Agatha Christie and F.R. Leavis: an unlikely pair?

In the Fall of 2007 I took Dr. Kristen Bluemel’s Intermodernism course. Because I am insane and very interested in cultural studies as well as the study of “middlebrow” literature. I read Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as a signpost of Leavis’ minority culture. My prompt to do this was, first, recognizing the correlation; and second, when I considered that it seemed a strange thing to explore, the conclusion that I inevitably reached was that it really only seemed strange due to how embedded distinctions like middlebrow/highbrow and mass/minority really are. From there, I further considered how these categories affect the ways in which we portend to study, literature, culture, history, etc. are effected by these distinctions through time.

It is not something that I would ordinarily undertake, and for that reason (and the fact that it provided a good excuse to revisit a lot of Raymond Williams), it was a worthwhile undertaking. I also think I gained a better understanding about the theorization and possibilities of Intermodernism than I would have if I had taken a more “traditional” approach and wrote about people like George Orwell or Mulk Raj Anand.

So, another paper: “The ‘Minority’ Figure in ‘Mass’ Fiction: An Intermodern Reading of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.” massminority.doc

Charlotte Temple, a.k.a the bane of my existence

Last Spring, in Dr. Lisa Vetere’s course, The Cultural Work of Early American Texts, I wrote my seminar paper on Susanna Rowson’s 1794 novel Charlotte Temple.

I was not terribly enthused with the primary texts in this course to be honest: “it just isn’t my thing;” however, the secondary and theoretical texts for this class were AWESOME. (This is a common experience for me.) I picked Charlotte Temple as my primary text for two very basic reasons: 1. It is a novel rather than a travel account, captivity narrative, autobiography, etc.; 2. The amount of existing criticism was substantial enough to give me something to work with, but not too overwhelming to negate the possibility of my being able to read and address it in the time and page #’s I had available to me.

Though it caused me a few headaches, I am pretty pleased with the result. Although there is neither quite enough theoretical muscle nor enough historical information to completely sustain the argument, for a seminar paper, it works because it identifies a formal element of the text, the analepses, which has not been addressed in criticism, and posits a social, historical and formal importance for that feature.

So, my first posted paper is “With Friends Like These: Authority and Analepsis in Charlotte Temple.” CHARLOTTE.DOC

* Papers posted on the blog, will also be added to the “Graduate Work” page*