Research

I’ve been nostalgic for the honors cohort and my quarter-long research topic. Fortunately, though, I’ll be working on two projects that fit right into my fairy tale fantasy fixation this quarter. To be honest, I think I expected to like postmodernist literature more, which had made me apprehensive about the final research project. However, Jeanette Winterson’s “Sexing the Cherry” is fantastic. She combines and retells “The 12 Dancing Princesses” with “Rapunzel" into a feminist commentary of a novel. She’s influenced by Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis of fairy tales. Combine the two, and I have a research project that continues my interest in feminist literature from last quarter with my desire to do something that gets into reconstructed and retold fairy tales. 

I first encountered Bettelheim in an LSAT reading prompt, of all places, and now that I have his book “Uses of Enchantment; The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” checked out from the library and ordered off of Amazon, I’m wondering how I got this far through the English major without using or referencing his works, considering how much of my honors thesis dealt with reusing or reinterpreting myths and tales.

And in medieval literature, I’ve gotten my professor behind my idea to look at the influence of Beowulf in the Tolkein-esque fantasy sub genre, at least as the optional bonus paper. This is going to be a fantastic next month or researching and writing!