RMST Blog

 This text was my favourite by far, and after scrolling through a few blog posts, it's interesting to see that most people share the same opinion. The shrouded woman was a fascinating text that challenged men's views on women in that day in age. It was super cool to read a book from a women's perspective compared to the other two books we have read so far. A theme I found similar was how a woman shouldn't act out and always listen because their husband can take everything away from them.  One of my favourite parts was when Maria spoke about how her beauty is lonely. Everyone was envious of her beauty, and all the men wanted her. Seeing it from her perspective was very eye-opening. But, unfortunately, she is only seen for that, and as a child, she was not given any love because she had enough beauty and was isolated. Isolated physically and emotionally from her family. She told us how she did not look like any of her family members and was not connected to anyone. Total ...

 After reading the first couple of pages of Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant, I did not understand what I was reading at all. All the previous texts I have read are novels. My first initial thought is to try and highlight words to understand the reasoning behind the author and their story. With Paris Peasant, this got me nowhere, and after watching the lecture and searching some things up about this text, I realized that the way I was reading and analyzing the book was all wrong. Even though I still don't fully understand it, Surrealism is a way of releasing our unconscious minds. Louis takes us on a journey of his small peasant town in pairs, describing the architecture, the types of people it draws and how we always have a perceived notion or underlying feeling about these places or things. One of the questions that Jon wanted us to think about was the notion of time in Aragon's text. I feel like the sense of time is lost and moving so fast before anyone can realize it's ...

 I enjoyed reading the first part of Proust's book. The intricate detail in every scenery and memory was breathtaking and truly brought me to experience those feelings. He described many feelings I have felt before and ones I never knew how to put into words. One that stuck with me was the feeling and the difference between sleeping in summer to sleeping in your bed in winter. The particular things we long for and how each feeling is connected to physical material. This could be as simple as the corner of the pillow or the window open. My favourite part of the text was the first couple of opening lines, where Proust describes falling asleep and being so tired that his candle was still lit. He described the feeling of your eyes closing so quickly that you don't have time to even think about it and say to yourself that you are falling asleep. I struggle with horrible insomnia, and specific material things help me sleep and comfort me. When Proust described all these feelings abou...

  Hi, I’m Alyssa Almerling. I am a second-year student majoring in Sociology and minoring in Family Studies. I grew up just outside of UBC and was raised in North Vancouver. I am thrilled to be back on campus and in my childhood neighbourhood again! I have always loved reading different types of literature, and I want to be exposed to many forms of writing style. I hope that with this blog, I can share with you my thoughts and questions about the romance world and language and open your eyes to the modern and post-modern world! The format of this class has inspired me to read as many books as I can. My goal is to make connections throughout the term and find overarching themes and styles from different texts. The Romance Study world is deceiving because it isn't about romance or all the lovey-dovey things that we associate with the word romance. The romance world does not belong to anyone, which I find super fascinating. Anyone can immerse themselves in this literature, and it focu...