Seriously, this fucking dissertation proposal is going to be the death of me. Or of my academic career. I'm not sure which. Not only have we gone from "your chapter outlines aren't connected enough" to "you're being way too specific - you could really only get a chapter out of this" to which I responded "I'm thinking along the lines of using X as a hinge to read things Y,Z,Q and B from, so that X can link the chapters together" which got me the response of "don't write anything until we've talked (which won't be until next Tuesday!) and read all the stuff on sacred/secular texts that you were supposed to read two months ago. Oh, and your deadline is really pressing now (ed.comment - it's in 7 weeks) and you really need to get cracking - I think you'll have to work your whole winter break on this! Oh, and make sure you realize that your thinking is likely to change ten pages into draft one of your introduction, and that we all accept ahead of time that this proposal is in essence a little white lie."
So. First question is that I'm not really sure what the hell sacred/secular overlapping literature it is I'm supposed to be reading other than this one 1000 page tome I haven't picked up yet because I haven't had the time because I've been trying to get this fucking proposal out so that I *would* have the time to actually digest it. I realize that advisor A and I spent an hour in the library together looking at stuff on precisely that topic. Why I don't have a better idea of what she thinks I'm supposed to be reading is beyond me because I have picked up and at least skimmed pretty much everything she mentioned. If she has some magic specific text in mind, it would be nice of her to mention it to me because I'm fucking clueless now.
Second question is wondering why, if we all apparently recognize that the document I'm being raked over the coals for is nothing but a little white lie to show the administration that I have some clue as to what I'm doing being that by writing it I have no time to actually process ideas the way I'd like to because I'm currently too trapped by the document to actually write anything meaningful, can't we just go ahead with some "final revisions" and let it go, assuming that, as has been admitted, I'm wasting my time by being at the proposal stage.
Third, advisor B pointed out that my comma usage apparently sucks (after a point, comma usage is generally STYLISTIC) and that reading my work is pissing her off. She told me this this morning. So I laughed it off and said "well we definitely don't want you angry while you're reading drafts" and said I'd have Tony look over stuff since I apparently am missing things, but honestly. The last draft I sent her was for me pretty clean. So what she just told me was that my writing style pisses her off. Fucking lovely. I fail to see how that's constructive at all, or how that's supposed to make me feel like this is a good working relationship. It's not a good working relationship. It's a fucking nightmare.
Fourth - said two advisors have turned into the fucking Borg or something. They've got this identical idea (based on talking to them both and their comments) of what I'm supposed to do. I just wish they'd share it with me. Because I am lost.
Fifth - What their idea of my dissertation is (so far as I can guess this) and what my idea of it is are not the same thing. I've given up on trying to do my ideas because they don't like them and the battle is not currently worth fighting. It will be worth fighting when I have the proposal approved and I am on maintenance of candidacy, but it is not worth it yet. Because there are deadlines and I am fucking NOT spending my entire fucking BREAK working on this stupid thing. It is not worth the time or the energy.
Fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck.
Tony did tell me last night that it would work fine for him if we got our dissertations done, he got a swanky job at a private high school (the good ones pay LOADS and LOVE to hire Ph.Ds) in a fun part of the country and he'd send me off to brewing school. And he'd be happy and I'd be happy.
I've been comparing stories. My advisors are the two newest faculty members and they're both in their first time heading committees. I got told by three people this morning that it sounds like the other person with my same committee people and I are being hazed something awful - this stupid thing is supposed to be broad, general, and about 7 pages. I'm at 12 at last count "and have about enough material for a chapter." Meanwhile, Tony's has been signed off on and he's working on chapter one already.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
back to almost drawing board
Got the latest round of comments back from both advisors (and to think, I still need two more) on the dissertation proposal. I can't believe that any one 10 page document is requiring this much work, when we all know and recognize that it doesn't have any viability as a written document beyond having to have a few people look at it so they'll sign off so I can be on maintenance of candidacy.
So, both of them think I've gone too narrow in my focus (one of whom told me that I'd come up with a great chapter, but not a great dissertation; the other of whom mentioned that the chapters seem to be repetitive, and need to branch out in other directions). Yay. This after several rounds of my not being specific enough. Also, one of them thinks that I can't write a sentence correctly. Yes, I know I'm long-winded and whatnot, but I know my grammar and when I'm writing something academic I do keep to grammatically correct sentences. It's sorta the way to go with that stuff. I've never had anyone tell me I need to start polishing my writing more before I send them stuff... so that little barb hurt.
I gather I need to meet with them again next week after the holidays so we can figure out what I'm supposed to be doing now so that they can sign off on the next draft (and so hopefully we can get me two other committee members who would also sign off on the next draft). So I'll set that up I suppose. And tomorrow I need to go back to working on that damned draft and see what I can do to branch out into whatever arenas I'm supposed to branch out into. I don't feel like I'm writing a dissertation for myself or as according to my own interests anymore; I feel like I'm writing some boring and pedantic little piece to make a bunch of other people happy. I'd love to say it isn't supposed to be like this but I imagine my experience with this is probably quite similar to other peoples'. This must be why so many people get to the ABD stage and say 'fuck this' as loudly as possible.
Tonight I think I'll salve my bruised ego a bit and enjoy the bpalz that finally came in the mail today. I've got Death of Autumn on one wrist and Archangel Winter on the other, so I smell like the weather outside - lots of dead leaves, a bit of smoke, and cold wet air. It's been snowing/sleeting/raining since yesterday morning and I had to cancel class tonight because I wasn't going to deal with driving back up from Philly several hours after dark in the frozen slush that's been falling from the sky. I don't think they've had bad weather in Philly, which is funny... oh, the joys of living 60 miles North of one's current place of employment.
So, both of them think I've gone too narrow in my focus (one of whom told me that I'd come up with a great chapter, but not a great dissertation; the other of whom mentioned that the chapters seem to be repetitive, and need to branch out in other directions). Yay. This after several rounds of my not being specific enough. Also, one of them thinks that I can't write a sentence correctly. Yes, I know I'm long-winded and whatnot, but I know my grammar and when I'm writing something academic I do keep to grammatically correct sentences. It's sorta the way to go with that stuff. I've never had anyone tell me I need to start polishing my writing more before I send them stuff... so that little barb hurt.
I gather I need to meet with them again next week after the holidays so we can figure out what I'm supposed to be doing now so that they can sign off on the next draft (and so hopefully we can get me two other committee members who would also sign off on the next draft). So I'll set that up I suppose. And tomorrow I need to go back to working on that damned draft and see what I can do to branch out into whatever arenas I'm supposed to branch out into. I don't feel like I'm writing a dissertation for myself or as according to my own interests anymore; I feel like I'm writing some boring and pedantic little piece to make a bunch of other people happy. I'd love to say it isn't supposed to be like this but I imagine my experience with this is probably quite similar to other peoples'. This must be why so many people get to the ABD stage and say 'fuck this' as loudly as possible.
Tonight I think I'll salve my bruised ego a bit and enjoy the bpalz that finally came in the mail today. I've got Death of Autumn on one wrist and Archangel Winter on the other, so I smell like the weather outside - lots of dead leaves, a bit of smoke, and cold wet air. It's been snowing/sleeting/raining since yesterday morning and I had to cancel class tonight because I wasn't going to deal with driving back up from Philly several hours after dark in the frozen slush that's been falling from the sky. I don't think they've had bad weather in Philly, which is funny... oh, the joys of living 60 miles North of one's current place of employment.
Monday, November 12, 2007
teaching in 8 minutes
So I'm teaching in a few minutes and getting the pre-class nervousness that I always get with this class - I don't know if it's because it's two and a half hours straight that I'm supposed to be keeping them interested and entertained or if it's because I've had a few off weeks or what. We're doing Margery Kempe tonight and I'm hoping it goes well despite the fact that half the class seems to hate the book. I actually love it; Margery is completely fantastic, quick-witted at times and really judgmental of the idiots around her, etc... and I love that the book puts a moral spin on whether or not one believes Margery - if you do, then you're going to heaven, if not, then you're off to hell. Hopefully it will be okay once I get past the initial couple of moments where students just stare at me like 'oh, it's you again, go away...' It usually is. And in two and a half hours when I survive tonight, I can go home, eat leftover chili with Tony, pack for tomorrow, play with the kitties, sleep, get up, shower, and hit the airport to go home for a few days and attempt to get my stress levels back to manageable for the rest of the semester... YAY!!!
Thursday, November 8, 2007
earlier mental wanderings
Turned into this paragraph. Consider it copywrited, bitches!!
"The Auchinleck manuscript has been dated to roughly 1330-1331, early in the reign of the young Edward III. For Londoners at this time, the reign of Edward I with its strong judicial institutions and prestigious knights had a powerful pull on the imaginations of those who had lately suffered through the corrupt reign of Edward II. Edward II’s reign was a time of much legal change and experimentation, coinciding with corruption and injustice in the highest levels of the government. As Anthony Musson points out, the beginning of Edward III’s reign was characterized by a “conscious resurrection of various laws and policies from Edward I’s time” (174). As Edward III took power and settled in as king, his subjects were energetically trying to re-establish social order and justice in the legal system (and indeed in the country at large). Citizens became nostalgic for the legal and cultural traditions of Edward I, using that nostalgia to re/create (i.e., both revive and create anew) the broken legal system. But the nostalgia was not limited to the legal system; it also involved the high chivalric ideals exploited by Edward I to form the backbone of his military might against the Welsh and the Scots in his imperialistic wars. By the 1330’s when the Auchinleck manuscript was being compiled, knights were not the mounted military figures they had been, but were instead taking a leading role in the newly representative form of a parliament which was largely concerned with the arbitration of justice. Knightly activity had become more involved with parliamentary judicial proceedings and upholding social justice than it was in battle and tournaments. In a sense, then, knights and justice had been conflated, and manipulation of one could in turn help define the other. Londoners in particular had a high sense of pride for their legal history, compiling it in custumals, which formed miscellaneous collections of law code and historical record and which were kept on record by the City Magistrate and also privately collected by individual citizens. Ralph Hanna points to these custumals as being the closest analog we have to the Auchinleck manuscript, which again suggests the conflation of chivalric and legal ideals in the early reign of Edward III."
Like I said, MY THOUGHTS, MY WRITING. (I hate having to think about that.)
But still, I'm pretty happy with that mess of words! It only took five hours of sitting at a computer and staring and the past two and a half months of sitting and staring at books and feeling the knots in my back return from their summer, post-exam hiatus...
Off to watch South Park and convince myself that the fact that there won't be a Daily Show until the writers' strike ends (and I'm rooting for the writers) means that I should spend time I would normally be watching that working on my dissertation, or at least reading for class on Monday...
"The Auchinleck manuscript has been dated to roughly 1330-1331, early in the reign of the young Edward III. For Londoners at this time, the reign of Edward I with its strong judicial institutions and prestigious knights had a powerful pull on the imaginations of those who had lately suffered through the corrupt reign of Edward II. Edward II’s reign was a time of much legal change and experimentation, coinciding with corruption and injustice in the highest levels of the government. As Anthony Musson points out, the beginning of Edward III’s reign was characterized by a “conscious resurrection of various laws and policies from Edward I’s time” (174). As Edward III took power and settled in as king, his subjects were energetically trying to re-establish social order and justice in the legal system (and indeed in the country at large). Citizens became nostalgic for the legal and cultural traditions of Edward I, using that nostalgia to re/create (i.e., both revive and create anew) the broken legal system. But the nostalgia was not limited to the legal system; it also involved the high chivalric ideals exploited by Edward I to form the backbone of his military might against the Welsh and the Scots in his imperialistic wars. By the 1330’s when the Auchinleck manuscript was being compiled, knights were not the mounted military figures they had been, but were instead taking a leading role in the newly representative form of a parliament which was largely concerned with the arbitration of justice. Knightly activity had become more involved with parliamentary judicial proceedings and upholding social justice than it was in battle and tournaments. In a sense, then, knights and justice had been conflated, and manipulation of one could in turn help define the other. Londoners in particular had a high sense of pride for their legal history, compiling it in custumals, which formed miscellaneous collections of law code and historical record and which were kept on record by the City Magistrate and also privately collected by individual citizens. Ralph Hanna points to these custumals as being the closest analog we have to the Auchinleck manuscript, which again suggests the conflation of chivalric and legal ideals in the early reign of Edward III."
Like I said, MY THOUGHTS, MY WRITING. (I hate having to think about that.)
But still, I'm pretty happy with that mess of words! It only took five hours of sitting at a computer and staring and the past two and a half months of sitting and staring at books and feeling the knots in my back return from their summer, post-exam hiatus...
Off to watch South Park and convince myself that the fact that there won't be a Daily Show until the writers' strike ends (and I'm rooting for the writers) means that I should spend time I would normally be watching that working on my dissertation, or at least reading for class on Monday...
things I need to organize
Just mentally. The organization of the rest of my life would take more than just a blog to deal with.
- the early 1330's were characterized in part by a nostalgia for Edward I (the Longshanks of Braveheart fame). This entailed:
- a return to legal proceedings and court eyres as in Edward I's time
- a heightened cultural standing for the concept of knighthood
- knighthood under Edward I had been very prestigious due to Edward's conscious manipulation of Arthurian style jousts, etc.
-Knights were forming the beginnings of the representative parliament and thus were very active in legal proceedings
-Therefore if we take the manuscript as being an analog to the legal custumals such as the liber Horn, placing the knight on a high moral pedestal with an internalized, self-correcting morality would help create the ideal of the sort of person who would be most fit to be judge or representative
-Furthermore, by privileging the individual sense of morality by systematically denying the role of the clerical figures, the manuscript could also be arguing for the primacy of secular courts over their clerical counterparts, in a sense saying that secular courts should be in control for all matters of justice and the clerical courts would be essentially unnecessary in most matters.
-The upshot of this is that through this manuscript we can see the nascent and increasing divide between secular and sacred social arenas when they had before been more intertwined.
UGH. Must get this all straightened out somehow so's I can relink my chapter outlines so's I can send this out tomorrow....
- the early 1330's were characterized in part by a nostalgia for Edward I (the Longshanks of Braveheart fame). This entailed:
- a return to legal proceedings and court eyres as in Edward I's time
- a heightened cultural standing for the concept of knighthood
- knighthood under Edward I had been very prestigious due to Edward's conscious manipulation of Arthurian style jousts, etc.
-Knights were forming the beginnings of the representative parliament and thus were very active in legal proceedings
-Therefore if we take the manuscript as being an analog to the legal custumals such as the liber Horn, placing the knight on a high moral pedestal with an internalized, self-correcting morality would help create the ideal of the sort of person who would be most fit to be judge or representative
-Furthermore, by privileging the individual sense of morality by systematically denying the role of the clerical figures, the manuscript could also be arguing for the primacy of secular courts over their clerical counterparts, in a sense saying that secular courts should be in control for all matters of justice and the clerical courts would be essentially unnecessary in most matters.
-The upshot of this is that through this manuscript we can see the nascent and increasing divide between secular and sacred social arenas when they had before been more intertwined.
UGH. Must get this all straightened out somehow so's I can relink my chapter outlines so's I can send this out tomorrow....
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Proposal writing
So I need to write this proposal like today, because I really need to have it out by the end of the week and I really don't want to end up sending my advisors another round of something that's still pretty rough - this needs to be better than what I've sent them in the past because I sort of feel as though I need to prove that I'm not completely scatterbrained and stupid, which is by and large how I've been feeling I must present myself to them as of late. So I really need to get my brain back into focus on this. Besides which I keep thinking that if I get through this and get it sent out I'll probably feel a lot better about things overall, and may be able to get to the point where my attempts at relaxation are working again a bit more. The holiday stuff came out for Lush, and I'm telling myself I can get a few bath bombs and stuff once I've gotten this proposal out and we're all relatively okay with it/at least agree I have a working draft, as opposed to a draft that accomplished whatever it needed to accomplish and can now be shoved off so that I can start from scratch yet again. I'll feel better when I get to that stage, I hope.
And I need to stop tying my in/ability to concentrate to my self esteem. I think that's been horribly unproductive because every time I get stuck and stranded, I get more frustrated with myself and end up even less productive. It's one of those cycles I've noticed in my thought patterns that for the moment I've got to attempt to just STOP. The long and short of it is that I'm spending more time mentally crucifying myself than I am getting through productive thoughts, and in the end I'm getting nowhere but depressed. I don't have time to deal with a depression right now and I've got a billion really wonderful things in my life between Tony and my family and friends and cats. Focusing on those helps. Nunk keeps curling up in my lap and purring when I'm in a particularly depressive group of thoughts - it's like she knows when I'm beating myself up.
I've got jazz/ballet in 6 hours. Before then I need to eat a couple of times so I have enough energy to get through. I also need to get an outline for all the chapters, or if not outlines then maybe a fleshed out version of just one chapter. I think what I do with that will need to depend on my attention span and whether or not I can focus on just one thing or if I'm all over the place. I also need to try and remind myself that this document does to a degree *matter*, even if the only point of it is to convince the Dean to put me on Maintenance of Candidacy. That does need to happen or I won't get funding next year. So regardless of how little this document has any bearing on my actual dissertation, it needs to be good for its purposes. It is just another bullshit hoop that's a waste of a semester, but it still has to get done. Given academics is just a series of largely bullshit hoops, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I'm dealing with another one.
