Stress Has Much Abated

There's been a lot of crap going on in the last few days, but over half of my culminating projects are finished and need never be spoken of again. Now I only must write my Name of the Rose and French essays, make stuffed onions, and honour my commitments to the art gallery. All in all, it's a very agreeable pace.

By The Way, my essay outline for Name Of The Rose:





IntroductionThesis: The Name Of The Rose is a work that is consciously influenced by magic realism and the detective genre, yet subverts several of the characteristics of both movements in order to fuse them into a cohesive whole.

Part: Magic Realism in The Name Of The RoseTheme: The Name Of The Rose is set in a superstitious society where magic and science are interchangeable, where the Devil is as present in the people's beliefs as God is. There is also a need to 'follow the leader', and a great amount of corruption amongst the leaders. The similarities between this society and that of the towns protrayed in the works of Marquez, Neruda, and others are striking.

Works to be referenced: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold, poems of Neruda, The Name Of The Rose, possibly others.

Part: The Detective Genre Pastiched in The Name Of The RoseTheme: William and Adso are the spitting image of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, or Auguste Dupin and his anonymous companion. The inequality of the iconic relationship is explored and subverted to great effect within context of the novel. Besides this, several cliches that one comes to expect with a typical deductive mystery are also played with.

Works to be referenced: Sherlock Holmes, Murder On The Rue Morgue, Name Of The Rose, poems of Weldon Kees.

Part: Deduction as Magic RealismTheme: Deduction in the detective genre is in itself a marriage of the trivial and the serious, the practical and the impractical. In this respect, it is a very close cousin of magical realism. Indeed, the father of magic realism, Jorge Luis Borges, appears to have drawn a great amount of inspiration from the father of the detective genre, Edgar Allen Poe.
Works to be referenced: Jorge Luis Borges's short stories, Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Chronicle Of A Death Foretold, The Name Of The Rose.

Conclusion: [See thesis]
As you can see, I may have overextended myself.