Category: 2024 Blog Posts

Since my primary text (The Aeneid) is from literally centuries ago, I struggled a bit for this blog post to construct an author biography. Very little survives aside from Virgil’s published works — his biography has to be constructed through allusions by his contemporaries, ancient lost biographies, and popular legend. Publius Vergilius Maro, or as we know him, Virgil, (~70 BCE – 19 BCE) was born to a farming family in northern Italy; though little is known about his family, they must have been relatively well-off because they provided him with an education that eventually led him to Rome. According to a lost biography by Servius, he was a relatively shy, closed-off man, who devoted himself to studying philosophy and writing poetry. 

Virgil lived through a particularly unsteady period in Roman history: he saw both the first and second civil war, the murder of Julius Caesar, the death of the Republic, and the beginning of what we know as the Roman empire. During this period of mass upheaval, he wrote the Eclogues and Georgics, pastoral poems about the beauty of Italy and the proper life of a farmer. However, he pivots from pastoral poetry to The Aeneid, an epic poem that set out to reflect the foundation of Rome, its connection to the new emperor (Octavian/Augustus), and to unite a divided Rome. Begun around 29 BCE, The Aeneid has its foundations in the period when Augustus took power and became the princeps of Rome (aka the emperor). One of Virgil’s contemporaries, Sextus Propertius, says Augustus himself commissioned Virgil to write the epic, and common legend says he was the only poet Augustus saw as up to the task. It’s hard to completely believe this story however, since so much of our evidence is contradictory and our modern conceptions of his biography are largely based on hearsay and legends. 

For this blog post, I want to focus on the pressure placed on Virgil to present the perfect epic. If it’s true that he was the poet chosen out of many famous and talented poets at the time (figures such as Ovid, Horace, and Catullus), would this work be expected to be proof that he was ‘the best’? Maybe that’s why, according to tradition, he only wrote three lines of the poem a day — reworking and perfecting each word and phrase. Virgil spent over ten years on the epic, and died before he was finished with it. Legend says he was largely unsatisfied with it, and it was awaiting many revisions; apparently, Virgil wanted the epic to be burned after his death, and only by the grace of Caesar Augustus was it saved and published. If Virgil struggled that much with this work — with the words, the message, the impact — how do we approach what survives?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume Virgil was under a lot of pressure — he had the emperor looking to him, his fellow poets, and, presumably, the entire Roman nation who had begun to see him as a national poet. His contemporary, Sextus Propertius, wrote “Make way, ye Roman writers, make way, ye Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad is coming to birth” (Elegies, II.34.64-65). Everyone waited to see what Virgil would come up with; it’s almost as if the entire weight of the nation was on his shoulders. When Virgil did share his work, either through letters to fellow poets or an alleged reading of a few books to the imperial family, he prompted excessive emotion and praise. Yet, Virgil didn’t seem very satisfied with what he had, continually revising his work and apparently calling for its destruction on his deathbed. 

I think this history, whether it be real or mythological itself, provides an interesting lens through which to read The Aeneid — from its inception, this work had a imperially-sanctioned message: to construct the foundation of the empire and help shape its values going forward. Virgil knew the weight this work held, for him as an artist and for the country. The way in which he chose to present empire and imperial values — what I will explore in my thesis — was deeply intentional. He also had a specific audience he was writing for: the emperor and those looking to define what Rome would become after all that upheaval.

Works Cited:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/virgil

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Virgil

Propertius. Elegies. Edited and translated by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 18. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

In 1993, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison, whose “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, [gave] life to an essential aspect of American reality” (The Nobel Prize in Literature). In her acceptance speech, Morrison frames language and writing through a fable of a blind woman being presented with a bird by a group of young strangers, who ask her if she believes the bird to be dead or alive. Morrison understands the fable through the woman as “practiced writer” and the bird as language itself. She thinks of dead language similarly to the prone body of a frail bird, “certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of will” (Morrison 2). Only when the young strangers express belief in language and narrative as alive and radical, “creating us at the very moment it is being created” (7), does the blind woman say: 

“Finally,” she says, “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together” (7). 

