Welcome back for the rest of the course, and literature reviews.
However!
I’m combining these two courses for multiple reasons. The first being they were taught by the same professor. Which I do NOT recommend doing if you are not already familiar with their pedagogy and personality or fieldwork. I was not aware this professor actually majored in PHILOSOPHY and NOT English in any way, shape or form. So, both classes were incredibly heavy on the 18th century philosophy and very minimal focus on the literature itself. Which was rather unfortunate. That’s the second reason; I am 100% so done with both courses and the materials that I don’t even want to split it up into two separate posts.
ENG 265 (Gothic & Impersonal Fiction)
This course was the other lower level course requirement, but at the 200-level for the English major. Of course, there are a plethora of others available each semester, but this is the one I chose. ENG 265 was listed for the spring semester as a focus on the Gothic & Impersonal Fiction of the 28th century. Much of the content was nearly evenly split between novels as the primary readings, and secondary readings in the form of non-fiction to complement the primary literature, and give some theoretical context the the overarching themed within each novel. Personally, I enjoyed and appreciated the non-fiction secondary sources more, with the exception of the Overstory, which is definitely an interesting perspective and was the novel the essentially accomplished everything that the non-fiction authors called for — encouraging writers and artists to give voice to climate change in ways that were both realistic & imaginative, spanning much longer timeframe than 99% of fiction novels, as well as telling the story from a more collective perspective.
The actual course description according to the syllabus:
“This course provides a survey of the novel at the time of its inception, when it was just emerging as a new literary art form. For a long time, scholars regarded the eighteenth century “novel” as a new form of leisure entertainment that came to replace the theater in urban settings and that sought to display modern subjectivity and personhood through the psychologically expansive medium of prose. But how did these fictions of “personhood” reflect or challenge the acquisitive desires, as well as the sociocultural pathologies, of an imperial century? At the same time that Great Britain was consolidating its empire and putting forward ideas of an Anglocentric nation, it was likewise invested in new projects of scientific inquiry. Scientists and philosophers alike adopted methods of empirical inquiry to investigate pressing questions about human bodies and thought processes. What happens, early novelists asked, when persons become like the things they collect? How might we distinguish humans from other animals, or life forms? For centuries, scholars have defined the novel as a fundamentally “personal” genre. But how does our concept of the “novel” change when we acknowledge that historical ideas of “personhood” were largely dependent on racialized, gendered, and able-bodied norms andstandards? In this course, we examine the power of “impersonal” fictions to reform our definition of the human. Authors may include: Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Kazuo Ishiguro.”
In other words: English professors are unnecessarily sagacious. I also feel there was way too much about John Locke and David Hume, that both courses qualified for dual credits and should have received credit in Philosophy as well as English.
But I digress.
On that note, I’ll briefly review the major texts and primary readings that we explored this semester.
“Gulliver’s Travels”, Jonathan Swift – I know there are die hard fans of this writing, both academic and beyond – but frankly the 17th century speech and the random capitalization of words peppered throughout every sentence threw me a bit. I understand the topics of satire and what Swift was trying to convey through Gulliver in a roundabout way… but I was not a fan of this book, nor the one that came after. Maybe I am just not compatible with the 17th and 18th century speech, writing styles, or time periods in general.
“Sentimental Journey”, Laurence Sterne – Again, not a fan of the work. The story just didn’t hold my attention, and found the writing style as well as the way to story flowed to be distracting. Frankly, I was bored with the first two novels. I have zero interest in 17th and 18th century philosophy or Anglocentric politics of the time, it is quite overdone now. So, both novels were somewhat torturous to read and then write close reading papers on – thankfully short papers, but torturous regardless.
“Evelina”, Frances Burney – I know this novel technically inspired some of Jane Austen’s works in general as Austen was a fan of Burney’s work, but again – I cannot with the 17th & 18th century writing. I am so over this time period its not even funny anymore. I don’t quite get why this time period is so romanticized by the current generations, considering how misogynistic the men were and the patriarchy was REAL in every sense of the concepts. Women were well and truly, literally sub-human with little to no rights and there was absolutely nothing romantic about the way they lived so limited and unfulfilling lives, nor the way they were systematically gaslit into believing they were less than.
