When I first read the description of the module I was very excited about starting a blog. I thought it would be a great and fun experience. Back then I was optimistic. For the title I knew I wanted to pick something related to Irish mythology and I had a couple of things in mind, but none of them were “the one”, if you know what I mean. Then I came across the Salmon of Knowledge. I liked it so much that I picked it as the name of my blog.
My first post is very laid back as I wanted to ease myself into this new experience.
“My name is Tabea and I’m 20 years old. I am doing a master’s degree in Irish Writing and Film at UCC. Before you ask, it is Irish as in coming from Ireland, not as in the Irish language. This is going to be a research blog related to my degree, but I will also write about anything Irish in general. And a few posts about something completely unrelated might pop up here and there.”
Awkward Little Introduction
But once things started to get/started getting serious, the bubble bursted and I was hit in the face by harsh reality. I could not write. I would sit in front of my laptop for hours, being unable to write anything. It was very frustrating. And the times I managed to write something I left it in the drafts. ‘It’s not good enough.’ Was usually the main thought keeping me from posting. So what was supposed to be an exciting experience became an unpleasant task that I had to perform. It did not feel like something I had the right to enjoy.
Once something becomes ‘something I have to do’ I just push it to the last minute. I can’t help it. So overall my blogging experience was a very anxious one. There were times however, where I managed to get out of that mindset. And I will be focusing on those. When I started this program I had absolutely no clue what I was going to write my thesis on. In my undergraduate we did not study much Irish Literature. And the only Irish films I watched were the ones starring Andrew Scott (as I am quite obsessed with him).
So my first post is about me exploring Irish writing.
“I have a complicated relationship with poems: I rarely find ones I actually like. I have tried French, German and English ones, mostly without success. Today I felt like exploring the Irish world of poetry.”
The Bittersweet Truth of Blackberry-Picking
The main reason why I posted this is because I knew I has to post something. I do like the poem, but it isn’t something that I would have normally written about, at least not willingly. In a way you it was a good way for me to get out of my comfort zone. But I truly got out of my comfort zone in the blog entry which followed that one.
“The Hole in the Ground is a film by Lee Cronin. It came out in January 2019. Sarah and her son Chris, portrayed by Seána Kerslake (Aisling in Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope) and James Quinn Markey (young Ivar the Boneless in Vikings), move into a new house in a rural area. In the forest near their house is a gigantic sinkhole. One day Chris runs into the forest and Sarah loses him, but she finds him again and they go home. After that Sarah notices changes in the boy’s behavior. It turns out he was kidnapped and replaced by a monster. At the end the monster dies, Sarah and her son survive and they move in a city, leaving the countryside for good.”
My first interaction with Irish Horror: The Hole in the Ground
I wanted to keep my blog pretty balanced, so I picked a film review for my next post. I actually enjoyed writing it as I found a theme which really spoke to me. I focused on the mythic aspects and the allusions to folklore.
“Changeling, to me known as Wechselbalg (German), is a widespread concept in European mythology. In the Irish one fairies swapped human children with other fairies. However the families could get their children back if they successfully exposed the fairy. This usually involved the eggshell method (as described in Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland p 28-32) or putting them on fire, which made them flee through the chimney. The baby would then be returned as quickly as an amazon prime delivery. In the film Sarah exposes the monster, but it doesn’t flee, instead Sarah locks it in the basement. And after rescuing the real Chris from the monster pit, she comes back and burns the house. So it is not a perfect copy of the myth, but close enough. Cronin might also have been inspired by the fetch. In Irish folklore a fetch is a double of a living person, fairly similar to a doppelgänger. It is considered to be a death omen if you see one at night. In the film Sarah’s hand is grabbed by one of the creatures when she is rescuing her son. Then it takes her shape and there is this short moment where they just look at one another. It is uncertain whether she is going to die, but Sarah ends up waking from this trance and attacks the monster with her flashlight. Thus deriving from the fetch concept.”
My first interaction with Irish Horror: The Hole in the Ground
I ended that post with leaving a few question up for discussions in the comments as a way to engage more with my readers. Having enjoyed writing so much I decided to write about another film. This time I picked one that was closer to reality and Irish history. When I learnt about the Magdalene Laudries I was once again reminded of the cruelty humanity has given itself.
