Within the reigns of The New Dawn
of Vampire Literature, a class I never expected to take, I learned much more
than I expected. While I thought the class would merely focus on vampires and
analyzing literature, I also got to experience (and learn more about) more
developed literary theory than I had encountered so far. We did a lot of work
with literary analysis using different types of theory, which I ended up having
a lot more fun with than I expected. Since I had so much to say on the topic, I
would have to say that Twilight is
the piece of literature that I had the most fun with. I particularly liked criticizing
the novel from a feminist perspective.
Twilight is often looked at as an anti-feminist piece of
literature, since Bella is (in my opinion) such a helpless, dependent
protagonist. A classic example of her submissive personality is after being saved
by Edward by a group of men. “’Drink,’ he ordered. I sipped at my soda
obediently, and then drank more deeply, surprised by how thirsty I was” (Meyer
44). Bella, unable to think for herself, is always in need of some direction or
a man in charge. This is just one example of many ways to tear apart the text
with feminist theory. Though it is easy to look like a bra-burning man hater
when using feminist theory, I really just enjoyed the opportunities to
scrutinize Twilight presented in
nearly every scene.
Literary theory, as a whole, was a
new concept to me. I have been writing around a dozen papers each semester of
college so far and yet have never taken a theory class nor had it explained to
me in a classroom setting. I think this is a drawback to modern American university
systems, because since I learned theory in this class, I already feel like I can
develop my ideas into a much more thorough and coherent thesis, which makes for
writing better papers.
Personally, I now feel that literary
theory should be mandatory for incoming first years in university, because it
is such a useful tool. In my academic future, especially when in other seminars
and when writing my senior thesis, I know that the literary theory methods I learned
in this tutorial will definitely be a huge help. I have always had an issue
with developing my thesis thoroughly and leaving gaps in my reasoning, but now
that I know how to dig deeper to get to the meat of a subject, I feel like that
will not be a problem in my future.
Truthfully, I thought the tutorial
accompanying the seminar had no faults. We learned a lot about literary theory,
discussed the texts as thoroughly as we needed to, and got to brainstorm very
often. We also didn’t do the same thing every day; our curriculum was always
mixed up, so it was never boring. The seminar was also interesting, though the
same agenda every day (student led presentations) became a bit drab. For that
portion of the class, I recommend maybe less presentations and more of other
activities to keep the students interested and willing to learn. Overall,
though, The New Dawn of Vampire Literature was never a class I expected to get
into and I really had a fun time in the course. I learned things I would not
have learned otherwise and was introduced to literature I hadn’t had a chance
to delve into in the past.
Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight. New York: Little Brown & Co,
2005. Print.
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