“Let’s try something different and see what happens”––the motto for this paper and project. I raided SurLaLune’s adaptation pages before settling on Before Midnight. The description of the story attracted me: Dokey’s interpretation harkens to Cinderella's French roots, retaining the culture and names of Perrault’s version. As the online synopsis promised, the author would focus on Cendrillon’s relationship with her father, an element lost or neglected in many of the variants, and a new character, Raoul, would assist in the heroine’s quest for identity. “Entertaining,” “Fun,” “Unique,” cried the Amazon reader reviews.
Squarebooks.com. ISBN 9781416934714. Visa. Click Yes for Payment.
The book arrives, and I am startled that the paperback looks like a drugstore Harlequin, only 50% shorter. I start reading: “My, what big print you have little book!” And then I realize that this novel is intended for teens. However, throughout the story, I found myself entertained and engaged in the lives of the characters, always asking, “What will happen next?” or “How will the author work in trop [X] from the original tale?” Dokey, clearly cognizant of the ubiquity of the tale and her audience’s knowledge of it, set out to write a fairy tale adaptation that was both fast paced and different.
I finish the novel, and then I’m stumped. How on earth am I going to write a paper about a book for teenagers? Dokey’s novel is highly prescriptive; she telegraphs the meaning behind major events to her readers. That’s okay––many fairy tale authors do this (such as Perrault’s morals at the end of his tales). However, as an Honors College English major, I have written strictly about informational and classic literary texts. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Austen are descriptivists, for they want the reader to create the meaning, and professors want your “meaning” in an MLA-sourced paper. The challenge to this paper was finding an appropriate way to extrapolate “meaning” from telegraphic storytelling.
So, like any critic, I revisited the text––the language and the words and I asked questions. The answers became the first draft of the paper. The second draft expanded the scope of my arguments, situating the paper within a modern cultural context as opposed to confining the thesis within the jurisdiction of Dokey’s prose. The result was a paper that I am both proud of and a challenge that was indeed rewarding. Now, I, as an undergraduate in English education, am more aware of adolescent stories as a body of “literature” not to mention the importance of feeding teenagers literature that challenges their hearts and minds as a future teacher. I can already imagine having a discussion with my future students about the story of Cinderella as a metaphor for prom night, while introducing culturally-relevant criticism that will (hopefully) make them stop and think about their actions and their participation in high school rituals.
Digitizing my writing has made my words come to life. I feel like my page on the website invites the reader into my thought process. For instance, when I was working with Dokey’s Gothic landscape in writing the first draft, the cover image of Harvard University’s annotated edition of Wuthering Heights was present in my mind. By adding color to the short quotes in the paper, I wanted to show how certain elements weave together to inform my interpretation of the novel. All of the sources that I have uploaded to the site contain my original highlights and comments from my research process which allows readers to see deeper into my literary perspective. And plus, it was totally fun playing with all the Weebly features.
So, in the end, I tried something different by writing on an adolescent work of literature and uploading my thoughts online, and what has happened? I hope it’s something both informative, literary, and magical.
Squarebooks.com. ISBN 9781416934714. Visa. Click Yes for Payment.
The book arrives, and I am startled that the paperback looks like a drugstore Harlequin, only 50% shorter. I start reading: “My, what big print you have little book!” And then I realize that this novel is intended for teens. However, throughout the story, I found myself entertained and engaged in the lives of the characters, always asking, “What will happen next?” or “How will the author work in trop [X] from the original tale?” Dokey, clearly cognizant of the ubiquity of the tale and her audience’s knowledge of it, set out to write a fairy tale adaptation that was both fast paced and different.
I finish the novel, and then I’m stumped. How on earth am I going to write a paper about a book for teenagers? Dokey’s novel is highly prescriptive; she telegraphs the meaning behind major events to her readers. That’s okay––many fairy tale authors do this (such as Perrault’s morals at the end of his tales). However, as an Honors College English major, I have written strictly about informational and classic literary texts. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Austen are descriptivists, for they want the reader to create the meaning, and professors want your “meaning” in an MLA-sourced paper. The challenge to this paper was finding an appropriate way to extrapolate “meaning” from telegraphic storytelling.
So, like any critic, I revisited the text––the language and the words and I asked questions. The answers became the first draft of the paper. The second draft expanded the scope of my arguments, situating the paper within a modern cultural context as opposed to confining the thesis within the jurisdiction of Dokey’s prose. The result was a paper that I am both proud of and a challenge that was indeed rewarding. Now, I, as an undergraduate in English education, am more aware of adolescent stories as a body of “literature” not to mention the importance of feeding teenagers literature that challenges their hearts and minds as a future teacher. I can already imagine having a discussion with my future students about the story of Cinderella as a metaphor for prom night, while introducing culturally-relevant criticism that will (hopefully) make them stop and think about their actions and their participation in high school rituals.
Digitizing my writing has made my words come to life. I feel like my page on the website invites the reader into my thought process. For instance, when I was working with Dokey’s Gothic landscape in writing the first draft, the cover image of Harvard University’s annotated edition of Wuthering Heights was present in my mind. By adding color to the short quotes in the paper, I wanted to show how certain elements weave together to inform my interpretation of the novel. All of the sources that I have uploaded to the site contain my original highlights and comments from my research process which allows readers to see deeper into my literary perspective. And plus, it was totally fun playing with all the Weebly features.
So, in the end, I tried something different by writing on an adolescent work of literature and uploading my thoughts online, and what has happened? I hope it’s something both informative, literary, and magical.