Final post!
I am honestly having a minor crisis about nearly being done with my first year of uni because I basically feel 16 still but I going to ignore that for now. This term has been genuinely awful in many way but this class was actually not a contributer for that which was very pleasant for me. I have not read as much as I did this term in so long and while I definitely did not enjoy all the books I picked I always found them interesting. Not even going to try to pretend I always closely read the book of the week, sometimes it was more of a 'yes I am certainly reading a book right now' vibe when I really just wanted to get the general plotline down and finish a blog post but, there was more times than I expected when I genuinely sat down and got really into what I was reading. Great example would be me curled up under my desk (it just seemed right) to read the entirity of Bounjour Tristesse with only a small break in order to cringe at everything I just read.
Anywayyy. I literally said this in my last blog post but I was incredibly skeptical of how on Earth these books could share similarities when they are all so different in origin. It was really interesting to begin to make connections between them all, even the ones I didn't understand too well. I am not going to even try to speculate ~why~ they all share these things because it honestly makes no sense and I almost feel like without also reading texts from not romance languages theres no way to tell that this isn't just like a overall thing I hadn't thought about before. Language is really weird, the fact that a common language family could be the cause of like an underlying similarity isn't exactly surprising to me but it's still really cool. This class will probably stick in my mind a bit for the rest of my life, I do not think I'll be able to read any book again without taking a moment to see if it also shares similarities or not. Not upset about it by any means, usually I forget everything I learn as soon as I am done with a class but it is always nice when something sticks with me, makes me feel accomplished I guess. My final question relates to this, does anyone else think these similarities and connections we learnt about will affect the way they look at literature from here on out?
Thats enough rambling from me :D
Good luck on finals everyone :))
Hi Dee! Very interesting thoughts - I was curious to find out how all the texts connected too, especially if the "romance world" isn't restricted to a specific geography. To answer your question: absolutely! I never realized how abstract and unreliable some narrators could be before this course. I think going forward, I will be thinking a lot more about how the language/region of an author affects their approach to writing and to the specific topic at hand.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I'm sorry to hear this term was awful for you, but take it from someone who is finishing his degree this semester: it gets better over time because you figure out ways to make it less awful, and by the end, you realize that that was a big learning from your time here - to deal with challenges without letting them become too awful. All the best with the rest of your degree! :)