Dangerous Minds

The quiet crank,
the humpty-dumpty professor
who teeters, slippered, before the blackboard
with a smile liked creaking leather.
The old Lothario,
whose hands have touched so many pages,
the spines of books
are no strangers to him.

He knows the cadence of Shakespeare,
and his heart beats in iambs.

"What light through yonder window breaks?"

His kind are dying.
And the new ones
have footnotes lined up like razer blades,
contact lenses
and polished fingernails.

They know that Shakespeare
was just a dead white man,
and there was never any author to begin with.
There is no blood on their fingers.
They cannot see the sunlight on the bed,
and Juliet, sleepy eyed, marveling
at the newness of her body
after his touch.
They cannot hear the lark
(or the nightingale)
or feel the iambic drumbeat in her vein.

It is easier to mock that love
than share it.
These dangerous minds.

This is what the other group's hotel staff told them when they asked about directions.  It is incredibly true.  There are MANY roads in Venice.  Most of them are tiny, twisting, somewhat sketchy, but amazing!  I haven't had much of a chance to update.  Laura's just applying the last of her make-up and putting on her mask.  We have to run shortly.  But this incredible!  Just incredible...I'm so tired.  Tired.  Must walk the roads.

Wow, my brain is still fuzzy.  I don't think I have the long term mental stamina of your average coffee-swilling grad student.  I can't pull an all-nighter.  I really don't work well after 10:00 pm in fact unless I'm drinking pots of green tea.  I try to overcome this by a general prepared-ness.  I get my work done ahead of time so I can keep to a reasonable schedule and not shove too much in at once.  And this is generally effective enough to keep me IN grad school.  But yesterday turned my brain to sludge.  You know when you're at the gym, and you know you just need to do another two to complete your reps, but your muscles are killing you, so you kinda put your back into it, and jerk around to get through?  That was my brain for the last four MSS (I looked at 17 yesterday).  Then I read another three articles, came back and started filling in the collation details from my printed description.  I got through about half before I reached the end.  Plus, I'm trying to slowly make notes on this book I'm reviewing, so I did a chapter of that.  But now my brain still hurts, despite a big English breakfast.

But, enough whining!  Today, I will battle mental fatigue with a well-placed pint, and move on to some of the fun stuff.  I actually took the time to wander around the Hereford Cathedral yesterday (For some reason, a number of the Herefordians have made someone suspiciously disparaging remarks against...Worcesterians?).    I don't know why that's in parantheses.  It's really not related to anything.  But they have a beautiful, HUGE mappa mundi, and I got to see the chained library.  I bought some posters of the map for when I one day have an office.  It'll be great!  

Oh yes, and fateldandsanta.  That is the password for Wifi at my B&B.  There is a story there, but I will not tell it you.

For those of you who remember, last summer looking at manuscripts made me gouge holes in my hands in an stigmata-like attempt to open bottles of beer.  Now I remember why.  It hurts.  HURTS!  I read three articles and looked at twenty manuscripts.  My brain no longer functions.  So that was my day.  And then I ate a salad.  And missed my train so by the time I got home every beer-selling store was closed.  GARRGGGHHHHHH!

Today, I spent my first day in a cathedral doing research.  My night did not go as well as planned since apparently drinking coffee to stay awake, then napping, then napping some more doesn't actual assist with getting a good night's sleep.  Nor does the cold.  Seriously, what is wrong with this country?  Turn on the heat!  I think my body has all the insulation of a kleenex, though, so it's probably not their fault.

This morning was a bit of a mess.  I was trying to hard to get to the train station on time that I ran clear past it, and had to backtrack a kilometer.  By the time I got to Hereford, however, I was still making respectable time.  Everyone in Hereford was exceptionally friendly.  It was my taxi driver's birthday, AND she had just had her first grandson born.  She was very delighted and told me all about it.  Then at the coffee shop, after ordering, I was asked where in America I was from by a random patron.  I told them I was from Canada and staying at Worcester.  He told me not to trust the Worcester(ians?).  They're like the poor relations of Herefordians.  And Hereford has a bigger cathedral.  And an older one.  So there!

