It’s about time for an update, I think.
I made it through another busy semester of teaching 5 classes, while writing and doing research on the side as much as possible (the latter being somewhat minimal, considering the former). I feel like my “Monsters in British Literature” class was mostly successful. I taught a few things for the first time, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (pairing it with the new film adaptation), which is always generally enjoyable but does require more planning and prep. I’m supposed to teach two sections of the same class in the spring, but right now my enrollment is low in one section and really low in the other, so to be honest I’m just hoping that at least one of them makes. It would be nice to teach the class again without having to do so much prep, but I guess we’ll see what happens with that.
I decided that over the break I would focus on trying to finish up a second draft of a paper I’ve slowly been working on, which was originally a paper I presented at a conference back in 2017, for the International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS). It’s a paper about how the film We Need to Talk About Kevin adapts the novel, particularly its inclusion of some Robin Hood material. Working on this article-length draft has sent me down some winding roads and rabbit holes in the area of adaptation studies and intertextuality. I’m trying to figure out how exactly to talk about the representation of a particular folk story in novel and film, but portrayed as a specific children’s book rather than as an oral tale or film or whatever. Thomas Leitch, a big name in adaptation studies, wrote an article that claims Robin Hood is an adaptation without a source, based on the fact that so many of us are introduced to Robin Hood through film (an adaptation), and yet there is so definitive source of the legend. Rather, there are a number of anonymous poems and ballads dating from the medieval period that all tell different stories about Robin Hood, which could be considered sources in a way, but that do not trace back to an authoritative beginning, the way that one can consider the Kevin novel to be the source for the Kevin film adaptation of the novel. Anyway, that has been an interesting journey, and I’m hoping I can get that draft finished before the next semester begins. Again, we’ll see!
I think I’ll stop here with this update. At some point in the near future, I’d like to write up a review or reviews of a couple of books I’ve been reading and quite enjoying. They are both by Peters, coincidentally: Peter Wohlleben’s The Heartbeat of Trees (2021) and Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers (1973), the latter of which I picked up on a whim and have found to be downright inspirational as a writing guide, particularly when it comes to freewriting and just writing, not self-censoring and trying to edit before you’ve got your ideas out. Anyway, that will be a future post, for the new year. Until then, best wishes and stay safe!
SylvanSomeThings 