Author Archives: Ashley Maggio

Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel, The Bell Jar, is widely considered a semi-autobiographical narrative of the mental breakdown of an intelligent and talented college girl in 1950’s America. The Bell Jar, even within the novel’s summary, contains many, mostly negative, connotations … Continue reading →

As I’m doing the weekly review this week, I’m paying a lot more attention to what everyone is saying – not that I don’t usually pay attention, I just have more awareness of the discussions going on, since I have … Continue reading →

As Rebecca points out in her post, the idea of writing a paper as telling a story about a text creates a more creative, innovative mindset toward the assignment. Sometimes, as an English major, writing a papers becomes a tedious … Continue reading →

Dr. Alison Piepmeier and Dr. Lindsey Green-Simms both emphasized the ideas of expanding English studies and the ideas of what is considered a valuable “text”. The discussion of other literature, specifically non-western/English, really illustrated how little English classes in High … Continue reading →

The idea that history can “bind us or free us” (106) in The Theory Toolbox represents the erratic and changeable nature of historical constructions and interpretations. The example of the Holocaust was given and how this time in history is … Continue reading →

Thinking about space and time as a social construct changes a person’s “self” perception. As the Theory Toolbox explains, space especially is a gendered construct, alluding to the notion of “public” and “private” space. These perceptions of space were once … Continue reading →

Cultural studies and criticism is a drastically different from Formalism, which emphasizes the idea that a work is unaffected by the social and cultural environment. Cultural studies, in contrast, looks at the social contexts and conditions that make a work. … Continue reading →

Marxist Criticism, like most criticism, is interdisciplinary with the intersections of capitalism, economy, class, sexuality and gender. In Laurie Finke’s “‘All is for to selle’: Breeding Capital in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, she covers all these intersections, … Continue reading →

I found the reader-response criticism entry in The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms very relevant to what I take interest in and apply to my own studies. This notion of the “resisting reader” is something I personally use … Continue reading →

The text I have selected for the final project is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I first read the novel when I was middle school and not understanding a lot of it. I continued to go back to it … Continue reading →