English 366: Literature and the Other Arts

Is the only way to analyze literature through writing essays?

Literature and the other arts… hmmm… that means movies, right? And maybe some plays? I guess you can compare them and write essays on that… Boy was I wrong.

When I first decided to take this class, I assumed that we’d be looking at different adaptation of books through other forms of art, such as opera, plays, or movies. When I got the the class, I realized that it was something much more interesting: audio and video composition that simultaneously looked at the literary elements of the books we read, and through projects that dealt with other aspects of literature.

We were trying to look at essays not from the point of view of the writer, but with that of the reader. How can we make their experience more than just words on a paper? Instead of a reader, we have a listener or a watcher. We give them elements of sound and movement to draw their attention to certain parts, and to make them think about the content in a different way by varying its appearance and method of presentation. Reading about a door creaking open is different than hearing it open, which is different from watching it open and each of these situation gives the audience a different interpretation of the door.

With this in mind, we created pieces that ranged from a psychokinetic animated tire to the life of a boy and his father in a post-apocalyptic world, and it was our job to show the audience what we wanted to discuss, much like Steph Ceraso's sound essay.

Below is a list of the works that we created this semester, and an insight into the revision process for each.