Author Archives: Samantha Mathison

The Things That Pass Us By

Posted on by
1

This weeks discussion on Monday really had me thinking. It’s amazing how much we overlook in the grand spectrum because we view them as normal or just part of the every day way of life. I remember in class Professor Seaman talked about how someone who had never seen our streets asked what were the lines in the road. We just don’t really think about those things, but to someone else who has never seen them, it’s something that really stands out. I wonder what else is slipping under our noses. It’s actually kind of scary to see how much we miss or what we consider unimportant in our every day life.

I’ve always known that the world has been filled with close-mindedness. I think everyone in some way has a certain degree of close-minded or prejudice that’s there, even if they don’t realize it.

As much as I like to think I’m an open-minded person to all things, but what am I overlooking and how could affect other people? I’m sure there’s plenty of things that pass us by, but I can’t help but wonder what things we could be missing that are really outstanding or significant.

I think it would be really interesting to have someone who was completely unbiased and knew nothing of my personal life or culture come follow me for a day and tell me how he/she sees it. Maybe they could point out the things I haven’t noticed yet. That would be really awesome. How would someone else view our lives if they weren’t familiar with our lifestyles? It would be amazing to finally see all the things we don’t notice that are right in front of us.

 

Monday’s Presentation

Posted on by
Reply

Monday’s presentation really excited me. I didn’t really know what to expect, but after listening to both professors talk, I realized for the first time that literature isn’t just defined to written text. The study of English is so broader than I even imagined. I never really considered film to be academic. I’ve always just enjoyed it for the entertainment, but after Monday and seeing the presentation, my mind has been completely changed. Also, I was very excited to hear that comics and video games are on the rise as well. It’s so cool to see all these different works get recognition for being considered literature that were previously seen as merely entertainment. My mind has definitely been opened since Monday.

I am especially interested in video games being seen as literature. I would be very interested in studying this if I ever had the chance.

Step 1: The Things They Carried

Posted on by
Reply

The text I have chosen for the assignment is The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I read this in my first semester of college and fell in love with it. It’s a collection of short stories about Vietnam. The author actually got drafted, and sometime after his return, he came up with the collection of short stories about his time in Vietnam. It was published in 1990, so I’m assuming it’s too young to be in the cannon. What makes this text so interesting is that even though it’s a collection of short stories, a lot of the characters are the same and the stories mesh together. I’m usually not into war novels, but in my opinion, this collection is one of the best examples of excellent writing that I’ve ever encountered. One of the big factors that you have to be aware of while reading it is knowing that the narrator is probably not very reliable. It makes the each story very interesting. Each story keeps you guessing.

I personally choose this collection of short stories because this was a text that surprised me for the first time in a while. I haven’t gotten so engrossed in a book in a long time. The Things They Carried wasn’t what I originally had expected it to be. I fell in love with the writing style. Reading each story really takes you there to Vietnam. O’Brien’s style makes each experience expressed in every story personal somehow. Analytically, I think one of the main points I’ll be targeting is the unreliable narrator. Tim O’Brien himself has stated that some stories are true, and others are complete lies. But, each one was influenced by his experiences. He manipulated his experience and produced these short stories. My professor had us analyze whether we thought each story was true or not based on certain factors in each story. The Things They Carried is more than that as well. It’s almost, in a way, an instruction on how to tell stories. It’s an extensive instruction on how to lie to tell good stories. That was a topic that we talked about in depth and very frequently when I read this collection of short stories in class.

Also, it will not be too difficult finding any secondary sources to can use for the assignment. There’s a good amount of resources I can use to support the  MLA Bibliography without a problem.

 

Women in power and Sexism

Posted on by
Reply

When it comes down to it, The Wife of Bath wants power. She likes to be in control. She states this in her prologue and she implies it into her story as well. She abuses power by using her own sexuality to torture men, yet, there was this one man she was not able to control. To have someone not submit to her power probably infuriated her, but at the same time I think it intrigued her as well. Not being able to control him kept her coming back. That’s why she loved the last husband most of all. He was the one that got away.

