We are now at the end…. just kidding. This will look like it is the final post, but it is not the end of the journey, what a quest this has been, making and managing a blog. How do people do it? Well, I can proudly say that I have done it. The idea of creating a blog has been with me since forever, but I was not aware of the work (here comes the drama queen), the blood, sweat and tears, that went into it. This is the first time using such media, apart from social media of course, but I’m not great at that either. Blogging has taught me many things and I can see why people enjoy it and maintain their own. I would also like to start another blog, but I don’t know who will read it or if it would be considered good, which is why making one in college is helpful, there is always someone who will read it or talk about the contents of the posts. The blog is for my class in Contemporary Literary Research, but it has also turned into a sort of personal blog because I am able to speak about my interests, it is not all classroom or academically based. I tried to include citations for all my posts and you will notice that at the end of the post there is my site logo which I love adding, it is almost like a watermark of sorts. I enjoyed adding links in the paragraphs through words, this would mean that the reader has to click and view something outside of my blog / post, which is nice, somewhat of a break from listening to me speak all the time.
The website was created in October and the overall idea for it was very different than it is now. I did not start posting until December, due to a majority of technical issues with the website. The navigation was new and difficult, with a variety of themes and a selection, sometimes too many choices and at other times too little, but the experience of figuring out how everything works was enjoyable. After many classes, speaking to my fellow peers and asking questions, I was finally able to gain confidence in knowing what to do and what I was doing. At first, I focused on a Medieval themed blog and posts, but this changed quickly because I did not want to limit myself to this topic alone and rather focus on my interests in class and in my daily life. My first post was an “About Me” page where I played around with the WordPress themes and menus and the different navigation keys to format my blog in a way that I was happy with and liked. The blog posts became frequent after this and I am proud of my work (hopefully this shows).
After this, my first post was a response to the seminar and a review of it titled “Dark Cosmology” which I really enjoyed writing. The conference was a great topic for the MedRen class, as this was our area of study and we also had a visit from the guests professors to our class after the general seminar. I decided to connect the topic with the ideals and concepts of Boethius because I was reading his work during that time and became quite passionate about it (as seen in my post):
“The conference talk aimed to connect the science of dark cosmology and magical tradition. This brings up the ancient debate between science and magic. Boethius saw science as a logical thought and rejected magic as superstition. Shakespeare, however, includes magic wielders such as witches and superstitions in the form of omens”. “Dark Cosmology”. Whitney Ramsaran. 5 Nov. 2025.
Seeing my name and quoting from a work that I have written feels great. My goal was to link Shakespeare’s Dark Cosmology, a term that was new to me, but that I can now recognize and speak about thanks to Professor Henry S. Turner and Jane Hwang Degenhardt. I loved making the connection between a text that I studied in class and one that I was reading in my private time. The posts of my peers were enjoyable to read and compare to mine as we all took similar, but somehow different approaches in relation to the conference. As time went by, I began to edit this post after feedback from my blog supervisor and I could have written more on this topic, but I wanted to reflect on my responses to it, rather than study the topic in depth. I started off discussing the idea of magic and science and the ancient debate between scholars about whether this should be linked together or kept completely separate. This led to an analysis of the human psyche and the importance of God in universal order and chaos. These are all heavy topics that I am interested in and it was great to ask these questions in the works of a medieval philosopher and a renaissance writer, and if you have read any of Shakespeare’s works, you will know that it is not a falsehood to consider him a philosopher as well. This post is, of course, not my best work, but I enjoyed writing it and that is all that matters…right? (I am now wondering if my professors would agree or disagree with this).
The second seminar was one that I was excited to attend as it was on Caedmons Hymn which we studied in depth in class and it was by a MedRen professor Dr Francesca Brooks. This seminar linked an Old English text with the works of Lynette Roberts (poet and novelist), who I knew nothing about. The link to old literature and modern literature is always fascinating, because time changes and flies by so fast, but literature will always survive whether this be in the past, present or future. Robert’s work is titled “A letter to the dead: collected poems” and Dr Brooks’s seminar “Caedmon on the shell tip” was a link between this collection of poetry and Robert’s purposeful life in Wales and thinking of Caedmons Hymn.
“The environment surrounding Roberts’ had a massive impact on her writing and her reminiscence of the life of Caedmon.” (Whitney Ramsaran. 20 Feb. 2026).
