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Wow, this is by far my favorite thread on the forums right now. I'm a double Slavic Lang&Lit and English major, so I have a few questions 1. Is Old Hamlet's ghost a spirit or a goblin damned? I'm taking a class now concerning the mythology of the devil in literature, and the author of a book I'm reading claims, without any reservations, that the ghost is a demon. My Shakespeare teacher disagrees and, without any reservations, says that the ghost is the genuine spirit of Old Hamlet. Old Hamlet speaks from below the ground in Act I, he only wants Hamlet to take revenge, and so on, but I'm not sure. Your thoughts? 2. What plays have the best and worst conclusions? I roll my eyes every time I read Macbeth because I think the fulfillment of the "woman born" prophecy as a huge cop-out, and plus the whole prophecy is never filled. When I read The Winter's Tale, I initially thought the ending was horrible with Hermione coming back to life, but the more I thought about it, the more I found it to be a wonderful ending with the ongoing themes of the play. 3. Have you seen Ian McKellen's King Lear? What did you think of it? 4. I'm probably going to apply for English MA programs soon. I have a pretty solid major GPA (3.75+), I will have worked at the university writing center for a couple of years, and I've already won a couple of departmental awards for some (non creative) writing I've done. Do you have any suggestions of things I can do to really help my chances for MA admissions? I'm going to a pretty bland public school with average-ish English department, but there are some solid resources available. Is there some place I can go to find particular strengths of programs around the country, for example a list of X number of schools with great programs in Shakespeare/English Romantic/Southern Literature/etc? I really have no clue of what programs are particularly strong and I'd like to start investigating grad schools soon. Thank you! You are doing an absolutely terrific job in this thread so far. An incredibly interesting read.
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May 9, 2009 09:35
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RNG posted:Oh, this thread. I would be interested to see where he fits into the academic canon of Western literature. I'm majoring in both English and Slavic Languages & Literatures, so I know of the ridiculous impact that Pushkin has had in Slavic literature, but not so much in Anglophone literature. For further investigation of Pushkin, I would first and foremost recommend Eugene Onegin -- it's the Hamlet of Russian literature and eternally etched into the culture. It's breathtaking in Russian, but I would say the best English translation is James Falen's. It comes as close as you're going to get, as it keeps the incredible wit of Pushkin and makes a pretty clever and inventive rhyming scheme to keep the verse. From there, read "The Bronze Horseman." Pushkin's relationship with St. Petersburg, and the eternally-linked Peter the Great, is incredibly fascinating and complex. It starts off as a traditional creation myth, but transforms into a very complex and torn story of the impact of this creation on the common Russian. For fun, compare the word choice of Pushkin in the opening "creation" part of the poem and the language used in Genesis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc -- especially concerning the role of water, in the most easy to spot example. If you are feeling very adventurous and curious from this poem, then hunt down Andrei Bely's Petersburg. It's a rewriting of The Bronze Horseman in the pre-Revolution period of early 20th century Russia, but with the added intrigue of spies, conspiracy, and "gently caress YOU DAD!" In less words, Pushkin is absolutely inseparable from the Russian canon to a degree that no one -- not Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, nor Akhmatova -- can match.
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Oct 2, 2009 10:28
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I just wanted to say that your analysis in your blog of Antonio as a villain in Merchant of Venice was absolutely fascinating. I'm taking a class on Allen Ginsberg/Jack Kerouac next semester. What do you think their places are in literature today? I think you've made a few comments on the beatniks before, such as that Ginsberg places himself in classical tradition at times (i.e. one of my favorite poems ever, A Supermarket in California). But, Kerouac might be in a completely different mold and might not survive in the "canon" as Ginsberg will. Or maybe I'm completely misguided. Thoughts?