This understanding is also very obviously implied in her story as well. She has the story enter with a Knight. Usually they are seen as very noble people, but quickly she strips that away and any other power he may hold over women. And there he is, at the mercy of these women. He has been stripped of his nobility and now is just a pitiful man waiting for the next move by the women. This part of the story is key to The Wife of Bath’s character. The whole concept of women in power and women calling the shots is a big part of The Wife of Bath’s personality and she shows this in her story as well. She also makes the knight off to be the bad guy, having raped the girl at the start of the story. I definitely do no support the knight’s character in his injustice of rape, but she uses the knight as a symbol of all men in her little fairy tale. He symbolizes the abuse they impose on women, and how they do not deserve their power. She purposely wanted to make the lead male of the story a bad man, and therefore, have reason to strip him of power. She wanted to inverse the typical roles usually seen in society. She shows how women can be taken advantage of, and how powerless they are to men at the very beginning when the girl was raped but then, when she strips the knight of his power and makes him submit himself to the mercy of the women, The Wife of Bath shows how women are not as powerless as society may make them out to be. She wants to show how powerful women are.

I think that was her point of the whole story. Even at the end, when the knight had to choose between the beautiful but unfaithful or the ugly and faithful, he was forced to choose at the will of the hag, at the will of women. The hag could do whatever she wanted, but the knight was forced into the marriage. For the majority of the story, he has been at the mercy of women. The Wife of Bath uses this story to show that even if men think that they are more powerful, the women are the ones who call the shots in reality. This would be her ideal world.

Now, going back to her own personal life, the one husband that got away, the ending of her story is quite different from her reality. I think this story is definitely a parallel fairy tale to her reality because in reality, she was not able to control this man when in her story, she was. The knight is obviously her late husband, and she is both the girl victim of rape and the hag in the story. When the knight raped the girl in the story, I would assume this symbolizes all the mistreating he had done to the Wife of Bath in reality. But, the difference is in the story she tamed him by using her own power over men. In real life, there wasn’t such a happy ending. He continues to have a power over her.

Basically, The Wife of Bath seeks power over men, and her story is a fairy tale about how she wishes to obtain power over her late husband. Some might say that her strife for power is a feminist effort, but I wouldn’t say that The Wife of Bath is a feminist at all. I would actually say she is sexist. Usually sexism is seen as the treatment of women as inferiors, but here, the Wife of Bath is treating men as inferior. She strives for superiority over men, and that is not what feminism is about at all. It’s about equality of genders. She doesn’t see men as equals, but rather she sees them as objects. She is sexist towards men.

I think that The Wife of Bath’s character has a few messed up perceptions about power, and she portrays them in her fairy tale. She seeks power over men, but the inability to obtain the power over her late husband drives her insane. Yet, this also just makes her desire for him even more so.

Defining Literature.

Posted on by
1

I think that the most beautiful thing about literature is how it is too broad to define. There are so many different interpretations and perceptions of just one piece of literature, that the definitions become endless. Also, what can be literature is limitless as well. Whether it’s novels, poetry, or even spoken word, it can all be part of the vast collection of literature.

When it comes down to it, how I perceive literature anyway, is that literature is supposed to have a root meaning or moral to it, as portrayed by the author. But, even though there is a moral or theme projected by the author, the reader or critic can always find a new meaning or meanings beyond what the author originally intended.

Bressler started off this chapter  by talking about listening to a conversation and how the reader fills in the blanks by their own perceptions and what they know. People fill in the ideals of their life, and transform the literature into their own meaning. Given that the author intends to have a moral at the root of their literature, they also leave these gaps that people fill with their own interpretation of the world. Literature is way too broad to be defined by just one prestige literary critic while there are so many different people who can see the same piece of literature from a different angle. Each new criticism defines that individual work or art a little more. It’s every new opinion added that makes literature such a broad concept.

Every new angle is important to the study of literature and it just keeps the art itself growing and expanding even broader than before. It is the collection of these different perceptions that makes the study of literature so beautiful.