“This thing we have done – together” encapsulates the communal effort to preserve the move toward a productive use of language in changing the trajectory of history, and of recognizing the systematic use of language that allows the transpiration of stagnant, oppressive perspectives. Morrison questions the Tower of Babel itself, stating that “the weight of many languages precipitated the tower’s failed architecture,” and one monolithic language would have saved the building and heaven could have been reached. Morrison reflects back to the blind woman, asking “Whose heaven? […] And what kind?” (4). The paradise that Babbel would have brought was one version of paradise for one group of people, and the dead languages left in its wake would still linger in the rubble of the fall. Their lingering presence still persists in the present moment, where statist systems of language that protect the interests of oppressors and polices the power of the oppressed must be “rejected, altered, and exposed” (3) in order for language to become generative and alive once again. 

Beloved’s publication and themes of lingering trauma related to American systems were highly influential to Morrison’s reception of the Nobel Prize, and in the novel she herself contributes to the resurrection of a dead language in the resurrection of Beloved herself. Beloved is a ghost of a child killed in a desperate act of mercy, but she also encompasses the trauma of America’s history of slavery and racism that lingers just the same as systems continuing to effect because they have not been rejected, altered, and exposed. Only then can those systems of language and history be broken, and only then can Beloved and everything she represents be freed from the purgatory she has risen from.          

At the end of the fable, the blind woman only trusts the young strangers with the bird, or language, when they assert they understand its ever changing nature and how they must question its meaning in order to take care of it. Whether it be language and the purpose of its uses or the ghost of a dead child, Morrison uses the power of narrative and confrontation to change the ways in which we operate within our surrounding systems.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Morrison, Toni. “Nobel Lecture.” Nobel Prize for Literature, 7 December 1993, Stockholm, Sweden, Speech. https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/?id=1502 (Transcript: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/) 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/summary/

I want to talk about J.R.R. Tolkien’s experience with war and loss and how those experiences have influenced The Lord of the Rings. At the age of 12, Tolkien was orphaned with his father dying in 1846 with rheumatic fever and his mother dying eight years later from complications due to her diabetes (Whitt). Twelve years after the death of his mother, Toklien joined the first world war fighting in the trenches on the front lines and simultaneously losing four of his five closest friends in the war (Whitt, Imperial War Museums). Reflected in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien creates “The Fellowship” consisting of nine members, four of which are hobbits, Frodo, the protagonist, Samwise (Sam), Peregrin (Pippin), and Meriadoc (Merry). 

The character of Frodo shares many similarities to Tolkien. Frodo lost both of his parents quite young and went on a quest that cost the lives of his friends and, if failed, would plunge the world into eternal darkness. Throughout the three novels, there is a constant question of sides. Whenever the fellowship, either together or broken up, encounters another person, they almost always begin their line of questioning with asking whose side they are on. This question mirrors Tolkien’s experience in the Great War, a heavily sided war with the side Tolkien was fighting against, the Central Powers, going down in history as the bad side. The long journey brought Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship to lands unknown to them, just as Tolkien was sent into battle in countries that he had never been in. 

The death of Boromir in the beginning of The Two Towers, the second novel in the trilogy, is what really drew me to looking into Tolkien’s history with war. Frodo was unaware of Boromir’s death when he runs from the group, but he runs knowing that death is on the horizon. He has seen a vision of death and does not want those around him to be hurt. Tolkien’s loss of his closest friends in the war deeply impacted him and his writing of Frodo of going on the journey to Mordor alone in order to save his friends lives could be what Tolkien wished he could have done. Of the Fellowship, only Gandalf and Boromir are killed, but Gandalf is later resurrected. Tolkien saving Frodo’s companions and friends are the complete opposite of what happened to Tolkien during the war, and most likely what he wished had actually occurred.

Sources:

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

“Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien.” Imperial War Museums, www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-lieutenant-j-r-r-tolkien. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024. 

Whitt, Jeremy. “Understanding J.R.R. Tolkien through a Christian Perspective.” Celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien – Library News | Pepperdine Libraries, Caruso School of Law – Pepperdine University, 18 Sept. 2023, library.pepperdine.edu/news/posts/2020-01-jrr-tolkien.htm#:~:text=After%20their%20return%20to%20England,Morgan%20of%20the%20Birmingham%20Oratory.

