Edward Cullen a Byronic Hero?

So, I'm reading the poetry of the "mad, bad, and dangerous" Lord Byron right at the moment, and it occurs to me that Stephenie Meyer may just be borrowing the infamous "Byronic hero" character for Twilight.

A Byronic hero, according to the Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, is "glamorous, [and] haunted by the guilt of mysterious crimes, which he seeks to forget in violent and dangerous adventure" (p. 379). Well-known examples of this type are Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Rochester from Jane Eyre, the actor James Dean, the singer Jim Morrison, and even Batman.

Does this sound like Edward Cullen to you?

My pondering on the first few chapters.

In my ponderings I find that the question that comes to mind is how exactly Bella falls for Edward. Bella falls completely head over heels, and a huge personality switch happens as Meyers turns a strong female personality, into the more gothic style of the woman in need of help, and makes this switch far too quickly (within 5 chapters). It is this switch that leads me to the following conclusion as to how it is possible for this to happen, with some amount of logic.

The grounding for my reasoning comes from a few key lines that are said later in the book. As Bella draws closer to the Edwards, when he reviles himself to her as a vampire “I am the ultimate predator, I am made to attract you, designed to draw you in.” Informing her that she will be attracted to him, no matter what, just as everyone else that would be his “prey” would be.

Later Edwards tells Bella that she is his own type of personal “Heroin”; a drug that he can’t get enough of addicting, and craving her, fighting himself constantly to keep from hurting her. This keeps Edward close, and makes him value her must like an addict. These statements lead me to the following conclusion.

In the beginning, both Bella and Edward are in no way interested in each other until the sign were Edwards keeps Bella from being smashed between cars ( a rather intimate moment). After this point Bella begins to think only of Edward, and focus on school, and even her hate of Forks takes a back seat to how much time he takes up in her mind. This and the attention that Edwards pays to her after bluntly rejecting her, and even casting aside any chance of a friendship, shows that they simply took their first hits and were doomed. Handcuffed together in a way, the two grow on each other and become closer than other had come out of need for their drug.

The love that begins in Twilight between Bella and Edward can be seen as having started many ways, from a sexual tension breaking forth between two cold people, to a romantic swept off her feet love story. I beg to remind the reader, that should we take this in the gothic standing though, we see that Bella is attracted to a predator who wants to drain her of her blood, and he, simply can’t get around to it.

Dickens and Twilight???

What the Dickens? Twilight vampire Ashley Greene to play female Oliver Twist

Apparently, Charles Dickens now has a Twilight connection. The actress who plays Alice Cullen is going to be playing a female Oliver Twist in an upcoming adaptation of the novel. According to the screenwriter, it is going to be an "ultramodern" project that will also "combine Dickensian elements with a Gothic backdrop."

So, what do you think Dickens would have to say about this project?  Would he be pleased by such a development, or horrified? And would that depend on whether he's wearing a Dickens-as-author hat or a Dickens-as-brilliant-marketer hat?

another voice for our ever growing blog

I believe in the beginning of the book, I get a feeling of love, between bella and Edward. The way she looks at him for the first time, I feel a strong connection. I feel that Edward loves bella even though he has a strong desire for her blood. I believe this book is a love novel even though it has many aggressive positions through out the book.  

(posted for Thomas)

Ch. 1 - 2; Bella Swan.... *sigh*

This is ah...long. Sorry. ^^;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

That’s in case no one knows what a Mary Sue is…in short a character with no REAL character traits at all, making it easy for readers to insert themselves in a perfect fantasy world.

In even shorter, the majority of the characters in Twilight.

Typically you would give that character (female, in this case) low self-esteem, brown eyes and hair (most common hair color in the states), and make them a few degrees nerdier/ more socially awkward. Ring any Bells? (<- See what I did there?)

The prologue in this series always starts off with Bella about to die, which I consider false advertizing at it’s worst. Tite Kubo kills off more characters then Stephenie Meyer.

I did not remember this at all from my first read, but…Bella whines a LOT. One of the reasons the first book initially appealed to me was that I was moving to Elma in my sophomore year in high school. My original state of residence? California. In fact, that was why my friend had recommended it to me, I was even one of those people who read Twilight before it was popular. (And hated it before that became a thing too.) So I understand what Bella’s feeling. Sort of.