And I need to stop tying my in/ability to concentrate to my self esteem. I think that's been horribly unproductive because every time I get stuck and stranded, I get more frustrated with myself and end up even less productive. It's one of those cycles I've noticed in my thought patterns that for the moment I've got to attempt to just STOP. The long and short of it is that I'm spending more time mentally crucifying myself than I am getting through productive thoughts, and in the end I'm getting nowhere but depressed. I don't have time to deal with a depression right now and I've got a billion really wonderful things in my life between Tony and my family and friends and cats. Focusing on those helps. Nunk keeps curling up in my lap and purring when I'm in a particularly depressive group of thoughts - it's like she knows when I'm beating myself up.
I've got jazz/ballet in 6 hours. Before then I need to eat a couple of times so I have enough energy to get through. I also need to get an outline for all the chapters, or if not outlines then maybe a fleshed out version of just one chapter. I think what I do with that will need to depend on my attention span and whether or not I can focus on just one thing or if I'm all over the place. I also need to try and remind myself that this document does to a degree *matter*, even if the only point of it is to convince the Dean to put me on Maintenance of Candidacy. That does need to happen or I won't get funding next year. So regardless of how little this document has any bearing on my actual dissertation, it needs to be good for its purposes. It is just another bullshit hoop that's a waste of a semester, but it still has to get done. Given academics is just a series of largely bullshit hoops, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I'm dealing with another one.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
momentary metacognition
So I've been realizing that a lot of the language I've been using for the past month or so when describing myself or my mental state or situation seems inevitably to involve some sort of feeling of being static, unmoving, stuck, or blocked somehow. This seems to all go back to my inability to deal with the current stressors in my life in anything even approaching a healthy way - rather than being productive when necessary and using any free time to destress, I've been having huge concentration issues, flipping into daydreams without actually realizing that I've done so for several minutes, have had my energy level spike in one of those weird, toxic ways that means that my muscles are constantly sore and I end up feeling more exhausted than usual, that sort of stuff. Meanwhile, my ability to get through all the reading I have for my class each week is suffering - I get through it all, but I'm not comprehending it on a level I'd be thrilled about with if I were taking the class, much less teaching it. I'm not really comprehending anything I'm reading right now on a very deep level. Because of this, I'm having a hard time critiquing arguments, synthesizing ideas, or working through any of the problems I've run into on the dissertation. My dissertation progress has slowed to nonexistent - I need to be putting together another draft of the proposal, but I've been finding it next to impossible to throw my brain into thinking about anything to do with the dissertation or the proposal for any length of time. During the first half of the semester I was balancing pretty well - I'd spend the mid-week section of time working on exclusively dissertation stuff and keep my brain pretty well focused on that, and then spend Friday-Monday working on stuff for my class. Lately, however, it's been taking all week to get through class stuff, my brain seems unable to flip into dissertation mode, and the stress of feeling like I'm forever falling further behind is leaving me unable to sleep - which is probably feeding the cycle more.
The upshot I suppose is that it feels like whatever is really ADD in my brain has gone on spin cycle, and I'm actually worse than usual. I'm to the point of idealizing any type of work that isn't graduate school, because I wonder a lot of the time if I'd be more productive if I were in a typical 8-5 office environment, and I feel like at this point my self-esteem seems tied to my productivity, as I've been getting more and more depressed and angry at myself over my lack of work or productivity or, um, product (seeing my dissertation proposal as a sort of end-phase commodity I suppose - I'm feeling pretty alienated from the process at the moment especially when I know that the whole proposal is pretty much there just to make the Dean here allow me to be on maintenance of candidacy).
Meanwhile, I'm comparing myself pretty relentlessly to Tony. I need to stop this. He just has this seemingly magical ability to stop all the things in his brain and really focus, and this ability is completely eluding me. And he just ran his first marathon last week, and I'm barely managing to work out more than once a week (though I'm down to magic weight - that 135 pound mark that means that I feel pretty good and thin, but not so thin that Sarah and Janet start yelling at me to gain weight - just healthy). I think I should be trying to work out a bit more because it seems like the cardio and whatnot should be helping me to focus some of the stress somewhere else. I can eat more if I worry about losing any more weight.
So I'm stuck at the moment and not doing a very good job of working though it right now. I'm frustrated with school because it feels like the current hoop I'm attempting to jump through is pretty pointless, and I'm also frustrated because for the most part I really haven't enjoyed teaching this semester as much as I was hoping to and it's making me call into question my ability as a teacher or even my desire to do this for the rest of my life. I think some of the stress of all of this professional doubt and self-doubt and not knowing how to overcome it quite yet is part of what's got my brain in overdrive, which is probably funneling into my concentration, which is in turn keeping me from getting through the proposal so that I can back up, do the background reading I need to be doing to really give some good analysis, and all of that.
And at the moment I need to be getting through the last three essays for tomorrow's class so that I can figure out how in the hell I think we'll be getting through five theoretical standpoints and their accompanying essays in two and a half hours. And it's all centered on Chaucer. I keep hoping they'll come up with a Chaucer action figure so I can hang him upside down by his ankle in my office...
On brighter notes, my comp two proposal for next semester got cleared, so I'll be teaching a course surrounding cultural attitudes towards death (Matthew!!! I need something short and accessible about AIDS please!!!). So we'll see how a comp two course goes when I'm doing everything I can to avoid talking politics with them...
The upshot I suppose is that it feels like whatever is really ADD in my brain has gone on spin cycle, and I'm actually worse than usual. I'm to the point of idealizing any type of work that isn't graduate school, because I wonder a lot of the time if I'd be more productive if I were in a typical 8-5 office environment, and I feel like at this point my self-esteem seems tied to my productivity, as I've been getting more and more depressed and angry at myself over my lack of work or productivity or, um, product (seeing my dissertation proposal as a sort of end-phase commodity I suppose - I'm feeling pretty alienated from the process at the moment especially when I know that the whole proposal is pretty much there just to make the Dean here allow me to be on maintenance of candidacy).
Meanwhile, I'm comparing myself pretty relentlessly to Tony. I need to stop this. He just has this seemingly magical ability to stop all the things in his brain and really focus, and this ability is completely eluding me. And he just ran his first marathon last week, and I'm barely managing to work out more than once a week (though I'm down to magic weight - that 135 pound mark that means that I feel pretty good and thin, but not so thin that Sarah and Janet start yelling at me to gain weight - just healthy). I think I should be trying to work out a bit more because it seems like the cardio and whatnot should be helping me to focus some of the stress somewhere else. I can eat more if I worry about losing any more weight.
So I'm stuck at the moment and not doing a very good job of working though it right now. I'm frustrated with school because it feels like the current hoop I'm attempting to jump through is pretty pointless, and I'm also frustrated because for the most part I really haven't enjoyed teaching this semester as much as I was hoping to and it's making me call into question my ability as a teacher or even my desire to do this for the rest of my life. I think some of the stress of all of this professional doubt and self-doubt and not knowing how to overcome it quite yet is part of what's got my brain in overdrive, which is probably funneling into my concentration, which is in turn keeping me from getting through the proposal so that I can back up, do the background reading I need to be doing to really give some good analysis, and all of that.
And at the moment I need to be getting through the last three essays for tomorrow's class so that I can figure out how in the hell I think we'll be getting through five theoretical standpoints and their accompanying essays in two and a half hours. And it's all centered on Chaucer. I keep hoping they'll come up with a Chaucer action figure so I can hang him upside down by his ankle in my office...
On brighter notes, my comp two proposal for next semester got cleared, so I'll be teaching a course surrounding cultural attitudes towards death (Matthew!!! I need something short and accessible about AIDS please!!!). So we'll see how a comp two course goes when I'm doing everything I can to avoid talking politics with them...
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
stuff to work through
okay - trying to work some thoughts out so I'm going to type without actually even looking at the screen or anything. Sorry for typos if anyone bothres readign ths.
Things I need to do with this diss project to make this a bit more manageable:
1- stop tyring to deal with eveyrhting in secular/sacred terms, if much of what I'm trying to do is deconstruct those boudnaries. I may need to propose a new terminological set to deal with them, but if nothing else I have to explain why i think that's a false dichotomy and work on how to articulate probelms without miring myself in the either/or thinking that iI'm criticizing. That's difficult. But doable.
2 - I need to figure out exactly who I could really justify as being the audience for this mansucript and what their social conditions were. Am i really dealling wtih knights at all, or am i dealing with people who would more or less aspire to be knights, or are there even knights in london by 1330 that would be recognizably such? probably not when i think about it, because they point out that knights were at least as much engaged in legal and administrative work as they were in any sort of military action - even Edward I dealt with chivalry as nostalgic, so my trying to assert that this is really for real armor wearing knights is a bit naive. however, that doesn't mean that the chivalric ideal is dead or anything, just that i need to reformulate what looking at chivalry would do for someone who's more in upper levels of society in a later sense, rather than in the hard and fast estates model that probably never quite existed anyway.
3 - I need to define how I'm dealing with romance better, and why i think the romantic tone is so important in this ms. Essentially the way I see it, romance is one of those things that breaks down fiction/reality binaries and melds them into each other - one creates the other which in turn reflects an idealized version of the first, or helps to recreate it etc. And if people in medieval times had no problem justifying large scale courses of action on writings that were generally agreed to be a pack of lies, then even the normal boundaries we see between the real and the pretend are liable to be thrown out the window whenever expedient. That said, everythign in this manuscript can be read as a romance which is important and thus necessary to unpack, define, and explain more.
4 - I really need to put my chapters into a non-outline form and figure out what the connections are that Im trying to make between them. I probably need a gender chapter as well as the others because it comes up too much.
5 - deal with social anxieties explored in the text, how these are expressed, whether or not there is some sort of narrative of resistance going on alongside what's held up to be good and fine and all that rot and work that into my overall thought.
Am running into a mental roadblock. Will go drink some water and come back to this in a bit when I've digested a bit more.
Things I need to do with this diss project to make this a bit more manageable:
1- stop tyring to deal with eveyrhting in secular/sacred terms, if much of what I'm trying to do is deconstruct those boudnaries. I may need to propose a new terminological set to deal with them, but if nothing else I have to explain why i think that's a false dichotomy and work on how to articulate probelms without miring myself in the either/or thinking that iI'm criticizing. That's difficult. But doable.
2 - I need to figure out exactly who I could really justify as being the audience for this mansucript and what their social conditions were. Am i really dealling wtih knights at all, or am i dealing with people who would more or less aspire to be knights, or are there even knights in london by 1330 that would be recognizably such? probably not when i think about it, because they point out that knights were at least as much engaged in legal and administrative work as they were in any sort of military action - even Edward I dealt with chivalry as nostalgic, so my trying to assert that this is really for real armor wearing knights is a bit naive. however, that doesn't mean that the chivalric ideal is dead or anything, just that i need to reformulate what looking at chivalry would do for someone who's more in upper levels of society in a later sense, rather than in the hard and fast estates model that probably never quite existed anyway.
3 - I need to define how I'm dealing with romance better, and why i think the romantic tone is so important in this ms. Essentially the way I see it, romance is one of those things that breaks down fiction/reality binaries and melds them into each other - one creates the other which in turn reflects an idealized version of the first, or helps to recreate it etc. And if people in medieval times had no problem justifying large scale courses of action on writings that were generally agreed to be a pack of lies, then even the normal boundaries we see between the real and the pretend are liable to be thrown out the window whenever expedient. That said, everythign in this manuscript can be read as a romance which is important and thus necessary to unpack, define, and explain more.
4 - I really need to put my chapters into a non-outline form and figure out what the connections are that Im trying to make between them. I probably need a gender chapter as well as the others because it comes up too much.
5 - deal with social anxieties explored in the text, how these are expressed, whether or not there is some sort of narrative of resistance going on alongside what's held up to be good and fine and all that rot and work that into my overall thought.
Am running into a mental roadblock. Will go drink some water and come back to this in a bit when I've digested a bit more.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
dissertations thoughts clogging my brain
Alright - we'll start with what I've just gotten read - the first chapter of Ralph Hanna's London Literature. A lot of it is involved with various different minor scribal differences to try and make a case for certain dialects of London English (Types II and III) overlapping more than most scholars would like to give them credit for. Not of interest for me because the manuscript I'm working with has been pretty well dated for the first chunk of the 1330's. Hanna's major and most provoking claim is that we should be thinking of 1300's London not as the country-capital megolith it is now, but as just another provincial town that would have actually been a bit more provincial than most - he cites that the major churches (other than St. Paul's, I'd presume) were all on the borders of London (i.e, like Canterbury), which is different from places like York or King's Lynn or Norwich, and that London didn't necessarily have the burgeoning literary culture many other cities did at the time.
He gives remarkably few manuscripts that can be dated to roughly the time of Auchinleck - ten in all (several which are later). The majority of them have the same works in common; the preponderance of works written at the time are largely Scripture-based works, explanations or interpretations of Scriptural texts, hagiographies and lessons for correct living, most of which seem to assume a high level of understanding and intellectual curiousity on the part of the audience. Auchinleck contains several examples of this type of literature, along with some extremely basic texts that seem to have been aimed at educating younger or less intellectually capable minds. Hanna points out (p 13) that compendiums of this type of literature seem to have been common household items given their common occurance in legal records like wills.
It is the coexistence of this type of literature with the romances in Auchinleck that can give modern readers pause, yet it is doubtful that the manuscript's contemporary audience would have found it odd at all.
Now for another book that's been thought provoking and clogging my brain for about a week - Kaeuper's Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. I'l be dropping out the French stuff whenever necessary, though it occurs to me that knowing attitudes towards chivalry in France would be important given the amount of literature in Auchinleck that seems to have been translated into English for the first time.
The first thing Kaeuper points out that is obvious, yet usually ignored, and completely necessary, is that to be responsible scholars we should really try and move beyond the aura of romance that surrounds chivalry and look at knights for what they were - warriors who, to whatever personal degree, followed chivalry as they personally viewed it - and that the chivalric code is one that promoted violence, and one that fused honor with the correct expression of violence and piety. The ideals expressed by "chivalry" were in constant flux and reinterpreted often by the Church (usually trying to figure out what to do with the warrior class), literature, and the knights themselves. I would argue that Auchinleck fits into this milieu; it seems overwhelmingly concerned with the lives of knights, the proper morality for knights to display and live by (one which generally only seems to need the intercession of priests for baptism and marriage; confession and penance are often, if not exclusively, at the discretion of the individual knight).
One issue common in chivalric literature is how to live in a society prone to random and often large scale fits of violence. That knights are the usual cause of this unrest can be seen through their appearance in many romances - there is the good knight protagonist of the story, and then several bad knights whose appearance is often rather demonic - black and imposing. The major point is that even contemporary authors regarded chivalry as a mix of the great social hope for high ideals at the same time they were concerned about its effects and the problems of its malpractice. Kaeuper looks at chivalry on a macro scale, trying to tease out the good and the bad in various situations. I propose to look at the Auchinleck manuscript as a particular expression of chivalric ideals in a particular location at a particular time with particular goals in mind.
That said, I need to learn more about London in 1330.
Kaeuper points out that chivalric literature is at least as prescriptive as it is descriptive, and that its authors were often concerned with trying to create the very ideal they were trying to describe. At the same time, the chivalric tradition is one that arose from the warrior tradition (and as such revelled in violence), rather than any sort of institutional behest, and it is a tradition that the Church and State governments were trying to co-opt and control. When it comes to the Church this is especially instructive - the Church's attempt to force some sort of control over knights comes in sacralizing the dubbing ceremony and in the Crusades. However, knights in romantic literature seem to resist any real clerical control (very true in Auchinleck); they often seem to act as though they have a special relationship with God that allows them to act as their conscience allows (violently or otherwise). Knights are often aligned with hermits when they are aligned with the church at all; this is interesting because hermits were alone and on the very fringes of the clerical hierarchy. In many cases, the hermits are mentioned to be past knights as well, and many knights go on to lead the life of a hermit after the major violent portion of their career is over. In many ways hermits were independent of the Church, and thus seem to give knights a way to claim correct morality while living outside of clerical control themselves.
In 14th century England, the top levels of secular society were quite fluid and interacted quite often. The secular courts in England were some of the strongest in England at the time, and knights often sat on the courts and held judicial duties. The clerical courts, meanwhile, had very little ability to enforce laws when it came to knights. The prevailing theme in much English literature is that one should be obedient to the king and the secular structure as long as the king in charge merits that obedience; bad kings mean that violence and working outside the system to promote one's own ends is essentially fine.
This could mean that one of the main reasons that the Auchinleck manuscript shows such a concern with proper chivalric ideals is due to the reign of Edward II, who was generally not a beloved king. Edward II's reign is described most fully in the last extent text, the Simonie, and I should look and see what sorts of violent outbreaks there were at that time. One of the major things the manuscript could be doing would be re-creating a system of chivalry that promotes social order rather than social mayhem; if Hanna is correct in his assumption that the Auchinleck's closest analogue is the legal custumals of London at the time, then this would be a way to form a sort of code for chivalry in an imaginative mode, rather than a legal one. This would be a good time to revisit Patty Ingham's book Sovereign Fantasies to come up with some sort of rationale for why the romance mode would be a good mode for this sort of exploration to take place.
And now I should publish this and start trying to figure out what would work as part of the diss proposal and what is stuff that I just need to keep in mind...
He gives remarkably few manuscripts that can be dated to roughly the time of Auchinleck - ten in all (several which are later). The majority of them have the same works in common; the preponderance of works written at the time are largely Scripture-based works, explanations or interpretations of Scriptural texts, hagiographies and lessons for correct living, most of which seem to assume a high level of understanding and intellectual curiousity on the part of the audience. Auchinleck contains several examples of this type of literature, along with some extremely basic texts that seem to have been aimed at educating younger or less intellectually capable minds. Hanna points out (p 13) that compendiums of this type of literature seem to have been common household items given their common occurance in legal records like wills.
