A whole new world.

I have entered a whole new world this past two weeks - the world of British Literature. Specifically, the Neoclassic Period (1660-1785). I have get to know those dates for my midterm, so I'm practicing every chance I get. :o)

Anyways.

I have never spent any time in this world that I'm aware of. I've spent a little bit of time in the Romantic Period (Pride & Prejudice, etc.), but that's what we study next. So no, I don't know those dates yet. But the beginning date would be 1785. Yeah! I already know one date for when we start studying that period in Week 5. Awesome.

This text has been pretty much my constant companion this week:

We are getting to know each other pretty well. See my pretty orange tabs? I go through a lot of these tabs. They pretty much literally save my life. And I love to match the color of the tab to the book. A little over the top, I know.

This new world is so interesting! I thought that Neoclassical literature would be really hard to understand because it's from very olden times. But I'm really loving it! One assignment this week was to study the life of John Bunyan and read "Pilgrim's Progress." In my "this will be so hard" state of mind, I looked it up in SparkNotes (awesome resource!) and printed out the summary, themes, characters, etc., and read it before I started reading the actual "Pilgrim's Progress." I then read the first part from the textbook, then the second and last part. A few lines down I realized that, "Hey, something's missing here." Then, after looking at the SparkNotes stuff again, I realized that the text only included the first and last parts of the story, and not even the last part, but the very last part of the last part! I was pretty bummed because I was really understanding the story and I was seeing so many gospel principles within it. It was (surprisingly) awesome! No wonder it's been hailed as "the most popular allegory in English" (quote from the above text, p 2148). So, I downloaded the complete version, for free(!), on my kindle. It is now waiting to be read. It might have to wait awhile, though, because this semester is, after all, Crazy Semester #1. You can read it here (although we only concentrated on part 1 in class. I wonder if part 2 is on my kindle? Hmmm...).

We also read "The Wife's Resentment" by Delariviere Manley. Oh my. That story could be a strong PG-13ish movie. You can download it and read it here, if you're so inclined. The female protagonist, Violenta (boy, is that name full of foreshadowing!), guards her chastity and virtue with her life, and she has some great lines that totally apply to today's world and the importance of chastity and virtue. It's fabulous. :o)

Next week we study Alexander Pope and "The Rape of the Lock" and Jonathan Swift and "City Shower" and "A Modest Proposal." Our teacher already suggested we use SparkNotes to help with "The Rape of the Lock." 

Should be a fun week! 

I hope...