- I delivered a presentation of a critical article on Beowulf.
- Watched the Zemeckis movie tonight; gah! In its own right, it was an interesting piece of fiction. But it was probably only 50% based on the poem. You'll probably hear more about this later.
- I finished the first paper for my rhetoric class.
- I'm working on a short preparation paper for the same class in which I have to follow Erasmus's steps of copiousness, creating a multitude of variations on a mundane sentence -- mine is, "I hate grading students' papers." It's quite a fun exercise, actually.
- I may do my second paper on the rhetoric of prayer; our professor mentioned that in passing, but we've not delved into it in the slightest, and my interest is piqued.
- I need to decide on a focused topic for my Beowulf paper. I feel behind there, though the paper isn't due for a week and a half. (That's simply ages in this program.) (So I tell myself.)
- I'm going to sit in on classes next week on revenge in Hamlet. I should be using that time to read and write papers, but this, seriously, is probably a once in a lifetime chance, and I'm not going to pass it by.
- We're going to the Huntington Library in several weeks to look at original manuscripts of Pope's and Swift's work. We'll do tea afterward. I'm looking forward to this excursion. I'll provide highlights once we're back. Field trip!
- We're at that point where we're having to come to some firm idea of a thesis topic, and we need to line up our first and second readers by August. Gulp. Can someone make the sun stand still for a bit, please?
- I'm shooting again. You'll notice below.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Being a student...
...is wonderful! Yes, I put off my reading and papers too long, and yes, sitting for two hours straight is literally a pain in the butt. But it's been so delightful to use my brain this way again!
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6 comments:
So is the movie worth seeing? I'm a little afraid of Animatronic Angelina.
Yes, let us know whether it's worth adding to the Netflix queue, please.
This all sounds like a lot of fun. I miss being a student in a lot of ways. On the other hand, it would take a helluva lot to get me to go back to being an English grad student again.
well, if you're interested in seeing the poem come to life, don't see it. i think what they were trying to do was say, look, the poems were written to praise the hero (like history is written by the winners), but they're not the whole story -- so let's take a look at the *real* story, or at least one possible version of it.
so they change a lot of things in the poem, serious plot and storyline changes. and the effect is certainly to present beowulf and hrothgar as flawed human beings; mission accomplished. i think they could have achieved that without making all of the major changes that they did. i was disappointed.
on the other hand, they did stay true to the overlap of pagan and christian, more than i had expected, so i'll give them that. i was happy they included one scene of a scop (poet) telling a story in real live old english.
except for the attempts at making him talk, i thought the representation of grendel was plausible. grendel's mother, on the other hand, while certainly sexy, was completely wrong...if the poem is to be believed. the dragon was depicted well, but the storyline surrounding it was frustrating for a purist. the motion capture, while at times impressive, was fairly off-putting in certain scenes. they did some interesting things with camera angles and approaches, some of which probably wouldn't have been possible without motion capture. there were some beautiful scenes, visually speaking. i choose not to believe that the time period was quite *that* debauched; at least i hope note. i'm probably just putting on blinders, but it is what it is.
so it's hard to give advice on this one. if you're a purist, don't see it. if you're cool with the movie having its own storyline apart from the poem, then you might find some things to enjoy. i told my classmates it's its own separate fiction.
myself, i spent half the movie muttering or shouting "oh for god's sake" at every inaccuracy. but as i hope i've communicated, they did *some* things very well.
anyone else care to chime in?
the rhetoric of prayer sounds fascinating, and could develop into a thesis, for sure. IF you're interested.
I had never heard of Erasmus's On Copiousness (which is perhaps embarrassing to admit, but there it is; I never actually have studied rhetoric), and I so appreciate this introduction! Thanks to this blog post, I now have a ready-made lesson plan for an English class -- thanks!
And the rhetoric of prayer sounds really interesting; I'd love to hear more if you continue to think about this topic.
I totally agree with you that the Zemeckis Beowulf movie is best for people who like cool special animation effects and don't care about the original story much if at all. I'd the motion-capture effect as "creepy," but "off putting" is also on the money.
Don't forget the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales at the Huntington! I miss it. :-(
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