“Curiouser and Curiouser”: Part IX

“Recalled to life” ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities 

29th December 2018

Taking a break from your work can do wonders. Having spent a few weeks away from this project I have occupied my mind with other work and distractions. This allowed my subconscious to explore my thoughts of this project in the background and bring forth new ideas.

I have decided to narrow down my focus in respect to the time period. Attempting to cover the entire Nineteenth Century in a dissertation is a task that, I think, would negatively impact the depth of detail in the overall piece. I have, therefore, decided to focus merely on the latter half on the Nineteenth Century. This gives me scope to briefly discuss and make references to events earlier in the period, whilst providing enough of the word count to do in-depth analysis of literary texts from the second half of the century.

This of course means changes to the list of literary texts I had originally intended to analyse. My new list of texts has not been finalised but will still contain Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I am currently looking into other short stories by Edgar Allan Poe as well as some lesser known tales.

I have created a ‘to do’ list for the next steps of this project.

• Finalise literary texts
• Research terms of hysteria and male madness and their point of discovery in the Nineteenth Century.
• Check relevant events in the early Nineteenth Century that should be included.

This organisation is something I find very useful. As the New Year is almost here, I find myself feeling refreshed and excited for the work I am to produce over the next few months.