Speaking of friendly Herefordians, the cathedral had a remarkably hot librarian!  He was super friendly, probably a bit older than me with a combination of nerdiness and over-enthusiasm that I loved.  Plus, man could he run up those cathedral stairs.  Phew!  I'm getting in better shape, but I was still wheezing after trying to keep up with him.  Even his tiny English head did not bother me.  And better still, he's going to Kalamazoo for the first time!

So I spent the day hanging out around the cathedral.  I was really worried everyone was going to be like the people at PIMS.  But they were happy to see me, and curious about my project, and generally wonderfully friendly.  Even though I like the Bodleian and the BL, this was way friendlier.  They delivered me all the MSS, and I just hung out and looked at them.  And they all had these massive chains on them!  Tomorrow I want to spend some time actually looking around the cathedral some.  And I bought chocolates to give them for being so nice to me.

I arrived in Worcester today.  Tonight, to be more precise.  I'll start with that, and then back track for you. Or maybe I won't.  Be prepared for some jumping.

To understand how I felt when I first arrived here, you need to know how much I did not like the hostel I stayed at.  The people were noisy.  The beds were uncomfortable.  The room was cold.  If you know me, you know I hate the cold.  But this was the cold where I grabbed every item of clothing I had and either wore it or used it as extra blankets.  I even borrowed clothing from Laura for this purpose (she got a better? room).  I was constantly worried I was going to be robbed (which was probably not so much of a worry...thanks mom for the built-in paranoia!).  Laura and I had nowhere to hang out.  To sit quietly, maybe watch Dollhouse.  Add to this what should have been a three hour direct train trip from King's Cross which turned into a...longer trip.  The only train left from Paddington.  Half the Tube was shut down for maintenance.  My first train was delayed.  My connecting train was cancelled.  It wasn't horrible, but I'm still not recovered from jetlag.

So I get into Worcester.  I've been studying Worcester for sometime as part of my major fields and because David Townsend always talked about it.  The place felt...good.  In the way Pisa felt bad.  It was completely deserted.  Completely.  And about a ten minute walk to my B&B.  But I trundled off with my much smaller suitcase in tow.  Merrily, almost, as it were.  But it's a really nice place.  Quiet.  Not like London, but with its own charm.  I can see why William Langland preferred it over London.  The cathedral kinda sneaks up on you, which is impressive when you're looking for it and it is pretty much huge.  And lit up with eerie yellow light.  And creepy looking trees.  But I walk alongside it, following my map, and wouldn't you know that my B&B is smack dab right next to it.  I am currently looking at my window and it is right there.  My next day neighbour.  But it is so fricken cool!!!!!!!  Mom, you would love it.  The B&B is all-around lovely as well.  My room is spacious, and warm, and the beds have sheets.  And there's a towel.  And I get to lie down and type this message.  I'm really looking forward to doing it abit of wandering...though tomorrow I've gotta head up to Hereford to check out their cathedral first.  But there's nice hills.  And tons of little museums.  And quaint (they juggle geese kinda quaint) stores selling teapots and English-y things.  I love it!

So to rewind back to my last entry.  I was sitting in despair and moderate comfort in the British Library.  I never mentioned it, b ut they had a Darwin exhibit on so the main entrance was filled with birdsong.  Wow, it was really idyllic.  Laura and I had tickets to see Sunset Boulevard, our favourite musical.  First of all, we went to a wonderful Chinese restaurant where I got the Crispy duck and Laura got Singapore noodles.

Stop.  The lights just went out at the cathedral.  Is this normal?  Now it's just waiting there in the darkness....