“’Love is or ain’t.…It ain’t my job to know what’s worse [than Sweet Home]. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that.” (Morrison 195).

Sethe, as an enslaved young woman, already was born to and lives in a nightmare in which she has no power nor protection from threats. Sethe as an enslaved mother leads an even more nightmarish existence: despite the fundamental “jobs” of motherhood is to protect your vulnerable from harm. But how can the powerless protect anything, however much they love and care for their child? And so, when caught by slavecatchers who threaten to take her and her children back to such a nightmare, she does her job- and keeps Beloved away from Sweet Home by killing her (Morrison 191-195). Whether or not this was “right,” as Paul D challenges her, Sethe’s love for her children cannot be denied, and only its expression potentially disputed (Morrison 195). More importantly, through quotes like this and by making Sethe the main character of the novel, we come to understand her and the hellish reality she faced. As a result, the reader may not agree, but we can understand.

For Sethe is not an abstraction: her feelings and choices are drawn from real histories, namely that of Margert Garner (Morrison, xvii). Also with four children, Maragret escaped slavery and was resting at a relative’s house when the slavecatchers came (Carroll, “Margaret”). Like Sethe, she only managed to “slit the throat of her 2-year-old daughter,” and intended to kill the others before stopped and arrested for destruction of “property.” (Carroll, “Margaret”). Like Sethe, this violence was likely done out of desperation, for even contemporary newspapers reported at the trial she appeared in “extreme sadness,” and held her youngest even while testifying, not focusing on the baby except “’only once, when it put its hand to her mouth, [they] observed her smile upon it, and playfully bite its little fingers with her lips.’” (Carroll, “Margaret”) Beloved helps recover the emotions of desperation to protect in impossible circumstances- the smile, sadness, and playfulness indicate this was a mother who loved her children. This understanding is important when considering narratives like below:

The above 1867- and thus post-war and post-slavery- “The Modern Medea” image offers none of the humanization started in the newspaper article and transformed totally in Beloved, and implicitly assures the necessity for Beloved as a text.  The lack of humanization to Margaret appears in the title itself- the mythological Medea kills her children in revenge for being cast aside, making the fatal decision one of pride. Sethe and Margaret killed their child to save them from pain, no matter wrongly or rightly, because enslavement is that terrible. The title obscures the motivation for the action itself, creating a false equivalency that subtly withholds sympathy for Margaret in rooting her decisions based on anger rather than systemic desperation and pain. The Margaret of the image conforms to this in glaring at the slavecatchers at the expense of her living and dead children- her remaining children cling to her, but she pays them no mind, unlike the real woman even at her trial. Though we cannot say for sure what Margaret felt in that fateful moment, this depiction does not afford her any dimensions beyond Medea-like fury. She shows (righteous) anger to the men, sure, but what does she feel intrapersonally? This image gives no indication, diminshing Margaret’s likely three-dimensional pain.

Most troublingly of all, the muted depiction of the slavecatchers obstructs of the reasons for Margaret’s anguished act: their invasion, and the slaveholding system they represent. In some way, their horrified expressions and physical recoil in their leg stance credit them with the most “human” reaction to the murder of a child, despite them being the problem. Indeed, one would need context to know these are slavecatchers- they carry no visible weapons, and thus do not appear to pose a threat in the image, not reality. Instead, the pointed hands of both the slavecatchers and Margaret point to the deceased children, emphasizing the horror in the infanticide rather than the cause of the slaveholders. If the portrait had wanted to connect the cause and the result, Margaret’s image might point at the slavecatchers and the children and thus link them. Instead, in emphasizing the horror of the action, “The Modern Medea” hides why this tragedy happened, and the real, impossible pain for a mother trying to save her children from infinite earthly misery. Sethe loves her children, and from what little we can tell of Margaret Garner, she loved her children, too. Images like these prove why Beloved has such power and urgency; whether the action was “right” or not, it was done in great desperation and pain, and whatever opinion on morality, we at least owe it to the “sixty million and more” from Morrison’s dedication to understand (Morrison, xiii).

