Midterm Blog

          Of my three posts, two were close readings and one was a bit of a rant inspired by a specific passage.

         My first post made me a cringe a little bit while reading it. Such clunky language! “Applicability”? I made some interesting points about Shakespeare’s use of aphorisms, but they weren’t all too clear until I remembered what I was trying to say.

         My second post made me cringe, too, but only because I said things like “Is Shakespeare telling us something?!!” To me, that seems like fluff and should be left out my blog posts. It’s absolutely valid to wonder whether Shakespeare is telling us something, but I think my blog posts should be proof enough that I am already wondering!

         I’m still proud of the third post, and I think it’s my best. It’s more organized than the first post, and it poses more interesting questions and comes to more interesting conclusions.

I think I do best my blogging when I isolate a particular passage and then pose questions about it. I don’t think Shakespeare’s work is impossible to comprehend, but reading so much of it can be overwhelming. So much of reading Shakespeare at this level is just trying to figure what he’s saying, and I don’t just mean to say “it’s like he’s using another language.” Every word in Shakespeare has weight. That’s why I think it’s helpful to isolate a specific passage, analyze it, and then pose questions about how it relates to the work as a whole. When I do this, I feel like I’m becoming more “fluent” in Shakespeare. I wish I had the time to do a close reading of every play line by line.

I like that the blog gives me an opportunity to do close readings. I also appreciate how I can voice concerns through the blog, like I did in my post about The Taming of the Shrew. I liked posting about my concerns with TS because I found it difficult to do so in class. I liked being able to take the time to think about what was so frustrating about that play and articulate it fairly well. Like I said before, it’s hard to tell how Shakespeare wants his readers to react to his plays. Mulling things over helps sort out the confusion and the impulse to redeem Shakespeare. I think my posts show that, when given the opportunity, I can do some great analytical thinking.

I would like to do more close reading posts, as well as posts that focus on historical context. I’d like my writing to approve with these posts. I think as I get more comfortable with Shakespeare, my writing on him should get better.