“I watched the film without any real background knowledge of the Magdalene Laundries, so I was interested in the historical accuracy of it. In her article: Sinister Sisters? The Portrayal of Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums in Popular Culture, Leanne McCormick states that “the rest of the film does not fulfill the potential of the opening scenes” (376). She also argues that the film focuses too much on the Catholic Church as an evil force. And I can definitely see why, as I stated earlier all of the people of the Church are abusing their power in the film. At the slightest hint of a nun sympathizing with one of the girls, a greater evil is shown. McCormick says:
“The failures of governments and society as a whole must also be recognized.” (379)
I think this would have made the film more realistic. Perhaps Mullan was satisfied putting one of the evils in the foreground and looking at it in depths. However the religious authorities in the film were marked by a “lack of character depth” (376) as McCormick put it. This could have been a deliberate choice. He might have thought that the nuns and priests are not worthy of a proper voice.”
The Magdalene Sisters
I tried to be more critical this time around by not only including reviews but also scholars’ opinions. However I did not relate it to my thesis research. The film reviews were still ways of me exploring the endless possibilities. I knew I couldn’t keep on doing film reviews. However I had no inspiration whatsoever, I think I hit a proper writers block. So sadly January remained blog post free. We started the new term with a new module entitled Gothic to Modernism. I love everything Gothic. So I decided to write about something we had studied in class and which inspired me.
“In class we looked at several short stories from Elizabeth Bowen. “Mysterious Kôr” caught me off guard as I did not understand how it fitted in the module Gothic to Modernism. But after a while I got some ideas. And in this post I want to explore one of them: the in-betweenness of the characters.
(…)
Pepita’s Case
As soon as she sees Kôr she forgets about the real life and her boyfriend as she “slid her hand from his sleeve” (729). When they start talking she admits that she thinks of it “all the time” (729), compared to Arthur who probably forgot it existed until she reminded him. This is the first indication that Pepita is wandering in between two worlds, as ghosts are. For them it is between the living and the dead.(…)
Arthur’s Case
Arthur is a soldier and this is one of the only nights where he is somewhat free, and he has a girlfriend. Now what would you rather do? Talk about a random place from a poem or shift your girlfriend? (It’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer it in the comments lol).
Just as Pepita his mind is split in two. On the one hand he wants to spend quality time with his girlfriend, but on the other he can’t stop thinking about the war.(…)
Callie’s Case
We do get to learn that her and Pepita live together, but are not from the same social class. Callie earns more and pays most of the rent. Pepita asked her to be out of the house, so she can have some time alone with Arthur, but Callie either did not get the hint or she refused to leave out of jealousy. She even says “it wouldn’t be proper, would it, me going off and leaving just you and Arthur” (p733). Why should they get something she doesn’t? Her inner division could be between wanting a relationship (with Arthur) or staying single.”
In-Between Worlds: The Mysterious Kôr
Rereading this post made me realize that I could have improved it if I added more references and did a bit more research. The way I posted it makes it feel like random thoughts written out. Structure wise I like the fact that I divided it in three parts. Maybe I could have turned it into three different blog posts, as a series. And to keep my readers interest using Twitter could have been a great platform to promote it and share sneak peaks.
The posts after that one were all required for the module, so I never got closer to developing my dissertation idea. In the end this blog, which was supposed to bring me closer to my thesis did not do that. In a way my with all my anxieties I completely missed the point of this blogging exercise.
The Wikipedia post is the first one in which I included a tweet.
While my friends edited various pages about Irish themes or authors dear to their hearts… I had to step back and think what useful contribution I could make. I often forget that being bi/trilingual can be very useful, hence why I did not think of translating an article in the first place.
“Instead of editing an article, I chose to translate one. First in German and then a few days later I decided to do a French one too. Having translated many texts during my undergraduate degree I knew what I was getting myself into. Many people underestimate translations. And they don’t know how hard it can actually be. Good translations take time and a lot of research. Choosing the right tone, expressions and tenses are some of the key aspects you have to keep in mind. You can easily lose the richness of the text, if you are not careful. Before I started to translate Mary Morrissy’s article I compared a few other translated pages. I noticed that the present tense is used in French, even when the article is about a deceased person. And the German and English articles use the past tense.”
There’s a First Time for Everything: Editing Wikipedia
This post gave me the opportunity me to stay true to my roots. Intercultural projects have always been a big part of my life. If I had incorporated it sooner in my blog it would have greatly greatly enriched it. Around that time I also figured out how to connect twitter to my blog.
