Things I have been thinking about recently:

[aimeesworld]

1. If masturbation in Victorian adolescent literature is a sort of 'closeted narcissism' because it puts the self before the side, why are there not more cricket team orgies in nineteenth century school stories?

2. Charlie Bit Me3. David Morrisey. Best Colonel Brandon or BEST Colonel Brandon

Comments

[labellementeuse]

It is a bit ridiculous.

I am... hmm, not too sure, I wrote it in a white-hot fire of I-kinda-have-a-cold-and-I'm-supposed-to-leave-in-five-hours, but I definitely was not massively thrilled by the paper and ended up having to do some reading in the exam which was a BIG drag. I ended up writing on, hmm... whatever the question was about adolescence, I wrote about A Sweet Girl Graduate & Tom and Some Other Girls; I wrote something absolutely DISASTROUS about romance and realism as methods of pushing ideologies and their corresponding merits and negatives (it was totally incoherent); and something coherent but really rushed about racism. Actually the racism question REALLY annoyed me because it asked for at least two books and I'd only worked up one book on racism (Rider Haggard) so I ended up having to re-read bits of Kim which ultimately put the whole pace of my exam off. IIRC this was the ONLY question which required two texts, and it was also the only topic for which I'd revised only one text, so. :-/ Not too thrilled about the film question either! Seemed like it'd only be useful for people who wrote essays on that, except... wait... they'd already have WRITTEN ESSAYS ON THAT. I don't know, annoying.

[aimeesworld]

It didn't go fabulously well for me either. I wrote about adult/adolescent relationships in Tom Brown (and sort of referenced just about every other text on the course) and about Eroticism and love in Romance of a Shop, Tom Brown and Tom and Some Other Girls, and film for Peter Pan.
The film question was frustrating because the only film we'd discussed was Peter Pan and, like you say, Matthew had already written an essay on that and none of the rest of us were expecting it.
The thing that bugged me was their constant use of adolescent when texts like King Solomon's Mines aren't about adolescents - I didn't end up using King Solomon's Mines which was frustrating because I'd studied for it in some detail.

I don't know where they were coming from with the choice of questions. Also, nothing about gender, which I know we'd been forewarned about but it's kind of the major thing we've talked about with pretty much ALL the texts.