The stipend is as important to me as the fit of the program right now, and as such, I’m considering mainly private schools. Is it foolish to apply to Yale, Brown, Duke, etc with the same writing sample and tailored SoPs? I’ve never applied before and I’m not sure if one Ivy rejection means that an application doesn’t meet basic standards of the others. I know each school is their own school; I’m just uncertain if their admission standards are similar enough that it would be a waste of time and money to apply for mostly Ivies and then one state school.

I know “safety schools” are kind of contentious (I’m not super up to date with the discourse) but should I be applying to more state schools as a strategic move nonetheless? Or are the Ivies’ admission standards diverse enough within themselves that it would be redundant?

Just feel this kind of hero is very popular in American media. I was wondering if this is a common trope across cultures, and is it as prevalent in other cultures as it is American media, or less so.

In late 17th-century Moscow, Simeon Polotsky (Simeon of Polotsk, 1629–1680) introduced syllabic verse and Western Baroque emblems to the Tsarist court which was much more eastern and not knowing of those traditions. He taught Tsar's children, including Peter the Great.

His lesser-known poetic cycle, Lѣstvica (The Ladder), is usually categorized by Slavists as a conventional didactic adaptation of John Climacus's 6th-century ascetic treatise The Ladder of Divine Ascent.

however I have found that when you perform a strict formal linguistic-poetic analysis of the manuscript's strophic architecture:

1. The Recursive Cadence: Each 30-line 'rung' of the poem contains strict isometric syllabic counts (13-syllable lines with feminine caesura at the 7th syllable), where the terminal noun of each stanza becomes the grammatical subject and initialization operator of the subsequent strophe.
2. Deterministic state transitions: The structural progression does not function like theological allegory; it operates as a deterministic finite-state automaton where moral 'passions' and 'virtues' act as binary state flags ('0' / '1') governing whether the reader ascends to the next operational tier or triggers an exception handler returning to Rung 1
3. the combinatorial grid: in the marginalia, Polotsky laid out an orthogonal coordinate grid linking rhymes across non-adjacent rungs, essentially a 17th-century paper lookup table.

how do you think, did Baroque poets across Eastern Europe consciously conceive of theological verse as proto-computational execution logic, or was this a unique product of Polotsky’s Jesuit scholastic training in Kyiv and Polotsk? What are historians view on the literature of that region at a time and relations between literature/poetry and technology?

Hi everyone!
I’m looking for George Steiner’s essay “The Uncommon Reader,” from his book No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1995.
Does anyone have a PDF copy they’d be willing to share, or know where I could access it digitally?
I’d really appreciate your help. Thank you! 😊

Just curious

I state that I have plenty of doubt about this concept, at least with the more “extreme” interpretation of it (which seems to be the standard). But I have the impression that this concept is dominant in academia, at least for the anglophone one (in my literature course in Italy, author intention was talked about, but it dealed mainly with author such as Dante and Machiavelli, and anyway it was part of a history programme).
Back to my question, how far do the people that held the concept of the Death of the Author apply it? The concept was created for literature, but there is no reason for why visual media would be different, and it’s frequently applied to it. So, if an actor playng a character is replaced by another actor playing the same character, would be reasonable to ignore the author intention that the character is the same? Or, in comics and animation, can a reader give huge importance to design changes?

I’ve been reading the Niebelunglied for a project at University, and I couldn’t help but notice an invariant, I could say, in the second part of the story: Kriemhild’s road after Siegfried’s death and marriage to Attila. A road which is done by other female characters in other books too, such as Ciri, after she became one of the Rats, in the Witcher saga. Now, I am not familiar with the Game of Thrones story, but if I remember correctly from what some of my friends who are GoT fans told me, Daenerys Targaryen also goes on some kind of road, after marrying Drogo. She goes on to be loved by the people from the place she goes to (excuse my low knowledge of the GoT series), just like Kriemhild when she became queen alongside Atilla.

I would really appreciate it if someone could shine some light on this! I’m looking forward on talking about this invariant in my project and I do not wish to speak nonsense.

Hello, everyone! I’m a 20-year-old student from Pakistan, currently in the 7th semester of my BS in English Literature. It’s time for me to start working on my thesis, and I want to complete it by the end of my 8th semester.

I have a genre and a particular work in mind: *The Return of the King*, the third book in J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy. It’s a fantasy novel, and I’m genuinely interested in researching it. However, from what I’ve found so far, many people suggest choosing a work published within the last 10–15 years. Tolkien’s novel was published in 1955, so I’m unsure whether it would be a suitable choice for my thesis.

I’m really invested in this novel, but I’m struggling to find proper guidance. Should I continue researching this work and try to identify a research gap, or should I consider choosing a more recent novel instead? I’d really appreciate any advice or guidance!

I couldn’t find much about it online, but I saw that O’Connor had pieces published in Mademoiselle where Plath was an editor in college, and they had a mutual friend in Robert Lowell. Is there any evidence they read each other’s work? It seems likely that they were at least aware of each other, but I can’t find anything confirming that they ever met or that either of them acknowledged the other.

