Studying English linguistics and literature part II

A little while ago I started a topic where I stated that I'd like to study English literature and linguistics and I asked people's opinions about it. A few wanted to know about my progress and about the books I'm going to read so that's why I've started a new topic.

I've enrolled a week ago at the university and lessons will start this Monday. I'm quite nervous but also very excited about it. I've bought the books I will have to read this semester which I will list here. I have to admit I haven't read any of these books yet but I know most of them and I always wanted to read these so this is a perfect occasion to study them. I'd like to know your opinion if you have read one or more of these books. I know everyone has different likes and opinions and I'd like to compare some different views before I start reading them myself :)

Subject: Nobel Prize winners since 1950
John Steinbeck Of mice and men
(read and analysed in class - very excited about this one and hoping to read more Steinbeck novels...rated 4*)

Ernest Hemingway The old man and the sea
(read and analysed in class - the story started a bit slow for me but when I came to the struggle between the fish and the old man I grew fond of both of them and how neither wanted to give up. The analysis in class proved that Hemingway used a LOT of symbols in his story...I would never have thought you can discover so much symbolism in such a short novel...rated 2 1/2*...I know it's not much and I did like his use of symbolism during the analysis but the story just couldn't really appeal to me as much as Steinbeck's did)

William Golding Lord of the flies
(Read and analysed in class - very good story about the fall of man and how a group of boys who are stranded on an island try to build up a civilisation at first but eventually give in to their primitive nature and become savage. I'd rate 3 1/2*:))

Saul Bellow Seize the day
(Read and analysed in class - this one was a dissapointment to me, I just couldn't get into the story. Rated 1*)
J.M. Coetzee Disgrace

Subject: Realism
Charles Dickens Hard Times (paused)
George Eliot Middlemarch
(read and analysing in class - see full review below)
William Dean Howells A hazard of new fortunes
Henry James Portrait of a Lady

Subject: Postmodernism
Jonathan Coe What a carve up!
(read and analysed in class - a very entertaining read about a rich and influential family who gathered their fortune by stealing, lying, committing fraude etc. and an author who has the assignment of writing a book about their various acts of crime. In doing so he also gathers information about an unsolved murder and the more his book advances the more mysteries are being unravelled...rated ***)

Don DeLillo White Noise
(Read and analysing in class - didn't think it was very special. I preferred What a Carve up better but White Noise won't become a personal favourite - rated 2*)
Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses
Toni Morrison Beloved (reading now)

What do you mean by "English linguistics"? I think of linguistics as by definition not being specific to any one language, so obviously you mean something different by it than I do.

I think when they say "English linguisitcs" at the university, they mean studying the history of the English language, the grammar, the phonetics etc.

I taught Of Mice and Men to high school juniors for several years, and I love it! It is spare and precise, with interesting characters, and a sense of place and time - without belaboring the historical aspects of the depression.

The characters are deftly sketched and developed, with the exception of Curley's wife - and that is by design. She is not meant to be a full person. (She doesn't even have her own name.)

This was often the first novel my students had read where they had to bring something of themselves. Many of them were used to stories that spelled out every emotion, every relationship, every scene. They weren't used to nuances, unspoken thoughts; and it was a revelation. And fun in a way, despite the sad ending.

Well, your professors obviously aren't too worried about inclusiveness, political correctness, or whatever you like to call it: only two women on the list; only one writer who isn't from England or the US (two at a pinch, if you count Rushdie)...

The Nobel prize winners seem to have been selected for gloominess, but at least they're all fairly short. And there aren't all that many English-language Nobel laureates to choose from since 1950 (unless you count Churchill and Bertrand Russell!).

Don't they give you any poetry? Walcott and Heaney would have made the Nobel list a bit more colourful.

The realism and postmodernism lists look more interesting.

#1 Thank you for posting your book list.

Unfortunately, I am in the same position as yourself in that, "I haven't read any of these books yet, but I know most of them and I always wanted to read these . Also, unfortunately I don't have the perfect occasion to study them.

I will not, therefore, be much use to you, but I hope you don't mind my following your thread as you work your way through the trials and tribulations of your studies.

Good luck with the course.

For typical English-speaking use, linguistics refers more to the 'science'; of language, and not the use of language. An old term, philology, at one time, was used to cross-over both the analysis/theory and the use, but the term is quite infrequent today.

I haven't read everything on the list, but I remember hearing that The Old Man and the Sea (which I did read) had a leaner prose, which was supposed to mean that it did not have complicated sentences. What I don't remember is whether Ernest Hemingway's prose was considered to be very idiomatic.