Sunset Boulevard was amazing!  The performance was riveting.  We're very used to the CD sountrack, which misses out bits of the storyline, so it wa refreshing to fill in the gaps.  Norma was much more childlike and clingy, not like Glenn Close's somewhat stronger, more cracked character.  This was someone who never grew up past sixteen.  Joe was...smarmier.  He was an ass.  You could tell all the way through that he thought he could just play her and walk away.  The CD Joe was ironic and smooth.  You could tell he knew it was all going belly-up but he wanted to keep it going for as long as possible.  This one, well, I think he always thought he had a way out, up until the catastrophe hit.  You could see it ramping up, but Joe kept thinking he still had control, had the ability to walk away.  He just never got his situation.  It was an interesting take.

Afterward, we spent some time not wanting to go to the hostel, but eventually we caved anyway.  I did not sleep.  This was problematic for our day of wandering around London (the bL is closed on Sunday).  So we headed to the British Library, wandered around there, hit a pub and then saw Slumdog Millionaire.  Great film.  It used the opportunity to get a quick nap.  So then cue back up to the Tube, and the train, and the walking with the suitcase, and here I am sitting in bed typing out a message on stolen WiFi.  Not Bad.  A good trip so far.

Today has both been a lot of fun and frustrating.  First things first.  It was great to see Laura!  She and I are hanging out at the library.  I missed having someone to have coffee breaks with and discuss manuscript-y things.  We stayed at a hostel yesterday.  Very sketchy.  I kept worrying that I was going to be robbed.  Maybe they've robbed us while we've been out?  I hope not.  In the morning, whenenver anyone was up getting changed, I kept feeling like they were right next to my bed.  Which they were.  Because there were sixteen of us.  and they put Laura in a different room!  Very sad.

So today, elation and upset and recovery.  Elation because I think I might have found another scribe working on multiple SEL stuff...but it is tres weird.  The hand looks familiar, but originally it start in an Anglicana not a Gothic.  But for about five pages in the middle, it blends into a Gothic hand!  And then back to Anglicana...don't know what's up with that.  Seriously.  Books are so mysterious.  Why won't you just tell me stuff?!?!?  And then upset.  I looked more at Egerton 1993, totally convinced myself out of the paraph theory.  And then half convinced myself back, but in such a way that I'm not sure I could plausibly convince other people?  I guess we'll see what else I find on the trip.  Then recovery, because I had a cappuccino with Laura, bought myself a ruler and magnifying glass (and a present for Peter) and decided it didn't matter anyway, because I'm learning stuff and there's still an argument to be made.  Just maybe not the original one.  There might be a desperate e-mail to Alex tonight.  We'll see.  But I did manage to see something like 12 MSS today.  that's a good sign.  And it was all fun!

Tonight we're off to see Sunset Boulevard - my all time favourite musical.  And then tomorrow we actually get to spend the day sightseeing since the library is closed...then off to Worcester for even more paraph searching!

My flight was successful and once again I find myself in the British Library, much deserted but much more familiar.  The plane trip went well.  I chugged a mini bottle of wine (they're free apparently?) and then slept merrily for the majority of the trip.  Not that you'd know
it now.  Being the eager grad student that I am, I got off the plane, onto the tube, and straight to the library.  I've got my suitcase stored in the locker room (potentially safer than at the hostel anyway).  I'm exhausted.  To beat the jetlag, my plan is to heavily caffeinate myself and just keep working through until Laura shows up.  I'll try to keep going after dinner, but truthfully I'm not sure that'll be possible.  We'll see what the coffee is like here.

There was a bizarre bronze dwarf dressed in Renaissance clothing staring at me from outdoors.  That doesn't help.  With anything.

The manuscript research is going well so far.  I've looked through three manuscripts, my argument seemingly hanging on everyone.  I've decided to simply relax, collect information, and then form a better judgment at the end of it.  Also, there's this one patron who looks
like Alex.  I keep seeing her out of the corner of my eye.  Haunted by a metal dwarf and my adviser.  Is this a promising start to the trip or what?

Higgledy, Piggledy
William of Malmesbury
Liked to write history
When he was bored---

Stalked the nobility
Each one sequentially,
Renaming Englishmen
With Latin words.

