Please note, this post was originally published on February 7, 2015 on my old blog Meghan Cantwell. Writer. on Wordpress. As I have stated before, I created this blog for the purpose of tracking my research. Currently I am enrolled in a workshop class at GMU meant to develop research papers into publishable journal articles. Here is a more detailed description of the class: “In this course students develop and revise work initially written for another course into a potentially publishable article or discipline-relevant written project while reinforcing and developing research and writing skills central to their concentration and long-term interests.” My long-term interests include Modernist literature, literature written by women, Latin American literature, and British & American literature from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The current project I am working on is editing a paper I wrote about Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, published in 1918 and written during World War I. West (pictured above) experienced the bombardments of London and other parts of England and wrote funny, precocious letters about her experiences. She was incredibly young, still a teenager really, when she became an accomplished journalist. And The Return of the Soldier, her first novel, was published when she was 26. I find West’s life and writings fascinating. My professor assigned a workbook by Wendy Belcher called Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success and so far I have worked through the first three weeks of the workbook. I have made pretty good progress, and hope to have 5 pages written next week. I will post my argument as it stands here now, and as I write more and more I will post snippets of my close readings as well as posts about the research I am doing. My argument thus far: In this article I assert that although many Rebecca West critics have labeled The Return of the Soldier as a fictionalization of the psychoanalytic method, I think this lens of reading the novel detracts from the other important literary and cultural contributions it makes. The novel wrestles with questions of “place” in society and geography. I assert that West uses geographic place, societal “place”, and the immaterial place of memory to (1) illustrate the gender and class divides present in Britain during World War I, and (2) to argue that class “place” and gender “place” are to blame for WWI and similar conflicts in the world. My assertion is supported by West’s narrator, Jenny’s descriptions of geographic place and social “place” in the novel. This is significant because questions of place are a common occurrence in the human mind and this reading of Rebecca West’s literature can make important contributions to the Western literary canon if enough students are exposed to it throughout their higher education.
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AuthorI use this blog to record my thoughts on my life in Kanagawa, Japan, continuing creative projects, and career as a professional writer. ArchivesCategories© Meghan Tompkins and Meghan Tompkins.Writer., 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Meghan Tompkins and Meghan Tompkins.Writer. with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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