Tuesday, July 04, 2006

This Blog is Junky

First of all, this blog isn't about "Tolkien, Myth and Ideology." It's about Walter's struggle to fulfill requirements for a master's degree. And it does not provide an interesting account of either subject.

My opening post for this blog stated my intention for it well enough. The next post is a copy of an email to my English professor, a member of my thesis comittee, and the teacher of the research methods course which I still have to complete.

The research methods course is a required course for the MA in Humanities or English, and it culminates in the production of a research paper. I had planned on writing a research paper for this course which would be helpful to me in composing my master's thesis on Tolkien, myth and ideology.

These are three really big topics. Wanting to write a paper on the relationships between Tolkien's writings, myth and ideology is kind of like saying, "I want to write a paper about the relationships between water, land and air. Except these last three are much easier to define. Wait. That's not really a good anaology. The point is that much of my experience in the research methods class has been characterized by an ongoing realization that I must narrow my topic or redefine what it is I am talking about. There are all different sorts of definitions of what mythology is, and all sorts of interpretations of its significance. The same with ideology.

I've got to continue this description later.