Grace's Posting about the Postings

My blog posts have usually focused on the historical context of the contents of the play. Actually I've found that in my studies as an English major, I've always found most interesting in the historical events and personal views of the author and how that is shown through their work. I find it really interesting to relate the social and political views of the time period to the work that is being written at the time. Also what the personal views of the author were; I find it interesting to see how it comes across in their works, and see how different the work would be if not for the time period. When I blogged about "The merchant of Venice" I was interested to see if it was common for literature of the time to have a anti-semetic view. Looking back maybe I should have double majored in history as well. But regardless, I didn't know much about the religious prejudices of the time, and was surprised to find that the stereotypes that are still prevalent today were the same as they were 400 years ago.
Another thing I noticed in my postings was that I linked the works we've been reading to other works of Shakespeare that I've read in the past. I like finding recurring themes, or techniques or patters in Shakespeare's works that he seems to like to use. It's comforting to know that if you follow a writers work they have that distinct voice, that something that makes them stand out. Like if you read a story, you can immediately tell a Hemingway from a Henry James. Shakespeare is a fan of family drama, corruption of the crown and of redeeming characters that once seemed lost to the devil for good.
Blogging has only been mandatory in one of my classes before this one, and I'm actually not the biggest fan of it. My favorite part about school and about being an English major is sitting in the class exchanging ideas with my professor and my classmates. I feel like being in a classroom setting and just letting the natural rhythm of talking about literature take hold of us is the best part of being in an English classroom. I love people feed of each others ideas and get to notice things that they might not have seen. I feel the same way about reading sometimes, in that I don't fully grasp what's going on or what the author's talking about till we get to class and are able to hash it out. Some of my favorite poems, or books, or passages in works have come from this wonderfully organic exchanging of ideas, even if we only have 70minutes together twice a week. Blogs are probably a great way for a professor to see what we are thinking and be able to bring points up in class that we talked about, but it's not always my favorite thing to do.