Works Cited:

Primary Sources:

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Penguin, 1979.

Secondary/Theoretical Works:

Walter, Brenda S. Gardenour. Our old monsters: witches, werewolves and vampires from medieval theology to horror cinema. McFarland, 2015.

Hoffman, Andrew J. Monsters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.

Academic Journals: 

Horror Studies. https://www.intellectbooks.com/horror-studies 

Journal of Dracula Studies. https://web.archive.org/web/20190801094056/http://kutztownenglish.com/journal-of-dracula-studies-archives/

Gothic Studies Journal. International Gothic Association., and International Gothic Association. Gothic Studies. Manchester University Press, 1999.

Keywords/Terms: 

Vampires, Bram Stoker, epistolary/epistolary narrative/epistolary fiction, gender/women’s studies, queer/LGBTQ/sexuality studies, myth/mythology/folklore, medieval studies, 19th century. 

Updates:

Changes to my reading list include, majorly, a change in my intended primary source(s)—I have switched horror tropes from zombies to vampires, intending to focus on Dracula as the main text. My secondary readings and journals, therefore, have switched to reflect this. I have found a journal discussing the idea of the “gothic” as well as a Dracula-oriented journal to add to my horror studies journal journey. Additionally, I have tried to include secondary readings that will narrow down my ideas about Dracula. I am interested in female sexuality, queer sexuality, mythological origins of vampires, and the epistolary format of storytelling, all of which, I believe, intersect with one another in the ways they interact in Stoker’s book. This is why I’ve included secondary readings on each of these sub-categories. However, I will draw the link between epistolary forms, the “monstrous,” and sexuality myself.

Secondary and Theoretical Works

• Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Ania Loomba (2015)
• • More specifically: “Defining The Terms: Colonialism, Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism, Postcolonialism,” “Colonialism and Literature,” “Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Discourse”
  • Also from Loomba: South Asian Feminisms
• Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind C. Morris (2010)
  • More specifically: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
• Barbed Wire: Borders and Partitions in South Asia, Jayita Sengupta (2012)
  • Request if the library can buy a copy
  • More specifically: “Introduction,” “Living the Dream: Narrating a Landscape Lost and a Land Left Behind,” “The Emblematic Body: Women and Nationalism in Partition Narratives”
• Unsettling Partition: Literature, Gender, Memory, Jill Didur (2006)
  • More specifically: “Fragments of Imagination: Rethinking the Literary in Historiography through Narratives of India’s Partition,” “Cracking the Nation: Memory, Minorities, and the Ends of Narrative in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India,” “At a Loss for Words: Reading the Silence in South Asian Women’s Partition Narratives”
• Borders and Boundaries: How Women Experienced the Partition of India, Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin (1998)
• “The Translator’s Task,” Walter Benjamin (1923, translated 1997)
• Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
• Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature, Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Academic Journals

• Verge: Studies in Global Asias
• Journal of Postcolonial Studies
• Literature in History
• Genre (for content on approaching historical fiction)

Key Terms

• Postcoloniality
• World Literature
• Partition
• Subaltern

Primary Texts

• Pinjar (The Skeleton), Amrita Pritam (1950, translated 2009)
• Ice-Candy Man (also titled Cracking India), Bapsi Sidhwa (1988)
• The Other Side of Silence, Urvashi Butalia (1998)
• A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There, Krishna Sobti
• Tomb of Sand, Gitanjali Shree

In conversation with Professor Kersh, Professor Sider Jost, Professor Seiler, Professor Haque, and Zana Mody (one of my tutors from studying abroad), I have created a broad reading list; it includes some new titles and some works to revisit more specifically under the lens of this project.

In terms of theory and secondary works, I am motivated by what it means to even access these primary texts; this involves consciously thinking about this genre as historical fiction. What does it mean for these women-authored novels to function as works of historical fiction that answer a lack of actual women’s voices in the real-life historical archives of Partition? What does it mean for these works to either be published or translated to English relatively recently, regardless of when they were written? In short, not only am I searching for secondary texts that define postcoloniality and the oral history project of the Partition archives, but I’m also looking for theory that can help answer precisely why it’s so difficult to locate these texts in an English-speaking sphere (both for purchase and for academia). For context, my hunt for physical copies of these primary texts was a quest triangulated across the United States, the United Kingdom, and India—what does it mean to “discover” (for lack of a better word) female-authored novels on the female experience of Partition?

