Informal, Online, or Multimedia Sources
My informal sources didn't have a lot of presence in my paper, but they largely contributed to the ideas behind my paper. Specifically I found a lot of informal online sources (a pictograph was what I ended up using in my paper) that identified Frankenstein as the world's first science fiction book, which was interesting because I had always thought of it as a Romantic novel. This duality of the genre of the book fueled my paper and the idea of Frankenstein striding the line between science and nature.
Literary Theory
I ended up using Ecocriticism, which fits very nicely into Frankenstein. The idea of ecocriticism was easy to apply to the book, but I had trouble actually working it into my paper. I wasn't really sure how to apply the theory to my paper and how to work it in. I think what I ended up with worked nicely, but I really had to think about it to get there.
Writing Process
This paper was really different for me. I spent a lot more time on this one considering the length that it ended up being. I spent a lot more time doing prewriting (doing research on my theory, brainstorming about my claim, and finding in-text evidence). I also ended up spending a lot more time editing, because I realized afterwards that there was some major problems in the paper. So I spent more time on both ends of the first draft. The result is that the paper took me a lot longer than a 1000 word paper normally would take me, but hopefully the paper was better as a result. I suppose we'll see!
I think it's interesting to see the informal sources for Frankenstein because that's all I know. I haven't read the book or seen any movies about him but I've only seen pictures portraying him as a horrible creation and monster. I'm curious how something with a horrible monster can be a character in a romance novel- that's not a typical archetype of a romance novel.
ReplyDeleteI like that that your informal sources led you to looking at the way Frankenstein works between genre's. After reading your paper in class, I think its cool that you were able to make a claim out of those sources that was able to tie it into Ecocriticism. Ecocriticsm seemed to work really well to your thesis but I wonder how it translated to your formal analysis because I could see that being a bit more of a challenging transition.
ReplyDeleteEcocriticism is such an interesting approach to take to something that you already identified as being science fiction. It would make sense then why it took you so long to finally complete. Does the novel still not qualify as a gothic novel though? Monsters and the dark setting of much of the novel seem to identify much more with those Gothic themes.
ReplyDeleteI'm really curious about how Frankenstein works with ecocriticism. I've never actually read the novel, and I know I need to, but it would be really interesting to read your paper and see how it works. I think one of the worst things about the writing process is how cool something seems BEFORE we write it down, but how hard it is to write down.
ReplyDelete