eurydicebound: (Jane Eyre)
So, if I'm going to have this as an academic focus, I need to have some idea of who I want to specialize in. Makes sense, right? That said, I don't think I've put that much thought into it yet, other than to focus on who I don't want to focus in. :) Not as helpful as one might think.

Now, I also like the Enlightenment. This comes into play when I start looking as some of the influences in the period, but I need to get more authors to really start putting my ideas together. That'll take research, and that takes time -- time when I'm not trying to get caught up on my current readings, you see.

So, offhand people I like:

Keats
Blake (sort of -- my initial reaction to Blake is "wow, he was completely insane." And yet, I could teach him and not get bored with him; I kinda like his crazy.)
Byron
Shelley (Mary)
Shelley (Percy, at least because how can you study Byron and Mary Shelley and not her husband?

From the period there's also Jane Austen, of course, though she's hardly a Romantic author. And yet, there are influences there...

Also, Edmund Burke, William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, Goerthe, Voltaire, Carlyle, Gibbon, Longinus, Paine, Swift, Pope

Of course, if we're looking at later Victorian Romanticists, then there's the Americans: Hawthorne and Poe, specifically, but there are almost assuredly others that I'm not thinking of. Not to mention the Brontes -- which are not American, obviously.

My brain then wants to make leaps to the British Arts and Crafts movement and those wacky Pre-Raphealites, but that's jumping rather firmly into Victorian literature, I think. Probably outside the scope of an academic specialty. We'll see.

Hmm. I think I'm probably making too long a list. I suppose it's not bad for a start, though... I can break it down further with time and research.
eurydicebound: (bleed words)
Went in today to the latest job prospect and took my editing and proofreading tests. Got to meet some people and was told that the potential manager had been telling people about me, so that's a good sign. I found out there are three people taking the tests, but I'm the first one to get them all back in. I should know next week one way or the other. I know I did well on the tests, though. It was good work.

I've gotten way behind on my reading for classes. I'm mostly treading water for Honors English, but I'm really falling back on my work for the Epic Tradition, even though the reading for that is technically less. Ostensibly I have the days between classes to catch up on reading and prep for papers, but I'm not actually doing it. Instead I'm picking up kids and running errands and cleaning my house. Don't get me wrong, the house needs the help and the errands... well, if they involve getting a job, I'm all about it. I'm just realizing that I'm not making the grade, and that my weekend hours are now going to be taken up quite a bit with the part-time job doing moderation for an online kids' game that I just landed. I can absolutely use the money no matter what, so I don't see myself giving this up for some time to come, but it's going to eat into my time for homework, no question. I can make it up by not being social, but then that's me not being social. Yeah. That'll work, really.

Go in tomorrow for my final academic advising appointment before enrolling for my last quarter. Pick my classes not long thereafter, too. One more quarter after this and I'm done. Four more months and I'm done. Well, assuming I don't get into grad school, anyway. And even then, I'm at least done for the summer. But... the idea of possibly not having classes and homework and whatnot... it's almost a foreign idea at this point. The word "done" does not compute. :) Also, I found out that my undergraduate honors thesis is, ideally, supposed to be an extension of the papers we write in one of the first two quarters. This is... well, can be useful, I guess. But my plan for my thesis was something else entirely. I could still do that, but I'll have to seriously hustle to get that dealt with, as "first drafts" of the first 5-7 pages are due really early on.

My plan was to do a paper that dealt with the changes to the family state of the Gothic novel over time, how it progressed from the initial patriarchal, nuclear family of traditional sane people (albeit with their own, um... well, eccentricities sometimes or occasionally missing family members) that disintegrated into dysfunction. Over time, though, greater and greater levels of dysfunction crept into the initial stages of the family setting, until the modern day Gothic novel of Gothic-derived fiction often has no obvious family creche as its starting point, instead using a constructed or obviously stunted "family" as the origin point, from which things devolve. I know this is awesome and means something, I just have to find a good way of stating what that is.

On the other hand, I could just use the Wieland paper again and have done with it. It's already 15 pages long. Another five wouldn't be that big a deal, even if I'm having to add more sources or look at something more deeply. I could save the examination of the Gothic novel thingy for later, or possibly shift it to the theme of "castles by any other name" and examine the changing role of houses in these books over the decades and still save it for later.... I dunno. And I have a group project or two and another unrelated paper to write first. It's not something I have to decide right now, no matter what. It's just productive to not wait until the last minute.

Anyway. That's some of what's going on today. Lots of stuff. *vague handwaving*

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March 2013

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