It is the coexistence of this type of literature with the romances in Auchinleck that can give modern readers pause, yet it is doubtful that the manuscript's contemporary audience would have found it odd at all.
Now for another book that's been thought provoking and clogging my brain for about a week - Kaeuper's Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. I'l be dropping out the French stuff whenever necessary, though it occurs to me that knowing attitudes towards chivalry in France would be important given the amount of literature in Auchinleck that seems to have been translated into English for the first time.
The first thing Kaeuper points out that is obvious, yet usually ignored, and completely necessary, is that to be responsible scholars we should really try and move beyond the aura of romance that surrounds chivalry and look at knights for what they were - warriors who, to whatever personal degree, followed chivalry as they personally viewed it - and that the chivalric code is one that promoted violence, and one that fused honor with the correct expression of violence and piety. The ideals expressed by "chivalry" were in constant flux and reinterpreted often by the Church (usually trying to figure out what to do with the warrior class), literature, and the knights themselves. I would argue that Auchinleck fits into this milieu; it seems overwhelmingly concerned with the lives of knights, the proper morality for knights to display and live by (one which generally only seems to need the intercession of priests for baptism and marriage; confession and penance are often, if not exclusively, at the discretion of the individual knight).
One issue common in chivalric literature is how to live in a society prone to random and often large scale fits of violence. That knights are the usual cause of this unrest can be seen through their appearance in many romances - there is the good knight protagonist of the story, and then several bad knights whose appearance is often rather demonic - black and imposing. The major point is that even contemporary authors regarded chivalry as a mix of the great social hope for high ideals at the same time they were concerned about its effects and the problems of its malpractice. Kaeuper looks at chivalry on a macro scale, trying to tease out the good and the bad in various situations. I propose to look at the Auchinleck manuscript as a particular expression of chivalric ideals in a particular location at a particular time with particular goals in mind.
That said, I need to learn more about London in 1330.
Kaeuper points out that chivalric literature is at least as prescriptive as it is descriptive, and that its authors were often concerned with trying to create the very ideal they were trying to describe. At the same time, the chivalric tradition is one that arose from the warrior tradition (and as such revelled in violence), rather than any sort of institutional behest, and it is a tradition that the Church and State governments were trying to co-opt and control. When it comes to the Church this is especially instructive - the Church's attempt to force some sort of control over knights comes in sacralizing the dubbing ceremony and in the Crusades. However, knights in romantic literature seem to resist any real clerical control (very true in Auchinleck); they often seem to act as though they have a special relationship with God that allows them to act as their conscience allows (violently or otherwise). Knights are often aligned with hermits when they are aligned with the church at all; this is interesting because hermits were alone and on the very fringes of the clerical hierarchy. In many cases, the hermits are mentioned to be past knights as well, and many knights go on to lead the life of a hermit after the major violent portion of their career is over. In many ways hermits were independent of the Church, and thus seem to give knights a way to claim correct morality while living outside of clerical control themselves.
In 14th century England, the top levels of secular society were quite fluid and interacted quite often. The secular courts in England were some of the strongest in England at the time, and knights often sat on the courts and held judicial duties. The clerical courts, meanwhile, had very little ability to enforce laws when it came to knights. The prevailing theme in much English literature is that one should be obedient to the king and the secular structure as long as the king in charge merits that obedience; bad kings mean that violence and working outside the system to promote one's own ends is essentially fine.
This could mean that one of the main reasons that the Auchinleck manuscript shows such a concern with proper chivalric ideals is due to the reign of Edward II, who was generally not a beloved king. Edward II's reign is described most fully in the last extent text, the Simonie, and I should look and see what sorts of violent outbreaks there were at that time. One of the major things the manuscript could be doing would be re-creating a system of chivalry that promotes social order rather than social mayhem; if Hanna is correct in his assumption that the Auchinleck's closest analogue is the legal custumals of London at the time, then this would be a way to form a sort of code for chivalry in an imaginative mode, rather than a legal one. This would be a good time to revisit Patty Ingham's book Sovereign Fantasies to come up with some sort of rationale for why the romance mode would be a good mode for this sort of exploration to take place.
And now I should publish this and start trying to figure out what would work as part of the diss proposal and what is stuff that I just need to keep in mind...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
penitential romance and thoughts
Starts off with a definition of the genre of romance, only to trouble that genre and what we typically put in it. She gives a great overview of why scholars often take Middle English romances and set them aside as being somehow inferior because they are by and large involved with religious themes, rather than secular themes, and the treatment of said themes is often heavy-handed enough that critics have often dismissed them as being inferior. That said, romances that are in Middle English are often more concerned with religious themes and are occasionally labeled as 'secular hagiographies,' which becomes one of many terms that she throws out that scholars have used to try and determine how to classify many of these tales, which seem to have romance features but also seem to be highly involved with more saintly concerns and are at any rate completely over the top. (don't think that last sentence made any sense at all). These stories, like all romances, seem to be involved with somehow teaching the audience the lesson of the story - whatever it is - through a combination of letting the reader identify with the protagonist, thus reenacting the journey through reading it, or by making clear moral judgments in the tale itself for clearer didactic purposes (something that is often scorned by critics).
I'm starting to wonder if the collection of stories I'm dealing with in the dear ol' Auchinleck manuscript are somehow aimed at letting us understand different ways to live a Christian life - I wonder if I could overlap even the obviously non-Christian stories with Christian counterparts to get the reader to understand each story as a sort of internal journey of faith, sin, and repentence or something like that. With cannibalism, incest, and lump babies thrown in...
Things I need to read - the rest of this book... several books on medieval romance to get a better sense of what all critics have to say on the genre... whatever I can find on what people have said about medieval miscellanies like this... anything on any stories in the manuscript that seem pertient... more on repentance and how it's understood in 1330's London... the rest of the #$%^&*(*&^%$#$%^&*&^%$%^&* manuscript...
...by Thursday.
I'm starting to wonder if the collection of stories I'm dealing with in the dear ol' Auchinleck manuscript are somehow aimed at letting us understand different ways to live a Christian life - I wonder if I could overlap even the obviously non-Christian stories with Christian counterparts to get the reader to understand each story as a sort of internal journey of faith, sin, and repentence or something like that. With cannibalism, incest, and lump babies thrown in...
Things I need to read - the rest of this book... several books on medieval romance to get a better sense of what all critics have to say on the genre... whatever I can find on what people have said about medieval miscellanies like this... anything on any stories in the manuscript that seem pertient... more on repentance and how it's understood in 1330's London... the rest of the #$%^&*(*&^%$#$%^&*&^%$%^&* manuscript...
...by Thursday.
Grad school doesn't work without blogs
Okay, so I'm going back to doing this because I've got too much crap in my head and I think my head organizes itself better when it can get stuff out of it. What I really need to be doing is writing down some thoughts on a bunch of randomly disconnected shit that theoretically might have something to do with what sort of seems to be my dissertation topic v5.9 or something -- my first three ideas were rejected out of hand by my advisor for feeling like she didn't know enough about them to guide me in a dissertation, and now that I've finally picked a manuscript to work on, she told me that she didn't know much about it (still) so that I'd have to figure out all the important stuff and do all the research without her being able to help me really. So I'm not sure why working on this manuscript is suddenly better than anything else I'd thrown at her since she seems to be just as sidelined, but whatever. I then got a lecture by her and the only other person possibly on my committee that if I'm doing things like laundry, cleaning the apartment, or worrying about anything non-dissertation in my life, I'm not doing enough work. The basic message is literally that if I'm even taking the time and energy to make sure my bills get paid, I'm not putting enough time into my dissertation. So... the end result of that conversation three weeks ago was to put enough stress on me to functionally incapacitate me - I've gotten significantly less done since then and spent significantly more time stressing out about what I haven't gotten done. For some reason the advisors would like an annotated bibliography of everything I'm reading - this ISN'T a requirement for the dissertation proposal and I can't figure out why they'd like everything annotated, especially as I can't figure out where the hell they think I'm going to be getting the time to read through everything and annotate it when I'm also supposed to be finishing reading a 982 page manuscript in an old London dialect I can barely comprehend, coming up with an argument to help make sense of the manuscript's random collection of religious and romance materials that is uniquely my argument and not just based on what other people have said, yet also taking that argument and putting it in a scholarly context and helping illustrate the place of my argument in the overall scholarly milieu of the twelve things ever written about the manuscript... I feel like I can barely comprehend half of what I'm reading to the point of doing much of a real lit analysis of it, and that if I had a bit more time I'd be able to sort through the difficulties and start really thinking through everything as opposed to just trying to get the plot down. But I was supposed to have this done a week ago, so....
And it's still not done, and what little I sent last Wednesday for a supposed 'deadline' merely got met with "this obviously isn't enough - what are you doing with your time" and suggestions that I spend more time working.
Meanwhile, instead of teaching freshmen this semester I'm teaching senior English majors and grad students at a college almost an hour and a half south of here. I was initially excited about this, but it turns out that after one week, I've already had a complaint made to another professor. Basically, I'm supposed to be teaching Ancient and Medieval lit. I based the level I was dealing with the first class on the posts the students put on blackboard, which were almost (with one notable exception) exclusively dealing with plot. No analysis, just plot. I expect more from freshmen. So I adjusted what I was planning on doing with the class to the sorts of posts that they were making. We had a fun discussion... but one grad student bitched behind my back that she felt she wasn't being challenged enough. I'm assuming it's the one person who's demonstrated capability of really thinking on a higher, more organized level than her peers (and everyone else in the class). I would LOVE it if this person would speak up more in class, but she seemed more content last night to just glare at me from under her eyebrows and assume herself superior to anything I said. I was going over methods of how oppressed groups often participate in their own oppression and ways to understand that so that we could usefully talk about the role of some slaves in the Odyssey... and then I split the class up into groups to talk about which model might help us understand the slaves that are loyal to Odysseus v. those who aren't. The ENTIRE CLASS totally ignored any of the theoretical models I outlined for them and came up with something different and significantly less organized or in-depth, and one of the grad students literally refused to so much as move her desk to even pretend she was going to be involved in group work. So I feel totally disrespected as a teacher and like I'm not sure what to do to get them to understand this stuff and work with it better - I'm emailing a couple of other professors to ask what sorts of suggestions they have. Because I don't see the point in assuming that they understand things if they refuse to demonstrate any understanding... but I'm really pissed at the idea that if the class isn't "up to standards" because I can't manage to get the vast majority of the class to ANALYZE anything, much less work with theoretical models, the originally bitchy student is just going to continue to badmouth me to other members of the department. And given we've had two classes, I just don't feel that that's either fair or deserved. And I can't motivate the rest of the class to work on a higher level if they're going to flat refuse to. Though if we get through another week where we're supposed to be working with theory and applying it to the text and they're completely resistant, I'm going to ask them what they think the point of the class is and what they want to get out of it, because a rehearsal of plot points isn't going to get any of us anywhere.
So I'm spinning my wheels a lot, being really unproductive because I can't get either of the above problems out of my head long enough to actually solve either of them, and really, really really really really wanting to quit grad school seriously for the first time. The reason I got into this was becuase I was hoping it would be a way for me to do work that was somehow meaningful to me and make me not feel like all I was doing was selling away portions of my life to a company I didn't care about in return for a paycheck. And now I'd rather do that, because it's stable and there's the possibility that I might be able to only work 45 or so hours a week and occasionally have a moment of mental peace. And stop crying so damn much because I'm so frustrated with everything in my life.
Thank God for Tony - he's only holding up marginally better but he's being a really wonderful support.... and Nunk won't move off my lap when I'm at home now - I think she's decided that I need help so she's been purring on me a lot lately.
Is it next June yet? I'd like to be able to stop putting off my life for school and get on with the wedding already...
PS - Thank you Mommy for the lovely plates and sheets!!!
And it's still not done, and what little I sent last Wednesday for a supposed 'deadline' merely got met with "this obviously isn't enough - what are you doing with your time" and suggestions that I spend more time working.
Meanwhile, instead of teaching freshmen this semester I'm teaching senior English majors and grad students at a college almost an hour and a half south of here. I was initially excited about this, but it turns out that after one week, I've already had a complaint made to another professor. Basically, I'm supposed to be teaching Ancient and Medieval lit. I based the level I was dealing with the first class on the posts the students put on blackboard, which were almost (with one notable exception) exclusively dealing with plot. No analysis, just plot. I expect more from freshmen. So I adjusted what I was planning on doing with the class to the sorts of posts that they were making. We had a fun discussion... but one grad student bitched behind my back that she felt she wasn't being challenged enough. I'm assuming it's the one person who's demonstrated capability of really thinking on a higher, more organized level than her peers (and everyone else in the class). I would LOVE it if this person would speak up more in class, but she seemed more content last night to just glare at me from under her eyebrows and assume herself superior to anything I said. I was going over methods of how oppressed groups often participate in their own oppression and ways to understand that so that we could usefully talk about the role of some slaves in the Odyssey... and then I split the class up into groups to talk about which model might help us understand the slaves that are loyal to Odysseus v. those who aren't. The ENTIRE CLASS totally ignored any of the theoretical models I outlined for them and came up with something different and significantly less organized or in-depth, and one of the grad students literally refused to so much as move her desk to even pretend she was going to be involved in group work. So I feel totally disrespected as a teacher and like I'm not sure what to do to get them to understand this stuff and work with it better - I'm emailing a couple of other professors to ask what sorts of suggestions they have. Because I don't see the point in assuming that they understand things if they refuse to demonstrate any understanding... but I'm really pissed at the idea that if the class isn't "up to standards" because I can't manage to get the vast majority of the class to ANALYZE anything, much less work with theoretical models, the originally bitchy student is just going to continue to badmouth me to other members of the department. And given we've had two classes, I just don't feel that that's either fair or deserved. And I can't motivate the rest of the class to work on a higher level if they're going to flat refuse to. Though if we get through another week where we're supposed to be working with theory and applying it to the text and they're completely resistant, I'm going to ask them what they think the point of the class is and what they want to get out of it, because a rehearsal of plot points isn't going to get any of us anywhere.
So I'm spinning my wheels a lot, being really unproductive because I can't get either of the above problems out of my head long enough to actually solve either of them, and really, really really really really wanting to quit grad school seriously for the first time. The reason I got into this was becuase I was hoping it would be a way for me to do work that was somehow meaningful to me and make me not feel like all I was doing was selling away portions of my life to a company I didn't care about in return for a paycheck. And now I'd rather do that, because it's stable and there's the possibility that I might be able to only work 45 or so hours a week and occasionally have a moment of mental peace. And stop crying so damn much because I'm so frustrated with everything in my life.
Thank God for Tony - he's only holding up marginally better but he's being a really wonderful support.... and Nunk won't move off my lap when I'm at home now - I think she's decided that I need help so she's been purring on me a lot lately.
Is it next June yet? I'd like to be able to stop putting off my life for school and get on with the wedding already...
PS - Thank you Mommy for the lovely plates and sheets!!!
Monday, June 11, 2007
Maine is pretty
So we spent Thursday - Sunday morning in Maine playing in Acadia National Park, eating blueberry pancakes, eating lobster, drinking beer, playing cards, eating lobster, drinking beer, going to a wedding that was blessedly short and pretty, eating lobster, drinking beer, eating lobster, and then coming back. I spent Saturday evening talking to a nun from St. Lucia named Sister Margaret Maria who was up at the wedding because she knew the photographer (who was a friend of the family) and hanging out to see what Maine was like - I gather her major impression was that it was cold, but pretty as well... She was neat - she was the first person I think I've ever met who manages to put God into every sentence and yet not make me uncomfortable. She sorta glowed.
I'm actually sick of lobster.
As far as the wedding went, almost none of the bridesmaids looked all that good in their dresses, and I'm getting really tempted to pick a color and tell the girls to go pick their own dresses, because the four of them are all different enough that it'd be difficult to find a dress that looks fabulous on all of them, and I'd rather have them all look fabulous and be comfortable than match and be miserable. I'm secure enough with myself to not have to make sure I outshine all of them... Other than that, I got a wedding planner that's called something about the 'Anti-Bride Wedding Planner' or something like that because it was the only planner they had at Barnes and Noble that wasn't white, pink, flowery or something else I don't like. And it agreed with me that most bridesmaids already have enough ugly crystal jewelry that they'll never wear again and that it would be more fun to give them jewelry that matches their dresses.
I'm going home tomorrow to say goodbye to the old house, greet the new one in a state of semi-completion, pack up my room and whatnot and take Janet out for a congratulatory beer for walking for her MA - she's finishing up her thesis now and will technically graduate in August but walked anyway so that she could and not have to wait until next May. So beer seems in order. And since the wedding is now 1 year and some days away, that means we can talk wedding stuff more ;.)
Off to make dinner - chicken salad in a pita. I'm starving... Tony and I have been working out a lot and my metabolism seems to be going a bit faster than it was. Or it could be that all I had for lunch was ice cream.
I'm actually sick of lobster.
As far as the wedding went, almost none of the bridesmaids looked all that good in their dresses, and I'm getting really tempted to pick a color and tell the girls to go pick their own dresses, because the four of them are all different enough that it'd be difficult to find a dress that looks fabulous on all of them, and I'd rather have them all look fabulous and be comfortable than match and be miserable. I'm secure enough with myself to not have to make sure I outshine all of them... Other than that, I got a wedding planner that's called something about the 'Anti-Bride Wedding Planner' or something like that because it was the only planner they had at Barnes and Noble that wasn't white, pink, flowery or something else I don't like. And it agreed with me that most bridesmaids already have enough ugly crystal jewelry that they'll never wear again and that it would be more fun to give them jewelry that matches their dresses.
