My name is Zach, and I am addicted to literary theory.
I often sort of dismiss formalism and structuralism. I often think that as forms are literary criticism they, like most things from modernity, are rather exhausted, and that something more is needed. I tend to favor more poststructuralist/postmodernist forms of literary theory. I like to think of texts as living and changing, rather than things that can be examined as static objects, and I just think that social criticism and reader response are important (and they are the type of analyses that I tend to do most often in my own work). Still, I have a secret love for some of the literary theory that comes out of Russian Formalism and early structuralism at the beginning of the 20th Century. I enjoy reading Vladimir Propp, Stith Thompson, and Tzvetan Todorov, and I can lose hours flipping through indexes of motifs and narrative types. I like the scientific, methodic quality to that type of theory. It seems so much cleaner, so much less messy and less confusing sometimes.
I love film studies so much because in film studies, I think more so than in literature studies, there is a need to marry formal elements to the social implications they signify. I am taking a class on postmodern narration in film this quarter, and I am so excited about the texts for the class because we will be reading a lot of structuralist theory, but we are examining films that have very fragmented, complex, more postmodern narratives, and we are looking at how these incredibly formal elements reflects things about the context of these films and about gender and how they affect the “reader” etc.
I am excited about all of my classes. The film class and my African American Lit and Postmodern Discourse class are both very theory heavy, so I am excited. I read some bell hooks and Cornel West today for that class. yay. I love bell hooks. :-) My other class is 16th/17th Century American Lit, which isn't really my area of interest, but I love Laura Laffrado. She is so energized, and she is such a good historicist critic. I will have a lot of reading this quarter, though.
I hope that everyone else is doing well. I need to update more often
I love film studies so much because in film studies, I think more so than in literature studies, there is a need to marry formal elements to the social implications they signify. I am taking a class on postmodern narration in film this quarter, and I am so excited about the texts for the class because we will be reading a lot of structuralist theory, but we are examining films that have very fragmented, complex, more postmodern narratives, and we are looking at how these incredibly formal elements reflects things about the context of these films and about gender and how they affect the “reader” etc.
I am excited about all of my classes. The film class and my African American Lit and Postmodern Discourse class are both very theory heavy, so I am excited. I read some bell hooks and Cornel West today for that class. yay. I love bell hooks. :-) My other class is 16th/17th Century American Lit, which isn't really my area of interest, but I love Laura Laffrado. She is so energized, and she is such a good historicist critic. I will have a lot of reading this quarter, though.
I hope that everyone else is doing well. I need to update more often