This is a new idea that Dr Brooks intends to research and I have to admit, due to my lack of knowledge of modern literature I felt a bit lost during the seminar but I have to agree with the fact that nature and the environment has a significant impact on writing. I always say, “what is literature without the description of nature.” That is how important I think nature is and its’ relevance in ancient and modern literature. There was also new information brought up during the seminar by someone in the audience and this was about the title that Dr Brooks used which is a line from one of Robert’s poems, it was about the “shell tip“, and if there might be a possible link to fossil excavations and if Robert’s was aware of this. I found this level of detail and thought fascinating because, seriously, how does one even think of that (it was a professor, so maybe I am overreacting), but for my academically newbie brain, this was an interesting question.
My first interests post as I like to call it is on, “The Disneyfication of a medieval tale: The precursor to Sleeping Beauty“. This post was made due to my love and hate relationship with Disney animations, specifically fairytales. While reading an article about medieval adaptations, I stumbled upon the original story of Sleeping Beauty, which was way more depressing than I remembered or knew. Disney is basically children censored and friendly versions of stories that are so dark it is better to stay in the dark not knowing the true tale or where it originates from. I speak about this in the blog and how Disney is more of an “appropriation rather than an adaptation” because they take stories of cultural significance and turn it into a happily ever after ending. I do not disagree with doing this, but as an adult finding out the original story has caused me to view the Disney version in a different light. We learnt about the difference between appropriation and adaptations and I think it is important for audiences and film lovers to know what the difference is between the two. My argument in the blog post is about the impact that Disney has on us as children compared to when we are grown up and whether knowing the truth ruins our childhood. I will have to stop here because I can feel myself beginning to rant about this, but for more information, you are free to read my post on this).
My post after this is on “Donnie Darko’s mind-bending ambiguity”, written and directed by Richard Kelly. When writing this post, I felt a little bit crazy because of how “mind-bending” it was and the level of interpretation and analysis that I had to do for this film. That was not exactly the difficult part because I do that for college as well, but the more I wrote about the film, the more I felt like I did not understand what I was writing (psychological, ambiguous works do that to you).
“Donnie Darko is a science fiction, psychological thriller, American cult classic of the 2000s, written and directed by Richard Kelly. “After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes” (IMDb, 2001).
After watching this movie, I got straight to writing about it, and I have heard from fellow fans that when they begin to understand the dynamics and narration of the film, they end up going down a rabbit hole and becoming absorbed in all the different interpretations and contexts that the movie and characters portray.
I tried to use every method of analysing that I learnt as a scholar and I have come to the conclusion that the issue is the ambiguity of the film itself and not everything needs to be understood.
“As the title of this blog suggests, the mind-bending ambiguity centres around the concept of time travel and its portrayal in the film” (Whitney Ramsaran, 17 Jan, 2026).
If the time-travel in this film were the only thing that signalled the ambiguous setting, I think it would make life much easier. There are several aspects that need to be discussed in order to explain Donnie Darko’s ambiguity, and my blog post explains some, but not all. Honestly, there are too many. I would have to spend considerable time studying this. Still, the chances of finding something new are high, but understanding something new is a different battle when it comes to the fantastic, headachingly brilliance of this movie. By writing this post I wanted to introduce the film, but also a new level of ambiguity, one that I had yet to come across in my studies. I am not saying that it is one of a kind and it exists alone, but I am saying that, as an English student, ambiguity is a concept that we study a lot throughout literature, but maybe the beauty of it is that it can never be fully understood, and my degree is about learning about these interpretations and critically thinking for oneself.
As I mentioned before, I attempted to connect this blog with aspects from my interests and area of study, which led to the post, “Batman: A Modern Medieval ‘Dark Knight'”.
“I’m back with a new idea: reimagining Batman as a modern-day medieval knight, inspired by my studies linking Middle English romance literature to the first live concert I attended for the 1989 Batman film, starring Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker” (Whitney Ramsaran. 4th Feb. 2026).
Trying to find research on this proved slightly difficult. I do not think it is an original or niche idea, one no one has ever thought of, but it is definitely barely written about. I mentioned at the end of the post that I would like to do further research on this topic and perhaps write a paper on it. Both Batman and Medieval studies and knights is something that interests me and that I am passionate about, so I am proud of this post and finding links between the two. I tried to use the most obvious connections to prove my argument, but as a wise professor once said;
“It is about the way you interpret it. That is what is it there for” (Wise words from Prof. Rooney, Textualities Conference, 2026.).
