So, I'm doing this major research paper for my American literature class. Nothing profound there. However, in the course of doing this I found a fascinating (to a self-proclaimed academic snob anyway) essay by Stanley Cavell. In this work Cavell discusses the Emersonian ideal of existence in reference to Descartes. Okay, not a big leap there as Emerson paraphrases the whole I think therefore I am idea.

The neat part comes in when Cavell extrapolates that in "Self-reliance" and discusses how Emerson concludes that it is also true that if I do not think than I do not exist, and that his society was one that didn't exist so that most people were merely haunting the world instead of existing in it. I thought this was intriguing.

It became even more so when Cavell brought the work of Poe into the discussion. I'm still muddling through the exact meaning of this part of the essay, though I know it deals with how this idea of existence is affected by skepticism. It's really interesting.

So much so that I am using it as an underpinning in the paper which has now shifted from the gothic as social commentary to Poe's seeming assertion that thought, in the sense that Emerson uses it, leads not to greater existence but to the destruction of identity.

I'm using four sources to explore this and so far it is going remarkibly well. However, I seriously doubt anyone but me is at all interested in this, and so I will stop babbling about it.

Other than that not a whole lot has happened today. We leave for Troy tomorrow, so there probably won't be another entry until Sunday at the earliest, and Monday most likely.

Bye for now, all!