed to be intended for other creative writers like himself who may feel as though their art is above or below the methodological realm and can't contribute to or be contributed to by the research method. 


 I particularly like how he quotes Keats in saying 'If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves upon a tree, it had better not come at all.'  For me, this echoes of the myth surrounding the culture of a writer's life that paints them as whimsical layabouts who wait for the muses to bless them and guide their quills to the paper.  The quote strikes as a defensive statement to someone who might have suggested that it could be something a little more concrete and bound to method.


I feel like this sort of article would be used to either reassure or firmly educate aspiring writers that the act of creative writing is a mixture of both columns.  You really can't have one without the other.  Without Christopher Marlowe further utilizing the potential of the method of blank verse for the English drama,  William Shakespeare and several authors may not be considered with the same regard as they are today.  But without the creativity of those authors and those before them, blank verse and all the other forms of prose and poetry would have no importance, much less exist, possibly.  In the same line of thought, someone had to be inspired to research and come up with those methods in the first place.  


Cook puts the article together in a great web of different arguments for all sides, those who think research and method are the death of creativity and those that think that creativity is nothing but a puddle of milk without a bucket to sit in, that craft and technique are bitter rivals.  At the end, though, he funnels it all into the same end:  that creative writing. through language, nature and intention, begets itself and the evidence of its research.

On Fetterley

Fetterley's essay on "A Rose for Emily"  really made me cock an eyebrow and made me rethink my perspective on that particular story.  I remember having read it back in an online literature course from my community college and I remember thinking 'wow, this is really messed up' initially.  I had agreed that Emily had clearly poisoned Homer Barron in order to have him forever because she was lonely and repressed by her father, but at that point in my experience of literary analysis I really hadn't thought any deeper.

My review of the story and essay and my hindsight aside, Fetterley is trying to establish that the story is more than just your average gothic piece, and that it had sexual and social politics in mind when writing about a killer who refused to be a victim and manipulated her oppressive station as a woman and a 'lady' to get away with it (freedom within limits, I keep hearing that theme ringing lately in all my classes).

What I like about her approach is that she rarely bloats her pages with anything else but what was in the story and her own analysis of it.  Certainly, she uses "The Birthmark" as a mirror reflection to give a parallel for the reader to orient themselves upon, but there is no mention of what other researchers have noted and so on and so forth.  This give us a clean look at what she wants to say without marring it with the opinions of others.

Simply put, her methodology is wholly to use what is already there, what's already factual and finite, and to put it under a microscope for decoding.   She relies heavily on translating the symbolism in imagery, and cracking the deeper meanings within examples of dialogue and action to prove her point that Emily was successful at such unpleasant acts and was driven to do so because she was oppressed by the people of Jefferson in order to shield her from unpleasant things without ever truly knowing her.

Honestly, I would and most likely have (maybe not as articulated) used this sort of method to write a slew of persuasive essays.  When I read it I felt like I was sitting on a jury and Fetterley was pacing up and down the courtroom like they do at the end of Law and Order, trying to sell me a verdict and that the defendant was only a victim of her environment with some complications attached.  Once again, though, she didn't try to blur my vision by throwing quotes of scholars at me to back her up, shouting "What I'm saying is true because these guys said it too!".  There was only the story as evidence and her common sense on the witness stand.

((edited because I mispelled the author's name.  whoops))