Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Instructor's "Thanks!"

I say a grateful "thanks" to all of you for an exceptional course: I didn't have a bad moment this term and have countless wonderful memories. Most importantly, I understand the fiction much better than I did as a consequence of our congenial dialectic, week-in-week-out.
You each deserve credit for vigourously engaging -- in turns no-holds-barred or with delicate sensibility -- any topic on the representation of and relationship between the sexes that happened to arise (none were off limits) and yet without any of the dogmatism,didacticism, or domineering that (one hears) can happen ... out there!
It was your credit that the spirit of delightful schoalrship is alive and well -- in AD 2005 and here at Simon Fraser University.
I'll return to this post after I've submitted the grades so send your comments here then, when grades are no longer an issue!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please add my name to the above comments. It was great.
If we think that Chicklit is a new genre, could it be a parasite? Now I know the term "parasite" has negative connotations, but some people love orchids, and they are parasites. So are some exquisite alpine flower, and perhaps other plants I don't know.
For those who enjoyed (Bridge) Bridget Jones' Diary, would you be willing to say it's an orchid?

Anonymous said...

I've been wondering whether we could see Bridget Jones' Diary as a tribute to Princess Diane. Could it be saying, "Princess Di, we love you just the way you are, bing and diet eating disorder an all?

Anonymous said...

I felt that we were focusing on readership--more than on writership--in Engl 369.
If that is correct, and if we were juxtaposing 19th C. Chick/Lad lit. to 20th C. Chick/Lad lit. Walter Ong's observation may throw some light on our endeavours. Talking about reader-response in 'Orality and Literacy' he says: "Readers whose norms and expectancies for normal discourse are governed by a residually oral mindset relate to a text quite differently from readers whose sense of style is radically textual. The nineteenth-century novellists' nervous apostrophes to the 'dear reader'...suggest that the typical reader was felt by the writer to be closer to the old-style listener than most readers commonly are felt to be today" (171).

What would be the significance, if any, of this observation for our enquiry?
The 19th C. reader would be more spontaneous, less analytical than we are to-day? And if so, does this tell us anything about the distinction between Chick and Lad lit to 19th C. readers, to 20th C. readers?