silva rerum

but some are more equal than others

I’m sup­posedly work­ing on my term papers right now (yes, the ones due in the next few weeks) but, instead, I have caught up on Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty and Heroes. I could prob­ably squeeze in Grey’s Anatomy if I watch before and after I tutor.

It’s not that my research is dull, though, it’s mostly because I abhor try­ing to put into words what I have in my mind. By I’ll try.

For ENGL 348, I’ll be writ­ing “Blood, Sweat, Tears and More: Bodily Fluids in King Lear.” Specifically, I want to high­light the the­ory of the four humours and their men­tions in the work, con­tin­ued dis­cus­sion of milk, tears and blood as repar­at­ive yet abject and how an under­stand­ing of these con­cepts may con­trib­ute to fur­ther study in Shakespearean works. In MacBeth, for example, the eponym­ous char­ac­ter laments that “blood will have blood.” In Julius Caesar, there is no short­age of blood! And Goneril remarks that Albany is too full of the milk of kindness…or was that Lady MacBeth, attempt­ing to divest her­self of milk for gall? Shakespeare was one dirty fel­low, delight­ing him­self in the abject.

In ENGL 357, my primary con­cern will be “A School for Scandal: Collaboration and Courtesy Among the Augustan Authors.” I will chiefly exam­ine the ways in which under­stand­ing author­ship as a col­lab­or­at­ive endeav­our enriches con­tem­por­ary under­stand­ings of lit­er­at­ure as work and the ways in which inter­pret­ing works as het­ero­gen­eous con­structs from mul­tiple archi­tects may con­trib­ute to greater under­stand­ing of Augustan lit­er­at­ure (i.e. The Life and Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus). Moreover, I am inter­ested in the polit­ics of lit­er­ary endeav­our con­sequent from the col­lab­or­at­ive cul­ture of the lit­er­ary scene, par­tic­u­larly the rela­tion­ships between writers and among groups of them. The Tory Montagu’s rela­tion­ship with, for instance, Pope or Swift will be closely examined to observe the niceties and cul­ture cre­ated by the prox­im­ity of their writ­ten sub­jects. This should be good fun!

I’ll be pretty chill on my two cam­paigns from this time on as school is really gear­ing up (BIOL 201 assign­ment, ENGL 348/​357 papers, CHEM 235 exam and ENGL 357 read­ing ques­tions). I won’t be doing any classroom announce­ments (as people seem to hate them any­way) but I will con­tinue to guard my posters.

I’ll hap­pily be apply­ing for the Minischool Coördinator pos­i­tion as Sheila has given me her bless­ing! It’ll pay vir­tu­ally all of tuition, though still under­paid for the amount of stress, and will be nicely sup­ple­men­ted by my tutor­ing. Oh, and taxes are due soon so I’ll get a head­start on those.