I kid you not, my mother complained less when she was in labor with any of the kids, and my brother took almost 2 days. (my mom’s a bamf)

First, she’s moving in with a father who clearly wants to try and make this work, he buys her a car (which she is grateful for) and has no problem giving her space. Yet, when referring to her (brief) time spent in Forks on vacation she says that she does a “good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things” from her memory. (page 6) I paid $2 for this coffee stained paperback, so I did not hesitate to write an obscenity across that pretentious, over-dramatic crap.

Okay.

If I type out every quote that fills me with rage and horror this will never get done, and I have TGS videos to watch.

Bella continues to laud her amazing brilliance and tragic life throughout the first chapter. She says her reading list for English includes Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer and Faulkner. She’d already read everything.

What, ALL of them? All of their everything? And what kind of high school is this, my reading list did not kick half as much…butt as this one did!

So Bella has read all of Chaucer, Bronte, Shakespeare and Faulkner…I’m assuming she comprehended NONE of it because she persists in referring to Forks as her “personal hell on earth” (26). As someone who has been through a not small amount of crap I kinda object to a bit of squishy-damp and rain being referred to as hell. I would like to see her live through...oh...Titus Andronichus. Yeah...

Also?

I hate Bella.

Anyway, Bella finds some pretty people in the cafeteria who aren’t gaping at her and so feels the need to gawk at them. Socially apt, this one is.

In Biology (which Bella has already taken, because she smells like rainbows) pretty-boy Edward is having an adverse reaction to Bella. Join the club mate, I’ll make you a jacket. (yours’ll have to say ‘Spare’ on the back, kay?) I hope everyone got that…

Bella is amazed that a perfect stranger could hate her so much.

The irony. *indicates self*

Bella returns to her car and miraculously manages not to throw another hissy fit before driving home.

Character growth?!?!?! No. (this is Twilight, silly!)

CH. 2

Can I blog Kingdom Hearts II instead? It’s kinda like Gothic…there’s existential stuff…and the organization wear black cloaks….and…and…oh. Fine.

Bella is sad because her life is flawed and a guy who was a jerk to her is gone. This makes her sad. Sad. *rubs temples*

There is an amusing line “I make the Cowardly Lion look like the Terminator.” (page 30) This is so great that I am seriously considering Meyer asked Joss Whedon to write a couple lines for her, her writing thus far as not shown her capable of a statement that amusing or non-pretentious.(Man, even when I compliment her I'm mean...I need to work on that.)

Bella is awfully judgmental of these people…They aren’t even hicks or anything…she just does not seem to like people. (Not live ones anyway.)

So Bella shops…writes to her mother, who she speaks to like she’s an infant. I mean, I get it, the woman’s a space cadet, but still.

Bella reads “Wuthering Heights” for kicks. I’m thinking (hoping) one of us missed the point of that novel, and I hope (think) it wasn’t me.

It’s so hard to type when you’re fingers are twitching to do harm to someone’s face.

Bella and her dad eat steak, talk about the Cullens. Bella observes a lack of dishwasher and I wonder what in heaven’s name she’d use it for as they are only dirtying dishware for 2.

Bella obsesses over Edward’s absence for a week and starts to fit in, finally deigning to remember her classmate’s names. She whines about snow and would probably whine about world peace, if we ever achieved it…and on page 43 it begins. One thing I distinctly remember about these books is that Bella good fill another series with descriptions of Edward’s god-like hawtsomeness. *vomits*

Sorry, Bells, some of us like men…live ones.

“He was obviously wondering if I was mentally competent.” No. He was probably wondering if you were stupid. Because I don’t think vampires routinely regurgitate thesauruses in pretentious, annoying sentences. Oh, wait. It’s Twilight.

(Anyone seen the anime Hellsing? Alucard. That. Is a vampire.)

Edward’s eyes are ocher, apparently. That’s not a very sexy sounding color, is it? Kinda gross sounding, actually.

Anypoop. Bella and Edward talk about her life. He asks if he’s annoying her, she goes to PE. Drives home. It was quite a gripping scene. *sarcasm hand*

NOTE:

I'm actually sad we aren't doing one of the later books so I can talk about Marcus.

He's super powerful.

He can see relationships. *giggle*

Just throwin’ that out there.

I love Marcus.

