The Myths/Folklore Blog

This week, for my Story Lab post, I decided to delve into the media tropes website again, just because I found it so interesting the first time I was looking at it. For the first area that I explored, I went into the love tropes, because I wanted to be able to put a name on some of the things I’ve seen so commonly used. The “sub-genres” of love were all over the place – from attraction, to forbidden love, and to love is a crapshoot, there were way more areas of love than I originally thought. The first sub-genre that I looked at was the Attraction Tropes. Some of these feel like they’re simply observations of normal aspects of human life – an example of this was the trope “Has a Type”. Yeah, while that is used within television/media, that’s a regular, everyday type of thing. An example of what I think is more of a trope is the “Hot Librarian” trope. This isn’t an everyday thing, this is something that was started by popular media, not the other way around. While reading through ...

This week’s reading of Alice in Wonderland was full of even more of the expected whimsy and great characters. After thinking about it after last night, I came to one of the conclusions that part of the reason why Alice in Wonderland is so widely read about and praised is because of the characters and setting that the story in contained within. It brings out everyone’s childlike wonder, with a touch of imagination thrown in to build the characters. Every character is unique and different from any of those around them. They stick out like a sore thumb and will plant themselves in your imagination. Take, for example, the Mad Hatter, The Dormouse, and the March Hare (which were read about today). While sharing one larger trait (they were all crazy!) they each had derivatives of this that made them stand out, providing great interactions between the seemingly normal Alice and themselves. By having a contrast in insanity, Carroll is able to defy expectations by making Alice seem the cr...

This week's readings were something that I have definitely heard before - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is a staple of most children's early lives. The whimsical story that is laid out by Carroll is rich in detail and the right bit of silliness to appeal to so many throughout the world. But what makes it so special to everyone? There have been stories in the past that are similar. Maybe it was because this book almost pioneered this type of fantasy writing. Not taking everything so seriously, making sure that the story is actually fun to those who read it, and the fact that it's characters/situations are so unique. My favorite sections of this week's readings was "Advice from a Caterpillar" (although when she fell down the rabbit-hole was a close second). The reasoning behind my liking it was the conversation that the two of them had between each other. From going round in circles about asking who each person was, to the grumpy/mean disposition that h...