I’m not trying to make comparisons or anything, I’ve just been reading O’Connor for the first time and I’ve always loved Plath, so I made the connection today that they were active around the same time period and it made me curious.

I am particularly interested in the development of new historicism, Marxism, decolonisation theory, and destructivism.

Hi all,
I've been trying to read more in general and have been trying to immerse myself more and try to find all the meanings behind things within books. After each chapter I read analyses online on spark notes and other sites and realize how many things I missed out on. What should I be looking for to make sure I don't miss out on these things that I only realize after reading the analyses?

I’m about three quarters of the way through reading Mark Fisher’s THE WEIRD AND THE EERIE. I was interested in reading this because I like a lot of the sort of media that is discussed in this book. But so, so, so much of this is going over my head. After every essay I think I could only give you the most general, bare minimum summary of the point he is trying to make and the ideas explored. How on earth do people read this stuff? Am I SOL as someone without an advanced degree in literature or philosophy? Or do I just have to keep reading and get used to it? Reading this stuff makes me feel like an idiot.

English is my third language, and I studied in my native language before my bachelor's degree. I managed to get through that transition and enter an MA programme, but it's only recently, as I've started exploring the subject independently, that I've realised how much I still have to learn.

My gaps feel like they cover almost everything.

I sometimes struggle to understand what I'm reading. Even when I grasp the central argument, I find it difficult to articulate it in my own words or develop it into a coherent argument. My academic English and writing skills are nowhere near where I want them to be.

I'm currently struggling with literary theory. I somehow managed to understand structuralism, but now I'm stuck at poststructuralism. I often find myself going back and forth between unrelated topics because I don't know what to study first or how different areas connect. The vastness of the subject leaves me overwhelmed and confused.

I know my command of English is part of the problem, but I also need to build my knowledge and critical thinking skills.

I hope to pursue a PhD in literature eventually, and I have roughly a year to work seriously on these gaps. I'm willing to put in the effort; I just need a clear, structured path to follow.

I'd especially appreciate advice from literature professors, PhD scholars and experienced students of English literature.

Where should I begin? What should I study, in what order, and how can I improve my reading comprehension and academic writing?

I'd also appreciate honest advice about whether pursuing a PhD is a realistic goal for someone in my position. Please be candid, even if the answer is uncomfortable. I'm looking for constructive guidance, not reassurance.

Thank you!

I’m a Master’s student in English literature and i reached a critical point where i really need to settle on a topic for my thesis. My supervisor advised me to look into topics that interest me, but when it comes to literary works, i love exploring everything and everything sounds interesting to me. That fact has been weighing on me since i enrolled in the program. I don’t know where to start, and I always feel like I do not know enough, which is true. I mean the vastness of the field is scary. I just need some guidance and i can’t find it anywhere.

I’m interested in all kinds of literature. And that is a problem.

Hi, I have a question! Is there a specific subfield of criticism that examines defense writing? What I mean by that is fictional writing that sort of anticipates the critical response it will get and preemtively defends itself against it in the text? Two contemporary examples that come to my mind are yellowface by R.F. Kuang and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

A lot of people who read yellowface felt like she put the criticism that gets leveled at her in the mouth of characters that are clearly meant to be disliked. (I personally think there is more nuance to that but it's that kind of defensive writing that I'm referring to.

A Little Life does something similar where it seems to be constantly commenting on itself in the language of culture criticism. A lot of its metafictional elements like Willem's movies or plays or JB's art often feel like Yanagihara using characters or metafiction as her mouthpiece to be like "THIS is what this story is about and idc what sensitive readers who care too much about identity-politics will say bc I'm doing it in the name of Art" lol. In other words, a lot of her writing feels like it is addressing some kind of imagined critical reader.

And so my question is have you come across papers, literature, fields that deals with exactly this phenomenon? I'm planning to look more into reading response theory and reception theory since hypothetical readers seem to touch on some of this, but maybe someone has heard of something more specific.

Hi everyone, hopefully this will be allowed

I recently picked up Modern Women’s writing by Paul Salzman

I am trying to slowly read through the first poem by Isabella Whitney - To her unconstant lover

Full poem: https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/i-w-her-unconstant-lover

I am trying to understand what “kindred stain” means here

So shall the promises be kept
that you so firmly made:
Now choose whether ye will be true,
or be of Sinon's trade.
Whose trade if that you long shall use,
it shall your kindred stain:
Example take by many a one
whose falsehood now is plain.

My understanding is that the phrase kindred stain here means that if you don’t keep your promises to your wife than you and Sinon will share a “kindred stain” - implying that you and him are kin and you share the same sin of being deceitful ?

Would this be a correct understanding?

Thank you in advance :)

Interested in pieces of literature that show bog standard lives of outwardly uninteresting people. Think janitors, and service workers, and insurance salesmen, and general menial people. I'm interested to see how these supposedly unremarkable and even unimportant (comparatively) lives are shown in literature, contemporary or not.

I’m currently read Afterlife by Julia Alvarez, in which she does not include quotation marks for the dialogue in the story. I’m curious about what people’s thoughts are on why some authors choose to do this, and sometimes even omit other punctuation as well.
What could be the literary function? Is there meaning behind it?