During the 17th and 18th centuries a bunch of journals and diaries were published England. It was a crazy time for London. There were multiple plague outbreaks and fire that gutted the city. The "Diary of Samuel Pepys" is in most high school Brit Lit textbooks as at least an excerpt. It became such a popular format that people like Defoe picked it up as a fictional format and some of the earliest adventure stories and sci fi are written as fictional journals in whole or in part.
I just got through teaching that unit to my seniors. This sparked an entire discussion on the practical differences between a journal and a diary. Both words are rooted in the language for "day" as in an account written on a daily basis. As such there is a lot of overlap between these closely related formats. On a practical level a diary tends to focus inward on the internal life of the writer. It tends to be filled with the minutia of daily life, emotional venting, as well as personal reaction and reflection to external events. Journal tend to focus outward on what is happening to or around the writer. While personal reflection and reaction is still a necessary part of the format, the focus should be more objective and spend more time on the recording/description of events.
For most people, it doesn't really matter what they call their collection of personal writing. The terms can be considered mostly interchangeable. For me though, while I would consider picking up a random person's journal and reading it, I would never read someone's diary. There's an implied expectation of privacy in the word "diary."
Lately, in an effort to keep up with daily posting, I've been straying closer to diary when this blog is intended to be more of a journal. I apologize for that. My personal natterings are probably really only interesting to me. I'll get it back on track.
No comments:
Post a Comment