In this post I argued why and how we can reimagine Batman as a modern-day medieval knight and the characteristics that group him into this genre of romance:
“To begin, medieval romance is defined by themes such as chivalric honour, quests, courtly love, trials, and the heroic knight’s morals and ethics. These recurring motifs shape romance texts” (Whitney Ramsaran. 4 Feb. 2026).
Anyone that has watched or read Batman will know that he is heroic, the hero of Gotham City and that he portrays acts of chivalry akin to those of medieval knights. I also argued that Batman is more forgiving because of his code and ethics, which prohibit torturing but not killing. As we know, medieval knights were sometimes seen as fighting to the death or against rivals (honestly, too many beheadings). I would have liked this post to be a bit longer, but I was afraid of making it too long and turning it into proper academic research based study, because I would like to keep this idea as a future project, but I do hope there are Batman enthusiast or medieval knighthood enthusiasts like myself who would find this post helpful and insightful.
The next post on the list is an assignment for class titled “Literature Review” where we discuss out MA thesis idea and the references and journal articles that we will use. I will admit my MA thesis idea changed drastically from the original, intended path. My original idea was to discuss the Penitential romance texts in medieval literature and analyse the themes of penance and redemption within knighthood. That has now change to analysing abduction within a medieval English text and medieval Irish text. There were too many options for the thesis topic and so much I wanted to do, but I decided to go back to my roots and do the texts I liked since day one, and to dive into new territory and choose a text from an area I have yet to study, but that I have interest in. I think it is a shame that we studied no medieval Irish texts, but there the Celtic studies department is separate from the English Literature department, so it makes sense. Most medieval English texts teach strong Christian-based ethics, but Irish texts are pagan and revolve around stories and tales of high Kings and Queens, Gods and warriors. Mythology and folklore of any kind is always fascinating to learn about, and I am doing this MA thesis topic in hopes of doing something similar to it in my PhD.
“The texts that I will be using are, Sir Orfeo, a late 14th century middle-English text and Tochmarc Étaíne, also known as The Wooing of Etain, dated to have been written around the 8th century, it is part of the early Irish Mythological cycle of texts” (Whitney Ramsaran. 1st Apr. 2026).
The Wooing of Etain is said to be one of the earliest romance texts in Europe and it is heavily Celtic myth and folklore-based, whereas Sir Orfeo is a middle-english adaptation of the classical Greek Orpheus myth. This is where it gets interesting, because two cultures and beliefs have somehow found their way together through a literary connection. The topic and texts are so rich that there are many things that I can write about and research. I do have it narrowed down as the word count can be quite limiting, so there are specific themes that I will speak about and connect between the two texts.
My other post relating to the MA thesis idea is the Textualities Conference, where I presented my idea on Monstrous Knighthood in Sir Gowther. This post was a reflection on my experience as a student and presenter who was new to presenting in front of an academic crowd, I am sure it was the same for my peers.
“I must admit, I was not anxious or stressed at first with the layout compared to my peers in class, but this drastically changed” (Whitney Ramsaran. 4th Apr. 2026).
Honestly, this sums up my experience for the day while I waited for my turn to present, and it was worse because I was the last panel. The anxiety hit very hard, and I wished that I were the first one to present (never thought I would say that, but it’s true). Regardless of the anxiety I experienced, I had fun! Would I do it again? Surprisingly, yes, I would, as I have learnt from my mistakes and would hopefully improve for future presentations.
This has been a great journey, blogging about different things, events, media and my interests. I am grateful to my professors who taught me how to create, manage and use the website (it was a difficult journey). Now that I have submitted this portfolio, it feels like I have completed a side quest of sorts. I had fun with this and it was an enjoyable experience. I hope to continue blogging in the future, maybe a book blogger, or films? Ohhh food blogging might be an option. Until then, fellow readers, the journey has been fun for me and I hope for you too.
Works Cited:
“Dark Cosmology.” Rainview Blog, Nov 5, 2025.
“The disneyfication of a medieval tale: The precursor to Sleeping Beauty.” Rainview Blog, Dec 5, 2025.
“Donnie Darko’s Mind-bending Ambiguity” Rainview Blog, Jan 17, 2026.
“Batman: A Modern Medieval ‘Dark Knight’.” Rainview Blog, Feb 4, 2026.
“Old English and Modern English Literature.” Rainview Blog, Mar 20, 2026.
“Literature Review.” Rainview Blog, Apr 1, 2026.
“Conference Reflection.” Rainview Blog, Apr 4, 2026.
Batman 1962, Live in Concert, 2026.
Donnie Darko directed and written by Robert Kelly, 2001.
Friends, sitcom TV show, 1994.