On the level of content, I am captivated by a larger trend of microcosmic representations (be it clothing, language, even names) of macrocosmic violence (here, the struggle between India and Pakistan) within domestic spaces and women’s lives. What does this pattern mean? Why are there smaller representations of communal conflict in women’s day-to-day lives against the backdrop of postcolonial state formation (especially considering that women themselves are often read as an extension of the state, like in the case of Bharat Mata)? I want to move away from the traditional reading of physical women’s bodies in Partition literature and move towards a study of their inner lives. So many narratives chart the effects of dismemberment, rape, and abduction on the physical female body, but what happens to women mentally?

Update:

My main goal with my updated reading list was to whittle down the mass of texts I previously listed into something more manageable. This involved shifting certain titles into different sections and breaking down larger readings into specific chapters that are most helpful to this project. My secondary and theoretical works have not shifted drastically, though I’ve broken most of them down in more bite-sized pieces; personally, this more in-depth listing makes the project feel more approachable. I’ve cut Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature byGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature by Rebecca L. Walkowitz for now, though certain ideas from these texts might become more relevant if I shift more of my focus to translation; for now, Benjamin’s “The Translator’s Task” seems to be a suitable enough look into the politics of translation. At the stage of research I’m currently in, it’s been fruitful to focus my energies on theoretical texts that explicitly focus on the juncture of literature and Partition.

In terms of academic journals, I surveyed The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies for useful articles related to Partition and narrowed the results down to two articles: “The invisible holocaust and the journey as an exodus: the poisoned village and the stranger city” by Ashis Nandy and “Partition’s other avatars” by Roy Parama. The latter article proposed a new book (Violent Belongings by Kavita Daiya) potentially worth looking at in the context of Partition literature and the state of the physical landscape, though I’m not sure I want to tackle chapters from this book until I’ve read my selections from the Didur and the Sengupta. I greatly narrowed down the list of journals I had after doing a preliminary search into what each publication had on Partition specifically. I still need to peruse Verge: Studies in Global Asias, but the refinement of my keywords is helping this process. I included “Partition” as an updated key term.

When it comes to my primary texts, I realized that I would never be able to do justice to a book so large in scope as Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, so I struck the 1000-page tome from my reading list. Given just how vast of a narrative the novel is, it feels as though including it in my thesis would be too broad for the scope and space limitations of the project. I also tentatively cut Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There from my original reading list. I’ve read the novel once before, and it didn’t necessarily speak to me in the same way as Pinjar or Ice-Candy Man. If it seems relevant as I continue my research, I can always revisit the text. I moved The Other Side of Silence (1998) by Urvashi Butalia from Secondary Works to Primary Texts for now since the bulk of my historical background comes from this nonfiction feminist oral history. I’m almost solidly set on Pinjar (1950) and Ice-Candy Man (1988) as the focus texts for my thesis. The temporal gap between the two also provides a place for analysis in the larger context of Partition literature as answering a gap in the historical archives. Both texts are authored by female writers who directly experienced Partition violence. Pinjar was originally published in Punjabi and then translated into English in 2009; the novel tracks the kidnapping and forced marriage of Puro, a young Hindu girl, to a Muslim man shortly before Partition. Ice-Candy Man centers on Lenny, a young Parsi girl living with polio in Lahore, as she witnesses brutal violence enacted on those around her.

