As the semester begins to draw to a close and my adventure down the path of Caribbean-inspired literature has come to an end, I can’t help but feel the need to reflect a little bit on how the texts I’ve read this semester have not only increased my appreciation for literature around the world, but how they have impacted the ways I think and write about the literature I consume.
For supplementary media to view alongside this reflection, I will include my favorite integrated image from each Blog Post this semester. With this, I invite you to join me in revisiting the memory lane of my reading path in this Blog of Blogs.
Looking back at all of my previous blog posts as an interwoven evolution of my thoughts and understandings of the various texts we read this semester, I find myself the most interested in analyzing the ways in which I write about literature. In other words, I found myself asking the following question to lead my reflection:
“Why am I so predisposed to write about my literary interpretations in such a routine way?”
By shifting from analyzing the writings of other authors to analyzing my own writing, I have begun to pick up on some patterns of how the ways in which I write have ultimately contributed to and evolved into to the routine form I have embodied for my blog presentations.
For example, I realized upon the re-inspection my writing this semester that my tone throughout my published blogs has remained pretty consistent, as I tend to write with a formal, analytical tone regardless of the subject matter I cover. While this style of writing doesn’t always seem to fit the stylistic form of online blogs, I believe my framing techniques and consistent shifts between moments of analysis and my own opinionated conjectures are ultimately what allowed for my more reserved, academic tone to still thrive in this casual environment.
To be more specific about my method of framing my Literary Blogs, I tried to open each of my entries with a broad statement that makes the content of my blogs applicable to an audience outside of the context of English 335.
By giving myself the space to slowly introduce the reader to what I am talking about with some background information, I am able to then establish a main point or leading question to set the audience’s expectations of what to expect from my blog—just like the leading question I incorporated into this very reflection.
In a similar fashion, I always tried to make the endings of my blogs revert back to the broad opening space to leave the reader (hopefully) with a deeper understanding of the textual implications I analyzed, or a more general thematic question about the text that can be applicable to life outside the realm of reading.
As for the actual construction of my arguments, I usually let my leading statement or opening question influence my research and organization of my thinking, which lead to my blogs leading you through the specific ways through which I came to my argument conclusions by the ending.
With this foundation of the actual construction of my blogs, I would compare my writing method to be akin to leading the reader down a rabbit hole as a result of my reactionary research on the differing weekly subject matters.
This connects to my reading path and the intersection of literature, as I found this technique especially made my Blogs #6-9 (which focused on Prospero’s Daughter) almost feel like they were in conversation with each other as one especially-long “rabbit hole.” As I read more and more and developed new thoughts about this novel in particular, the specificity of why Prospero’s Daughter was so appealing for me to read seemed to culminate in my analysis as a snowballing effect.
With this shift towards talking more specifically about the actual texts we covered, I found my focus of the actual main arguments/reviews of the literature that informed my blogs to be a healthy balance between analytical and psychological.
While I definitely enjoyed using my blog space to summarize the plots of the texts we covered to help reaffirm my understandings of the readings, I found that even my plot summaries seemed to highlight the most recurring theme of my blogs—my interest in the psychology of the characters.
Because I spent so much time in the second half of the semester immersing myself in trying to figure out and break down and present some aspects of the character psychologies of significant characters such as Caliban/Carlos, Dr. Gardner /Prospero, Ariana/Ariel, and Miranda/Virginia, I found myself becoming more attached to the Caribbean Path readings as the semester progressed—likely because I got to progressively spend more time with these characters as the weeks passed.
As my emotional connection with the characters evolved, I was actually encouraged to go out on my own and include outside research (usually consisting of other outside Blog posts, like the interpretation of Sycorax I included in Blog #5, or brief complementary videos like the Chacachacare Leprosarium from Blog #6). By incorporating outside media and making my blogs as visually appealing as possible, I believe these outside connections give my opinions some more credibility while also enhancing the enjoyability of my blogs as a cohesive piece of media.
Speaking of the actual connections made with the texts, I found that besides offering up my opinions on the author’s intentions in writing or the inclusion of these outside sources, I didn’t have many moments where I felt the need to apply the texts I consumed to events that have happened or are happening in my personal life—with the exceptions to this being my personal history with the figure of of Calypso from Blog #4 or my inability to answer whether I would prefer freedom or security and reference to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Blog #2.
I think part of this has to do with my predisposition for conventional academic-themed writing and the associated tendency to leave yourself out of the piece, but I also found that this writing move helped me focus more specifically on the plots and characters covered.
As I continued reading the texts with the prospect of constructing a weekly blog constantly in the back of my mind, I started to realize some of the distinctions between how writing about reading is a separate entity from just reading.
When purely reading for pleasure, I find that I have a tendency to miss some of the significant themes/details in novels, as I am more focused on the immediate gratification of being spoon-fed plot details and getting to the final page of a book.
However, when you are writing about what you are reading, you really have to step back and view the text more objectively—meaning in order to write an effective review or opinion on a text, you have to focus not only on your personal enjoyment or interpretations, but also the author’s craft or intentionality in their writing.
I believe this action of thinking deeper about why authors choose to write certain ways and how they achieve certain effects has helped me become more self-aware of the ways in which I construct my writing, in both the context of writing creatively and writing to traditional academic standards. In hindsight, this really helped contextualize the old adage that “good writers are great readers,” as thinking critically about the writing moves employed by other authors can help influence your individual writing style.
Considering all of these revelations, I think my predisposition for writing about literature in this blog format in such a routine way is an effect of how I prefer to construct my arguments for almost everything in everyday life—through the balancing of my individual opinions with the actuality of the source material I reference.
I must admit before this class I wasn’t much of a fan of taking notes or annotations for the literature I read—especially Creative Fiction. But as I move forward beyond this class and beyond this blog, I have come to a further appreciation of not only the enjoyability of reading as a pastime, but the benefits of how taking notes on and analyzing the work of other authors from a variety of backgrounds can help amplify my own writing and textual comprehension.
Blandford Literary Blog 