I'm going home tomorrow to say goodbye to the old house, greet the new one in a state of semi-completion, pack up my room and whatnot and take Janet out for a congratulatory beer for walking for her MA - she's finishing up her thesis now and will technically graduate in August but walked anyway so that she could and not have to wait until next May. So beer seems in order. And since the wedding is now 1 year and some days away, that means we can talk wedding stuff more ;.)
Off to make dinner - chicken salad in a pita. I'm starving... Tony and I have been working out a lot and my metabolism seems to be going a bit faster than it was. Or it could be that all I had for lunch was ice cream.
Monday, June 4, 2007
oh yeah...
It finally occurred to me that I should look at the profile and stuff on here because it still had me listed as dealing with comps, and a month out from those I'd really like to remove any and all refernces to that hellish part of life from my online existence. I haven't had a nightmare about them in about a week, which is great - maybe the trauma symptoms are ending?
Right now it is 65 degrees, cloudy, drizzly, and perfect outside. It feels like October. I love this weather. YAY for non-destructive tropical storms that want to do nothing but make up for our lack of rain this month... Or better yet, put out the fires in GA and FL so that when we go to Tallahassee to visit Jackie in a couple of weeks, we won't be constantly smelling smoke -- she said she's been smelling smoke semi-constantly for quite a while now. Ick.
Summer traveling starts in earnest this week - we're leaving on Thursday to go up to Maine for one of Tony's cousin's wedding. The possible lowlights of the trip involve the 8-10 hours in the car with Aunt Molly and Grandma, both of whom are wonderful, but neither of whom I gather enjoy long car trips. The highlights should be everything else, especially as we're planning on spending most evenings downing Guinness and lobster like its going out of existance. How the hell did I get lucky enough to end up with a guy whose family likes to do this sort of stuff and yet isn't rich enough to be obnoxious?
Pigger is sitting in the windowsill with a nice breeze blowing in, apparently as happy as I am that it's cooled off. She doesn't seem impressed by the heat or our lack of A/C any more than I have been. I need to recharge the batteries in my camera - I wish I could take a picture of her right now.
Off to marinate some chicken and then work out...
Right now it is 65 degrees, cloudy, drizzly, and perfect outside. It feels like October. I love this weather. YAY for non-destructive tropical storms that want to do nothing but make up for our lack of rain this month... Or better yet, put out the fires in GA and FL so that when we go to Tallahassee to visit Jackie in a couple of weeks, we won't be constantly smelling smoke -- she said she's been smelling smoke semi-constantly for quite a while now. Ick.
Summer traveling starts in earnest this week - we're leaving on Thursday to go up to Maine for one of Tony's cousin's wedding. The possible lowlights of the trip involve the 8-10 hours in the car with Aunt Molly and Grandma, both of whom are wonderful, but neither of whom I gather enjoy long car trips. The highlights should be everything else, especially as we're planning on spending most evenings downing Guinness and lobster like its going out of existance. How the hell did I get lucky enough to end up with a guy whose family likes to do this sort of stuff and yet isn't rich enough to be obnoxious?
Pigger is sitting in the windowsill with a nice breeze blowing in, apparently as happy as I am that it's cooled off. She doesn't seem impressed by the heat or our lack of A/C any more than I have been. I need to recharge the batteries in my camera - I wish I could take a picture of her right now.
Off to marinate some chicken and then work out...
Saturday, June 2, 2007
oops
So somehow in the post-exam mental pause I've been allowing myself the past month or so, I completely forgot that Janet was getting her masters this semester and graduated about two weeks ago. So I feel like a giant horrible person. I'll have to make sure I buy her a drink and bring her flowers or something proverbial like that when I see her in a couple of weeks. Oops...
Other than that, Nunk was back at the vet again on Wednesday and has an allergy panel being run to figure out what we can and can't feed her without making her sick. She's passed out on the floor by my feet right now. I don't blame her. It's 9000 degrees in this apartment and PA doesn't believe in central air, so it's awful and hard to fix the temperature problems. Even with the built-in window units.
I've been reading Harry Potter pretty much non-stop and am almost done with book 6 - I'm about to hit the depressing part at the end where Dumbledore finally gets killed.
It's hot. I need to start thinking about dissertation stuff. I'm going to Maine with Tony/family for his cousin's wedding on Thursday. I'm more excited for the lobster and beer than I am for the wedding itself, but the wedding is early Saturday with immediate reception and then we're all going down to Bar Harbor to eat more lobster. I should get a cholesterol check...
Very little is going on at the moment, but I think that's probably good - I'm pms-ing and threatening to throw Tony in the car and drive an hour and a half North of here - we've been getting lots of little localized thunderstorms all over the place around us, but none of them develop directly overhead, so we haven't gotten a drop of rain in a day or two. The thing that's weirding me out with the thunderstorms is that unlike real, normal thunderstorms in the Midwest which actually move, these just stay in one place and dump copious amounts of rain in a very small area, triggering flash flood warnings. The river near Lehigh is a nasty shade of mud right now from all the runoff...
Off to more Harry Potter, and to see if I can get ahold of Janet again...
Other than that, Nunk was back at the vet again on Wednesday and has an allergy panel being run to figure out what we can and can't feed her without making her sick. She's passed out on the floor by my feet right now. I don't blame her. It's 9000 degrees in this apartment and PA doesn't believe in central air, so it's awful and hard to fix the temperature problems. Even with the built-in window units.
I've been reading Harry Potter pretty much non-stop and am almost done with book 6 - I'm about to hit the depressing part at the end where Dumbledore finally gets killed.
It's hot. I need to start thinking about dissertation stuff. I'm going to Maine with Tony/family for his cousin's wedding on Thursday. I'm more excited for the lobster and beer than I am for the wedding itself, but the wedding is early Saturday with immediate reception and then we're all going down to Bar Harbor to eat more lobster. I should get a cholesterol check...
Very little is going on at the moment, but I think that's probably good - I'm pms-ing and threatening to throw Tony in the car and drive an hour and a half North of here - we've been getting lots of little localized thunderstorms all over the place around us, but none of them develop directly overhead, so we haven't gotten a drop of rain in a day or two. The thing that's weirding me out with the thunderstorms is that unlike real, normal thunderstorms in the Midwest which actually move, these just stay in one place and dump copious amounts of rain in a very small area, triggering flash flood warnings. The river near Lehigh is a nasty shade of mud right now from all the runoff...
Off to more Harry Potter, and to see if I can get ahold of Janet again...
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Sunburned
So Alan was here all week. I think we made him spend more time outside than he has in years. We spent Monday getting drunk on our porch while Tony cooked a bunch of stuff, Tuesday in NYC, Wednesday at Tony's parents (getting drunk, as often happens there) and then going home to watch The Fountain (which I bought - YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Thursday going to Pirates and then watching an anime Alan brought with him - he's completely otaku - and then yesterday down in Philly, followed by more anime. He left this afternoon and has left the last three dvd's of the anime for Tony and I to finish.
The anime itself is Evangelion - I'll post a reaction to it (aka, what all I figure out) once we're done watching it. We don't have too many episodes left, and no one's died yet. That should change shortly from what Alan was telling us. They keep referencing the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Book of Revelation. I'm feeling like it would help to know those better, though thanks to Milton, I recognized the names of the so-called 'angels' as being names of Jewish devils.
It's fairly hot here, and being in a second floor apartment means it's been hard to cool off at all without running the a/c constantly. Yet again I'm dying for central air. At least I'll get a bit of it when in KS in a few weeks...
Nunk's condition doesn't seem to have changed AT ALL in a week, so we're taking her to the vet that seems to know what the hell she's doing on Wednesday. I wish it was earlier, but the vet at the clinic earlier in the week is the one that doesn't seem to have a fucking clue what he's doing. The one Nunk's going to see on Wednesday is the one that finally came up with a diagnosis. We took Alan over to MayFair (Allentown's yearly craft fair) for corn dogs and funnel cake before he left, and they were handing out samples of Science Diet. After a week and a half of a pair of cats who have been refusing to eat the dry food we've been leaving out for them (I'm not sure I blame them-I think it smells like cardboard), we took some of the samples and the cats are finally eating something other than tuna. There's a little bit of rice in it which I'm a bit concerned about (the Lamb and Rice food seems to have been the problem), but maybe it will turn out to be okay. We're going to ask the vet on Wednesday what she thinks the kitties should be on. Piggers, meanwhile, did her first ever complete back flip last night while jumping after her toy. She's doing beautifully.
We're grilling shrimp and asparagus and having some bean spread for dinner tonight (and a bit of wine, perhaps), and tomorrow we're going out for ice cream with Tony's parents (not sure why, but I'm not turning down ice cream!!) and starting on ribs for Monday. Monday we're going over to Tony's parents - I'm grilling ribs and they're doing pretty much everything else, I think. After that, though, I really feel like going on a diet or something - while Alan was here we were eating a lot of fried stuff and generally not as healthy (we were eating out a lot after Monday - and since it's Allentown, the food is horribly unhealthy. A cheesesteak will never win a health food award) -- I'm ready for dance on Tuesday and some serious vegetable time.
That's that for now - I'm just starting book four of Harry for the first read-through of the summer. I'll probably do another one right before they come out. I'd like to re-read Tolkien as well, and I have some Middle English romances to get through as I search for diss topics.
Oh, and I'm sunburned from being out all week.
And I had that job interview at Arcadia yesterday morning - I won't find out if I'm teaching Freshman Comp at Lehigh or Ancient/Medieval lit at Arcadia for another three weeks. I'm praying for the latter.
The anime itself is Evangelion - I'll post a reaction to it (aka, what all I figure out) once we're done watching it. We don't have too many episodes left, and no one's died yet. That should change shortly from what Alan was telling us. They keep referencing the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Book of Revelation. I'm feeling like it would help to know those better, though thanks to Milton, I recognized the names of the so-called 'angels' as being names of Jewish devils.
It's fairly hot here, and being in a second floor apartment means it's been hard to cool off at all without running the a/c constantly. Yet again I'm dying for central air. At least I'll get a bit of it when in KS in a few weeks...
Nunk's condition doesn't seem to have changed AT ALL in a week, so we're taking her to the vet that seems to know what the hell she's doing on Wednesday. I wish it was earlier, but the vet at the clinic earlier in the week is the one that doesn't seem to have a fucking clue what he's doing. The one Nunk's going to see on Wednesday is the one that finally came up with a diagnosis. We took Alan over to MayFair (Allentown's yearly craft fair) for corn dogs and funnel cake before he left, and they were handing out samples of Science Diet. After a week and a half of a pair of cats who have been refusing to eat the dry food we've been leaving out for them (I'm not sure I blame them-I think it smells like cardboard), we took some of the samples and the cats are finally eating something other than tuna. There's a little bit of rice in it which I'm a bit concerned about (the Lamb and Rice food seems to have been the problem), but maybe it will turn out to be okay. We're going to ask the vet on Wednesday what she thinks the kitties should be on. Piggers, meanwhile, did her first ever complete back flip last night while jumping after her toy. She's doing beautifully.
We're grilling shrimp and asparagus and having some bean spread for dinner tonight (and a bit of wine, perhaps), and tomorrow we're going out for ice cream with Tony's parents (not sure why, but I'm not turning down ice cream!!) and starting on ribs for Monday. Monday we're going over to Tony's parents - I'm grilling ribs and they're doing pretty much everything else, I think. After that, though, I really feel like going on a diet or something - while Alan was here we were eating a lot of fried stuff and generally not as healthy (we were eating out a lot after Monday - and since it's Allentown, the food is horribly unhealthy. A cheesesteak will never win a health food award) -- I'm ready for dance on Tuesday and some serious vegetable time.
That's that for now - I'm just starting book four of Harry for the first read-through of the summer. I'll probably do another one right before they come out. I'd like to re-read Tolkien as well, and I have some Middle English romances to get through as I search for diss topics.
Oh, and I'm sunburned from being out all week.
And I had that job interview at Arcadia yesterday morning - I won't find out if I'm teaching Freshman Comp at Lehigh or Ancient/Medieval lit at Arcadia for another three weeks. I'm praying for the latter.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Spiderman 3
... sucked donkey testicles or something equally foul. It was easily one (twelve?) of the worst movies I've ever seen. Possibly twelve because I think I counted that many plot lines and watching it felt about that long. Nothing held together, the only decent acting came out of sorely underused extras like Bryce Dennis Howard and Topher Grace, and poor Hayden what's his name spent the whole movie looking dumbfounded and confused, like he wasn't sure what he was doing on the set of this movie rather than one that would actually allow him to use his talent. The main actors were pretty much uniformly terrible.
Shrek 3, on the other hand, was completely fantastic, as was Hot Fuzz. Hot Fuzz made me laugh so hard I almost lost bladder control.
Movies aside, Kalamazoo was the predictably alcoholic boozefest it was last year, tons of fun, really interesting, neat panels, and helped me narrow down the century I think I'm planning on working in - I'm going Anglo-Norman lit of late twelfth into the thirteenth centuries and looking either at chronicles (always some odd love of mine) or at the popular romances featuring knights who can't seem to decide if they're protagonists of romances or saint's lives. I'm going to worry about that more in another week or two. I need to start brushing up on my Old French. Joy.
On a really happy fun note, Alan's coming in to town late tonight and Tony and I have a billion plans for him. We're cooking all day tomorrow (basically because we can) while watching anime with Alan and playing cards and drinking beer. We're going into NYC on Tuesday. Still not sure what we're doing there - we can't decide between Chinatown or uptown near the park. I'll let Tony do sales pitches for each as he knows the city better and we'll go with whatever seems most amusing to Alan. And we'll take the subway at some point, because I think everyone should take the NYC subway at some point in their lives... Other than that, I'm not sure what we're doing later in the week other than we're having dinner with Tony's parents on Wednesday so that Alan can meet them (and try grappa!), and going down to the Italian Market in Philly either Thursday or Friday. Alan leaves Saturday :.( We're going to try and fit in going to Pirates as well, since that comes out this upcoming week.
Other than that, in the glorious week off we've had, I've gotten a massage that left me bruised pretty badly because I had some knots down in my lower back by my hips that were just that tight, I've perfected a jerk marinade for chicken so hot I can barely eat it, Tony marinaded some fish in a chili-lime sauce that was pretty good, and we've basically just fed ourselves and goofed off all week. I finally got the first three Harry Potter books that I didn't have and started the first re-read of the summer - I've gotten through book one and half of book two so far. I think Snape's going to be evil at the moment. Harry's dreams have a tendency to be right, and there's this weird dream in book one that has Snape turning into Voldemort (or vice versa). I don't think Snape IS Voldemort (though JKR IS that sneaky and I'm not sure I can think of a scene where the two are together), but I'm pretty sure that he'll turn out evil in the end.
And I'm still pissed that she killed off Sirius, especially since Sirius is Gary Oldman in the movies and I don't want him to not be around - he was pathetically underused in the fourth film, and he's really an amazing actor....
Nunk had to go to the vet again this week and they've diagnosed her as having allergies or possibly some other immune disorder. She's on a pill that seems to be really helping - she's been less skittish and in a better, cuddlier mood than she's been in for months now. She's finally starting to PLAY again. I hadn't realized how long it had been until I saw her playing with her carrot a couple of nights ago and couldn't remember the last time I'd seen that. I'm trying to flip her and Piggers onto new food, but they HATE the kibbles I got them, and won't go near them or touch them or anything. So I got some new stuff and we'll try this. Grrrrrrr.... finicky little twerps. Nunk's on medicine now every day for a month and then we'll be trying to wean her off of it - hopefully she'll be able to stay off of it (meaning it's a food allergy), but if we wean her off and the symptoms come back she may be on it forever. It's a really cheap medicine, but it's sad that something's this wrong with her when she's so young - she's pretty much exactly Jamie's age. Poor baby doesn't deserve it. Anyway, I'm not sure how we're going to handle being gone so much if she has to take medicine every day - it won't be bad when Tony's mom is around, especially now that Nunk's warmed up to her, but we're not sure what we're doing about Maine and Florida yet. I'm almost not sure I'll be able to go to Maine. We're going to check into kenneling them for that trip since I don't know anyone who will be around that I can trust to have give her medicine every day... Ugh. At least she's starting to feel better... she curled up on my lap and purred for about two straight hours last night. I've missed my kitty.
Things otherwise are going well. I'm off to give Nunk medicine and then read Harry Potter and wait for Alan to get here.
Shrek 3, on the other hand, was completely fantastic, as was Hot Fuzz. Hot Fuzz made me laugh so hard I almost lost bladder control.
Movies aside, Kalamazoo was the predictably alcoholic boozefest it was last year, tons of fun, really interesting, neat panels, and helped me narrow down the century I think I'm planning on working in - I'm going Anglo-Norman lit of late twelfth into the thirteenth centuries and looking either at chronicles (always some odd love of mine) or at the popular romances featuring knights who can't seem to decide if they're protagonists of romances or saint's lives. I'm going to worry about that more in another week or two. I need to start brushing up on my Old French. Joy.
