Our class discussion

It seems in discussing Gerald Egan's article "Radical Moral Authority and Desire: The Image of the Male Romanitc Poets in Frontispiece Portraits of Byron and Shelly," our conversation center upon what we could do in our own that mimics or borrows from this essay.  Looking back at all the research I did last weekend, I now have 40-50 sources, many of them are books, it seems that any notion or goal I had for my project changed--or should I say gained vitality--as I continued to search various terms, critical lenses, and authors.  Given these experiences, it seems trying to force fit an agenda too early may disrupt progress as you continue to absorb sources.  As I read, ideas and conflicts came to me that I hadn't realized about AKM and my ideas adjusted accordingly.  For example, the noir elements are certainly now obvious to that book, I wouldn't even had considered how that genre might be grounding the novel as a whole given the descriptive depth and beauty of the language, especially in terms of philosophy, if I had investigated feminist readings of the book.  Likewise, I would have simple adapted cookie-cutter notions of Burden's crisis of identity (in terms of Existentialism and Modernism) and applied them to me investigation if I hadn't done significant reading about Masculinity and Southern Culture.  I guess the point I gleamed here is that initial research should first shape your project, before we can appropriate more sources to reinforce it.  First we must ask what can be done, before investigating what would help accomplish this task.