Ah. I have decided to update this with the spare hour I have before Anna gets back. It prevents me from reading as well, which is a nice respite. Today summed up concisely would be as follows: slow note-taking on the body in Shakespeare's dramas, lunch, crushing ennui, a resurgance of cautious enthusiasm, a caffienne (sp?) overload, and getting kicked out of the library. Due to it closing rather than any untoward behaviour I might add.

The stuff about the body has been fairly interesting though, and in the good-natured spirit of sharing academic learning, and partly as a means to recall my learning, I'll share my work a bit. I've been focussing on bodies in Shakespeare, but specifically with relation to the dialogue between interiority and exteriority. Maus' very interesting book Inwardness came in pretty useful, as did some work by last year's tutor on Othello. I'm quietly confident about it on the basis that there is plenty of bodily depictions in Shakespeare's work (and Shakespeare himself undoubtedly had it thrust upon him - from 1604 his lodgings on the corner of Muggle Street and Silver Street put him just around the corner from the Barber-Surgeons Hall, where anatomizations took place. And hopefully the body will be a useful place to go from if the exact question I want doesn't come up - there is room to talk about early modern maternities, subjectivity, and nationalism within the framework. So yeah. Go Shakespeare. Also have been reading the peerless Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. I have to say, reading what is essentially an adventure story to break work up is pretty nice.

I have traded essays with a girl off my course at her request. Hers didn't really fall into anything that I was interested in, but enjoyable to read someone else's essay as a change. Fairly similar essay style as well, which I like. Hmm. Ran into (arch-nemesis) who got an AHRC scholarship at UCL over me for the first time since the awards were announced, which was fine but...slightly unmanning. Still, I'm happy to be going to Cambridge, and at least I won't have to speak to her anymore. Plus, she doesn't appreciate Renaissance literature enough, so she clearly has no taste. Extremely unlikely, but I would so love to get funding from Cambridge and casually prop it up against her. Probably best to hope for that thin sliver of a chance on the basis of merit rather than vengenace mind.

Right - probably going to spend some time with Anna tonight, but will try and come home and do some reading - love that girl to bits, but she is terrible at waking up, and I'm in a pretty good rhythm at the moment. Maybe read some Scott before bed. I actually think if I had a child I would read him Scott - I think they're pretty good stories. I end on a passage from Ivanhoe which I found particularly, and perhaps bizzarely, touching. In it, Wamba, the Jester of Cedric, an ancient Saxon lord, puts aside his comedy to release a suitably brief lament for his master:

"Our master was too ready to fight," said the Jester; "and Athelstane was not ready enough, and no other person was ready at all. And they are prisoners to green cassocks, and black visors. And they lie all tumbled about on the green, like the crab-apples that you shake down to your swine. And I would laugh at it," said the honest Jester, "if I could for weeping." And he shed tears of unfeigned sorrow.

Labels: revision, Shakespeare

"The circle of human knowledge, illuminated by the pale, cold light of reason, is so infinitesimally small, the dark regions of human ignorance which lie beyond that luminous ring so immeasurably vast, that imagination is feign to step up to the borderline and send the warm, richly colored beams of her fairy lantern streaming out into the darkness ; and so, peering into the gloom, she is apt to mistake the shadowy reflections of her own figure for real beings moving in the abyss.

Sir James George FrazerThe Golden Bough

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The title of this blog comes from a poem by Coleridge, A Wish: Wriiten in Jesus Wood, Feb. 10th, 1792, Plus most blogs are moans anyway. Including this one. lol manuscripts

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I'm a 23 year-old student in London Cambridge London, studying English Literature Law. It's hard to really think of anything truly personal I can put here that might give you some idea of who I am, so I will just tell you that my favourite Shakespeare play is Richard II, my favourite chocolate bar is Snickers, and I have a bit of a thing for instant coffee, especially if someone else makes it for me.

I'm interested in Renaissance Literature, Higher Education policy, and libraries.
I'm completely in love with a Scottish girl.