The Literature Review is one of the key elements of the research module. I tried to keep the language somewhat academic but still relatively simple and blog friendly.
“In my thesis I will be looking at Mary Morrissy’s “Rosa” and Emily Lawless’ Grania: The Story of an Island in the context of the relationship between sisters. Homoeroticism, religion and heroism are the main themes I will explore. How did the events and changes in society affect the writing? Especially considering that the works are a century apart. The romantic or sexual tendencies between sisters in Irish fiction might have been a reaction to the suppressed sexual desires women had, which were caused by the Catholic Church.”
Literature Review
Two days after the literature review I posted another lost entry from my drafts. It could have been my first post, if I hadn’t let my anxiety rule over me. I went to most of the seminars, I could have easily posted about one research seminar every month. It would have given me the opportunity to go back to my notes and maybe give me inspiration for other potential blog topic and maybe even one that would have led me to my thesis (or at least closer to it.
“The first research seminar I attended was Professor Terry Gifford’s ‘Post-pastoral readings of nature and gender in literature’ back in September. He mentioned the death of the pastoral followed by the post pastoral, while focusing on D. H. Lawrence’s work. What really caught my attention was the definition of the pastoral he gave us. It is a retreat to the countryside from urban life. And upon the return the person will have changed. This is often represented in forms of a book. Now when I heard this it reminded me a lot of a something I studied during my undergrad: The Last of the Mohicans.
(…)
Cooper was familiar with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellig and Arthur Schopenhauer. Both of them were involved with Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism. The German philosophy then inspired Americans and thus Transcendentalism was born.
How is any of this related to the pastoral you may wonder. Well I believe the pastoral, which has been around long before Transcendentalism influenced the latter.
“Transcendentalists borrowed from the European Romantics the notion that a regular contact with nature (by which was generally meant: living in or visiting rural and pastoral settings) was essential for regaining human innocence and originality that was corrupted by civiliza- tion. Intimacy with nature could return the individual (especially the writer) to a state of childlike openness and wonder.”
REBECCA KNEALE GOULD
The pastoral as Gifford mentioned is idealized, unproblematic and nostalgic. Considering Gould’s quotation, transcendentalism is exactly looking for all those things. However transcendental tendencies are present in the post pastoral as it avoids the idealized vision Gifford touched upon during the seminar.”
Time Travel: September 18th 2019
With this reflection I tried introducing something new to what had already been said, without it being out of context. In Flashback Friday, Research Seminar I went into the depth of a question which occurred to me after having reread the notes. I tried incorporating historical facts.
“More than half of the painters mentioned in the seminar were German. So I couldn’t help but wonder why specifically Germans? Why were they so interested in it? Before I started my research I had some theories… a)They were good at it and it was their main source of income. OR (the more unlikely one) b)They enjoyed it. Turns out I was sort of right…
The German Renaissance played an immense part in the development of Europe, at the time. The continent was greatly influenced by it as it brought printing. And printing meant that not only text could be spread, but art too. Another key factor was the Reformation. The majority of painters turned to protestantism, thus leaving religious art behind. With Catholic art being their main source of income, they had to paint something else. A lot of them started to paint portraits and landscapes. However some might have been attracted to the depiction of dress instead. And that’s when it clicked in my brain. German artists must have been hired to illustrate books.”
Flashback Friday: Research Seminar
Blogging has been a very interesting experience to say the least. I acknowledge that it is very flawed and I could have done a lot better. In general, going through all of my posts, I have noticed that things are all over the place. I’ve got film reviews here and there, a post about a poem, then the literature review and research seminars,… Nothing is connected in any way. My blog is like a wild jungle, where you have to fight your way through, instead of being a well maintained path with flowers on the sides and signs indicating the way. I also should have blogged more consistently. At least twice a month sounds manageable. Overall I started very late and it was over before it really started. My poor salmon never had the chance to acquire any knowledge. In this portfolio there are too many ‘what ifs’. I should have just gone for it and posted what I had in my drafts. Because in the end I could have edited them later on. And while I think it is good to explore, I could have posted more about my own interests and somehow connected them to my college work. For instance, I went to quite a few events organized by the English society, which I could have easily written about.
Anyway, I did learn my lesson: Don’t think too much about it…
Salmon of Knowledge 