(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

So, y'all, I'm writing an essay on science, economics, and British Imperialism in The Hunting of the Snark. You would think, wouldn't you, that an essay entitled "Science, Literature and the Hunting of the Snark" which lists the poem as one of its subjects would be vaguely relevant to this, wouldn't you?

Yeah, you'd be WRONG. It was written in 1942 and it's all about the quest for scientific certainty in the past "generation and a half", ie, the twentieth century. ARGOMFGRELEVANCEPLZ.

Also? When you have a book that's highly recommended reading for an essay, that's on three day loan, for an essay due tomorrow, and it was due back YESTERDAY, and OTHER PEOPLE ie ME have it reserved? RETURN THE FUCKING BOOK ALREADY GODDAMN IT.



... or there will be when I stop tearing my hair out and start reading actually useful sources. I think I'm probably going to end up citing, like, one book and one article BUT THAT'LL JUST HAVE TO BE ENOUGH, I guess. (It's okay, we weren't even required to do any outside reading for the paper, so.)

I would so much rather be doing Tess, but I missed most of the classes on that, so I'm just suffering. SIGH. Also, it's pouring.

Also! Carroll scholars are stoned. I can't believe they're calling this an academic essay, it's basically a stream of consciousness on Alice and Carroll and nonsense literature. Do you think this means I get to do the same thing? I could write a great stream of consciousness on this topic.

Also also! Wow, I just read a totally useless article that spent 20 pages on Alice Through the Looking-Glass and half a page on The Hunting of the Snark. WHY is there no scholarship on the damn poem? I know he wrote (repeatedly) that it was "all nonsense" and insisted that he didn't mean anything by it when he wrote it, but he also acknowledged that things come to mean something even when they didn't have meaning when they were first written; and, too, he wrote that sometimes you mean things even when you don't intend to. Bah, humbug. Alice isn't the be-all and end-all, you know?

Comments

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

My lit lecturer says that you can never trust authors, and then quotes them at us all the time. I say you can never trust lit lecturers. And I've come to a conclusion that these mythical essays that are brilliant and go through all the evidence of things like Hamlet wanting to sleep with his mothers are just that - mythical. They totally do not exist, and the only things that do are other guys bitching about the first group, who may or may not exist.

And I think you're clearly missing the ingredient in understanding those essays, you also need to be stoned. Or drunk. Either will do.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I'm in two minds about the whole authorial intent thing. On the one level I think knowing authorial intent and position can really grace the understanding of a text. On another level I feel like once the text is created it's open to a whole range of different interpretations and it can be a bad idea to exclude them because the author would have excluded them, you know?

I absolutely agree about lit lecturers, though. bastards, all.

The myth of the ur-essay! I like it.

Unfortunately when I get drunk I make even more typos (although actually, I find that I never have typos in my academic essays - spellcheck only ever gets americanisms and so forth. Which is bizarre considering my normal number of typos in comments and stuffs)

[kitsunerei88]

I like how you tag your entries on university "I lost my soul" and "University". Yesh. Because university causes us all to lose our souls.

I need to find a topic for my sociology essay. . . >< *sigh*

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

It's more about the pain and agony in my very core that writing essays causes me to experience. I usually like them once they're done but boy oh boy do they drive me nuts while I'm writing them.

>.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

At least your lecturers don't leave all the recommended books for your essay on two-week loan. *gnashes teeth*

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

VERY TRUE, and I am thankful.

... you know, you can usually request for books to go onto restricted loan.

[disturbed-kiwi.livejournal.com]

Ah literature essays.

I love writing about poems and books because you're never really wrong. Which is probably that 'stoned sensation' you're finding. I'd say outside reading isn't very necessary, just start writing about the stuf and what you think. Context reading might be appropriate. Or you could watch terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky, just for somehting to bring up.

Good luck.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... No, I'm pretty sure the stoned sensation is just because they're actually stoned. Seriously, she's on the good crack. And, no, outside reading isn't really necessary, I just wanted to do some and was, you know, THWARTED. But that's okay.

:) thanks.