Student Blogs

    Nadja was written by André Breton, who is a theorist of surrealism. The concept of surrealism is greatly expressed in the novel “Nadja.” Personally, surrealism is very abstract to me, and its ideas seem to transcend conventional reasoning and rationality, not depending on any conventional aesthetic constraints.     The novel begins with […] read full post >>

My first impression of Breton’s Nadja was that it was a novel with a lot of illustrations, to the point where the illustrations took up quite a bit of space. This reminds me of the children’s books I read as a child, which also had many animated images. The significance of the existence of illustrations […] read full post >>

To me, it felt that Robert Arlt’s “El Juguete Rabioso” (“Mad Toy”) provides an interesting tale into the life of an adolescent as he struggles to fit in within the society that surrounds him. While the protagonist Silvio Astier is certainly a genius bookworm, his environment barely has a place for academic pursuit of any […] read full post >>

Hello Everyone, welcome back to my blog. This will hopefully be my last late post as I am scrambling to catch up from joining the class a week late. The book of interest for this week is Combray by Marcel Proust. I had not heard of Proust prior to reading this so I had no […] read full post >>

Combray by Marcel Proust, the first text I have ever encountered of such a descriptive, narrative nature. I found the book especially hard to consume due to, what I found to be, increasingly complicated and elaborate descriptions of the world. This took form in the shape of extremely long sentences, heavy use of adjectives and …

Continue reading "Week 2: Combray"

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Honestly speaking, this reading was a little bit of a challenge for me. I hadn’t been exposed to many texts that had such  a complex plot and a variety of different characters continuously being introduced throughout a text until I took a class called WRDS 150 last year. I think the reason I had to […] read full post >>

Week 1 – IntroductionHi! My name is Alexandra, but I almost always go by Alex. I am a second year undergraduate student studying economics in the Faculty of Arts with an interest in learning languages, more recently the Italian language. Growing up, I spoke mostly English and learned Greek practically at the same time as […] read full post >>

 Hey everyone! The assigned reading for this week was “Combray” by Marcel Proust. Before I started reading, I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it was to get through this reading. I found it to be a bit hard to read because of the long... read full post >>

 Hey everyone! The assigned reading for this week was “Combray” by Marcel Proust. Before I started reading, I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it was to get through this reading. I found it to be a bit hard to read because of the long... read full post >>

Marcel Proust meticulously described the town of Combray and I maybe loved it. While his drawn out monologues took several tries to decipher, the beauty he found in life’s simplicities helped me immerse myself into his childhood home. I’m not sure if any of you also relate but I found myself at times having to […] read full post >>

Hey everyone! I’m so excited to do this first blog entry and get started with the course! This week’s reading, Marcel Proust’s “Combray” was genuinely like stepping into a whole new universe and was so different compared to anything I’ve read before. It was tough and there were moments of difficulty reading the text but […] read full post >>

Initially delving into the pages of Proust’s “Combray” was confusing and complex for me, his text definitely requires a slow and careful read. I found his storytelling to be similar to a puzzle, a bit perplexing but equally enchanting. However, upon further reading, and being able to understand the text, I enjoyed the chaoticness of […] read full post >>

The work of Proust is a reflection of revisiting childhood memories, revealing the inherent inconsistencies that underscore our limited understanding as children. Essentially, it brings upon many ideas of what it’s like to look back upon the memories you have as a child. The inconsistencies, for example, show how small our minds were and our […] read full post >>

Marcel Proust has written a truly in-depth and meticulously detailed story with Swann’s Way. When I first began reading the chapter Combray, I honestly resented it a bit. This is because every sentence seemed to be enriched with too much detail. It was confusing to read or fully immerse myself in the next. More frustratingly, I was flip-flopping […] read full post >>

Impressions My first impression upon reading Combray was that it is one perplexing piece of literature, especially given that it is the first one we are reading. Not only was I met with a spiral of confusion, but also I would feel lost with the more pages I frantically read, although there were some parts […] read full post >>