A Cracked and Bloody Chalice:
The Distortion of the Celtic Divine Feminine
in Lady Macbeth
This began its life as an essay about the pagan Celtic elements in Macbeth, but I quickly realized that was much too large a topic (especially for the word limit set in the assignment!). Thus, I scaled back to just the warped goddess aspects found in Lady Macbeth. That was still plenty to fill a paper, and was a lot of fun to explore. Was Shakespeare thinking about all this when he wrote the play? Not bloody likely. But the remnants are there, and he could have picked up on them as easily as anyone.
Morgan le Fay:
The Eternal Shapechanger
Rather than being a proper essay, this is actually the text of a verbal presentation I made in Dr. Geraldine Heng's Medieval Arthurian Literature class. I just wanted to be sure we looked at Morgan from both sides, especially since we'd be watching Excalibur but not reading The Mists of Avalon. Still, it's not as far afield as the first presentation I made for that class, where I talked about how sexy dissonance was in music at the time and played some steamy medieval love songs as proof.
Deep and Difficult Eyes:
The Insistence of Vision in Jane Eyre
I had read Jane Eyre before, of course, but re-reading it in Carol Mackay's class that year was an epiphany. That happens sometimes... for whatever reason, the story may have something to tell you the second time around (or third, or fourth) that you wouldn't have thought about on the first reading. This is why the best books are books you have to keep, because you never know when you'll need to read them again to see what they have to say now.
When Hope Rattles the Cage:
Impressions and Explorations of Confinement
in Women's Autobiographical Writings
Writing this paper was like running a marathon. I had all these notes and ideas, and knew which texts I wanted to use, and knew that I wanted to build it around the word "confinement" -- but when I sat down to write, I did not know that it would end the way it did, or that I would make the connections I did in the end. Looking back it at now, though, I can't imagine doing anything else with it. I just love that moment when you finally know exactly where the story/essay/whatever is going, and you realize that's where you were going all along, even if you didn't see it.
Glamour Girls:
Explorations of Women, Magic and Sexual Power
in Yvain and Le Morte D'Arthur
Here's another paper for Gerry Heng's Medieval Arthurian Lit class, that ended up being much more fun to write than is probably allowed. The original included another section dealing with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it wasn't as well developed as the remaining analyses you see here. When I can figure out how to successfully integrate the "why Sir Gawain has to dress up in women's clothing to triumph" theme into this piece, it'll go back in.
Confessions of a Creative Slacker
This isn't an academic paper, and as such isn't quite as formally structured as some of the other pieces here. It started as an article for a now erstwhile paper zine. It's a little rough, but, I think any creative person who's been hit with the procrastination bug can still find a truth or two within.
God's Beloved:
In Which the Author Ponders
Life, the Universe, and Amadeus
It's no secret that I am a big Mozart geek. Big. Huge. Just in time for the commemoration of Mozart's birthday, January, 2003, I thought I'd get down some of my thoughts about what brought me to this pass in the first place, the First Cause of my Mozart geekery: Amadeus.
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