Thread: Were you/are you a literature student?

I have been considering a thread for essays people might have done on particular books and authors. The idea is mainly as reference thread to attract students, on the basis that literature students are often writers themselves. Unless it grows a fair bit it would be unlikely that they would find exactly the reference they wanted but it would be a good guide to structure and form of an essay.
The downside is that people may plagiarise, I have seen a couple of articles on the 'Cut and paste essay' lately. We would warn them against it, of course, but my feeling is that in the long run such actions get what they deserve, when you don't know it, or have not got it, it shows and every one knows you for a cheat.
Anyway, what do you think? And do any of you have essays that you might contribute? I was not thinking any particular grade, anything from school Shakespeare to a masters thesis.
Oh, and I was thinking an index of reference books as well.

I'm currently doing a degree in English literature and history. I've written essays on Ibsen's A Doll's House, Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Joyce's The Dead and Ulysses, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, Shakespeare's MacBeth, Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est, and W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming.

I've also done a variety of pieces for history, but they mightn't be applicable here.

I'm the world's foremost authority on the philosophy of anarchy. And I solemnly swear that the preceding sentence is absolutely true, and contains no more than one hidden joke. Honest.

This could be a good idea, for those others (include me out) who enjoy taking writing apart and attempting to understand what the writer meant. Of course, what those others fail to realise is that frequently the writer didn’t mean anything. He (or she) was simply writing for the sheer joy of it.

But yeah go for it. We need more pointy-heads.







PS There's already a plethora of stuff out there on how to write an essay. Do we really need to add to it?

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

.Of course, what those others fail to realise is that frequently the writer didn’t mean anything. He (or she) was simply writing for the sheer joy of it.

Where the hell were you when I needed someone to back me up on this very thing during one of my literature classes? I tried to explain that Joyce really wasn't trying to say that Irish people were trapped in "nets" and a whole other host of b***ocks like that. Instead, I said he was just writing because he loved it. "Oh no", I was told, "Joyce deliberately wrote that way to convey his dislike of the direction Irish culture and society was heading".

I say again: B***ocks! He was just writing. These people over-analyse everything to forensic details.

Sam W - The essay I would be most interested in reading would be the one on Koestler. 'Darkness at Noon' is one of the books that must be read to understand the 20th Century. The others are 'Man's Fate', '1984', 'Animal Farm', and 'Brave New World'.

Regarding Joyce, you were both onto the truth. Joyce couldn't help but write, and he couldn't help but write about the world he knew, and he couldn't help it that his vision of Ireland and of the Irish would cause any thoughtful reader to come to certain conclusions about Ireland and the condition of the Irish.

I remember a piece I did for a magazine in the '60s about the Civil Rights struggle in Mississippi. I described, objectively, the policies and practises of the Jackson Police Department under Mayor Allen Thompson. There was no bias in any direction in what I wrote. I quoted from official guidelines and provided a factual description of what I saw, with photographs to back up what I said.

The article was condemned by the Mayor's office and by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the agency charged with maintaining segregation in the state, as a piece of propaganda written by some Yankee reporter. The fact that I was born and lived the first 22 years of my life in Mississippi was overlooked.

When police dogs are set on children, and an armoured vehicle rolls into a crowd of unarmed civilians without regard to possible bodily harm, there's no need for bias in the reporting. The point is made in the mind of the reader without any prodding on the part of the writer, and, indeed, whether or not the writer is conscious of any point being made.

Whether Joyce had in mind criticism of the Ireland he had left behind is beside the point. We see Ireland through his eyes, and we cannot help but be influenced by what we see. For an update on Irish culture after Joyce, read Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes' and ''tis'.

Edit - To answer the original question, I majored in English. It's possible, though not likely, that essays I wrote 50 years ago could be found and that they would be of interest today.

Funny, that. Darkness at Noon was the only book that I enjoyed reading last semester. The rest of them were, in my opinion, mind-numbingly boring. To each his own, though. I'd be happy to post it, but it's only a thousand-or-so words long because I did it for a secondary paper. My main essay was, without choice, Ibsen's A Doll's House.

Sam W - If you're a writer, a real writer, you can say a helluva lot in a thousand words. Let us see your 'Darkness at Noon' essay. I've read the book at least 20 times, the first time when I was in high school. Stalin had only been dead a couple of years. I was mildly offended by Koestler's negative portrayal of socialist society.

I still have my original first English edition, translation by Daphne Hardy, and published by MacMillan in 1941. It was in one of the many boxes of old books I had given to me or that I dug out of trash heaps as a kid.

I just recently switched to a English major in Creative Writing. Taking five English lit courses starting in two weeks. Frankly I am terrified. I still have a long ways to go, but feel it will help elevate my writing to new levels. Which will help me reach my goals of becoming a published writer. I am looking forward to the assignments though and hope to read some interesting books in the process. Though I am still scared due to the fact that I never went past 10th grade english due to circumstances out of my control. So, I might try posting papers here first for reviews.