[By Birgit de Schrijver] In the third seminar we looked at the role of the author. More specifically the influence of the author when it comes to our interpretation of certain texts (or songs). When looking at “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, we came across many nonsense words which made it difficult to understand the poem. However, this gave us a lot of freedom in interpreting it since there didn’t seem to be a right or wrong meaning. Where Jabberwocky gave us a lot of freedom, part of this was taken away by Carroll's “Through the Looking Glass”. Here, Humpty Dumpty gives us (sometimes confusing) explanations for the nonsense words. Unfortunately, by telling us what something means, we are deprived of our own interpretation. We discussed that often the explicit interpretation of the author limits the interpretation of the reader. [Click above image to read more]
Month: October 2023
English Literature (Taylor’s Version): Seminar 2
In English Literature (Taylor's Version) seminar 2 - titled 'This Ain't a Fairytale: Chivalry and the Knight in Shining Armour' - we looked at the anonymous 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written in Middle English (though we used the excellent Simon Armitage poetic translation). Students had also watched the 2021 film The Green Knight - a very free adaptation of the poem by filmmaker David Lowery and starring Dev Patel - in advance of the seminar, and were asked to write either a short opinion piece on the film, or their thoughts on the idea of chivalry. [Click the above image to read more]
English Literature (Taylor’s Version): Seminar 1
In the first seminar of English Literature (Taylor's Version) at Ghent University, we looked at four reasons to study Taylor Swift's work alongside English literature. [Click the image above to read more.]
Swifterature 