Blogging Portfolio II

Welcome to my second Blogging Portfolio for EL312: Literary Criticism for the spring semester, 2009!  Once again, I have organized my blogs for easy reading and have included blogs that I think best show my progress, conversation with peers, and understanding of the readings during the past month.

 I do have to say that I slacked a bit in my blogging as compared to my last portfolio.   I still completed all of the blogs, but I commented on fewer of my peers blogs.  I think I was focusing so much on the critical essays required every week that I lost sight of the valuable information I obtain through reading the viewpoints and insights of my classmates.  I will definitely work on this for the next portfolio.

I do, however, feel that my blogs are very good and were even helpful to my classmates.  Without further ado, here are some of the best examples of my blogging over the past month.  Enjoy!

Coverage:  These are just some of the blogs that were done in a timely manner and are well done, yet did not really fall into any of the other categories below.  Despite this fact, I think most of them are very interesting and all are worth reading.

·         “Free Thinkers and Divine Monarchs-How Do They Get Along?”

·         “More Evidence for the Monomyth, Plus I Really Understand Intertextuality!”

·         “What Is a Diptych?”

·         “I Don’t Like Scrambled Eggs, but I Do Like Eagleton’s Essay”

·         “Help with Signifier and Signified”

Depth:

·         “It Might Be a Poor Critique of the Literature, but a Good Mimetic Evaluation”- In this blog I discuss my personal and academic feelings of Gilbert and Gubar’s essay “The Yellow Wallpaper.”  Although I did not do outside research, I already knew much about the three authors Gilbert and Gubar discussed and used my knowledge of this information.

·         “Synesthesia-Imagery with All the Senses”- Here, I looked up a literary terms that was not in Hamilton and found that it pertained to medicine as well.

·         “A Road to Help you Through Frye’s ‘The Critical Path’”-This blog goes along with a class presentation.  It provides an in depth summary of the essay, as well as other helpful links to important quotes and terms.  If you have to read this essay by Frye, I would definitely take a look at this blog.

Blog Carnival:

Interaction:

·         “Actors or Actresses-It Makes All the Difference”- Sue and I discuss the roles of female characters and how they might be viewed by English and Spanish audiences.  Although we don’t come up with any real answers, we do both hope we will be able to research this more in the future.

·         “Poststructuralism- Is It Really Its Own School?”-This blog on Donald Keesey’s Poststructuralism Chapter in Contexts for Criticism features my opinions of Poststructuralism and a conversation between Greta and I that leads to some slight difference in opinion that is thought provoking nonetheless. 

·         “Understanding Poststructuralism- At Least I Think”-On this blog, I posted a simple example to explain the difference between Poststructuralism and Structuralism, and Greta posted an example to further provide help to others.  It actually helped Ellen for her presentation too, so I think this is a great example of a successful interaction between us through our blogs.

Discussion:

·         “Some Themes for You to Think about”- In this blog, I listed some of the major themes in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  A few people commented on liking the ones I included, but they also added a few of their own, which is an excellent example of academic exchange.

·         “A Little Different, but Still Valuable”- In this blog about mimetic criticism and psychological criticism, Greta, Angela, and I have a short, but academic discussion concerning whether or not characters in literature should be or can be considered real people. 

·         “The Feminists Are Making Me Angry”- I disagree with another author’s (Josephine Donovan) feminist interpretations.  This blog shows academic discussion because, although none of us disagree with one another, we do wholeheartedly disagree with the approach of a published author.  Perhaps feminism has just taken a new turn with our generation, but you should definitely read what we have to say.

Timeliness: Although almost all of my blogs were posted on time, I have included a few thoughtful ones that I posted especially early.

·         “A Road to Help you Through Frye’s ‘The Critical Path’”-This blog goes along with a class presentation.  It includes a thorough summary, links to pages that define unknown terms, and a link to a list of important quotes from the essay.

·         “The Feminists Are Making Me Angry”- In this blog I discuss my disagreement with the opinions of various feminist essayists we have read so far. 

·         “What Is a Diptych?”-  This blog defines this literary device and poses a question concerning Shakespeare and the diptych. 

Xenoblogging:

·         “A Really Great Crtiical Piece and…Maybe We Are Getting This Stuff!”- In this blog, I discussed Charles Swann’s helpful essay “Whodunnit? OR Who Did What? ‘Denito Cereno’ and the Politics of Narative” and linked my blog to Greta’s blog on the same essay. 

Take a look at my classmates’ blogging portfolios.  They are making great progress!