Reading List 

Summary:  

I have chosen to use the concepts of the sublime and ekphrasis as my guiding terms because these concepts have always been of interest to me throughout my time as an English major. I think the concept of describing visual art in poetry and literature as a whole is interesting given that it provides a metaphysical analysis of art, forcing the reader to find what terms and literary elements help depict an image. A lot of ekphrasis that has always intrigued me is how visual art can inspire other artists and transcend their work. I have noticed that particularly in the Romantic Era, many poetic works involved ekphrasis. Poems of Keats and Wordsworth took inspiration from separate forms of visual art and involved ekphrasis to illuminate a deeper meaning that could not be achieved without the device. Currently, I am interested in studying ekphrasis in the Romantic Era, involving concepts of the sublime and how these sensory devices worked with create deeper meanings in poetry. I am still looking for a journal to use, and once I find one, I plan to use it in conversation with my reading list, applying an aesthetic lens. 

 Updates:

Over the past few weeks as I have reviewed my list, I have decided to involve Keats in my analysis of ekphrastic poetry. The Irish poet is a famous user of ekphrasis in poetry, and his descriptions and inspirations from visual art are both similar and very different than Wordsworth’s. Most of my favorite Keats’ poems are ones where he incorporates art as a way of understanding temporality, and even broader concepts such as life and death. These poems include Ode to Immortality, Ode to a Grecian Urn, and Ode to a Nightingale.

Key Terms: The Sublime, Ekphrasis, Poetics, Romanticism, Art History,

 Primary Sources:

Keats, John. “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Chicago Review, vol. 8, no. 1, Jan. 1954, p. 76. https://doi.org/10.2307/25293011.

Keats John. “Ode on Melancholy.” Poetry Foundation. Ode on Melancholy | The Poetry Foundation

Wordsworth, William. “VI Elegiac Stanzas: suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont.” Oxford University Press eBooks, 1807, pp. 259–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00081630.

Wordsworth, William. “The World is Too Much with Us.” Poetry Foundation. The World Is Too Much With Us | The Poetry Foundation

3-5 Secondary or Theoretical Works: 

Carelse, Michael. “Unique Forms of Ekphrasis: The Keepsake and the Illustrative Poetry of the Literary Annuals.” Victorian Poetry, vol. 61, no. 3, Sept. 2023, pp. 301–35. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1353/vp.2023.a915653. 

Burwick, F. (1996). Ekphrasis and the Mimetic Crisis of Romanticism. In Icons, texts, iconotexts : essays on ekphrasis and intermediality / (pp. 78–104). W. de Gruyter. PeterWagner_1996_EkphrasisandtheMimeti_Icons-Texts-Iconotext.pdf 

Toikkanen, Jarkko. “Intermedial Experience and Ekphrasis in Wordsworth’s ‘Slumber.’” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 107–24. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=821eba48-1748-376a-852e-c144d95235cc. https://research.ebsco.com/c/rd5flh/viewer/pdf/afzyz3xjwj 

Primary Texts

Jane Eyre (1846), Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Anne Brontë

Villette (1853), Charlotte Brontë

Shirley (1849), Charlotte Brontë

The Professor (1857), Charlotte Brontë

Agnes Grey (1847), Anne Brontë

3-5 Secondary/Theoretical Works:

The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës (2002), Edited by Heather Glen

The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2012), Edited by Deirdre David

The Brontë Myth (2001), Lucasta Miller

The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Poetics of Space (1958), Gaston Bachelard

Ideas in Things (2006), Elaine Freedgood

Relics of Death (2015), Deborah Lutz

• • • • Also by Deborah Lutz: The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives In Nine Objects (2016)

Academic Journal:

Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society

Key terms:

Victorian Culture/Society, Religion, Gender, Material Culture, Gothic, Brontë Biography

Initial Thoughts: 

The main questions I have decided to approach my reading list with have been: how can I deepen my understanding of the Brontë sisters? How can I gain a deeper cultural understanding of their lives and lifestyle? Considering my initial curiosity about ways that religion and gender is utilized in specifically Jane Eyre, are there patterns across novels that could indicate deeper meanings? The Brontës lived in the mid-nineteenth century. Are there ways that their novels questioned or supported cultural “norms” that we, as current readings, take for granted?

I briefly with Professor Sider Jost because I wanted to know if there were ways I could broaden my frame of reference for religion – although he didn’t have concrete answers for me, it was nice to let him know what I’m researching. I have plans to talk with Professor Seiler on this topic as well – I studied Jane Eyre with her last semester in her Novel and the Normal class, and she referred me to The Madwoman in the Attic, which I want to pursue with greater attention this semester. Although I am beginning my thought process on the Brontës with thoughts of religion, this is largely because I understand it to be the subject I am least familiar with. I hope that by asking these questions, and doing more research, I will be able to find framework to begin posing more in-depth questions about the nature of the Brontë works.

