Semester

It's honestly hard to believe that the semester is over already. We have finally read everything on a reading list that seemed almost daunting at the beginning of class, and most of them were a lot more enjoyable than I expected. We did a lot more than just reading in this class, and I don't think I can ever forget some of the more amusing activities we did. Writing our own conspiracy plots comes to mind, and I remember my group coming up with some gruesome ways to murder someone with a tuba and twist ties in a Taco Bell. We definitely did things I never expected to do in an British Literature class, but those fun little activities made it an extremely memorable class, and one that I hope some of my classes next semester can live up to. I remember dreading the quizzes, and staying up late to finish reading some of the stories, but as a whole, this was a great class, and I'll definitely miss it.

Rewriting

One of my favorite assignments, which we ended up doing several times for different stories, was rewriting scenes from what we read in modern terms. It was always fun to rewrite a scene that, in its original form, was difficult to read and even more difficult to understand. Since we generally did that kind of activity in groups, I always loved hearing what everyone came up with. They were always very different, and definitely hilarious, and it was amazing to see how many different ways the class could write one scene. That's yet another bit of evidence that many of the things we read are still completely applicable to today, if you can look past the time period and the language it was written in. It is not too difficult to put a modern spin on the themes that we read and to come up with a whole new piece of writing which still tells the exact same story.

Favorites

Looking back on everything that we read this semester, my two favorites would have to be the Taming of the Shrew and the Beggar's Opera. They both shared a common theme of humor, which always makes things more fun to read, and they were both full of interesting characters. I have always been a fan of Shakespeare, and though I had never read anything by Gay, he had the same sort of grip on humorous, satirical writing. Both stories seemed much easier to understand than most of the other things we read, probably because by that point, I had at least somewhat of a grasp of the language. The stories seemed to flow more easily, and I found that by the end of them, I actually cared about what happened instead of just being happy I had finished. Unfortunately, the latter was definitely the case with some of the other things that we read.

Film

Looking back, it seems like a lot of groups chose to show movies for all or part of their presentation. I found it extremely helpful to see what we were reading come to life. Whether it was a movie completely based on the material, like "10 Things I Hate About You," or a movie that shared common themes with the material, like "Legion," they always helped give me a better understanding of what we had read. Almost everyone says that books are always better than the movies based on them, and while I believe that myself, it was still helpful to watch them side-by-side with the literature that went along with them. As was the case with most, if not all, of the movies we watched, they were modern interpretations of significantly older stories. It's amazing to think that stories which were written such a long time ago could be made popular in today's society by putting a modern spin on them. Obviously, some of the things we read truly are classic literature, which will surely continue to be read in English classes, and continue to be remade in modern ways.

Paradise

This was my second time reading Paradise Lost. The first time I read it, I found it incredibly hard to understand, and I finished it without having much comprehension of it or its meaning. This time, it seemed much easier, probably because I at least knew what I was getting myself into. Even though the language is some of the worst to try and understand, and the imagery can be confusing at times, it was one of my favorite things we read. There was so much symbolism, and so many references, and when you look past the hard-to-understand language, it tells an enjoyable, epic story.

What I really loved about it was how thoroughly it examined the idea of good and evil, as well as the term 'hero.' On the surface, one wouldn't assume that Satan could be considered anything even close to 'good,' and he certainly couldn't be the story's hero. If you put aside any outside connotations to the word, and look at it from a literary perspective, he absolutely could be. The poem focuses on Satan, and when things are looked at from his point of view, it changes everything. If you chose to look at the story from any of the other characters' perspectives, things would be entirely different, which just goes to show how important point of view is in literature.

Epic

When we started discussing ideas for the epic poem we wrote as a class, I thought that it was going to turn out completely insane. After reading through the entire thing, I think it's safe to say that I was absolutely right. As crazy and hilarious as it is, it's amazing that we can all say that we wrote an epic poem. At first glance, it seemed to me that a poem about Justin Bieber's lost manhood couldn't possibly be in the same category as Milton's Paradise Lost, but our poem has every quality required of it to be considered an epic. It just goes to show that anything, even something as complicated as an epic poem, can be made modern and fun.

Writing our own Epic Poem was a great assignment, and probably one of my favorites this semester. I loved how everyone was responsible for their own segment, and it was great to read how everyone tied their parts to the previous ones.

Biography

Now that I have finished writing my critical biography, I'm happy to say that I enjoyed writing it. Although the specifications seemed a little confusing at first, since we referred to it as a critical biography even though it really wasn't, it was easy to get past that and focus only on my topic. In a way, it still included some of the information that would have been in a biography of Mary Wroth, but only because it worked with my topic.

I decided to write about how she was an early example of a feminist, a fact evidenced in both her writing and her personal life. Originally I was going to focus solely on her writing, but as I did my research, I found out that there was a lot about her life that made her a true feminist. She was a very strong, powerful woman, and it was a lot of fun to learn more about her and her life. I did find some extra information that didn't quite fit in my paper, and I'll be using that as my oral presentation on Thursday.