Brit Lit at a Glance

In British Literature I never expected

1. to write blogs
2. to take Crazy hard quizzes
3. to be taught by students
4. to teach students
5. to play twister
6. to write about Disney Land 
7. to win candy
8. to become an actor
9. to write about Justin Bieber
10. to read about hussies and thieves
11. to care about British Literature

Thank you Mrs. Watson for making this semester in Brit Lit I an enjoyable one.

Research Paper

I have been working on this Reasearch Paper for the past three days. My author is John Gay who wrote the story "The Beggar's Opera." The first two days I spent working on a hopeless topic. My original thesis was about John Gay being more upbeat in his early works but became more critical in his later. I had massive amounts of research but nothing to write about. I changed my topic to John Gay's obsession with sex... but I won't go into that so I can save it for my presentation.

I'm posting now to see if I can get an idea of what other's are doing so I know if my topic didn't venture too far off.
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Startling Revelation

I have struggled with the language of these stories since the beginning of this class but after reading a couple of blogs about the complicated, non-modern language, I realized something. This last story, "The Beggar's Opera," was more comprehensible than the previous. And the last story, "Paradise Lost" was a little more understandable than the story before that. I think that reading all of these have become easier through the practice.

When I took ENG 113, the professor made a comment that we may lose literature in Old(er) English because this generation doesn't commonly have any practice. He said that generations who read the bible (whether in school or elsewhere) were primed for academic learning of British Literature. (The King James Version of the bible is/was the most readily available. Since its publishing in was in about 1611, the language was of Older English.)

So I'm going to pose the question to students of Brit Lit 1 that have read or are reading the Bible:
Have you had a lot of problems reading this semester's literature?

WOO. NO 2nd PAPER.

For my second paper I decided to write a play mimicking a Shakespeare play. I love to write so I thought I'd enjoy writing my first play.... I didn't. It is so difficult to put the amount of detail I like to have in my stories and poems in conversation. My characters started sounding like spokespeople for those "Paid Programming Specials" on daytime television.

My idea was to write a comedy based on what I found about Shakespeare's life. I found out that Shakespeare married a woman named Anne Hathaway (like the actress) but the author of the site I found claimed that it was a "shot-gun wedding." Apparently, Shakespeare impregnated Hathaway and Hathaway's father demanded a wedding.

I was going to modernize the story with the main 2 characters Will and LeAnne meeting and performing their extracurricular activities and being forced to marry.

Starting with something like:
Will dreaded the day that he had to commit to LeAnne. He didn't know her very well. She was just the fling he planned to walk out on. She was hot and he was a college man, he didn't have time for her feelings. Their meetings were casual as far as he was concerned. 

LeAnne's "Big Daddy" as she called him was as Southern as they come. Deer heads on the walls and a gun rack in his truck. Big Daddy never expected his baby girl to do such a thing... and out of wedlock too?! He was not going to stand for such a sin. Big Daddy wasn't gonna let the baby or his reputation as church-goer suffer.

Will wasn't so sure about the idea of marrying LeAnne but he couldn't have HIS kid be raised without his influence... Big Daddy's guns were pretty convincing too. Unwilling William rented a trashed apartment for him and his blushing yet bulging bride.

In Shakespeare's comedies, he usually has the happy ending involve a marriage but I wanted the new couple to learn to love each other and end with Will rushing his beautiful wife to the hospital where he coaches her through her labor. Then, Will holds his glowing baby boy that he wouldn’t give up for the world.

(It’s nice to dream right? J)

Blog Writing Constipation

So, I haven't written a blog in a while. I thought that writing down my opinion would be a simpler job than it is in reality. (Plus, my computer doesn't like Blogger all that well. It freezes. In order to type my entries, I had to pry my mother away from Farmville long enough to post.)

I know we have been out of Paradise Lost for a week or so but I wanted to write on it anyways.

Since I could not get into Blogger, I started writing my entry with pen and paper. I began with thing like religion in the times of Milton and how did Milton read the Bible if he was blind but what I am really wondering is why did Milton use the title "Paradise Lost”?

“Paradise Lost” describes the story in a nutshell but with the ostentatious use of language and the grandeur of the poem he wrote the title is pale in comparison.

If I were to rename this poem I would title it “From Heaven on High” or “Ain’t No Valley Low Enough”. I think that this poem needs a complicated title with a double meaning but I can’t come up with something I’d stick with.

If anyone has any ideas leave it in the comments. (Also, it would be a good way to get one of your comments over with.)