Update:

My initial thought process when I started thinking about how I wanted to research Brontë literature was centered around what I didn’t know – namely, religion. After spending some time reading through the Brontë Studies journal, I encountered material culture in conversation with Brontë literature, a new concept to me that I found immediately fascinating. Not only is it newly contemporary within this journal, but I have found that, when reading books of this time, object and materials are very present and often very significant within Victorian culture.  After continued conversation with Professor Kersh, several books that could be helpful in furthering my research into material culture have been added to my reading list based on her suggestions.

Following our in-class discussion with our library liaison, I have also found several other useful databases and search techniques that will be helpful in expanding my research into Brontë biography as well as general Victorian culture.

Because of these observations, my questions have shifted away from the religious presence in Jane Eyre and towards the Gothic presence, specifically as it relates to material culture. Some of the biggest “objects” within the novel are buildings, think Thornfield Hall, Gateshead, Lowood, that in turn indicate deeper cultural significance and themes. These themes, like colonialism and many iterations of hierarchies, in turn manifest through these buildings and the novel’s narrative elements as Gothic themes that then connect to cultural ones, or are indicative if deeper cultural ideologies. This thought process sparked the idea that, if these Gothic themes that are manifested through material culture, specifically through buildings/architectural structures within Jane Eyre, then it is very likely that this is a connecting theme across Brontë works (i.e. Wuthering Heights) in a way that will likely offer greater insight into their Victorian society but also the Brontë’s lived experiences. To that aim, I intend to further my research by continuing to research material culture and the current scholarly works about it, as well as Victorian culture and Brontë biography, to try and observe these connections across texts.

I. Secondary/Theoretical Works

Ehlers, Sarah. “Introduction” and “I. Documentary.” Left of Poetry: Depression America and the Formation of Modern Poetics. The University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

Evans, Olivia Milroy. “Ekphrasis as Evidence: Forensic Rhetoric in Contemporary Documentary Poetry.” Word & Image (London. 1985), vol. 37, no. 2, 2021, pp. 142–51, https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2020.1866969. 

Leong, Michael. Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry. University of Iowa Press, 2020.

Michaels, Walter Benn. “Formal Feelings.” The Beauty of a Social Problem, University of Chicago Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226210438.003.0001. 

Nelson, Maggie. “All That Is the Case: Some Thoughts on Fact in Nonfiction and Documentary Poetry.” Lit from Within, 1st ed., Ohio University Press, 2011, pp. 154-.

II. Primary Sources

Jess, Tyehimba. Olio. First edition., Wave Books, 2016.

Nelson, Maggie. Jane: A Murder. Soft Skull, 2016. 

Osman, Jena. Public Figures. 1st ed., Wesleyan University Press, 2012.

Smith, Patricia. Blood Dazzler: Poems. Coffee House Press, 2008.

Wright, C. D., and Deborah Luster. One Big Self: An Investigation. Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

III. Academic Journal

Word & Image. Taylor & Francis., est. 1985. (Survey 2023)

IV. Keywords

documentary, poetics, genre, subversion, representation

V. Initial Inquiry Framework

I’ve admittedly been struggling to decide on a topic for my thesis, as there is so much that interests me, and so much that I could satisfyingly write about. The original topic I thought of just had too many answered questions, and would not produce an original or innovative final paper. So, I started thinking about what I wished I could’ve written more about in past classes, and I began reflecting on a class I took my first year of college, U.S. modernist poetry. I enjoyed this class so much because as a songwriter I’m interested in ways to use the poetic form and what can be conveyed through existing structures. In the class we read Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead, a documentary poetry collection about a West Virginian mining company’s deadly conditions. Modernist forms of poetry have always been my favorite because they push the boundaries of the genre, and this was no exception. Using poetry to both represent and expand upon existing images and events interests me because of the layers poetry must use to incite meaning-making. Documentary poetics that deal with crime are particularly demonstrative of this idea, as both the event and the poetry itself hide aspects of the whole that can only be uncovered through analysis of context and genre formation. Hopefully through an exploration of this genre I can solidify some of these ideas about the form, function, and how real-life events and poetics converge through the inner workings of both.

