I’m glad of the arrival of the new movie Bright Star, based on the life of poet John Keats. Really, it’s high time Hollywood produced a movie based on the romantic and absolutely fascinating life of this famous poet. Bright Starfocuses on Keats’ relationship with his neighbor Fanny Brawne, and the subsequent influence Brawne has had on the subject and nature of his work. Hopefully, the film will spark a fresh wave of interest in Keats, someone whose life hasn’t provided the kind of mainstream biographical interest as his contemporaries, Byron and Shelley.
Bright Star also got me thinking about the many if-not-great then at least ’solid’ biopics that have recently been produced on the lives of poets. Of course, we don’t prescribe to a biographical reading of any author’s work (we are strictly Barthesian in believing that the author is dead), but we whole-heartedly enjoy the singular sensation of watching the real-life, actual persona of a poet — a creator of poetic fictions — become the subject of a fictional portrayal itself. No one can possibly argue that a Hollywood biopic has any relevance in the discipline of academic biography, so the pleasures we experience in watching them are intently and completely based on fictional — i.e., entertainment — value. These poetic biopics are wholly ‘meta’, unapologetically middle-brow, and greatly entertaining, with small trivia takeaways that become of value later in board games and dinner conversation. We love them! And, without further ado, here are our five favorites.
The title of Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken, is often confused as The Road Less Travelled. Once you read to the end of this Prize Winning Poem you will understand why.
As beautiful as the sentences that come out of the brains of people like Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, or William Faulkner are, they are definitely of a different generation of thinkers than you students. You love their work, but you can’t really relate, on a tangible level, to what they say. Right? Or was the first time you read Ulysses the moment when you recognized your own soul inside the fictional framework of a literary character? Yeah right. Gimme a break.
I love Joyce as much as anyone else does. Heck, I’ll take your Joyce, and I’ll raise you a Samuel Beckett. I adore tough modernist literature as much as the next dude, but I’ll admit that I (a twenty-something former English major — I’m not that much older than you, dear student, even though in your eyes I might be ancient) have trouble relating to Estragon on a personal level. We speak a different language now. We are stuck in a post-modern fugue, and the entire landscape of literature has changed.
Luckily, there are many writers that consistently produce masterpiece-level literature and write through a modern lense. These writers talk about things like television, anti-depressants, and the Internet. Finally, someone who speaks our language! While we may not read them (yet) as a part of the canon of literature, these hip writers will one day be the Ezra Pounds of our generation. They are people that you should know and read, and here are 5 of our favorites:
Family Guy is rife with unabashed references to pop culture so it is no surprise that the show takes some jabs at literature as well. The parodies referenced below are strikingly similar to the original literature being referenced, only featuring family guy characters instead. Watching any of the episodes below is perhaps the most entertaining way to introduce yourself to one of the five following essay worthy topics, so enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
We love literature. We love music. But try telling your English teacher that listening to music helps you better understand literature when you’re caught listening to your iPod in class…
Actually, the connection between pop music and classical literature isn’t as far fetched as it seems. Though it may not always be obvious, pop stars do read — at least, they occasionally read. How else would they be able to write such great songs based on literary works? Below, our 5 favorites with links to their music videos and descriptions of the work in question.
