Wide Sargasso Sea

So, instead of writing some in depth or personal anecdote regarding Wide Sargasso Sea, I would post this video of a woman reading a book report for this story. I think it is funny and still relevant.

Well, I could not figure this thing out and how to post this video, so here is the link for the video if you care to watch it. I think it is an interesting way to teach kids classic stories. Most kids, especially nowadays refuse to sit down and read a book, so I feel this could be an influential first step in being able to teach kids classic literature without them knowing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU9iVyHQdn8

So today in class we discussed the term "negative capability." Obviously, never before hearing of this term, i had no idea what it meant or in what context it was being used. John Keats defined it as "When a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Now, after hearing (or reading) this definition, I interpreted it as the ability for an artist to take his/her personality out of the text and write as a neutral party. Keats believed that Lord Byron and William Wordsworth were too egotisticalvand included too much of themselves in their texts. I do not agree with Keats. Mainly because if a person is a writer, they need to separate themselves from every other writer by writing their story from their perspective. If a story does not have a piece of its author in it, there just is not enough emotion in it.

The poem I chose for the class was "Stanzas" by Mary Shelley. I chose this because of it's complete opposite content from that of Frankenstein. It is a good poem by itself, but knowing that she wrote the story for one of the best and most classic and famous horror movies of all time is fascinating.

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
...I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
...And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

'Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
...Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
...And woke to find her hopes betrayed.

But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
...And Psyche's lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
...Thou dost renew thy vows to me.

Then come to me in dreams, my love,
...I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
...And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

Dinosaurs and Fascists

S0 there has been a lot of Talk between Kelly and I about dinosaurs and about how she thinks her dinosaur coloring books are better than my dinosaur skeleton shoes (which is obviously not true) and a separate discussion about how someone said that Roanticism is simply fascism gone wrong. I thought this image would be fun and funny; a dinosaur teaching kids what fascism is.

Jane Eyre

So I have read Jane Eyre and it actually was not as bad as I thought it would be, although I still think it is still a terrible novel. But, from what I have read and heard, a lot of women can relate to Jane's story; She is a rejected girl who cannot seem to find a good situation in her life--well, she can, but they are few and far between. The thing I enjoyed most about the novel was that it is still so relate-able in modern day without the typical and cliche happy ending.

This coffee house's topic is (drum roll): chick lit. Now, I have never read anything that would be considered "chick lit" but I do know what is considered chick lit...I guess. Anyway, A few examples could be pretty much anything written by Nicholas Sparks and a lot more. But, the example I chose in class are those Harlequin novels written using nothing but stereotypes of what females are supposedly looking for [and will find] in all men. These things are a HUGE joke and should not be allowed to be read by girls who have had less than 4 or 5 boyfriends and/or marriages and now how men really are, which is pretty much nothing like what we are depicting as in these books.

So I read Oroonoko and I have many questions that have been left unanswered. The first--and possibly biggest--question I have is if the story true. How was it possible for Behn to know everything that he did? At the beginning, Behn comes right out and says that she has witnessed all of this stuff (the entire story she has written here) first hand. I find it hard to believe that Behn was actually around to see everything that Oroonoko goes through; It seems more like she heard it from a witness or some other second hand source and simply adapted it as if she really was there. Also, there is not much description; Behn just sort of jumps from point to point rather quickly. She states a scenario and then expands a little bit on it, and then on to the next event. After being in class and listening to the discussions from our group and the other groups about Oroonoko, I started to better understand what was really going on and that I was not the only one who was confused by the story.