On a really happy fun note, Alan's coming in to town late tonight and Tony and I have a billion plans for him. We're cooking all day tomorrow (basically because we can) while watching anime with Alan and playing cards and drinking beer. We're going into NYC on Tuesday. Still not sure what we're doing there - we can't decide between Chinatown or uptown near the park. I'll let Tony do sales pitches for each as he knows the city better and we'll go with whatever seems most amusing to Alan. And we'll take the subway at some point, because I think everyone should take the NYC subway at some point in their lives... Other than that, I'm not sure what we're doing later in the week other than we're having dinner with Tony's parents on Wednesday so that Alan can meet them (and try grappa!), and going down to the Italian Market in Philly either Thursday or Friday. Alan leaves Saturday :.( We're going to try and fit in going to Pirates as well, since that comes out this upcoming week.
Other than that, in the glorious week off we've had, I've gotten a massage that left me bruised pretty badly because I had some knots down in my lower back by my hips that were just that tight, I've perfected a jerk marinade for chicken so hot I can barely eat it, Tony marinaded some fish in a chili-lime sauce that was pretty good, and we've basically just fed ourselves and goofed off all week. I finally got the first three Harry Potter books that I didn't have and started the first re-read of the summer - I've gotten through book one and half of book two so far. I think Snape's going to be evil at the moment. Harry's dreams have a tendency to be right, and there's this weird dream in book one that has Snape turning into Voldemort (or vice versa). I don't think Snape IS Voldemort (though JKR IS that sneaky and I'm not sure I can think of a scene where the two are together), but I'm pretty sure that he'll turn out evil in the end.
And I'm still pissed that she killed off Sirius, especially since Sirius is Gary Oldman in the movies and I don't want him to not be around - he was pathetically underused in the fourth film, and he's really an amazing actor....
Nunk had to go to the vet again this week and they've diagnosed her as having allergies or possibly some other immune disorder. She's on a pill that seems to be really helping - she's been less skittish and in a better, cuddlier mood than she's been in for months now. She's finally starting to PLAY again. I hadn't realized how long it had been until I saw her playing with her carrot a couple of nights ago and couldn't remember the last time I'd seen that. I'm trying to flip her and Piggers onto new food, but they HATE the kibbles I got them, and won't go near them or touch them or anything. So I got some new stuff and we'll try this. Grrrrrrr.... finicky little twerps. Nunk's on medicine now every day for a month and then we'll be trying to wean her off of it - hopefully she'll be able to stay off of it (meaning it's a food allergy), but if we wean her off and the symptoms come back she may be on it forever. It's a really cheap medicine, but it's sad that something's this wrong with her when she's so young - she's pretty much exactly Jamie's age. Poor baby doesn't deserve it. Anyway, I'm not sure how we're going to handle being gone so much if she has to take medicine every day - it won't be bad when Tony's mom is around, especially now that Nunk's warmed up to her, but we're not sure what we're doing about Maine and Florida yet. I'm almost not sure I'll be able to go to Maine. We're going to check into kenneling them for that trip since I don't know anyone who will be around that I can trust to have give her medicine every day... Ugh. At least she's starting to feel better... she curled up on my lap and purred for about two straight hours last night. I've missed my kitty.
Things otherwise are going well. I'm off to give Nunk medicine and then read Harry Potter and wait for Alan to get here.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Kalamazoo to-do list
Tony and I are leaving in the morning for the annual crazy happy medievalist conference in Kalamazoo. I just finished my paper for my presentation on Thursday.
Left to do today:
-drive to campus to print off my paper and directions from 131-North in MI to the hotel (I've got everything else still memorzed from last year)
-clean out the 1000 water bottles in my car and get the cds organized so that I can find all my comedy and other fun road trip cds
-get gas and check tire pressure
-buy a cooler for snacks because the food along I-80 SUCKS
-buy snacks
-get new cat food for the kitties - Nunk's skin problems are coming back now that the shot from a couple of weeks ago is wearing off
-eat something healthy for dinner
-NO BEER - saving myself for Kalamazoo
-pick up Yuengling Black and Tan for Darren (Sarah's roommate) to pass off to him in Kazoo, as he's begging for some and Yuengling B&T, as a PA-only beer, is unavailable to him in Chicago
-set out extra food and lots of water for the kitties, because Tony's Mom can't get here to see them until Saturday
-get some sleep - we're leaving early! (hopefully 6 or so)
YAY!!!!! I'm excited. This conference was awesome last year!!!!
Left to do today:
-drive to campus to print off my paper and directions from 131-North in MI to the hotel (I've got everything else still memorzed from last year)
-clean out the 1000 water bottles in my car and get the cds organized so that I can find all my comedy and other fun road trip cds
-get gas and check tire pressure
-buy a cooler for snacks because the food along I-80 SUCKS
-buy snacks
-get new cat food for the kitties - Nunk's skin problems are coming back now that the shot from a couple of weeks ago is wearing off
-eat something healthy for dinner
-NO BEER - saving myself for Kalamazoo
-pick up Yuengling Black and Tan for Darren (Sarah's roommate) to pass off to him in Kazoo, as he's begging for some and Yuengling B&T, as a PA-only beer, is unavailable to him in Chicago
-set out extra food and lots of water for the kitties, because Tony's Mom can't get here to see them until Saturday
-get some sleep - we're leaving early! (hopefully 6 or so)
YAY!!!!! I'm excited. This conference was awesome last year!!!!
Sunday, May 6, 2007
try again...
So I had this pretty much updated on Friday and then the internets crashed. It's all over and I passed everything and now have permission from Kate to take a lengthy and well-deserved break before starting on dissertation stuff. So I'm definitely going to take the break.
Nunk's skin problem seems to be returning so we'll be taking her back to the vet yet again at some point hopefully before Wednesday when we leave for Kalamazoo - I'm assuming it's allergies given just how much she improved when she got the steroid shot, so I think we're going to be switching her food. I've been researching pet foods trying to find some that's good for allergy problems that's also made by an ethical, responsible, non-caught-up-in-the-whole-pet-food-recall-thing company. I've found a few. Nunk's currently passed out purring by the laptop as I'm typing this.
Anyway, as far as exams went, they were soul-suckingly terrible and I'm really really glad they're done. Tony's went brilliantly, and he's also passed and ready for diss work after a summer of lots of vacations.
Celebrations:
-Friday afternoon beer on porch at Ho with David
-Friday evening champagne of the cheap, pink and wonderfully silly variety at Drown when Kim finished, followed by more beer back at the Ho in the party room with about half the grad students in the department
-Saturday late morning remarkably not-too-hungover trip up to the outlet mall Banana Republic
-Saturday evening bbq thrown by Kate at her house with various different people somehow involved with medieval type work in some way, shape or form, most notably becoming highly even more entertaining when Kate and Dawn decided that we needed to make mint juleps in honor of the Kentucky Derby and there were suddenly six people in the kitchen ripping through cookbooks and whatnot for recipes to make sure we were doing it right and then trying to figure out how to crush mint without a mortar and pestle, and then making fun of Kate for being a medievalist and not actually owning a mortar and pestle (which made sense at the time) - the bbq also included the revelation that Kate both noticed and was impressed by the fact that I had managed to get my nail polish to match the sweater I was wearing on exam day
-today: crashing for a little while longer and then spending an inordinate amount of time throwing myself together for a dinner date with Tony entirely because I can - Tony's Dad gave us celebratory money to buy ourselves a swanky dinner with so we're going to a place called Melt (quasi-upscale mediterranean/Italian food that seems pretty good - service is a bit bitchy though) and then going to the movie theatre next door to go see Hot Fuzz. And then try to sleep in. I haven't accomplished that yet.
In other big news: Mom and Dad found a house they love and are moving in about 7 weeks or so. The pictures I've seen of the model look gorgeous, though I'm even more excited to see what the house looks like when they've got it decorated and painted the way they want it and not all in various shades of pale builder's beige... YAY!!
Nunk's skin problem seems to be returning so we'll be taking her back to the vet yet again at some point hopefully before Wednesday when we leave for Kalamazoo - I'm assuming it's allergies given just how much she improved when she got the steroid shot, so I think we're going to be switching her food. I've been researching pet foods trying to find some that's good for allergy problems that's also made by an ethical, responsible, non-caught-up-in-the-whole-pet-food-recall-thing company. I've found a few. Nunk's currently passed out purring by the laptop as I'm typing this.
Anyway, as far as exams went, they were soul-suckingly terrible and I'm really really glad they're done. Tony's went brilliantly, and he's also passed and ready for diss work after a summer of lots of vacations.
Celebrations:
-Friday afternoon beer on porch at Ho with David
-Friday evening champagne of the cheap, pink and wonderfully silly variety at Drown when Kim finished, followed by more beer back at the Ho in the party room with about half the grad students in the department
-Saturday late morning remarkably not-too-hungover trip up to the outlet mall Banana Republic
-Saturday evening bbq thrown by Kate at her house with various different people somehow involved with medieval type work in some way, shape or form, most notably becoming highly even more entertaining when Kate and Dawn decided that we needed to make mint juleps in honor of the Kentucky Derby and there were suddenly six people in the kitchen ripping through cookbooks and whatnot for recipes to make sure we were doing it right and then trying to figure out how to crush mint without a mortar and pestle, and then making fun of Kate for being a medievalist and not actually owning a mortar and pestle (which made sense at the time) - the bbq also included the revelation that Kate both noticed and was impressed by the fact that I had managed to get my nail polish to match the sweater I was wearing on exam day
-today: crashing for a little while longer and then spending an inordinate amount of time throwing myself together for a dinner date with Tony entirely because I can - Tony's Dad gave us celebratory money to buy ourselves a swanky dinner with so we're going to a place called Melt (quasi-upscale mediterranean/Italian food that seems pretty good - service is a bit bitchy though) and then going to the movie theatre next door to go see Hot Fuzz. And then try to sleep in. I haven't accomplished that yet.
In other big news: Mom and Dad found a house they love and are moving in about 7 weeks or so. The pictures I've seen of the model look gorgeous, though I'm even more excited to see what the house looks like when they've got it decorated and painted the way they want it and not all in various shades of pale builder's beige... YAY!!
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
I'm tired and I want this OVER WITH!!!
So I've survived the first two days. My oral defense of the answers is Friday morning at 9. I would like here to publicly thank my mother for taking away the "stupid" from Tony and I for the past couple of mornings and taking it all for herself - methinks it has helped.
Nunk caught a mouse and kept toying with it Monday night - it took me about 15 minutes to get it away from her. It was really funny but irritating timing-wise because I was all ready to go to bed freakishly early (still in the 10 oclock hour) and this kept me up until about 11 (I got wired and couldn't relax). That's the second mouse this semester. I wish I knew where they were getting in - the cats love it but I feel bad for the mice...
Other than that, I'm exhausted already beyond normal, and have reached a stress level over the first two days of testing that has led to jaw clenching during the night so bad that I can barely chew right now because my teeth hurt excruciatingly badly.
I get tomorrow off to pour through my answers, figure out where all I screwed up/left openings/holes/how to fit in Chaucer because I spent a fucking long time studying Chaucer and can't believe that in a Medieval comprehensive exam Chaucer literally couldn't be fit in anywhere... the stupid thing was that most of my exams were on Arthurian romance in various forms and I was convinced I wouldn't get any questions on that because Kate already knows I know them (else I wouldn't have been teaching her class at times last semester), so anyway I didn't review them and felt like I was falling into lots of memory lapses - i.e. I couldn't remember anything about the Roman de la Rose other than that it's a dream vision that features a guy who falls in love with a particularly lovely rose on a bush. (Yeah, he falls for a flower. The great thing about this is how obvious it makes the idea that love is all about the guy - all the woman has to do is be the appropriately lovely object. Thank God I don't live then - I wouldn't have patience for that. I think I'd be a nun.)
Will update Friday when this is all over with and I can move on to fun and thinking about the Kalamazoo trip next week (!!!!!!). I'm going to eat dinner and go take a really f---ing long bubble bath.
Nunk caught a mouse and kept toying with it Monday night - it took me about 15 minutes to get it away from her. It was really funny but irritating timing-wise because I was all ready to go to bed freakishly early (still in the 10 oclock hour) and this kept me up until about 11 (I got wired and couldn't relax). That's the second mouse this semester. I wish I knew where they were getting in - the cats love it but I feel bad for the mice...
Other than that, I'm exhausted already beyond normal, and have reached a stress level over the first two days of testing that has led to jaw clenching during the night so bad that I can barely chew right now because my teeth hurt excruciatingly badly.
I get tomorrow off to pour through my answers, figure out where all I screwed up/left openings/holes/how to fit in Chaucer because I spent a fucking long time studying Chaucer and can't believe that in a Medieval comprehensive exam Chaucer literally couldn't be fit in anywhere... the stupid thing was that most of my exams were on Arthurian romance in various forms and I was convinced I wouldn't get any questions on that because Kate already knows I know them (else I wouldn't have been teaching her class at times last semester), so anyway I didn't review them and felt like I was falling into lots of memory lapses - i.e. I couldn't remember anything about the Roman de la Rose other than that it's a dream vision that features a guy who falls in love with a particularly lovely rose on a bush. (Yeah, he falls for a flower. The great thing about this is how obvious it makes the idea that love is all about the guy - all the woman has to do is be the appropriately lovely object. Thank God I don't live then - I wouldn't have patience for that. I think I'd be a nun.)
Will update Friday when this is all over with and I can move on to fun and thinking about the Kalamazoo trip next week (!!!!!!). I'm going to eat dinner and go take a really f---ing long bubble bath.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Freddie the Fabulous
So Tony and I went out this morning after my early post to go get some breakfast and finish getting plants and hangers and stuff for the porch. We now have even more herbs (including more cilantro, so I had better get some good fajitas this summer!!! :.) ) and a few more flowering hanging pots. We've named a few of the plants so far - we have Geraldine, an ivy; Jester, a huge pot of mixed flowers with some blue lobelia (out of bunny reach, Mom!!); Oswald, the newly-named bromeliad we've had since October; two long boxes filled with various herbs; a pot of New Guinea Impatients named Xenobia (best said with snotty British accent); another, as-yet unnamed pot of pink flowers and another as-yet unnamed ivy; and finally, last but definitely not least (especially as he's currently the biggest plant hanging out there) - Freddie the Fabulous, a fuschia. I'll try and post pictures later, especially of Freddie - Freddie got his name by looking like a big drag queen of a flowering plant - big droopy bright red-pink flower bulbs that open up to bright red-pink big clusters of flowers with huge indigo-purple petals mixed in - absolute gorgeous, the flowers actually clash with themselves, and all told, showy enough to be quite the queen. At this point, the porch is really looking good. So we're grilling more fajitas tonight with leftovers and whatnot to survive the next few days. And because Tony's new fajita recipe is really awesome. The jerk chicken I tried to make last night wasn't anywhere near flavorful enough, though the coconut rice/red pepper/pineapple combo was pretty lovely.
Exams are now beginning in 19 hours, 40 minutes and some change. I'm having a hard time convincing myself to review, or even read the blog I've been babbling thoughts onto for several months now. This is probably partially because I woke up at 4:25 this morning thinking over possible questions and answers and haven't been asleep yet. I'd normally be pissed, especially since I woke up fairly panicked, but today this is good because it means I'll be tired early. So I'll take a bath and curl up with Sir Gawain after dinner and wait to pass out. Oh, yeah, and make a spinach quiche later for tomorrow.
Overall, I'm doing okay right now. Tony's a bit more panicked and has been nervous and quiet all morning. It's probably good he'll be grilling later. We were both expecting him to be nervous - he's actually doing better than I thought - but it probably won't end all told until Friday afternoon when all this torture is done...
Off to read my own thoughts and do some quickie online writing tutoring...
Exams are now beginning in 19 hours, 40 minutes and some change. I'm having a hard time convincing myself to review, or even read the blog I've been babbling thoughts onto for several months now. This is probably partially because I woke up at 4:25 this morning thinking over possible questions and answers and haven't been asleep yet. I'd normally be pissed, especially since I woke up fairly panicked, but today this is good because it means I'll be tired early. So I'll take a bath and curl up with Sir Gawain after dinner and wait to pass out. Oh, yeah, and make a spinach quiche later for tomorrow.
Overall, I'm doing okay right now. Tony's a bit more panicked and has been nervous and quiet all morning. It's probably good he'll be grilling later. We were both expecting him to be nervous - he's actually doing better than I thought - but it probably won't end all told until Friday afternoon when all this torture is done...
Off to read my own thoughts and do some quickie online writing tutoring...
The Clock is Ticking
Comps begin in 24 hours, 10 minutes and some number of seconds.
I want them over with!!!!
I want them over with!!!!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
organizing thoughts
T-minus 5 days or so and counting down - exams begin on Tuesday morning at 9. ACK.
Fortunately, my Lush order (www.lushusa.com) FINALLY arrived yesterday evening, and so I've spent the last 27 hours as smelling mostly like jasmine and vetivert (WOOT for Silky Underwear!!!!) - though right now a silver glitter-covered lavender field - and largely quite glittery (giving rise to what is referred to on the forums as, to be quite blunt, "disco pubes"). I just took a long bath with a Black Pearl bomb and I'm feeling significantly calmer than I was before hand.
