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A Reflection

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There are not enough words in the human language to describe my strong emotions towards not only this course or this semester, but my entire freshman year under the instruction of Professor Jennifer Mignano-Brady. I had spent my high school career just floating by without having any real interest in what English (or any) teachers had to offer me, but that all changed when I walked into my EGL 101 class in the Fall. I had no idea  what to expect from my first college English course, and was honestly afraid of a horrible workload, and dull papers, just like in high school. Professor Brady proved me wrong, and got me more interested in literature and writing that I thought I could ever be. Not to sound pompous, but I believe I have always had a way with crafting words and ideas together. This was just never a skill that I had the motivation to apply in an educational setting. I spent a lot of my childhood listening to music, and fantasizing about the day I would run off and begin wr...
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What is Love?? (lectures from May 1st and 3rd, 2018)

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(Here's some jams for this write up!) These two fishbowls are obviously very important to me, and hopefully will be to anyone who has ever, or will ever experience love in their lifetime. This lecture hit me hard personally, as I had just gone through a break up, but love is still the heartbeat of life, whether you can see it or not. During our lecture, we highlighted different kinds of love: Familial and romantic, both being very intimate types of love, and departed, and deep attachment, which are pure and nascent. What is true love? What defines it? What destroys it? True love is when a person can truly gain a full understanding of another person, or people. It is a constructive love, as we try to better ourselves for it, as well as better each other in it, in a positive way. It is about two people together as one unit. Once it is about just one or the other, or even nobody, not the whole, and crumbles and it is destroyed. How does love relate to poetry? So...
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Delivering Feminism through Realism (lecture from March 27th, 2018)

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"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life." (Kate Chopin 1850-1904) As both a lover of literature, and a woman, this lecture is incredibly important to me. Given the society we live in today, even with its flaws, it is hard to imagine the hardships that women faced just about a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago. In this lesson we covered female short story authors, and the events in their lives that lead up to their pieces. Let's talk about time period, baby!! 19th century America, during the realism period (Civil War and Post-War). Brings forth a type of literature that is real and true, as opposed to mixed ideals. In a sense, literature in the 1800's depicted the reality of human life and behavior. Who is Kate Chopin? Chopin is an incredibly vital female author, in that when she began to write, she kicked off the first wave of the women's rights movement. Her short ...
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The Tragic Hero (lecture from February 6th, 2018)

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"A man cannot become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall." (Aristotle, 384 - 322 BCE) The lecture from this day stood out to me because I have always loved looking deeper into the flaws of tragic heroes. We gave background to the titular character in Aristotle's Antigone,  as we were beginning to read it at this time. Firstly, what is a tragic hero? A Tragic Hero... is the central character in the story, often nobility has defects and flaws in their character These two defining characteristics were hard to digest at the time, as nobility was often viewed as God-like. Said defects and flaws are very human, like poor judgement, great pride, and general weakness. Many of the flaws given to these types of characters also coincide with the Seven Deadly Sins highlighted in Dante's Inferno. Pride Greed Sloth Envy Gluttony Wrath Lust A point brought up during this lecture was a matter of altruism versus egoism. This refers to whether a c...
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