@Thorold: I have the sort of disadvantage that I start my studies at the university in the second semester. I had to catch up with three courses in college which took place in the first semester before I could graduate. Now that I am graduated from college, I was able to enroll at the university for the second semester. This means that I missed the courses of the first semester (which are, amongst other courses: romanticism (which consists of poetry and prose) and modernism) and I'll probably get those at the beginning of next year.

>8 Sapphiregirl:
Aha - I thought realism and postmodernism were a bit of an odd place to start. Anyway - have fun! Whatever else, there's certainly a lot of good stuff there. You might find some of the books quite hard going for a non-native speaker, especially Middlemarch and Hard Times, but they're worth the effort. Having to write essays is a great motivator for reading books that are a bit outside your normal range.

Hi
I read Beloved for A level English many moons ago. Quite hard work because I was studying literature several years after leaving school and couldn't really get my head around analysing how a story can be dissected and interpreted and the teachers always seemed to think that their interpretation was the 'correct' one. However, I must have got the hang of it as I passed. I remember a 'wow' moment when I found one sentence at the beginning of the book repeated at the end. I tried to make something of it in my essay but I still wonder if Morrison meant it to be!

Middlemarch took me forever (and I'm not a slow reader) but it was worth it just for the feeling of achievement. I think I should read it again soon.

Enjoy :-)

Well I've read Of Mice and Men and we analyzed it yesterday. I really liked the story. It is quite short but it's very emotional and tense and after the analysis at school I discovered that Steinbeck makes use of a lot of symbolic suggestions which makes it even more interesting. So I was pleasantly surprised because it's a genre I normally wouldn't read very easily. I thought about reading it before I went to university because it is a literary classic and I wanted to read as many of those as possible...but up until now I always went for the horror/fantasy genre. But I really recommend this book to everyone, it's not a big book but it reads very fluently and it's very moving. I also like Steinbecks' writing style and I'd like to read "Grapes of Wrath" soon although it is not on my list for school, but I read a small description and I like the way it sounds ^_^

For next week I've started The Old Man and the Sea...for now I liked Steinbeck better but I haven't finished it yet so I can still change my mind about it ^_^. I also need to start with Hard Times and What a Carve up! for next week...and maybe I'd better soon start reading Middlemarch as well since some members here (+ our teacher) are saying it's quite a heavy read...

For Realism, the teacher made up a list of questions (about 5 per book) and we have to discuss one of them. I chose "How are science and religion thematized in the novel?" in Middlemarch. I know I chose the bulkiest book but it seemed like a question with a lot of possibilities (constant debate between science religion etc.). It was a guess since I haven't read any of the books so I don't know whether the answer is stated quite clearly in the book or not...it's also not sure that I will be able to discuss this question...it can still shift according to the number of students participating. If someone has already read Middlemarch it would be great if he/she could tell me whether I have chosen a good question/book to discuss. I'm certainly not asking for help on my homework or anything...just some general ideas are cool :)

>11 Sapphiregirl:
Science and religion in Middlemarch should give you more than enough material. I don't think you'll have any difficulty putting together an interesting essay on that topic.

#11, 12 Ditto what Thorold said.

Ditto again. I think your problem will be keeping to the maximum word limit because you could practically write your own book on the subject. Always better to have too much info than not enough, though.

A bunch of us on LT did a group read of Middlemarch in November and December last year that spread over three threads (about 600 posts in all).

If you're interested, the first thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/100024. Introductions take up about the first 40 posts so the book doesn't really start being discussed until post 42.

It took me almost 2 months to complete it but I was reading alot of other things at the same time. I found the BBC DVD of Middlemarch very helpful in getting a feel for the characters and the times.

I'll be interested in following your reading for this class. Besides Middlemarch, I've only read a few of the others many years ago.

#15: That thread looks really cool and helpful. Thank you very much
I'll see if I can get my hands on that DVD somewhere, my granddad is a real movie freak so I'd be surprised if he hasn't got that one amongst all his other BBC series and movies :D

I was wondering whether there is a way to save a thread as a favorite? The only way I've found out is posting a response in it and then you can track it from the homepage but I can't really response to an old thread like that and just in case I lose the link...

#16 I'm not sure this is the most efficient way to do it (because I know I'm not up on all the LT features), but I'd probably go to the first post of the thread and mark that post a favorite (you put the cursor over the message number, click on it, and they give you an option to save it as a favorite). When you want to find it again, you go to "Talk", click on "Favorite Messages" under "Your World" and it'll be listed there. When you click on the message it will take you to the thread. Hope that's clear and that it helps!

You can star it (see top right hand corner just above the blue message that says (jump to first unread). If you click on that star to turn it yellow the thread will come up when you click on the box on the left (your starred - under 'your world'). Hope that makes sense.

