Monday, January 16, 2006

Bless me Father...

…for I have sinned – no I haven’t actually… still going strong at 16 days and really back in the swing of things at the gym. I’m glad I’ve got my routine going again, because I had been a bit naughty over Christmas and put on a little extra!

So – very little to report except for making progress on studying Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. Fascinating reading by Delia Da Sousa Correa, who has quite a lot of input on the 19th century course I’m doing as well. Anyhow, the whole thing about Mansfield is her style, which is described as being ‘poetic and mysterious’ and ‘open to reconstruction by the reader’ (C20th Texts & Debates, 2005, p.95). It’s all about what she doesn’t put in the stories, which leaves the reader having to ‘intuit’ what’s going on. Most of her stories need a second or third reading to really appreciate all that’s going on. Her stories depend on the psychological movement of the characters rather than an actual plot, to move narrative forward.

We have a very interesting assignment to do now, that involves looking at that old chestnut of Wilde’s: “All art is useless,” defining what he meant and then seeing whether the same can be said of either Mansfield’s work or Gibbon’s Sunset Song.

A-n-d I'm currently chasing after an ideal opportunity that’s turned up at Poetry Ireland for a cover administrator for six months! Would that be my dream job or what!

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