How My First Night of Grad School Went

I had my first grad school experience last night, and it was a positive one. The Romanticism class ties into everything I'm into and writing about right now. For example, one of the selections on the syllabus is Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man. We'll be dealing a lot with writers and ideas from the Era of Enlightenment and the French Revolution-- huge influences on the Founding Fathers. We're beginning the summer session by reading Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice. We'll also be reading the works of William Blake, whom I love. In fact, I'm seriously thinking about doing my class project on Blake. Of course, we'll be discussing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. My professor, Dr. Kilgore, explained that this novel is an example of "dark romanticism." He also pointed out that "romanticism" is a very misunderstood literary term. I must say that Shelley's themes and those of French Enlightenment (18th century) writers Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary) and Voltaire (Candide) have had a most profound effect upon my own thought processes.