burgundyrain
Reptile Researcher
Working on a PhD on the ASOUE books.
Posts: 11
Likes: 15
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Post by burgundyrain on Jan 15, 2019 8:09:44 GMT -5
Well, hello to everyone in this lovely community !
I've been somewhat present on this forum for at least three years now, but never actually introduced myself and I'm ashamed I never did ! So used to just read everything in the shadows... Anyways, you can call me Rain, and as you probably guessed, I am from France !
My main motivation for being here, despite being a HUGE lover of every Snicket book, as we all do, is to find more inspiration and ideas for my research. Indeed, I'm currently finishing my graduate studies, and I have to write a master's thesis which I decided to center around ASOUE. The title of my thesis is the following: "Repetition in the Children's Book Series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket"
It is due in three months (have been intermittently working on it for the past two years). I have to make a lot of choices and open the field to postmodernism and 20th-century philosophical ideas surrounding repetition. I also challenge the idea of the series being a "children's book series" and discuss how the repetitive patterns of the series contribute(d) to its success, for both adult and young readers.
I'm so grateful for being able to write on my favourite book series for my to-date most important work ever !!
I hope to find interesting ideas that can fuel my work, and I would be delighted to share my final work if anyone is interested !
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Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Jan 16, 2019 0:39:30 GMT -5
Welcome Rain! I've been working on various research projects focused on ASOUE before. If you can share it with us, I'd love to read your thesis! There are a lot of Snicketologists around here who can probably help you to enrich your work, especially Dante and @dante. Hope you enjoy your stay and become an active member of this community!
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Jan 16, 2019 7:02:34 GMT -5
Hi BurgundyRain! I'm also very interested in ASOUE from an academic perspective (from most perspectives, to be fair). Off the top of my head, I have nothing to suggest for your thesis other than 'Repetition makes a lot of the funny things in ASOUE funny and a lot of the sad things sad', which I'm sure isn't the most groundbreaking idea. Still, I agree with Zortegus - anything that you feel you can share would be exciting for me, and probably a lot of us here, to read. May I ask what your field of study is? I'm guessing literary studies or something like that, but I'm curious about your specific angle on the series.
I hope you'll find something useful here, and that you'll enjoy being part of 667!
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Post by Dante on Jan 16, 2019 8:59:44 GMT -5
Hello, burgundyrain. An interesting, fruitful choice of subject for your MA; I also wrote my Master's Thesis on ASoUE, though I focussed more on genre and allusion. Repetition as a focus should definitely provide you with a wealth of material, though, as ASoUE is strongly informed by a structural formula which it's in more or less constant debate with over the course of the series. I would say the series uses repetition, perhaps paradoxically, to create difference; or perhaps you might think of it as establishing the grounds for difference to have an impact. There are guardians, and they are at first well-meaning, then unhelpful, then flat-out non-existent; Count Olaf appears first as himself, then in one disguise after another, and then it's the Baudelaires who are in disguise; there are alliterative titles, until there aren't; thirteen chapters, until there aren't; and so on. I know that one of the most important factors in my own enjoyment of the series was the way the story fell into patterns about which predictions could be made, but never with complete certainty. Good luck with your thesis.
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burgundyrain
Reptile Researcher
Working on a PhD on the ASOUE books.
Posts: 11
Likes: 15
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Post by burgundyrain on Jan 16, 2019 15:40:45 GMT -5
Thank you so much for the warm welcome !
@comet I study English literature, civilization and linguistics (called "LLCER Etudes Anglophones" here in France) - though I specialise in literature, and more precisely in children's literature and postmodernism. Children's literature is not studied at all in France, and I've actually found out about this field of research when on exchange in Vancouver. I love the fact that something seemingly for younger readers actually holds so much more for older readers, making some books enjoyable at all ages and for different reasons.
So, I'm obviously considering aSoUE as a children's book series, though it shares many characteristics with the Gothic and some 18th-century novel patterns - making its categorization really difficult (in the manner of the Alices, for instance). I will use both the "literature" and "linguistics" angles to prove that repetition is indeed one of the main factor that make aSoUE such a great and famous series.
The most interesting and challenging part of the thesis will be the third one -- should be on the origin of meaning (i.e. the sugar-bowl, the meaning of "V.F.D") and the importance - or lack - of the search, rather than that of the result. Repetition therefore seems to "bury" the meaning of certain aspects of the story, in the manner of a "rhizome" (theorised by Deleuze) that would make the story appear to go into endless loops (the return to Briny Beach, the "rebirth" of a Beatrice Baudelaire, the keep-going-forward aspect of the story) -- but really, in a way that repetition MAKES the story live and continue, beyond the "boring" aspect of it. It is basically the "movement is life"," even if it is the same one, and "stasis is death" theories (death of the author, death of creativity, death of the characters, etc.)
Sorry, I got a little carried away -- always happens when I talk about something I love !
I was wondering in what type of format I could share my thesis - it is 70 pages long for now, planning to make it 160. If you have any ideas
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Jan 22, 2019 15:22:13 GMT -5
That sounds very interesting! I'm a linguistics student myself, so it's nice that there's some overlap. I'm not familiar with Deleuze, but I think I'm getting the overall point. I know your focus is more on the literary than the linguistic aspects, but if you can use some inspiration on the linguistic aspect, a while back I did a short uni assignment on the use of Grice's maximes for humour in ASOUE (don't feel obliged to read it, I'm just mentioning it in case you have some use for it). It's tangential to what you're writing about, but now you know it's there, anyway. Don't be sorry at all for getting carried away - it's interesting stuff! I don't know which format it would be best to share your thesis in. I think there's enough people here who would be interested in something like that for you to make a whole new thread about it.
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Post by Reba on Jan 22, 2019 17:54:59 GMT -5
the application Of Kierkegaard’s Repetition to ASOUE
Constantin Constantius = Montgomery Montgomery One-way epistolary = Dear Dairy
idk just spitballing. est-ce que vous connaissez La Pente Glissante ? Un Autre forum pour les frogs
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