I've hit the point of realizing that if I don't already know it, the chances of me figuring it out before exams start on Tuesday are slim to none, so I'm going to start reviewing tomorrow. I'm persisting in saving Sir Gawain and the Green Knight until roughly Sunday night, because I love that poem and I think it would be great to draw a bunch of correlations with. That said, tomorrow will start a slew of typing involving everything I can think of on the following topics:
- hagiography (specifically women)
- mysticism (specifically positive - I don't have much of anything on negative)
- drama:
- Corpus Christi "cycle" "mystery" plays
- morality plays
- Saint's Plays (really, just the Digby Mary Magdalene)
- dream visions
- Chaucer
- allegory
- chronicles
- romance
- labor
- representations of labor
- estates satire
- women's work
- the Church
- antifraternal literature
- theology
- questions of salvation
- sacraments
- heresy
- competing cultural worldviews (i.e., Christian v. Celtic)
- community
- definitions of
- creation of national identity
- humor
- sex
- marriage
- antifeminism
- love
- erotic love
- agape/divine love
- bizarre intersections between the two
-authority
About a week and a half ago, Kate asked for a list of questions of various ideas I'd come up with based on all the reading. Here's what I gave her - the Julian (divine love) question and the Wycliffite/Lollardy question are utter crap, but she liked everything else. I got told I should be writing exam questions. That's great and all, but I'm not sure I could give coherent answers to all of these. Hopefully most of the answers are located buried in some other blog posts and I just need to dig them out. Here goes:
- How are histories used for political purposes, and/or how are they used to shape the political landscape or peoples’ understanding of political power and the exercise of that power? Also, what other genres (such as romance or epic poetry) can be used or created to further the exercise of political prerogatives?
- What is the role of morality in romance? More specifically, perhaps, how does the sort of morality in romance compare to more traditional Christian morality, and how do romance texts deal with this tension?
- How does violence work to create gender roles – specifically, how does violence work to create a sense of masculinity? Can violence be co-opted by women? How is violence represented, and how is it dealt with and understood?
- How does marriage create/inform societal gender roles? When were women given power, and how were they often deprived of what power they had? How was marriage used to control female sexuality, and in what ways were women able to control their own sexuality?
- How do allegories teach people to understand language as a system of signs, or to teach people to read those systems – i.e., how do allegories function to ‘teach readers to read’? How do allegories provide insight into the state of the human soul and its varying depths? How does the way an allegorical text plays with puns, words and meanings force the reader to become more conscious of his/her own reading practices?
- How do dream visions open up sites for the authors to discuss and debate contentious, difficult, or abstract topics? Do dream visions open up a particularly vivid site for social and spiritual questioning and questing? How does the dream vision shield the author from criticism?
- How are Corpus Christi cycle plays effective in establishing and regulating guild and labor activities and modes of production? What is the relation of labor to the production of the plays, and what is the importance of the plays to the civil life of the cities in which they are performed?
- How does the performance of cycle plays help to establish a sense of community and communion? How do they establish the importance of sacraments, particularly of the Eucharist?
- Why did the Lollard heresy seem to be such a threat to the order of daily life in England, and why was it reacted to with such fervor? Why were the movement’s more populist overtones so particularly threatening, and how were they manifested?
- How was one’s estate determined, and what is the importance of each estate in the overall medieval conception of society? What is the role of estate satire in bringing to light real social conditions of the day? How did estate satire expose both the good and the bad in the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of each estate’s social roles?
- How is the medieval sense of self revealed? How does interiority play out in both courtly texts (Tristan comes to mind) and in religious texts – especially with regards to confession and contrition? In what ways is the subject seen to be self-determining, and in what ways is the subject formed in interaction with the pressures of society?
- How is English identity formed, and how is it understood? What social groups constitute the “Other” and what do those groups have to say about the state of England and “Englishness”?
- In what ways do the texts understand the increasing role of the market economy and of the role of work in daily life? How does one’s labor help to define one by estate, or does the increasing role of commodity production and consumption challenge the traditional conception of the ‘estate’ – i.e., how does the literature account for the increase of what we would anachronistically refer to as the “middle class,” and what sort of attitude often prevails towards members of that class?
- What is the social relevance of affective piety? Why do outward shows of contrition have such importance, and what sort of social work does this do? How do they help point to a conception of sin as being a social problem, rather than merely an individual spiritual problem?
- What conceptions are there of divine love, and how do these conceptions overlap? Divine love could be interpreted to mean variously the role of the love of God for his creation, the love felt by Christians toward God, or the role of love of humans for each other in salvation.
So basically what it boils down to is that I need to know all of that for exams on Tuesday. The minor field list has a whole other set of issues, except for allegory, which I can handle well in either category. The above is also why I haven't posted in a while. I've been relatively consumed with self-doubt lately in the moments I'm not feeling either complacent or like it's been nice out (until yesterday) and wanting to be outside "communing with nature" as it were (read to mean: getting sunburned while sitting on my shady porch for a few hours on Saturday afternoon reading Chaucer crit, talking to Mom, Dad and Alan and wearing SPF 45). In 8 days this will all be over and after a lot of sleep I'll probably end up typing out a poorly spelled drunk post. And then revising a paper for the Kalamazoo conference and driving 10+ hours to Kazoo for drinking and playing and geeking out with 3500 other sincerely warped megageeks.
Now if only the carpal tunnel would go away -- I'm threatening to bring BenGay to the exam so my wrists will stop throbbing...
Fortunately, my Lush order (www.lushusa.com) FINALLY arrived yesterday evening, and so I've spent the last 27 hours as smelling mostly like jasmine and vetivert (WOOT for Silky Underwear!!!!) - though right now a silver glitter-covered lavender field - and largely quite glittery (giving rise to what is referred to on the forums as, to be quite blunt, "disco pubes"). I just took a long bath with a Black Pearl bomb and I'm feeling significantly calmer than I was before hand.
I've hit the point of realizing that if I don't already know it, the chances of me figuring it out before exams start on Tuesday are slim to none, so I'm going to start reviewing tomorrow. I'm persisting in saving Sir Gawain and the Green Knight until roughly Sunday night, because I love that poem and I think it would be great to draw a bunch of correlations with. That said, tomorrow will start a slew of typing involving everything I can think of on the following topics:
- hagiography (specifically women)
- mysticism (specifically positive - I don't have much of anything on negative)
- drama:
- Corpus Christi "cycle" "mystery" plays
- morality plays
- Saint's Plays (really, just the Digby Mary Magdalene)
- dream visions
- Chaucer
- allegory
- chronicles
- romance
- labor
- representations of labor
- estates satire
- women's work
- the Church
- antifraternal literature
- theology
- questions of salvation
- sacraments
- heresy
- competing cultural worldviews (i.e., Christian v. Celtic)
- community
- definitions of
- creation of national identity
- humor
- sex
- marriage
- antifeminism
- love
- erotic love
- agape/divine love
- bizarre intersections between the two
-authority
About a week and a half ago, Kate asked for a list of questions of various ideas I'd come up with based on all the reading. Here's what I gave her - the Julian (divine love) question and the Wycliffite/Lollardy question are utter crap, but she liked everything else. I got told I should be writing exam questions. That's great and all, but I'm not sure I could give coherent answers to all of these. Hopefully most of the answers are located buried in some other blog posts and I just need to dig them out. Here goes:
- How are histories used for political purposes, and/or how are they used to shape the political landscape or peoples’ understanding of political power and the exercise of that power? Also, what other genres (such as romance or epic poetry) can be used or created to further the exercise of political prerogatives?
- What is the role of morality in romance? More specifically, perhaps, how does the sort of morality in romance compare to more traditional Christian morality, and how do romance texts deal with this tension?
- How does violence work to create gender roles – specifically, how does violence work to create a sense of masculinity? Can violence be co-opted by women? How is violence represented, and how is it dealt with and understood?
- How does marriage create/inform societal gender roles? When were women given power, and how were they often deprived of what power they had? How was marriage used to control female sexuality, and in what ways were women able to control their own sexuality?
- How do allegories teach people to understand language as a system of signs, or to teach people to read those systems – i.e., how do allegories function to ‘teach readers to read’? How do allegories provide insight into the state of the human soul and its varying depths? How does the way an allegorical text plays with puns, words and meanings force the reader to become more conscious of his/her own reading practices?
- How do dream visions open up sites for the authors to discuss and debate contentious, difficult, or abstract topics? Do dream visions open up a particularly vivid site for social and spiritual questioning and questing? How does the dream vision shield the author from criticism?
- How are Corpus Christi cycle plays effective in establishing and regulating guild and labor activities and modes of production? What is the relation of labor to the production of the plays, and what is the importance of the plays to the civil life of the cities in which they are performed?
- How does the performance of cycle plays help to establish a sense of community and communion? How do they establish the importance of sacraments, particularly of the Eucharist?
- Why did the Lollard heresy seem to be such a threat to the order of daily life in England, and why was it reacted to with such fervor? Why were the movement’s more populist overtones so particularly threatening, and how were they manifested?
- How was one’s estate determined, and what is the importance of each estate in the overall medieval conception of society? What is the role of estate satire in bringing to light real social conditions of the day? How did estate satire expose both the good and the bad in the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of each estate’s social roles?
- How is the medieval sense of self revealed? How does interiority play out in both courtly texts (Tristan comes to mind) and in religious texts – especially with regards to confession and contrition? In what ways is the subject seen to be self-determining, and in what ways is the subject formed in interaction with the pressures of society?
- How is English identity formed, and how is it understood? What social groups constitute the “Other” and what do those groups have to say about the state of England and “Englishness”?
- In what ways do the texts understand the increasing role of the market economy and of the role of work in daily life? How does one’s labor help to define one by estate, or does the increasing role of commodity production and consumption challenge the traditional conception of the ‘estate’ – i.e., how does the literature account for the increase of what we would anachronistically refer to as the “middle class,” and what sort of attitude often prevails towards members of that class?
- What is the social relevance of affective piety? Why do outward shows of contrition have such importance, and what sort of social work does this do? How do they help point to a conception of sin as being a social problem, rather than merely an individual spiritual problem?
- What conceptions are there of divine love, and how do these conceptions overlap? Divine love could be interpreted to mean variously the role of the love of God for his creation, the love felt by Christians toward God, or the role of love of humans for each other in salvation.
So basically what it boils down to is that I need to know all of that for exams on Tuesday. The minor field list has a whole other set of issues, except for allegory, which I can handle well in either category. The above is also why I haven't posted in a while. I've been relatively consumed with self-doubt lately in the moments I'm not feeling either complacent or like it's been nice out (until yesterday) and wanting to be outside "communing with nature" as it were (read to mean: getting sunburned while sitting on my shady porch for a few hours on Saturday afternoon reading Chaucer crit, talking to Mom, Dad and Alan and wearing SPF 45). In 8 days this will all be over and after a lot of sleep I'll probably end up typing out a poorly spelled drunk post. And then revising a paper for the Kalamazoo conference and driving 10+ hours to Kazoo for drinking and playing and geeking out with 3500 other sincerely warped megageeks.
Now if only the carpal tunnel would go away -- I'm threatening to bring BenGay to the exam so my wrists will stop throbbing...
Friday, April 20, 2007
The Pearl
In very poor taste, sent to me by Kate, who will be examining me on the poem the Pearl (among many others, in about a week and a half:
http://sjl.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=3efbc24c7d2583be6925
To make this make sense, the poem the Pearl is a really sad poem about a father whose not quite two year old daughter, and in mourning, falls asleep. In the dream vision that follows, he encounters her in a beautiful garden - she's dressed in all white with a giant pearl necklace. her name is also Pearl. She's now a bride of Christ in heaven, a blessed virgin, and extremely knowledgeable. Her poor grieving father wants to either join her in heaven or have her return to him - she points out that the first is impossible because the time hasn't come for him to die and the latter is equally impossible, and since she's so happy in heaven it would be really mean to want her back on Earth - wishing the dead back to life is pictured as an ultimately selfish behavior. The debate goes back and forth in this vein until Christ comes out of a large tower surrounded by virgins - the father turns to ask his daughter about this only to discover that she has gone - he sees her at a distance in heaven with the other virgins praising Christ, and then wakes up.
Pearl in the poem is a bit hard to take - she's bossy and rather rude at times, feeling no sorrow for her father's really intense grief, yet also tries to explain to him things about heaven that he fails to understand because they lack the proper words to communicate about heaven with each other. The father on the other hand comes across as a bit dull, but as he's so bereived, it's understandable...
That said, getting the above little video from my advisor pretty much made my month. I haven't laughed that hard in a while...
http://sjl.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=3efbc24c7d2583be6925
To make this make sense, the poem the Pearl is a really sad poem about a father whose not quite two year old daughter, and in mourning, falls asleep. In the dream vision that follows, he encounters her in a beautiful garden - she's dressed in all white with a giant pearl necklace. her name is also Pearl. She's now a bride of Christ in heaven, a blessed virgin, and extremely knowledgeable. Her poor grieving father wants to either join her in heaven or have her return to him - she points out that the first is impossible because the time hasn't come for him to die and the latter is equally impossible, and since she's so happy in heaven it would be really mean to want her back on Earth - wishing the dead back to life is pictured as an ultimately selfish behavior. The debate goes back and forth in this vein until Christ comes out of a large tower surrounded by virgins - the father turns to ask his daughter about this only to discover that she has gone - he sees her at a distance in heaven with the other virgins praising Christ, and then wakes up.
Pearl in the poem is a bit hard to take - she's bossy and rather rude at times, feeling no sorrow for her father's really intense grief, yet also tries to explain to him things about heaven that he fails to understand because they lack the proper words to communicate about heaven with each other. The father on the other hand comes across as a bit dull, but as he's so bereived, it's understandable...
That said, getting the above little video from my advisor pretty much made my month. I haven't laughed that hard in a while...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Wynnere and Wastour
Wynnere and Wastour –
This is one of the earliest poems in the alliterative revival, and falls under the category of a debate poem, much like Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles (though I think the Pearl has many of the same characteristics). This usually takes the form of two opposed viewpoints – often in allegorized form – debating over some matter or other.
Wynnere and Wastour begins with a Brutus reference, and immediately falls into an account of the social disorder of the time, where unlanded boys can marry noblewomen and the usual social hierarchy is gone – this leads into apocalyptic references. The poet finishes up the Prologue with a complaint of the popularity of young, relatively unlearned and rather ‘fluffy’ poets, though asserts that eventually the good poets who write worthwhile poems will one day be recognized.
This is a dream poem – the poet in part one has a difficult time going to sleep despite being in the typical dream-scenario area of a nice place with a stream murmuring and birds chirping in nearby trees, but rather than that lulling him to sleep as is typical in dream poems, the overwhelming noise of it all keep him awake for a while. Once he falls asleep, he sees two armies, and gives the description of a pavilion for a prince/king (Edward III, the critics think) , who is a member of the (recently formed) Order of the Garter (motto: honi soit qui mal y pense), and there are heraldic designs of the Plantagenets described on a woodman (usually a type of crazy person, though Merlin is often described as a woodman). The King shows up with a lady, and sends a Knight, presumably Edward the Black Prince his son, out to the armies. There’s an extended description of the Knight being armed, and he then goes out to the two armies, explains to them the penalties for breaking the King’s peace (i.e., death and disinheritance).
Now the narrator jumps into an extended sequence of describing Wynnere’s army. It starts out with a bunch of merchants who carry no heraldic banner, which makes sense in that they wouldn’t have any noble background, and who seem to come from all over, and are “stuffed” into steel. Then he flips into the papal delegation, which has a black banner with papal bulls hanging off the end. The lawyers have a green banner and are satirized for vanity, hypocrisy, and untrustworthiness (typical estate satire). Then the Franciscans, carrying white and wearing buckled shoes – the satire here is that they are fighting for pursuit of money rather than following their poverty vows. Then are the Blackfriars, the Dominicans, who have a lot of power because of their connections to the Pope. Then are the White Friars, who are noted gluttons. Then the Augustinians, noted for extreme carefulness about their appearance – they carry their shaving implements with them. There are also more merchants.
Wastour’s army is the typical bunch of knights, squires, and bowmen, who are only given four lines of description.
The knight commands Winner and Waster to come up to talk to the king, and both are given very equal, highly nice treatment from the king, which seems to point to his equal indulgence of them both (which probably can be extended into a critique of the King’s rule), the two are united in their love of him (they fight only with each other) and they sit and feast.
There’s a quick break in the poetry and then the debate begins. Wynnere is a teacher, likes frugality, is happy gathering goods (all avaricious), and whines that Wastour spends all the money and doesn’t help out with the farming tasks (given Wastour’s make up, this can’t be surprising – that’s not their job as according to estates logic). He accuses Wastour of pride and says he wants nothing but fighting equipment, a horse, and fun times. Wastour jumps back in and claims that by doing nothing besides gaining, all of those gains are going to waste anyway, and urges charity (i.e., no defense of himself, merely an attack on what virtues Wynnere claims for himself). Winner jumps back in and says that through pridefulness, Wastour destroys all the goods or uses them for pointless armor, and going to the edge of town to have sex with prostitutes – i.e., he accuses Wastour of pride, lechery, glutton, which leads to destruction. Wastour jumps back in that Wynnere’s words are vain, and jumps into anti-fraternal satire and more anti-legal talk. Wynnere describes a feast held by Wastour in such detail that he seems to be guilty of gluttony as well.
Fit the third – Wastour jumps in in defense of social hierarchy, and in some sort of Reaganomics-style trickle down effect explains that the feasts he throws benefit the peasantry, and that winners need wasters. Winner in his turn deplores the rising middle class, then that men buy their wives finery unlike that of even the Virgin Mary. Wastour jumps in upset and explains that nice clothing is beneficial to them as husbands because it keeps their wives happy. He also says again that no one other than the devil will be able to enjoy Winner’s goods when they get parceled out wrongly on the occasion of his death.