Regarding this series, I know it seems like I simply loathe these books but…well, I do, I guess. Not just for themselves though. Even with the horror of the last book it’s actually the hype that pisses me off (sorry) worse then anything. Middle-aged women drooling over Edward Cullen, teenage girls thinking what they should look for in a man is this shallow, uninteresting 2-dementional character…it’s sick and wrong. What’s the point of a significant other who has no personality? And then in the future books Edward’s behavior borders no, becomes extremely possessive, nearly abusive. (if you want a list, check the internet) This is what girls are looking for. This is what guys are being told to be. Yes, I do think it’s anti-feminist, and the writing is terrible, the characters are boring and poorly written, the plot contrived, often ridiculously convenient…none of that would matter if people just left it as what it is; a crappy smut novel. But they didn’t.

(And the vampires SPARKLE! Freaking, SPARKLE!! A part of my soul died that day.)

Shocking Headline: "Oxford University Applicants as Likely to Be Asked about Twilight as Shakespeare"

No, not a hoax...an actual headline from a British newspaper, The Telegraph, announcing that students applying for admission to Oxford University (the British equivalent to our Ivy Leagues) are as likely to be asked about Twilight as Shakespeare.

Check out the full article here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/6272444/Oxford-University-applicants-as-likely-to-be-asked-about-Twilight-as-Shakespeare.html

The reason given is that the admissions officials want to see how students think about a book that they've read independently (rather than a book that they've been taught).

I find this intriguing, but definitely controversial. What do you think about this? Do you buy into the idea that a skilled reader can read ANYTHING well? Even Twilight?

[To see Oxford University's actual media release about this, click here.]

Sarah May -- Intro and Pre-Vis

[Since I don't really say anything spiffy here, reading this is not terribly essential. If rambling is your cup of tea, though...]

Coupla things I want to establish here:

* I write a lot. Some would say I write very well, but your mileage may vary, so I won't assert it here myself.

* I credit this to the fact I used to spend a lot of leisure time reading. Since I now spend something like 60% of my waking hours reading not for pleasure, but rather for classes, I don't read much for fun anymore. Unfortunate, but, um, school.

* I would like to make it clear here that when I do read in my occasionally-existent leisure time, I read stuff that's worthwhile – when I was younger it was Harry Potter and the Redwall books. This semester, I'm going to carve my way through the Sherlock Holmes adventures.

I tried to read Twilight a couple summers ago. I think I got about eight chapters in, and then I just never came back to it. Looking back, it's not so much that I hated the book – I embarrass myself in admitting that once I got past the fact that I was reading Twilight, I could coast through it. The fact is that the book simply. did not. entertain. I was bored.

I dunno; maybe I was expecting it to actually sweep me away despite everything wrong with it and I would suddenly find myself halfway through it and wondering why I resisted its call for so long.

No such luck; I got hungry and had lunch.

To finish up a thought: I don't like to say bald-faced that I hate the Twilight series – how can I when I haven't even finished the first one? What I can say with certainty is that I hate the hype around it. I don't know what I think of the book yet. I'll find out this semester.

So my pre-visualization that I mentioned in the title of this post involves me reading the book as objectively as I possibly can. The book has to have merits if it's so popular that it has saddled thousands of babies with the names of its three main characters... right?

My mission: To read Twilight this semester with the greatest objectivity I can muster. I will not let preconceptions spawned from ridiculous hype / rabid fangirls/boys, inflammatory critique / rabid haters, nor the pressures of homework and the added indignity of being required to read it for a college-level class, distract me from giving as unbiased a commentary on the writing, plot, characters, etc. as I possibly can.

On pain of everyone protesting, "But you said--!" I promise you this.

First entry imminent...

~Sarah

TEST

TEST TEST TEST!!!!! Hey it works, now I just need to start reading the book. lol

BRT - Switzerland

WARNING SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven't read all of the Twilight Saga be warned I will spoil some things for you, but I think most of you don't really care, but in case you do I'm warning you now. Also, I'm not necessarily going to use academic writing, this is a blog so I'm being more personable (if you don't understand a phrase I use let me know and I'll explain it, but there is probably a gif somewhere and Google will help you find it). Also you should note that I actually enjoy Twilight and the rest of the saga.


