SPAN 312

  When reading One Hundred Years of Solitude I attempted to follow Jons advice, to read it as close together as we could. I found that this was helpful in following certain aspects of the story, especially the characters names, the environment and state of the town, Macondo. In the beginning of the book the town of Macondo seemed to capture this overarching idea of solitude that I had in my mind from the title. The town itself seemed lonely, quiet and secluded from the rest of the world. Then the town of Macondo transitions when a road connects it with the rest of the world. With this connection comes an increase in capital/wealth and with that increased societal problems, with hints of communism and political uproar against the government sprinkled in. Although eventually, almost like a circle, Macondo reverts to the quiet and secluded town it seemed to be at the very beginning.  Additionally, r eading this book was not similar to other historical fiction novels I have read, ...

  Reading Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo this week was certainly easier to follow then last week's readings, and I enjoyed being able to feel as though I could understand and unpack the writing. Unlike last week's reading, the confusion I felt while reading Pedro Paramo felt more narrator based confusion rather than philosophical.  From my initial understanding of the story as I read, it begins with a story of a man in search of his father. As you read you begin to understand the reasoning behind his search for his father as a request of his dying mother. Something I did find a little shocking was how the story shifted from being centered around the young man to being centered around his father. This shift between lives continued and caused a sort of circular feeling to the text that gave it a lot of differing perspectives. The shift in direction and perspective made it engaging to understand who is narrating. Additionally, descriptions of the town in which the story takes place ...

Reading Labyrinths by Luis Borges this week was certainly an interesting piece of work to follow. I first began by reading the text as I was interested in getting a brief understanding of what it was about before watching the lecture, however after the first few stories I was still quite lost and confused and I decided to watch the lecture before I continued reading. This certainly helped me feel as though I wasn't just misreading or misinterpreting the stories, but rather that they were crafted intentionally in a way to make us question and rethink what we have read. I also found it interesting to affirm that the ways in which Borges writes of serious matters, such as death, were also intentional.  One of the stories that is discussed in the lecture titled “ Library of Babel” was one that I found particularly interesting and I credit this to its intense use of visualization. Though I couldn't exactly pinpoint what book it reminded me of in terms of authors intentionally creati...

The poems in twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair were very interesting to read and in many ways different from poems I’ve read in the past. Each poem follows this overarching theme of nature and uses this to find the beauty in so many little elements of love and attraction. However, these poems were not like many love poems I've read before, in fact they did not always feel as though they were objectively idealizing love, but rather providing a more raw and honest description of all its messy elements. Much like the seasons itself these poems followed a sort of cycle of life.  The poems felt driven by Neruda's bodily experiences of lust and love as well as by his perspective of the physical world. Neruda writes as though he is infatuated by women in the same way that humans become infatuated by nature. We often look at nature in awe and wonder, and Neruda looks at women in this same way. From an outside perspective he sees the rolling hills and breaking waves of nature and ...

  Week 2: Cartucho   Reading Cartucho this week was an interesting experience given the actual structure of the book, especially how parts were divided into 1-2 page stories. Each “story” seemed almost like an excerpt of something bigger as they often lacked a clear introduction, rising action, climax or resolution. Each story seemed to begin abruptly and end equally as abruptly with maybe a sentence or two of a conclusion.  As I read the first few pages, I didn't feel like I was learning about the plot or characters as I read in the way I normally would when reading a book in English class for example. Normally there is an introduction, an establishment of the setting and character development, however this book did not exactly follow this structure. Yet, I believe this in many ways is what intrigued me to keep reading. The short stories, each ending with little to no resolution left me wanting to read the next. This element of story structure had me thinking about our d...

       Reading the first couple of pages of this week’s reading where the editor introduces the manuscript of memoirs felt very intriguing. The foreword felt very raw and real, much like I was reading a history book, but one that was told from the voice of a woman, which is certainly a less popular perspective throughout history.  A quote that stood out to me in the lecture was in reference to the foreword of the piece that highlights how the editor made "what is private, public and what is singular potentially universal". This reminded of a creative writing course I took last year where the professor told us he wanted our writing to be unique and personal however in order for it to be good writing people need to relate to it and to feel something from the words you write, and I think “Mama Blanca” is a perfect example of that. As someone who knows very little about the time period of the memoir, I still found myself related to a woman I've never met or shared a...

  Hi everyone!  My name is Elisabeth and I am a third year psychology student. This is my first time taking a literature course at UBC and I am so far very intrigued by both the content and the nature of the course! I love that this course allows us to have some independence in what we want to read and the goals we want to set for ourselves. Though I enjoy reading, I find that with a full course load during the semester it's hard to find the time to sit down and read, so I'm looking forward to this being a part of my work this term. Through looking over the course readings I'm intrigued by their content and that we have the ability to contrast them and draw connections between each week.  In terms of what I'm expecting about this course… I think I'm expecting lots of things to be very new to me. I've taken a few online courses in which our means of communication was weekly blog posts, however I've never done a course quite like this where we combine in class...