The king jumps in here to settle the debate. Winner is sent to the pope in Rome (interesting, as in this time of schism this was technically in Avignon), where he will be lain in silken sheets and treated quite luxuriously. Wastour is sent to Cheapside in London, to look out for people coming by and take them to taverns to get drunk. The overall point seems to be to get people into taverns and then steal from them and get them to pick up the bill – riotous, uncouth living (but probably fun). At about this point, the poem cuts off.
This is one of the earliest poems in the alliterative revival, and falls under the category of a debate poem, much like Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles (though I think the Pearl has many of the same characteristics). This usually takes the form of two opposed viewpoints – often in allegorized form – debating over some matter or other.
Wynnere and Wastour begins with a Brutus reference, and immediately falls into an account of the social disorder of the time, where unlanded boys can marry noblewomen and the usual social hierarchy is gone – this leads into apocalyptic references. The poet finishes up the Prologue with a complaint of the popularity of young, relatively unlearned and rather ‘fluffy’ poets, though asserts that eventually the good poets who write worthwhile poems will one day be recognized.
This is a dream poem – the poet in part one has a difficult time going to sleep despite being in the typical dream-scenario area of a nice place with a stream murmuring and birds chirping in nearby trees, but rather than that lulling him to sleep as is typical in dream poems, the overwhelming noise of it all keep him awake for a while. Once he falls asleep, he sees two armies, and gives the description of a pavilion for a prince/king (Edward III, the critics think) , who is a member of the (recently formed) Order of the Garter (motto: honi soit qui mal y pense), and there are heraldic designs of the Plantagenets described on a woodman (usually a type of crazy person, though Merlin is often described as a woodman). The King shows up with a lady, and sends a Knight, presumably Edward the Black Prince his son, out to the armies. There’s an extended description of the Knight being armed, and he then goes out to the two armies, explains to them the penalties for breaking the King’s peace (i.e., death and disinheritance).
Now the narrator jumps into an extended sequence of describing Wynnere’s army. It starts out with a bunch of merchants who carry no heraldic banner, which makes sense in that they wouldn’t have any noble background, and who seem to come from all over, and are “stuffed” into steel. Then he flips into the papal delegation, which has a black banner with papal bulls hanging off the end. The lawyers have a green banner and are satirized for vanity, hypocrisy, and untrustworthiness (typical estate satire). Then the Franciscans, carrying white and wearing buckled shoes – the satire here is that they are fighting for pursuit of money rather than following their poverty vows. Then are the Blackfriars, the Dominicans, who have a lot of power because of their connections to the Pope. Then are the White Friars, who are noted gluttons. Then the Augustinians, noted for extreme carefulness about their appearance – they carry their shaving implements with them. There are also more merchants.
Wastour’s army is the typical bunch of knights, squires, and bowmen, who are only given four lines of description.
The knight commands Winner and Waster to come up to talk to the king, and both are given very equal, highly nice treatment from the king, which seems to point to his equal indulgence of them both (which probably can be extended into a critique of the King’s rule), the two are united in their love of him (they fight only with each other) and they sit and feast.
There’s a quick break in the poetry and then the debate begins. Wynnere is a teacher, likes frugality, is happy gathering goods (all avaricious), and whines that Wastour spends all the money and doesn’t help out with the farming tasks (given Wastour’s make up, this can’t be surprising – that’s not their job as according to estates logic). He accuses Wastour of pride and says he wants nothing but fighting equipment, a horse, and fun times. Wastour jumps back in and claims that by doing nothing besides gaining, all of those gains are going to waste anyway, and urges charity (i.e., no defense of himself, merely an attack on what virtues Wynnere claims for himself). Winner jumps back in and says that through pridefulness, Wastour destroys all the goods or uses them for pointless armor, and going to the edge of town to have sex with prostitutes – i.e., he accuses Wastour of pride, lechery, glutton, which leads to destruction. Wastour jumps back in that Wynnere’s words are vain, and jumps into anti-fraternal satire and more anti-legal talk. Wynnere describes a feast held by Wastour in such detail that he seems to be guilty of gluttony as well.
Fit the third – Wastour jumps in in defense of social hierarchy, and in some sort of Reaganomics-style trickle down effect explains that the feasts he throws benefit the peasantry, and that winners need wasters. Winner in his turn deplores the rising middle class, then that men buy their wives finery unlike that of even the Virgin Mary. Wastour jumps in upset and explains that nice clothing is beneficial to them as husbands because it keeps their wives happy. He also says again that no one other than the devil will be able to enjoy Winner’s goods when they get parceled out wrongly on the occasion of his death.
The king jumps in here to settle the debate. Winner is sent to the pope in Rome (interesting, as in this time of schism this was technically in Avignon), where he will be lain in silken sheets and treated quite luxuriously. Wastour is sent to Cheapside in London, to look out for people coming by and take them to taverns to get drunk. The overall point seems to be to get people into taverns and then steal from them and get them to pick up the bill – riotous, uncouth living (but probably fun). At about this point, the poem cuts off.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Book of Margery Kempe
Okay, I'm trying to cut down on notes here in order to figure out better ways to link texts. There seem to be two main questions here worth discussing - 1) how community is envisioned in the text and 2) how ideas and questions of salvation are answered.
Briefly, Margery is a sinner, married, tries brewing and cloth-selling before getting desperately ill upon the birth of her first son, when she suddenly sees "the light" as it were. She falls back into sin again, but is eventually rescued from sin by the grace of God, who speaks to her in her soul. She eventually is able to get a vow of chastity from her husband so that she may also take one and live without sex, and goes on a ton of pilgrimages. The main thing Margery is known for is her gift of holy tears - she sobs INCESSANTLY throughout the text, often pissing off everyone near her, leading her into a lot of persecution (which she enjoys because it brings her closer to God and allows her to understand a bit better what Jesus might have gone through), and irritating the reader quite often as well. For all that, this is an amazing, easy to read text, and she does seem to have had some sort of amazing, completely inexplicable by normal means type experience.
As far as community goes, the community is generally defined in terms of those who go with Margery (the people of God or those whom God has moved to favor Margery in some way) and those who treat her poorly, persecute her, etc. In her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, this ends up working out in fairly counter-intuitive ways - her fellow English can't stand her, try and leave her behind, persecute her, refuse to let her eat with them, etc., whereas a Moslem man carries her up a mountain quite happily, and she often finds welcome at the hands of foreigners and Moslems in Jerusalem.
As far as universal salvation goes, this is something that seems to disturb Margery quite a bit, and she often prays that God will save the souls of all mankind as he has promised her he will save hers. She is constantly told that this will not happen, because for all she weeps constantly for her own sins and the sins she sees around her and recognizes those sins to be terrible, those sins are so the much worse in God's eyes as to be often unforgiveable - therefore, no universal salvation. Margery is told by Jesus that it pleases him greatly that she would ask for salvation for all people, and that she is a good soul for wishing such a thing. This usually makes Margery cry worse. At one point in the text it refers to her being told when a person dies whether that person will be saved or damned, and she refuses to believe that God is speaking to her when she hears a person is damned - she believes at that time that she's hearing a devil. This irritates God quite a bit.
At one point, Margery continues to refuse to believe that she's hearing Jesus speak to her because she doesn't like what she's hearing. Jesus withdraws from her soul, and Margery is tortured for 12 days with 4+ hours a day of mental pictures of penises that she sees - it seems really interesting that the punishment for her moment of non-belief comes in an explicitly sexual form. There are also moments when people around her are really uncomfortable with her because she is living, shall we say, an unconventional life (wandering around and sobbing all the time) and so men are often afraid that she's trying to lead away their wives - again, a linkage of women's sinning and freedom with wanton, unchecked sexuality.
Fun book.
Briefly, Margery is a sinner, married, tries brewing and cloth-selling before getting desperately ill upon the birth of her first son, when she suddenly sees "the light" as it were. She falls back into sin again, but is eventually rescued from sin by the grace of God, who speaks to her in her soul. She eventually is able to get a vow of chastity from her husband so that she may also take one and live without sex, and goes on a ton of pilgrimages. The main thing Margery is known for is her gift of holy tears - she sobs INCESSANTLY throughout the text, often pissing off everyone near her, leading her into a lot of persecution (which she enjoys because it brings her closer to God and allows her to understand a bit better what Jesus might have gone through), and irritating the reader quite often as well. For all that, this is an amazing, easy to read text, and she does seem to have had some sort of amazing, completely inexplicable by normal means type experience.
As far as community goes, the community is generally defined in terms of those who go with Margery (the people of God or those whom God has moved to favor Margery in some way) and those who treat her poorly, persecute her, etc. In her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, this ends up working out in fairly counter-intuitive ways - her fellow English can't stand her, try and leave her behind, persecute her, refuse to let her eat with them, etc., whereas a Moslem man carries her up a mountain quite happily, and she often finds welcome at the hands of foreigners and Moslems in Jerusalem.
As far as universal salvation goes, this is something that seems to disturb Margery quite a bit, and she often prays that God will save the souls of all mankind as he has promised her he will save hers. She is constantly told that this will not happen, because for all she weeps constantly for her own sins and the sins she sees around her and recognizes those sins to be terrible, those sins are so the much worse in God's eyes as to be often unforgiveable - therefore, no universal salvation. Margery is told by Jesus that it pleases him greatly that she would ask for salvation for all people, and that she is a good soul for wishing such a thing. This usually makes Margery cry worse. At one point in the text it refers to her being told when a person dies whether that person will be saved or damned, and she refuses to believe that God is speaking to her when she hears a person is damned - she believes at that time that she's hearing a devil. This irritates God quite a bit.
At one point, Margery continues to refuse to believe that she's hearing Jesus speak to her because she doesn't like what she's hearing. Jesus withdraws from her soul, and Margery is tortured for 12 days with 4+ hours a day of mental pictures of penises that she sees - it seems really interesting that the punishment for her moment of non-belief comes in an explicitly sexual form. There are also moments when people around her are really uncomfortable with her because she is living, shall we say, an unconventional life (wandering around and sobbing all the time) and so men are often afraid that she's trying to lead away their wives - again, a linkage of women's sinning and freedom with wanton, unchecked sexuality.
Fun book.
Friday, April 13, 2007
momentary non-academic blog
I figured out why people get so fucking tired after exams - I can't sleep, I'm nauseous 24/7, the IBS has kicked in at an absolutely unprecedented level, nothing sounds good but I'm eating all the time, and I feel like every single thing I see or hear anywhere about anything jumps my brain into reading stuff at about 80 different levels and linking everything back to what I'm dealing with in exam reading. It's completely exhausting but I'm too mentally wound up to slee, so I just get more exhausted. My blood pressure is up too, which is fantastic (I checked at the grocery store recently). Other than that, I think I've lost more weight in that I'm back to thinking I look relatively thin, and showering has become entirely optional unless I have to see people other than Tony.
Tony isn't dealing well either - he's gotten so wrapped up in exhaustion and anxiety that one of his examiners finally basically ordered him to take a night off. YAY!!!! - he really needed it. He needs more of them. I finally got him to take a Klonipin a couple of nights ago, and I think he slept a bit better.
I'm on a Klonipin every night and half of one during days when I'm panicking (most of them now). I'm meeting with Suzanne (a Chaucerian they've hired as a visiting professor for the next two years to cover Chaucer classes and mostly I think so that Kim and I have someone else resident to be on our dissertation commitees) in about 15 minutes - we've never had a chance to talk really for any length of time, but every time I've run into her she's been a complete sweetheart, and this article she's working on about the Wife of Bath is brilliant, so I'm excited to work with her. I'm glad to talk to her today about Chaucer because I still feel like Chaucer's my weakest point, but I'm nonetheless nervous (which is ridiculous - she's not examining me - she just offered to help out if I wanted).
I sent in the registration for Kalamazoo today, and I'm going to call and get us hotel reservations tonight or tomorrow. The Holiday Inn we stayed at last year was fantabulous, so hopefully we can stay there or the Country Inn next door to it. It's still early enough to get the conference rate - though weird realizing I'll be there in a few weeks...
It's 45 degrees here and supposed to snow some on Sunday or Monday. What the hell happened to Spring?
Tony isn't dealing well either - he's gotten so wrapped up in exhaustion and anxiety that one of his examiners finally basically ordered him to take a night off. YAY!!!! - he really needed it. He needs more of them. I finally got him to take a Klonipin a couple of nights ago, and I think he slept a bit better.
I'm on a Klonipin every night and half of one during days when I'm panicking (most of them now). I'm meeting with Suzanne (a Chaucerian they've hired as a visiting professor for the next two years to cover Chaucer classes and mostly I think so that Kim and I have someone else resident to be on our dissertation commitees) in about 15 minutes - we've never had a chance to talk really for any length of time, but every time I've run into her she's been a complete sweetheart, and this article she's working on about the Wife of Bath is brilliant, so I'm excited to work with her. I'm glad to talk to her today about Chaucer because I still feel like Chaucer's my weakest point, but I'm nonetheless nervous (which is ridiculous - she's not examining me - she just offered to help out if I wanted).
I sent in the registration for Kalamazoo today, and I'm going to call and get us hotel reservations tonight or tomorrow. The Holiday Inn we stayed at last year was fantabulous, so hopefully we can stay there or the Country Inn next door to it. It's still early enough to get the conference rate - though weird realizing I'll be there in a few weeks...
It's 45 degrees here and supposed to snow some on Sunday or Monday. What the hell happened to Spring?
Dinshaw - Chaucer's Sexual Poetics
The main point overall in the introduction is that there's a long patriarchal tradition of men doing the reading/creating on the female body/text. This plays out in lots of interesting, varigated ways in Chaucer's writing/reading, and in that of his characters. Masculine reading offers closure; it rids one of "feminized" textual slippage and instead imposes order discrete, concrete readings of texts. Feminine reading is quite the opposite - rather than erasing uncomfortable parts of the text, it keeps everything always in view, and works to try and understand the complexities and slippages even when those slippages refuse to allow for a concrete, readily available, closed interpretation of a particular text. The Wife of Bath is one example of one who reads like this.
With regards to Troilus and Criseyde, then, we have several readings/readers. The narrator and Pandarus are very much paralleled - both seem in love with the text of Criseyde that they create until Criseyde proves to be too slippery to pin down. The narrator deals with this by blaming first the source texts and eventually by closing the text he writes; Pandarus deals with this first by offering Troilus new lovers (in that all females can in essence be interchanged) and eventually by disowning Criseyde altogether. Pandarus in particular works to control the text that Criseyde is to him - he is orchestrating the text of a romance between Troilus and Criseyde that he, as an unsuccessful lover, can then read and enjoy. Troilus also learns to read Criseyde like a man - he begins by searching for meaning in her, but eventually, by the love scene in the bedroom, doesn't necessarily see signs of love in her eyes but decides to act as though they were definitely there - in essence closing off the text she offers in order to give it a comfortable interpretation.
Criseyde, on the other hand, reads in a much more feminine fashion - she tries to keep open all interpretations of the texts she's presented with and constantly seems to keep all words in view - as in the song her niece Antigone sings to her that helps persuade her to love, or in the letters (whose texts we never get) that pass between her and Troilus. She is also very much aware of herself as being a text or as being a sort of object to be passed between men - she doesn't seem willing to have Troilus at first but accepts him at the behest of her uncle; when she gets to the Greek ships and returns to her father Calkas, she recognises in her new situation the fact that she will again have to make herself into the sort of text that will be agreeable to her new suitor, Diomede.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Troilus and Pandarus is one of female trafficking - Pandarus offers his niece to Troilus when desired by the latter; Troilus offers (though is rejected in the offer) to give his sister to Pandarus. Pandarus even has a guilty moment in which he realizes that he is, in many senses, a pandar or go-between in the affair between TandC, but the guilt he feels is pushed away by Troilus in that he hasn't done anything wrong. Significantly, the relationship between Pandarus and Troilus seems to cool off at the end when Pandarus can no longer offer a woman to Troilus. Troilus, meanwhile, seems too attached to the specificity of Criseyde, and her loss leads to his suicidal ideation - it seems as though his big mistake is loving her specifically, rather than seeing her either as a way to get sexual pleasure or loving God in her, rather than her for herself.
Chaucer seems to realize at the end that this text is overall hugely unfavorable to women, in that he both apologizes to them at the end of his text and in the beginning of the Legend of Good Women, when he is attacked by the God of Love for doing so much harm to females.
With regards to Troilus and Criseyde, then, we have several readings/readers. The narrator and Pandarus are very much paralleled - both seem in love with the text of Criseyde that they create until Criseyde proves to be too slippery to pin down. The narrator deals with this by blaming first the source texts and eventually by closing the text he writes; Pandarus deals with this first by offering Troilus new lovers (in that all females can in essence be interchanged) and eventually by disowning Criseyde altogether. Pandarus in particular works to control the text that Criseyde is to him - he is orchestrating the text of a romance between Troilus and Criseyde that he, as an unsuccessful lover, can then read and enjoy. Troilus also learns to read Criseyde like a man - he begins by searching for meaning in her, but eventually, by the love scene in the bedroom, doesn't necessarily see signs of love in her eyes but decides to act as though they were definitely there - in essence closing off the text she offers in order to give it a comfortable interpretation.