“Frankenstein”, Mary Shelley – Frankenstein is annoying. The man was a walking red flag, truly thinking he was some kind of hero bringing some sort of progress to humanity with his incredibly unethical experimentation. Then he had the audacity to treat his creation as an abomination without any legitimate proof of its apparent “evilness” other than it looked grotesque… as HE created it to be! Frankenstein’s perspective in this storytelling was a frustrating read, purely because Frankenstein is a horrible hypocrite. I feel for the “monster”, of whom was never even bestowed a name. While I don’t condone the murders, I understand it was not the entity’s fault, given its cringe-worthy interactions with other humans, including its so-called creator.
“Never Let Me Go”, Kazuo Ishiguro – I was grateful to have this more contemporary reading towards the end of the semester. I truly was relieved to be blessed with this and the contemporary novels for ENG 160. I will say that it was interesting to read a novel that was written by an Asian author – and something that wasn’t a manga or webtoons comic. Not to say that those are bad in anyway, I’ve also read both (and still do occasionally indulge in webtoons). However, I have noticed that the majority of what I read is often penned and published from a Western, more Eurocentric perspective.
ENG 480 (Jane Austen)
Rather than review the individual books or go into depth on this course, I’ll just give the general gist of things. The first is the course description according to the syllabus:
“The sustained popularity of Jane Austen’s novels over the course of literary history is a testament to the fact that her texts have both a mind-altering and a consolatory power. Austen herself was deeply cognizant of readership and reading practices. Books are beloved, Austen suggests, because they possess their own fictional psyches, as well as an enticing power to transform the psychologies of their readers. This course explores concepts of the mind, body, and memory in Austen’s oeuvre. It does so by placing Austen’s works in the philosophical context of her contemporaries. We will consider how Austen’s novels engaged with various theories of mind and brain at a time when debates about memory and consciousness were on the rise. What can Austen’s novels teach us about the relationship between feeling and knowing? How do these novels explore the ethics of intention and the fuzzy distinctions between human conscience and consciousness? These are just some of the questions we will examine in this course as we address the role of minds and bodies, memory and nostalgia, time and environment, in Austen’s major works.”
Austen’s main works of Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion were all read, and accompanied by a multitude of intense secondary criticisms. Personally, Mansfield Park could not hold my attention, Fanny’s prudishness was particularly grating to read. I’m not entirely sure if it was academic burn out at this point, or just that the characters and plot were not for me. Emma was amusing in her dense assumptions and often misplaced celebration of her own ‘wit’, while Pride & Prejudice was indeed sparkly and easy to digest, even pleasant to read. Persuasion was an interesting exploration of influence (persuasion) and the passage of time, and to some extension the nature of connection. I have also come to the conclusion that Anne Elliot may very well have been labeled with Asperger’s if she had been a millennial. Her internal world was peculiarly difficult to penetrate and her sensory experiences remind me very much of those conveyed to me by those in my life that are in fact Autistic, or some manner of neurodivergent.
At this point, it should be said that I have come to the conclusion I am not at all compatible with the style of writing (or speech) from earlier time periods, at least the 17th & 18th centuries more specifically. Which is fine, likely because I thankfully don’t live there. However, I signed up for the ENG 367, the Epic (ancient tales like Beowulf) half way through the semester. I’ll see what the first week and syllabus looks like before I decide if I want to commit to it. Weirdly, I have no issues with ancient writings… just English literature from medieval times to the 19th century.
From this point on, I will only be taking courses with modern or contemporary writings and authors or do more independent studies. Perhaps an internship in my last semester. Doing the coursework with copious reading (primary & secondary sources), research for independent study and long, multi-page essays, long discussions posts that amount to 4 page essays, as well as projects and other works is incredibly time consuming and mentally taxing as it is…. having to decipher writing that sounds like an entire different language when I am not actively learning a foreign language. Well, I am studying Japanese again but I wouldn’t attempt to read something advanced in Japanese until I had a C2 level fluency (or rather advanced) fluency!
Overall, it wasn’t awful semester. I can, at the very least, claim that I’ve read those works now. I can’t say that I enjoyed the majority of them, except for a few of Austen’s works – primarily because I was already familiar with Pride & Prejudice, as well as Emma and Sense & Sensibility to some extent. It was a decent semester, though, in the grand scheme of things.
I do hope that senior is more interesting and engaging.
Unfortunately, I am absolutely exhausted by academic focused readings for the next few months. I am looking forward to reading strictly for pleasure and focusing on developing artistically and creatively in other realms, such as my printmaking, sewing, formulating, working on Project StarFall, and perhaps some travel!