The Study of English

Posted on by
Reply

It’s sort of strange to read that The Study of English is a fairly new concept. I guess I always assumed that English was always right up there with Math, Science, History, and everything else. I assumed it had always been like that. I never even questioned it. But, to think it wasn’t even established until after WWI is pretty shocking to me. I’m also pretty shocked that originally people who graduated with the first “English” degrees actually had degrees in Language because it was thought that an English degree wasn’t strong enough to hold on it’s own. It’s crazy how much has changed in the past century. It went from being a debatable topic to one of the most important topics of study. I remember being in school and always being pushed to do my best on English and Mathematics. Even throughout high school, every year, you were required to take both of those.Those two were always the most important, and I can’t believe that less than a century ago it couldn’t even hold a degree on it’s own. It’s sort of amazing how it evolved over the century. I, of course, am glad that it did. I have always loved English and I couldn’t imagine it not being an option of study. Also, I love how it became a source of salvation for the people during the war. To think that something as ugly as war could produce something as beautiful as the  new appreciation for the study of English Literature is pretty amazing.

I really liked how The Newbolt Report put it.

“Literature is not just a subject for academic study, but  one of the chief temples of the human spirit, in which we should all worship.”

Literature has always been that way for me. It always held character that I appreciated. Even from when I was very young, stories entranced me. I’m just glad that it isn’t taken for granted as much as it used too be back in the day when it was still only a language. It has truly evolved into something great and more widely appreciated. I hope that other areas of study can blossom into something as widely appreciated as English has. Who knows what other under appreciated studies are out there just waiting to grow?

Thee Fyrst Wyke

Posted on by
Reply

In high school and last semester, I read parts of The Canterbury Tales (including The Wife of Bath) and I’m excited to be reading it again! I’ve always been a fan of Chaucer since I first read the Canterbury Tales in high school.

Although, I was a little scared at first when I read that Beidler was keeping it pretty traditional with the middle English. I had to recite the first 16 lines of The Canterbury Tales in front of my whole class and I just remembered how difficult it was. But actually, I think after reading this introduction I’m more excited now for Beidler’s edition. I also liked how he has lists of translations and what not. He sort of shifted my opinion on middle English when he talked about preserving the language. I guess I hadn’t really thought about how I was missing out on the poetry itself when I first read the stories. Also, I thought that blog Professor Seaman showed us that was written in middle English was pretty interesting. I think the whole idea of a blog devoted to middle English  that talks about modern life is actually a pretty unique idea.

To be honest, I always dreaded doing middle or old English and I would be the first to find some modern text translation (especially after having to memorize those 16 lines, blahh) I guess I feel like I’ve sort of been cheating because I’ve been going around the real text and going for the translated ones instead. But now, thanks to Beidler, I’ll be introduced to the real, raw stuff. (well, I guess it’s still technically semi-middle English, but still) I think I’ll appreciate Chaucer a little more now than I have before since I’m not just looking at the modernized versions.

Continue reading →

Hello!

Posted on by
Reply

Hey guys, I’m Sam. I’m from Aiken, South Carolina, so I’m not from too far away. I actually just transferred to CofC from USC Beaufort. I’m a sophomore here.

I’m an English major, and I choose this major because I love English and all it offers. I especially love to write, so I’m definitely considering adding a Creative Writing minor. I have lots of ideas with what I want to do with my education after I graduate. First, I want to go to Japan and teach English over there. I’m taking Japanese for the first time this semester so wish me luck!

What I really hope to do one day though is become published. Whether it’s my poetry or my novels, I just want my voice to be heard. There’s a lot of good writing out there, and I just want mine to stand out and make a difference in the world’s endless vastness of talent. But, before I dive into getting my work published, I want to travel and adventure. I feel that the more I see the world, the more I’ll have to write about. More experience might help my imagination grow. I feel that more adventure will help my writing be more creative and open-minded.

So, I guess that’s me. I look forward to getting to know everyone more in our small class. :)