Update: 

In preparing the Updated Reading List for my projected thesis, I tried to hone in on specific themes I want to explore in my reading of documentary poetics. The first collection I knew I wanted to read was Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson, about the murder of her aunt. From there, two areas of thought emerged in the kinds of poetry I want to read: poetry about identity and poetry about traumatic events. Nelson’s work encapsulates both. From there I chose Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith about the events and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and One Big Self by C.D. Wright, which explores the Louisiana Prison Systems through poetry informed by interview. These two collections explore trauma and emotional expression through documentary poetics, but the following two collections merge this idea with concepts of identity and the self. Olio by Jess Tyehimba explores the lives of unrecorded African American performers through the events of the Civil War up to World War I, and Public Figures by Jena Osman that aims to express the perspective of the eyes of statues of public figures. I hope by reading these 5 poetry collections I’ll form an avenue for which my thesis can continue to head toward with a clear purpose in topic and theme.

Secondary or Theoretical Works  

Benshoff, Harry  M., and Barry  Keith Grant. “The Monster and the Homosexual.” The Dread of Difference : Gender and the Horror Film, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 2015, pp. 116–141, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dickinson/detail.action?docID=3571889. Accessed 2024. 

Fuss, Diana. “Introduction: Inside/Out.” Inside/Out : Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, Routledge, New York, New York, 1991, pp. 1–10, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dickinson/detail.action?docID=1144411. Accessed 2024. 

Thomas, Ardel. Queer Others in Victorian Gothic : Transgressing Monstrosity. University of Wales Press, 2012.

Petrocelli, Heather O. “Horror Is Queer: Theoretical and Ontological Foundations.” Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator, 1st ed., Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press, 2024, pp. 1–37, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dickinson/reader.action?docID=7263174&ppg=12. Accessed 2024. 

Rigby, Mair. “Uncanny Recognition: Queer Theory’s Debt to the Gothic.” Gothic Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, May 2009, pp. 46+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A381057953/AONE?u=carl22017&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=815748c7. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024. 

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, New York: Methuen, 1980. 

 Primary Sources

“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier

“Carmilla” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

“Hauntings: fantastic stories” by Vernon Lee

“The Haunting of Hill House,” by Shirley Jackson

Academic Journal 

Horror Studies 

Keywords 

Queer theory, gothic, horror 

For my thesis, I am interested in focusing on the way queerness manifests in the gothic horror tradition. This genre interests me because of how it explores and reveals cultural anxieties. Gothic literature centers elements that are often uneasily regarded within society, then moralizes them to produce clear messages about good and evil. The intrinsically transgressive elements of the gothic are what make it align well with queer readings. Gothic literature often includes the concept of the immoral “other,” which is where queer theory begins to be used as a unit of analysis. Throughout the history of this genre, queerness has been covertly used to signify a monstrous and frightening “other.” At the same time queer-coded villains represented supposed social evils, they also represented transgressive yet tempting sexuality. This complicated relationship between the gothic and queerness both upheld and questioned popular perceptions of reality. 

I am currently most interested in exploring this concept of monstrousness within the context of gothic literature and queer theory. The majority of the secondary sources I have chosen provide insight into the history of this literary genre and its relation to queerness. I plan to determine which time period I would like to focus on, as well as which primary source I would like to build my research around. As I continue to explore this subject, some of my guiding questions will be: what does it mean to queer the gothic? How have representations of queerness developed in this genre? 

Update

I have narrowed down the subject of my thesis to focus on gothic literature. To reflect this change, I have removed secondary sources that focus on horror and film, and I have found additional sources that have a specific focus on queerness in gothic literature. I have also begun to read primary texts that may relate to my research, beginning with “Rebecca” and “Carmilla.” These are texts that have frequently been referenced in the articles I have read while researching my topic, making them a good starting point.