Criseyde, on the other hand, reads in a much more feminine fashion - she tries to keep open all interpretations of the texts she's presented with and constantly seems to keep all words in view - as in the song her niece Antigone sings to her that helps persuade her to love, or in the letters (whose texts we never get) that pass between her and Troilus. She is also very much aware of herself as being a text or as being a sort of object to be passed between men - she doesn't seem willing to have Troilus at first but accepts him at the behest of her uncle; when she gets to the Greek ships and returns to her father Calkas, she recognises in her new situation the fact that she will again have to make herself into the sort of text that will be agreeable to her new suitor, Diomede.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Troilus and Pandarus is one of female trafficking - Pandarus offers his niece to Troilus when desired by the latter; Troilus offers (though is rejected in the offer) to give his sister to Pandarus. Pandarus even has a guilty moment in which he realizes that he is, in many senses, a pandar or go-between in the affair between TandC, but the guilt he feels is pushed away by Troilus in that he hasn't done anything wrong. Significantly, the relationship between Pandarus and Troilus seems to cool off at the end when Pandarus can no longer offer a woman to Troilus. Troilus, meanwhile, seems too attached to the specificity of Criseyde, and her loss leads to his suicidal ideation - it seems as though his big mistake is loving her specifically, rather than seeing her either as a way to get sexual pleasure or loving God in her, rather than her for herself.
Chaucer seems to realize at the end that this text is overall hugely unfavorable to women, in that he both apologizes to them at the end of his text and in the beginning of the Legend of Good Women, when he is attacked by the God of Love for doing so much harm to females.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Spearing - Medieval Dream Poetry notes
Spearing – Medieval Dream Poetry
Dreams are a space where we are freed from the constraints of daily reality and lived experience, and thus they seem to have a sense of hidden significance and possibility – medieval dream literature should be regarded in much this light. Dream literature in the medieval period seems to the authors themselves to constitute a separate genre with its own constraints and traditions, though it is disparate enough not necessarily to warrant that title.
It has several typical constraints of subject: ‘ideal and often symbolic landscape, in which dreamer encounters an authoritative figure, from whom he learns some religious or secular doctrine – also a poem which has (by fourteenth century) more fully realized its existence as a poem, i.e., the dream frame allows consciousness of the poetic form itself to weave itself into the poem.
The dream framework explains the existence of the poem – the dreamer, who is in some sense synonymous with the author, is at the center of the poem-subjectivity – the poem exists on account of the poet’s dream. This leads to a simultaneous creation and erasure of the author – he exists in that he has created the poem from his own mind, and yet erases himself as author by putting himself into the poem as a character. One of the typical forms this takes is the author putting himself into the dream and referring to himself by name, but often degrading himself in some manner in the dream-vision – for example, Chaucer in the book of the duchess is a bit of an idiot. However, the dream-poem becomes a way for the poet to express himself and his own creativity (rather than the other typical excuse for writing which is the appeal to authority – by writing a dream-narrative, the author can avoid the necessity of an authority because he is writing in the dream tradition).
Dreams typically take the form of a spiritual adventure, rather than an outward, physical adventure – this allows for deep probing of the mind and the spirit in a way other genres don’t allow. Macrobius, one of the first major writers on dreams, classified them in five ways – two which don’t matter and three which do. The first two are nightmares and visums, which have no prophetic significance, happen only because of the dreamer or in the liminal space between sleeping and waking. Then there is the somnium which is enigmatic, veiled and ambiguous, the visio, which is a true prophetic vision, and the oraculum, where advice is given to the dreamer by a wise authority figure. Most dreams (and most people’s opinions about dreams even now) would be put in the somnium category, as dreams in need of interpretation. Dreams are naturally like allegories, and allegorical figures feature prominently in many dreams – said figures are usually authoritative as well.
Dreams can also be Scripturally oriented, and Scripture itself has several examples of dream visions, including the book of Revelations, etc. This affects a lot of vision literature and leads to a common theme in medieval dream visions, which is the fate of the soul after death – or conversely, the dreamer may travel to the afterlife to receive from a now dead person (who by fact of having died is highly authoritative) some sort of knowledge or belief necessary to salvation. Dream visions also can be spent describing a certain place, such as heaven and/or hell (mostly heaven). This seems to be dealing with some sort of universal mental space or psychic archetype of what heaven might be – typically this is the ideal setting of dreams. Dreams in any vein like this seem to be highly didactic – the visionary goes on a spiritual journey during the dream in order to learn something of great importance.
Dreams are a space where we are freed from the constraints of daily reality and lived experience, and thus they seem to have a sense of hidden significance and possibility – medieval dream literature should be regarded in much this light. Dream literature in the medieval period seems to the authors themselves to constitute a separate genre with its own constraints and traditions, though it is disparate enough not necessarily to warrant that title.
It has several typical constraints of subject: ‘ideal and often symbolic landscape, in which dreamer encounters an authoritative figure, from whom he learns some religious or secular doctrine – also a poem which has (by fourteenth century) more fully realized its existence as a poem, i.e., the dream frame allows consciousness of the poetic form itself to weave itself into the poem.
The dream framework explains the existence of the poem – the dreamer, who is in some sense synonymous with the author, is at the center of the poem-subjectivity – the poem exists on account of the poet’s dream. This leads to a simultaneous creation and erasure of the author – he exists in that he has created the poem from his own mind, and yet erases himself as author by putting himself into the poem as a character. One of the typical forms this takes is the author putting himself into the dream and referring to himself by name, but often degrading himself in some manner in the dream-vision – for example, Chaucer in the book of the duchess is a bit of an idiot. However, the dream-poem becomes a way for the poet to express himself and his own creativity (rather than the other typical excuse for writing which is the appeal to authority – by writing a dream-narrative, the author can avoid the necessity of an authority because he is writing in the dream tradition).
Dreams typically take the form of a spiritual adventure, rather than an outward, physical adventure – this allows for deep probing of the mind and the spirit in a way other genres don’t allow. Macrobius, one of the first major writers on dreams, classified them in five ways – two which don’t matter and three which do. The first two are nightmares and visums, which have no prophetic significance, happen only because of the dreamer or in the liminal space between sleeping and waking. Then there is the somnium which is enigmatic, veiled and ambiguous, the visio, which is a true prophetic vision, and the oraculum, where advice is given to the dreamer by a wise authority figure. Most dreams (and most people’s opinions about dreams even now) would be put in the somnium category, as dreams in need of interpretation. Dreams are naturally like allegories, and allegorical figures feature prominently in many dreams – said figures are usually authoritative as well.
Dreams can also be Scripturally oriented, and Scripture itself has several examples of dream visions, including the book of Revelations, etc. This affects a lot of vision literature and leads to a common theme in medieval dream visions, which is the fate of the soul after death – or conversely, the dreamer may travel to the afterlife to receive from a now dead person (who by fact of having died is highly authoritative) some sort of knowledge or belief necessary to salvation. Dream visions also can be spent describing a certain place, such as heaven and/or hell (mostly heaven). This seems to be dealing with some sort of universal mental space or psychic archetype of what heaven might be – typically this is the ideal setting of dreams. Dreams in any vein like this seem to be highly didactic – the visionary goes on a spiritual journey during the dream in order to learn something of great importance.
Chaucer - Prologue to CT
Jill Mann – way to view the prologue is as an estates satire, a satiric representation of all classes of society. One’s estate is clearly demarcated in Chaucer’s work with reference to one’s job, and the pilgrims are almost exclusively defined as being somehow at the height of their respective professions. Chaucer does not bother to put the order of his pilgrims in the technical hierarchy of estates other than by starting with the knight. Mann looks for some sort of abstract significance in the face of this lack of order – that one’s view of hierarchy has much more to do with one’s own standpoint within the world than it does with any abstract perfect hierarchy of estates. Chaucer uses the estate form to show that the specialized duties of each estate, when taken to extremes, work against rather than for a productive, content society.
Estates literature works to reflect, play with, consume, and produce stereotypes of each particular group. Social stereotyping allows for a wider scope of understanding in that it 1) forms a possible source for the form, content and satirical techniques of the Prologue; 2)use the Prologue as evidence for the prevalence of certain estate stereotypes common in Chaucer’s time; or 3) evidence of the sort of conceptual frameworks Chaucer himself would be drawing on.
Each pilgrim is drawn as being superlatively skilled in their trade, regardless of what that trade is, this seems to be representative of a sort of romance style Chaucer uses throughout. Pilgrims are often described with their respective professional accoutrements, and their personalities are also part and parcel with what one would expect of them in their work.
Estate work can go two ways – it can evoke the ‘idealized’ version of an estate that would define how the estate should work, or a more ‘normal’ version with all the malpractices and frauds that typically define the workers in it. Regardless of what version one is being presented with in any particular pilgrim, the other version is always kept in mind, thus the good and the bad are represented as mutually definitive. Through the details that Chaucer gives us about the working lives of the pilgrims, it is often the estate itself that we are gaining information about, rather than the actual pilgrim.
Chaucer is consummately aware of point of view and plays with these ambiguities constantly, so that in the most fully realized accounts of pilgrims, we are understanding them largely from their own perspective. Thus in giving us the Monk as pilgrim, we get the typical sins and excesses that are often associated with monks in anti-clerical literature, but in a way that makes those sins and excesses seem excusable and even good – that is to say that according to Mann’s argument, we are getting the Monk from the Monk’s point of view, rather than from the over-moralizing point of view of someone else.
When giving us idealized estates, such as the clerk, the parson or the plowman (the last of which seems to owe something to Langland or the tradition surrounding plowmen at the time), Chaucer may be using estates ideals against themselves. By giving each estate representative such a perfect version of their own specialized labor, he shows how these ideals don’t necessarily always work together in a full society – like the Parson and the Plowman seeming to exist in a closed off dichotomy which other pilgrims are totally unengaged in. The Clerk, meanwhile, is an ideal and lives to that ideal without any clear notion as to how that ideal furthers him in society or even what that means his place in society actually is. What this does is exploit the concept of ideal: when acting as ideals, are they necessarily fitting into society as well as they could, or does acting in an “ideal” fashion as commanded by the estates model force a sort of alienation from social intercourse?
There is a big argument between whether we are encouraged to read the pilgrims Chaucer describes as “types” or as “individuals” – as types of their particular professions/sets of stereotypes versus individuals Chaucer would have drawn from real life people. Mann’s contribution to this argument is to say that perhaps Chaucer was relying on reader-response – that how we are encouraged to read the pilgrims individually comes in how we are encouraged to respond to them as individuals. Chaucer encourages the ‘pilgrim-as-individual’ response through an awareness of the effects of time on the characters, their reactions to traditional views of their jobs and behaviors, a specific awareness to their individualized points of view, their terminology.
Conversely, however, Chaucer aims at a sort of universality by the very comprehensiveness of its scope. It constitutes a wide range of characters and of moods. Characters and values are played off each other in the tales themselves in a way that is relative until the Parson steps in with a set of absolute, incontrovertible values (which simultaneously seem to apply only to him as a character). The omission of the victim that Mann describes can be used in a way to help relativise the value system of the individual pilgrims, in that without a victim we are able to see the pilgrims largely from their own perspectives.
Chaucer plays with our own senses of morality further in his descriptions of his pilgrims, in that he presents us wholly good people such as the Knight or the Parson, people like the Friar and Monk who aren’t so good but whose charm makes up for it, and wholly disgusting people like the Summoner, who sin and who physically repulse us. In this, Chaucer is pointing to and playing with the various ways we inherently judge our neighbors – while morality seems to have a part in it, physical appearances and a jovial manner do a lot to help us excuse people where morals are lax. Mann uses a good dichotomy between the Friar and the Summoner here, the Friar is fun, jovial, a musician, and quite handsome; the Summoner is thin, hollow-looking and reeks of garlic and onions – we thus instinctively like the Friar more than the Summoner despite the fact that their moral failings – both of them participate in simony – is identical. Thus Chaucer illuminates that our personal senses of good and evil are not only based on morality, but also on aesthetics. Verbal ambiguities and ironies, such as wordplay with particular words or equivocations in lines also help to add up to the idea that Chaucer consistently removes the possibility of making a reliable moral judgment on any of the characters, or indeed of making one at all. It is this lack of a moral judging ground that ironically gives us the sort of social cohesiveness we see in the Prologue.
The values that are presented in the Prologue are the values of the world, and are drawn in a manner consistent with the general way that the world works. We have a sort of worldly ethic, and our individual takes on that ethic have more to do with us as readers than it does any sort of judgment within the text itself. (Mann cf’s to Criseyde, and the subtle psychological machinations presented in her as the story progresses – here we get more outward signs or shows of who/what people are, such as the brooch of the Prioress – it is the outward that helps us to determine what people are, and the inward is largely left alone.) The ethics of the world are basically relativist. In the Prologue, as arguably in the world and history, it is “specialized work which ushers in a world where relativised values and the individualized consciousness are dominant.” (202)
Estates literature works to reflect, play with, consume, and produce stereotypes of each particular group. Social stereotyping allows for a wider scope of understanding in that it 1) forms a possible source for the form, content and satirical techniques of the Prologue; 2)use the Prologue as evidence for the prevalence of certain estate stereotypes common in Chaucer’s time; or 3) evidence of the sort of conceptual frameworks Chaucer himself would be drawing on.
Each pilgrim is drawn as being superlatively skilled in their trade, regardless of what that trade is, this seems to be representative of a sort of romance style Chaucer uses throughout. Pilgrims are often described with their respective professional accoutrements, and their personalities are also part and parcel with what one would expect of them in their work.
Estate work can go two ways – it can evoke the ‘idealized’ version of an estate that would define how the estate should work, or a more ‘normal’ version with all the malpractices and frauds that typically define the workers in it. Regardless of what version one is being presented with in any particular pilgrim, the other version is always kept in mind, thus the good and the bad are represented as mutually definitive. Through the details that Chaucer gives us about the working lives of the pilgrims, it is often the estate itself that we are gaining information about, rather than the actual pilgrim.
Chaucer is consummately aware of point of view and plays with these ambiguities constantly, so that in the most fully realized accounts of pilgrims, we are understanding them largely from their own perspective. Thus in giving us the Monk as pilgrim, we get the typical sins and excesses that are often associated with monks in anti-clerical literature, but in a way that makes those sins and excesses seem excusable and even good – that is to say that according to Mann’s argument, we are getting the Monk from the Monk’s point of view, rather than from the over-moralizing point of view of someone else.
When giving us idealized estates, such as the clerk, the parson or the plowman (the last of which seems to owe something to Langland or the tradition surrounding plowmen at the time), Chaucer may be using estates ideals against themselves. By giving each estate representative such a perfect version of their own specialized labor, he shows how these ideals don’t necessarily always work together in a full society – like the Parson and the Plowman seeming to exist in a closed off dichotomy which other pilgrims are totally unengaged in. The Clerk, meanwhile, is an ideal and lives to that ideal without any clear notion as to how that ideal furthers him in society or even what that means his place in society actually is. What this does is exploit the concept of ideal: when acting as ideals, are they necessarily fitting into society as well as they could, or does acting in an “ideal” fashion as commanded by the estates model force a sort of alienation from social intercourse?
There is a big argument between whether we are encouraged to read the pilgrims Chaucer describes as “types” or as “individuals” – as types of their particular professions/sets of stereotypes versus individuals Chaucer would have drawn from real life people. Mann’s contribution to this argument is to say that perhaps Chaucer was relying on reader-response – that how we are encouraged to read the pilgrims individually comes in how we are encouraged to respond to them as individuals. Chaucer encourages the ‘pilgrim-as-individual’ response through an awareness of the effects of time on the characters, their reactions to traditional views of their jobs and behaviors, a specific awareness to their individualized points of view, their terminology.
Conversely, however, Chaucer aims at a sort of universality by the very comprehensiveness of its scope. It constitutes a wide range of characters and of moods. Characters and values are played off each other in the tales themselves in a way that is relative until the Parson steps in with a set of absolute, incontrovertible values (which simultaneously seem to apply only to him as a character). The omission of the victim that Mann describes can be used in a way to help relativise the value system of the individual pilgrims, in that without a victim we are able to see the pilgrims largely from their own perspectives.
Chaucer plays with our own senses of morality further in his descriptions of his pilgrims, in that he presents us wholly good people such as the Knight or the Parson, people like the Friar and Monk who aren’t so good but whose charm makes up for it, and wholly disgusting people like the Summoner, who sin and who physically repulse us. In this, Chaucer is pointing to and playing with the various ways we inherently judge our neighbors – while morality seems to have a part in it, physical appearances and a jovial manner do a lot to help us excuse people where morals are lax. Mann uses a good dichotomy between the Friar and the Summoner here, the Friar is fun, jovial, a musician, and quite handsome; the Summoner is thin, hollow-looking and reeks of garlic and onions – we thus instinctively like the Friar more than the Summoner despite the fact that their moral failings – both of them participate in simony – is identical. Thus Chaucer illuminates that our personal senses of good and evil are not only based on morality, but also on aesthetics. Verbal ambiguities and ironies, such as wordplay with particular words or equivocations in lines also help to add up to the idea that Chaucer consistently removes the possibility of making a reliable moral judgment on any of the characters, or indeed of making one at all. It is this lack of a moral judging ground that ironically gives us the sort of social cohesiveness we see in the Prologue.
The values that are presented in the Prologue are the values of the world, and are drawn in a manner consistent with the general way that the world works. We have a sort of worldly ethic, and our individual takes on that ethic have more to do with us as readers than it does any sort of judgment within the text itself. (Mann cf’s to Criseyde, and the subtle psychological machinations presented in her as the story progresses – here we get more outward signs or shows of who/what people are, such as the brooch of the Prioress – it is the outward that helps us to determine what people are, and the inward is largely left alone.) The ethics of the world are basically relativist. In the Prologue, as arguably in the world and history, it is “specialized work which ushers in a world where relativised values and the individualized consciousness are dominant.” (202)
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