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Oct 17, 2009 20:28
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A question both to Brainworm and to elentar, as I think he's the resident Pale Fire expert around here. I'm writing a gigantic term paper now of the relationship between Nabokov and Swift, but more specifically, Pale Fire as a response (intentional or unintentional) to A Tale of a Tub. Reasoning for this is obvious enough if you've read both texts, but it goes in comparing the narrator of Tub to Kinbote, the ridiculously innovative/stylistically rich structures, and tying back to the Spider/Bee metaphor in Swift's "Battle of the Books". Both books are two of my favorite and innovative I've ever read. Brainworm, what would you calculate as the influence of Swift? It goes far beyond simple satire, as many people think with "A Modest Proposal" and Gulliver's Travels. And elentar, have you read Tub, and even if you haven't, do you have any suggestions with my topic? Thanks! I hope the semester is wrapping up well for both of you.
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Nov 19, 2009 20:10
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I've really gotten into Mad Men as of late, and I think that it's brilliant. It has some of the best character development that I've seen in television, along with the thing thats actually draw people in (an incredible commentary on 20th century American life, from gender roles to post-war capitalism). The thing is, it's such a visual use of media that I don't think it can be classified in the same manner as other "literature." The writing is very good, but again -- much of its appeal comes from the visual representation of the America of the early 1960's. It's wonderful storytelling, and it couldn't be done anywhere but television.
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Feb 22, 2010 06:49
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You say that you've worked worked with technical writing. I'm taking classes next year for technical writing, and my school offers a certification for it, but I'd need to stick around an extra semester to finish that out. Not really worth it. Anyways, I'm really interested in pursuing work as a technical writer after graduation if grad school doesn't fall into place. Do you have any suggestions, specific or general, to offer? Keep in mind I'll probably only have 2 or 3 classes re: technical writing when I graduate next spring.
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Mar 26, 2010 21:29
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I work in the Writing Center at my school now, which interested me in your post i/r/t R/C (acronym overload). What do you think of writing centers and their future in university education, along with their roles in English departments and other interdisciplinary work?
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Apr 26, 2010 21:25
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What are some authors you would recommend on the whole idea of tradition in literature? I've read some of the staples, like "Tradition and the Individual Talent," but I'd like to be well-versed because it's a fascinating idea to me. Not just a small part due to this thread! What are your thoughts on conceptual metaphor theory in literature study, going mostly from Lakoff/Johnson and Kovecses? Does it have a real, tangible place in literature and do you see it really rising, or is it in the realm of linguistics and should be spoken of in the same breath as Jakobson/Saussure more often than Pound/Joyce? There's the obvious "Well, of course poets use metaphor. Why make an entire -ism out of it?" argument, but there is clearly much more to it than that. I think you previously briefly mentioned that you knew some Russian, and I just did a really long, boring paper about how the grammatical category of directionality in Russian verbs of motion (i.e. "idti/xodit," or the difference between round-trip/nondirectional motion and unidirectional/goal-oriented motion) and how it shapes the metaphors of some Russian prose/poetry. That's just a super-specific, boring example that will dull you if I'm overestimating the amount of Russian you know, but metaphor seems to be an infinitely fertile field (metaphor!) for comparative literature, not to mention boring old English literature. I typed a lot more than I expected, but I've been overtaken by Lakoff/Johnson/Kovecses/et al for the last 6 months and it's completely changed the way I read literature. That seems to be the whole point of literary criticism in the first place, so I'm interested in how you see it progressing. This can help me direct my Personal Statement for grad school that I'm writing now too in seeing if this stuff is worthwhile and marketable 
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Dec 1, 2010 05:13
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That's a tremendous breakdown on book reviews. I've had to write them and had about 4 different people teach me how to write one--each a bit different--but that's probably the best succinct summary I've seen. I do really hate the reviewers out there with an axe to grind or use the review as a platform to gripe about things. I just read a review that was 1000 words+, while all the others were about 300-400 words. He broke down every instance of mistranslation he could find of the book in the review, including a lot of extremely petty things that could go either way. The review got through because the reviewer has been in the field for 40+ years and used to be an editor for this journal, but it's still ridiculous.
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Jun 19, 2013 18:30
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I don't know if you use Evernote, but you should categorize your posts/thoughts from there. You can use tags, organize them, and endlessly rearrange/format them. Just the Hamlet-tagged notes alone would make a small book. (P.S. I also have used this thread a ton from my early-ish undergrad days, completing a humanities graduate degree, to now working with all of those writing/analysis skills in a for-profit organization)
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May 15, 2014 03:14
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