Word Prison

I'm already veering from my rigid "blogging my CAE reading" formula, but this is something that I think is important for me to remember as I try to tackle what feels like an overwhelming workload sometimes. It's funny that no matter how many times I try and fail (and I've been trying and failing at this since undergrad) to spend 10 or 12 dedicated hours a day reading, comprehending, interpreting, and staying excited about the vast wealth of material I have to go through, I still try to do it. As much as I know that human beings need breaks to re-energize and restore themselves, both for the quality of their work and for their own happiness, I still go to my school library with way more work than I can expect to accomplish in a day, and tell myself I'm staying there till it's done. Do I ever succeed, or even come close? No. Then I go home, exhausted with the effort, and more stressed out than I was before because I'm overwhelmed by a sense of not having gotten anything done. Have I gotten some things done? Always. But if I went there with the goal of "doing it all," and then don't do it all, it feels like I've failed to accomplish the goal.

Of Plymouth Plantation, Book I - The Puritan Settlers Come to America and Steal Corn

Of Plymouth Plantation: ed. Francis Murphy

     I hope not to break up many of the books I discuss into multiple posts, but since this first book on my list is proving to be rather slow-going (and since Book II seems to indicate a dramatic shift in genre and focus), I’ve decided to give Book I of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation its own post. Book I includes the first ten chapters of this seventeenth century historical text.

     First, let’s start with some background. Of Plymouth Plantation is essentially a journal of the Puritans’ colony in Plymouth, Massachussetts, written by one of its initial governors, William Bradford. The journal covers the initial journey of the pilgrims to the colonies from Europe on the famous, celebrated Mayflower and relates the various difficulties and struggles the pilgrims encountered as they set up their colony. The Puritans made the hazardous sea voyage from Europe to America because they disliked many rituals and practices of the Church of England, but were persecuted for their attempt to establish a church of their own that conformed with their own sense of true Christian faith. The points of religious disagreement, from what I’ve read, are extremely complex and I’m not going to go into them here. The important part, for the purpose of how the text unfolds and what it means for American history and literature, is that the Puritans made this voyage (after an eleven-year self-imposed exile in Holland, which allowed them religious freedom but wasn’t so great to live in for reasons only vaguely explained by the text) with the cemented belief that God was on their side and that whatever happened as a result of this risky mission was God’s will.

         

The Beginning of the Long Haul

Welcome to my blog. I am a doctoral candidate in English literature at a large university in Canada, and I am about to tackle the "canon" of American literature in preparation for my field exam in approximately seven months' time. The practical purpose of this blog is to give me both space and impetus to concisely organize my thoughts on the many texts I have to read over the next seven months. I'm hoping more generally that I can engage in thought-provoking dialogues about my reading, about the reasons particular texts have continued to be influential, and about the potentially exclusionary nature of literary "canons."

I'd like to give you a more specific idea of what this "exam" consists of. The comprehensive area exam ("CAE" or "comp," for short) is a test that requires you to prove, at the graduate level, that you're well-versed enough in the influential texts of your chosen field to engage in academic criticism and to eventually teach it to undergraduate students. The test consists of both oral and written components, and generally, the exam requires you to discuss the significance of particular texts, theories, and literary movements within your chosen field. Though I love all kinds of literature, and choosing a specific field to specialize in forces me to rule out many things I love, I've decided to take my CAE in American literature.  In particular, as I prepare for the exam, I hope to investigate and create connections between the texts I read to develop an overall theory of what makes American literature distinctive from literatures of other countries.

Hello!

Thanks for visiting my blog - I will have posts here very soon.