Critical Theory: Bringing it all together

Hello, all! Lovely to write again, and I hope your Thanksgivings, for those of you who celebrated, were completely delightful; I know mine was. <3

So, this semester I have been in a class called "Critical Theory," which sounds incredibly daunting, but in actuality has been pretty fun and interesting, especially when paired with a delightful assortment of pop culture and an option to do the semester project on whatever one's little heart desires. We were told to find something that we wouldn't mind spending gobs of time in and around, something that we were already pretty interested in and wouldn't mind re-reading or seeing what other people have said about it.

That, for me, happened to be my very favorite novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'm certain I've mentioned before, my ardent feelings for this particular novel; I first read it less than a year ago, in Ireland no less, and have fallen madly in love with this work by the famous sass-master, Mr. Oscar Wilde.

Wilde's statue in Dublin. I'm just like, excuse me, sir, you are deceased. You are not supposed to have more sass than me.

 Anyway, so the book was chosen, and I decided to focus, for the most part, on the character of Sibyl Vane, and specifically on the scene when Dorian breaks off their engagement.

As part of this project, I created four separate parts- a prospectus, a close reading, a survey of criticism, and an application of one of the theories we've learned to our chosen text. This project was special though- it was a multi-genre project (a concept which confused me to no end until it was more clearly explained); there were different "genres" or formats from which we could choose to present each given part. Now, here I am at the end, and making some semblance of sense to these parts and how they connect. What'd be cute is to to create a fun spider web or something to show which parts of which connect to the rest, but lets face it, 1) I've already made a prezi and this is not it 2)I'm not that tech-savvy, and anyway, this is a blog; we use words, so this will have to do:

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Now, the first part of this project was a prospectus, where I gave a general idea of what I was going for in the project as a whole. For this part, I wrote a poem. I'm not gonna lie and say it's a masterpiece, but it gets the job done and for highlights the points of interest that can be found early on. It mentions a lot and is more general, because I hadn't quite narrowed my focus yet. Here is both the poem, and a short explanation:

http://criticaltheoryoscarwilde.blogspot.com/2014/12/part-1-prospectus.html

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The next part was the close reading, and this one was so very different from what I've done for any other English class: I made art! This part looks closely at the specific scene I mentioned earlier. A lot of the words and phrases that I found so tantalizing in the first place were heavily focused on in this section. In fact, a lot of the quotes that I used in my poem became focal points for my close reading.

Here's my actual work of art:

Ba-BAM! Clearly I've missed my calling. If anyone's interested, I'm willing to sell the original for like a trillion dollars or something. Lol, kidding. . .  more like 2 trillion. ^_'

And here is a brief explanation:

http://criticaltheoryoscarwilde.blogspot.com/2014/12/part-2-art-project.html

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On now to part three! This part of the project was closer to, if not quite, what I'm used to. Here, I did a lot of research to see what other people have said about my man Oscar and his work. For this part I kind of panned out, so the focus is on the novel as a whole, with a little bit of Wilde thrown in. The major theories I found were on aestheticism, but there were some other interesting theories as well, like "Utopian," "philosophic," and "pluralist" theories.  Aestheticism, actually, is very likely a significant reason that all of those pretty words and phrases were used by Wilde; art has to be beautiful for it to serve it's purpose of being art (which is it's whole point of existing). So, what better way for an author to do that then to use such lovely phrases that just sound and feel lovely on one's tongue; seriously, I just love saying the word "exquisite,"and the phrase "long-drawn music" is actually has  a musical quality to it, and that makes me so very happy.

For this bit of the project I made a Prezi:

https://prezi.com/trsxn14pa9jn/criticisms-the-picture-of-dorian-gray/

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Then, finally, after the months of learning about different literary theories, I got the opportunity to apply one myself. Of all of the theories we learned about in class, the one that seemed like the most fun to apply to Sibyl Vane was feminism, and specifically a theory called the "fallen woman." After a teeny bit of research to understand the specific theory I was dealing with, I set to work analyzing Sibyl Vane's role in the novel through that lens. It's so interesting, the things one can notice, when you look closely at a text from an angle you've never tried before. 

This part was actually just a normal essay, which is something I am significantly more comfortable doing:  

 http://criticaltheoryoscarwilde.blogspot.com/2014/12/part-4-critical-analysis-essay.html                 

 This part, I believe, tied everything back together. It was based off of my original idea, looking at Sibyl and her moments in Dorian Gray, doing a close reading, though this one covering more than the first, and then applying one of the theories I learned about and even did a little research on.

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So, there it is. The linking threads between these pieces are, well, Sibyl Vane, and actually the language that is used in the novel is a unifying factor, too, since every part of this project touched on that. The last part especially, seemed to bring it all together, in application of other techniques used in the rest of the project, and also looping the focus back around to Sibyl .

It's not super exciting, obviously, but if anyone's interested, here's my works cited page:
(which I'm going to warn you ahead of time, is refusing to copy and paste correctly, so there are some weird gaps in there and it's not at all spaced correctly)
http://criticaltheoryoscarwilde.blogspot.com/2014/12/ambers-works-cited-page.html

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Anyway, so that's my project. Fun, right? Never expected, when going into this class, that I'd have to employ my mad art skills, or my superior presentation-constructing talents, but here we are. I was pleased and surprised with what I ended up finding out while doing this project, both in what other critics have said and in what I observed myself.

Since I didn't have a real web, I thought I'd invite nerdy spider. She likes Oscar Wilde, too.

 Well, that's all folks! Oscar Wilde was a pretty fab writer, and I'm kind of a big fan. It's reasons like this why I'm an English major. Okay, well hope you all have a great day and/or holiday season in general. Bye!