#17 and #18: Great, the starring worked :) Thank you both for the tip and the help, it looks like a very interesting topic about the book and I'll be sure to check it out more closely soon

Just finished What a Carve up!. A very entertaining read given that I never heard of the novel (could be that I once heard the name of the author but I can't seem to remember...) and I'd certainly recommend it to everybody.

I'm about to start Lord of the Flies now...my thoughts and general progress can be found in the first topic which I update as I go along

EDIT: now this must sound silly...but after reading the back the summary of this Lord of the Flies strongly reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Bart, Lisa and their class get stranded on an island and where a "monster" eats all their food (later turns out to be a wild boar) but before they discover this they blame Milhouse and start hunting him down...could it be a reference to this book? I'm starting to like it already and I haven't even read it :D

21: Definitely a reference to the book. In the US most of us read that book in high school. (I think the teachers feel it will help us understand school culture better.)

#20 It's one of the great things about classics, that they are constantly being 'referenced' in all kinds of popular culture. 'The Simpsons', of course, is quite brilliant at doing this but once you get started on this kind of thing you'll find it's endless. The course I'm doing at the moment is on intertextuality (where one text influences or inspires another) and it turns out there's hardly been a decent book written since Don Quixote that hasn't sprung from the loins of another great work. A truly fascinating subject and one that will keep you entertained for the rest of your life as you spot these references every time you read a book or watch TV. I suspect LOTF must be one of the most heavily referenced books around.

#22 I also like it a lot when I spot these little references, it's always clever how they can implement classical music, opera parodies, movie/literary references in another art form

That course you're doing sounds like something I'd do as well when given the chance:D

I'm currently reading Middlemarch...I've read about 100 pages so not much yet considering the number of pages this book has. I'll dedicate my entire week now to this book because I have a group discussion about it this Saturday with some people from my class and I obviously won't be of much use if I haven't read some of it by then. I'm going to try to read about 100 pages a day...I haven't got many classes and am usually at home in the afternoon or in the evening so I guess I should be able to have read about half of it by Saturday.

It's a bit difficult for me to get into the story. Sometimes Eliot uses such a complicated vocabulary that I have to re-read certain passages 3 to 4 times before I somewhat understand them. Usually when I'm reading a passage that I understand I find it a good read and I really get sucked into the story but then I suddenly come across something more difficult and the magic's gone again so it's quite hard.

I've almost finished Lord of the Flies and I liked it. We've seen in class today that the manuscript has been turned down by 21 publishing companies before it got printed and the main reason was that it was "to dark and depressing" but I like it that way. A good novel doesn't always have to have a happy ending. He did quite a good job in portraiting how easy humans can turn savage again when isolated for a while without any figures of authority or rules to restrain them

I went to the school library today...and I couldn't resist borrowing a book with all sorts of occult short-stories from the Victorian Period. I've been looking for such stories for a while and thought it would be a welcome change if Dickens or Eliot becomes a bit much and I want to skip to some lighter reading...as if I haven't got enough to do already :D

EDIT: I didn't have the book with Victorian ghost stories with me when I first created this post but I've found it now. It's The Supernatural Omnibus: Hauntings and Horror v. 1 by Montague Summers

Middlemarch is quite hard, there's no doubt about it (that's what I meant really about it needing more time) but it is infinitely rewarding so I hope you'll hit your stride soon. It can also help to make a few little notes as you go through, just to remind yourself who is whom and what is happening to them. Good luck.

I think I'm finally getting more into the story concerning Middlemarch. It still reads slower than I thought it would but I finally seem to understand most of the family ties and who's married to who etc. and the story is starting to get clearer as well so I'm starting to enjoy it :)

Maybe I could read the beginning again when I've finished the novel...now that I have a better view of the relation between the different characters the beginning which was at first so difficult to understand could be clearer when I read it a second time...but I guess I'll have to get through it at least once to begin with :D

Sooooo...next update...I've finished Lord of the Flies (for my opinion, see my first post ^^). I've had my groups discussion about Middlemarch today. It went well, we need to write a rapport of max. 5 pages about how science and religion are thematized in that novel. I haven't finished the whole novel just yet but I've managed to get through half of it and it was a fun discussion. But now that discussion is over I'm still able to take on a more relaxed tempo on Middlemarch so that's cool :D

I'll probably start White Noise this week due Friday...
So that's that, and now I should really get away from this site and continue with copying my notes

See you at the next update

I've just finished Seize the Day by Saul Bellow and I have to admit I didn't really like it. I felt some symathy for the characters but I guess it just a story I can't enjoy very much

Thanks for that! Seize the Day is one of those boks I've always felt I should read but didn't really want to - you just allowed me to walk away without feeling guilty! How's the Middlemarch report going?

