“And in the same way, also, the thoughts of the dying are quite often turned toward the aspect of death that is real, painful, dark, visceral, toward the underside of death, which is in fact the side it presents to them and so harshly makes them feel, and which more closely resembles a crushing burden, […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with being, childhood, Dreams, family, memory, space, time
This week’s reading, Combray by Marcel Proust, definitely challenged me. The reading was a lot different than my usual weekly school readings. It was filled with intricate details and imaginative meanings but yet I still found it hard to pay attention. Just a few pages into the reading I found myself confused about the setting […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with childhood, dream, memory, past
Combray: Section 1 The novel opens with the narrator drifting in and out of consciousness, describing all the thoughts and memories that sneak into his mind as fatigue blurs out his rational thinking. The main story told was from his childhood, he recounted the days spent in his grandparents’ house where he was sent to […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with church, family, memory, relationships
Since this is my first blog, I’d like to share what I think are the highlights of my reading of Proust’s “Combray”. I’d like to focus on two broad aspects of my reading of the story: the writing style and the central theme of the novel. First of all, it is obvious that the story […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with childhood, experience, memory, relationships
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is a novel about the friendship between the narrator Elena and Lila. This novel follows many themes that we have noticed in previous readings such as childhood and memory. Although it seems like Elena is in competition with her best friend Lila, I believe Elena does care and looks …
For my penultimate blog post, I found myself reading Agualusa’s text closely to find overlap on the various themes found across the course readings. Memory is something which we looked closely at in all the readings—the certainty of events, and the unreliable narration which so often leads to the label of fiction for the stories. […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with convention, Entries, memory, romance world
Hey Everyone, Wow, this novel had a lot to unpack. It covers sociological concepts like the reproduction of inequality, as well as romance, betrayal, and jealousy through the story of friendship. The friendship between Lila and Elena reminded me of the Gossip Girl characters Blair and Serena, as these young women navigate their changing lives […]
Posted in Blogs, Ferrante | Tagged with Elena Ferrante, friendship, gossip girl, literature, memory, My brilliant friend, romancestudies, romanticliterature, ubc, Womanhood
I really enjoyed this book and I wish I had more time to spend reading and enjoying it. I found there to be a lot of different dimensions within it, such as the relationships and dynamics between the girls and the other characters, the opposing classes, the use of language and education, the violence, the […]
Posted in Blogs, Ferrante | Tagged with childhood, class, death, education, family, memory, modernism, violence
The text The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by José Eduardo Agualusa is set after Angolia’s independence, which also reflects government structures and changes in that structure. The novel’s narrator, Benchimol, recently got a divorce and thus goes to a resort or hotel to be able to rest and recuperate. He’s also a journalist whole tends […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with deja-vu, Dreams, memory
This week’s reading The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by José Eduardo Agualusa revolved around dreams. Dreams have always fascinated me, as it probably should for any psychology major. The lecture mentioned how dreams are often considered to be opposed to practicality, and while I believe that can be true at times (with all of its […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Dreams, memory, psychology