I understand why people hate Twilight and I understand the rabid fangirls who squee at any mention of the books and decided to join Team Edward or Team Jacob (Edward wins Bella, Jacob wins Bella's daughter so essentially both "teams" won). Most of you, those who I know of, hate this series. I am like Bella (I forget which books she says this in, I believe it was Eclipse) and choosing to be Switzerland.

http://fav.me/d1xkilj
A gif I found on deviantART.com

I do not chose to hate (bash bash bash horrible writing and disco ball-like shiny 'vegitarian' vampires) or obsess (Jacob is soooo hot! No, Edward is sooooo dreamy! Did you watch the MTV Movie Awards? Edward kissed Jacob!!! squee!!!! -insert stereotypical fangirl flail here-), what I am chosing is to be the middle and taking both sides into account as evenly as I can. So, yea, I will comment on the disco ball like qualities of these specific vampires and the, to my werewolf obsessed boyfriends despise, non-werewolf werewolves disappointing-ness but I will also talk about what I like in the book, the romance between the characters and the human emotions portrayed (though a bit too dramatized at points, or under played at others).

So expect random things to be said that most likely will not make sense, I might use fangirl-isms and bits and pieces of slang here and there, just a fair warning. I will try to write about every chapter, but really that's too much to post so I will condense chapters together so that you aren't reading a new post for each and every chapter from me (I'm not that interesting to read so I understand if you skim over it).

I love comments, so feel free to tell me if I'm contridicting myself (I do that a lot unforunately). I will add videos and pictures to make it more exciting (the aformentioned kiss clip is to be inserted after this). Thank you for reading this, and see you next time!!

This is the best quality version I could find on YouTube for this kiss between Twilight Saga co-stars Robert Pattison and Taylor Lautner at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. When I watched this I thought Krisen Stewart was going to kiss Lautner, but that is not what happend (the movie made the Bella Jacob kiss the best in the entire movie) and like everyone else I was shocked. But, watching the clip again I find the hilarity and I'm sure some people who like to ship JacobxEdward (of course Jacob would be the man in that couple, Edward sparkles) were given fuels to their fanfiction writing flames.

Sarah Ybarra - Blogging Twilight: Preemptive Strike

It turns out, preemptive does not did a hyphen. Weird.

Well, in the interest of full disclosure:

- I have read the Twilight series before, so there will probably be some spoilers for the future books, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum.
- I hate these books. A lot.
- I'm not wearing shoes right now.

Seriously though, I can't stand this series and not because of some obsessive fan-girl reason like 'it's not as good as Harry Potter'...although it isn't. And I'm not saying it's subjective either, the series has underlying (and blatant) themes of pedophilia (shown in a positive light), misogynistic views and there was no epic vampire battle at the end; whatever people say about the writing I don't get what makes this okay.

I know it's bad, but the absence of vampire battle probably bothers me most. well....second most. They were there. Battle lines were drawn. It was going to make everything better. It never happened.

However, that's later. As I recall this first book wasn't half as bad as the rest of the series, so I'm going to try and keep things separated in my brain and not hold the future against it.

One final point: Although, I dislike (read: hate) Twilight I actually don't think Stephanie Meyer intended to write Gothic fiction. I think she intended to write smut and she succeeded in that goal. (Good job? I guess?) This book was inspired by a dream, not a scary dream, a dream of two people talking about how it was dangerous to be together...not really dangerous though, because the worst Bella suffers in these books is a paper cut. (okay, that's a total lie, she even gets hospitalized in this one.) My point is that I think it was always intended to be a pure romance, maybe even supernatural fiction but I really don't think her intention was to incite fear, a feeling of creepiness or even a thought. I don't think she's a good writer (you really don't have to be one to get published, it just helps) but I will defend her in that.

And only that.

There's 24 chapters in this book, not counting the preface *cough*prologue*cough* or epilogue, but as the preface is a paragraph I'm not counting it.

If I read a chapter a day starting tomorrow I'll be done by about October 7th.

I would also go completely insane, so I'm going to space these out a little.

By the way, a very funny guy named Dan Bernstein read and blogged the whole series for sparknotes, it might be a fun read: http://community.sparknotes.com/index.php/2009/05/06/the-twilight-experience/

- Sarah Ybarra

Welcome to our Twilight blog

Like many Gothic novels before it, Stephenie Meyer's novel Twilight has been a phenomenal success.  Twilight, like its precursors, also has the potential to give us fascinating insights about the society for which it was created--OUR SOCIETY. Gothic novels can certainly be read just for fun--and I encourage you to have fun while you read Twilight. These novels can also be read more seriously to reveal insight about what we fear and why we fear it.

This blog is an opportunity for you to make connections between the world of Twilight, the examples of literary Gothic that we'll be studying in class, and the "dangerous" world in which we live. I am looking forward to reading your unique comments throughout the semester.

You are free to post as often as you'd like.