Well I would never say something like "I wouldn't recommend this book" because we all have different tastes so maybe you have another judgement than I have but I personally was glad it wasn't more than 118 pages :D

Middlemarch is going well, we divided the tasks amongst the group members so we could work out different aspects in pairs. I worked with someone of our group on the character of Dorothea Brooke and how she represents science and religion. I think the end result of our bit was very well written.Two other team members will put everything together today and then we can post it onto Blackboard. I'm still reading it though...I'm a bit stuck in the middle but it's mainly because I'd like to take a little break from it. The story is really getting interesting once you get used to all the characters but after a whole week of reading nothing but that heavy literature I'm glad that I can now turn to something lighter again :)

Recently finished White Noise by Don Delillo. It hasn't captivated me much though. I tried to appreciate it but it didn't quite live up to my expectations. While reading the reviews at the back of my book they all said it was funny so I was expecting myself to a fun read but it was a bit of a disappointment. Rated it 2*. It had its good parts, especially part II with the toxic cloud...I thought that part read very good but the rest wasn't much to my liking. I prefer What a Carve up much better

Finished Middlemarch :)
Before I started it, I feared it was going to be one long torture but it turned out all right in the end. The first 100-120 pages were difficult for me. The language is quite hard for someone who doesn't have English as native tongue and I still had to figure out how all the characters related to each other but when I somewhat figured this out, it became very enjoyable.

MINOR SPOILERS
I got very involved in the story and quite attached to certain characters. I felt sorry for Lydgate and his failed marriage and I really didn't like Rosamond and her mother who were so spoiled, narrow-minded and who thought they were better than anyone else and regarded status as thé most imporant thing in life. I also got somewhat nervous with the relationship between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw that, near the ending I almost shouted out loud "Oh for God's sake, just get married already" xD. If I start behaving like this and constantly exclaiming things like "This isn't going to look good for Lydgate" and "I wonder how Rosamond is going to respond to THAT", it's a proof that I'm enjoying it ^^
I also liked reading the whole affair about Bulstrode's scandalous past being revealed and reading about all the gossips that came with it and how they mistakenly accused Lydgate of taking bribes to keep quiet...it made me feel sorry for Lydgate but gave a somewhat humorous insight in the gossiping women in a small community.
END SPOILER

I was also very impressed that a woman was able to write a novel of such epic proportions in an age where women weren't supposed to have an opinion about science or religion, which is represented throughout the whole book. I especially liked the very last paragraph;

"Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

That really gave me goosebumps because it made me aware of so many unknown people who must have done good deeds which were so small that they never got a lot of attention but have had a great impact on the lives of other people and that maybe hundreds of those people have never gotten the attention and thanks they deserved...

While analysing this book in class, our teacher said that when you read this book and feel like trowing it out of the window and then changing your mind, go outside, pick it up and start reading again, it's a good book and I admit I had that feelsing several times when I started reading it

I'm not yet going to rate it though. I feel like I should read it a second time in order to fully appreciate it because I had a hard time understanding the beginning of the novel but I'll need a little break first :)

Good review, Sapphiregirl. I enjoyed Middlemarch, too, and reading your comments brings back all the wonderful characters and writing. What did you think of Casaubon?

I felt really sad for Causabon. He spent his entire life working on that book which will never be finished so all his hard work was in vain + his marriage with Dorothea wasn't as good as he expected it...but I had less trouble understanding the relationship Lydgate-Rosamond than Causabon-Dorothea

I think the reason is that the relationship between Dorothea and Causabon is explained in the beginning of the novel when I still had some difficulty getting used to the language and the characters whereas the marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate was explained much later. This is probably one of the reasons why I should read it again...to be able to understand some of the characters better than I did now.

I can see why you'd find it difficult going, particularly in a second language.

SPOILER ALERT To me, Dorothea admired and married Casaubon for what he appeared to be, and to help fulfill her longing to make a difference. She started getting disenchanted with him when she saw he was not the man she thought he was. At the same time, he wanted her to be an acolyte at all times, and (not necessarily cruelly, but effectively) oppressed her lively spirit. I found him sad but also petty, pompous and intolerable, and I was relieved when she was free of him. He was petty and self-centered even after death, though, providing in the will that she'd get nothing if she married Laidlaw.

What do you mean by "English linguistics"?

Great thread.

Lorax- Of course you are correct about the ‘one world’ thing for linguistics but believe me, there is enough to study in “English linguistics” alone to last a lifetime.

Sapphiregirl- On your profile page. “Hi all” would more properly have been “Hi ya,ll”