I've reached the end of the trip now, and I'm sitting in an over-heated airport and contemplating the last couple of days.  Today has been a bit...frustrating, but I'm not really going to talk about any of that.  The conference was great.  It was lovely to see Sarah again and to have a book history buddy.  We could just rant about manuscripts over a beer (mine, not hers, since she's 7 months pregnant).  I had a bunch of good conversations with people that made me remember why this is fun.  The panels themselves were okay.  I didn't recognize many of the names.  Probably my northern bias.  No major gossip to report.

I do have one bizarre story to yell.  After presenting, an old man walked up to me and started talking to me about a dissertation he had written on scribal organization of the "Canterbury Tales". When I said that was fascinating and I should look at it, he produced it from his bag and handed it to me.  Yes.  He was carrying a 35 year old, leather bound copy of his disseration.  And he gave it to me to borrow.  I read through it that night (it was only 109 pages) but I didn't see him the next day to give it back.  So there I am, walking around with this bizarre dissertation, terrified I'm going to end up heading back to Canada with it.  He was like the ghost of academics past.  So I told everyone, and it became one of those bizarre conference stories that begins to circulate.  People came to see the dissertation.  People would interrupt me when passing by to say, "What?  Someone gave you their dissertation?"  Fortunately (or unfortunately from a narrative stand point) I did manage to find him just before I left the conference on the third day.  But now it makes me think that I should carry around copies of my dissertation (should I write one) to hand out to poor, unsuspecting academics.  It was very odd.

One other talk of note was that of a queer theoriest talking about touch.  This struck close to home because I used to do that kind of work.  But his was one of those airy-fairy (no pun intended) beautiful talks that people give and historians hate.  No contextualizing.  No historical detail.  Just pure interpretation.  And it was lovely.  And a tiny part of me rebelled because it made me remember that once upon a time I wanted to say beautiful things.  And now I have footnotes.  And citations.  And they are ugly.  On top of that, he talked about the vision that freezes, that codifies and locks into place.  The gaze of the Medusa that says, "You can't do that!  You need footnotes."  And I realized that I was the gorgon.  So I hated myself.  And then I wrote some footnotes and felt better.

So I've now been in St. Louis for a day and a half.  I meant to post yesterday, but well, my Internet access wasn't working.  The flight was good.  There were some Canadians bitching behind me to Americans about how boring our election is in comparison to theirs.  "Damn you!" say I.  Seriously, there's still something at stake in this country....so says she who has only recently discovered an interest in politics.

Sarah Noonan picked me up at the airport and drove me to her husband's restaurant.  Which was great!  It was just like being in France again...it was called the "Shaved Duck" and was something of a gastro pub.  There was duck every where, and since he was the exec chef we got all this delicious food for ridiculously cheap.  Then in the morning we want to his *other* restaurant for lunch, and again the food was brilliant.

I gave my paper this afternoon.  It went over surprisingly well, and THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE!  Lots of them!  So many they had to sit in the front seat!  People actually showed up to a panel I was on!  I credit it entirely to my obscure title "Chaucer's Frankenstein Text".  Who the Hell knew what that was about?  It's genius.  I will make up random stuff in the future as well, and then I will rule the world of academia.

I'm kinda drunk now, and about to sit down to watch the debate with some room service, so well, that's all you get from me.

The title is misleading - largely because I couldn't think of a real title.  I'm sitting in the Pearson airport, having paid my $5.00 for the advertized WiFi.  I showed up 5 hours early to the airport, so I feel justified in spending a little cash to burn some time.

For those of you who remember, I mentioned that my first plane trip was a horrible experience, involving floods in Buffalo, not being let onto the flight, losing my luggage, and then a five hour trip to Toronto that involved take two different cars and a train.  That was my first trip to SEMA.  It was my first real conference, my first real trip into the wilderness of academia.  I had met a guy named Jeff Turco who said, "Hey!  You should go to SEMA with me!"  It was a little ambiguous as to whether we were dating.  I guess we were going on dates, but nothing more serious than that.  So off I went, knowing only this one person, to a conference where there was not a single person from Toronto.  The conference itself went well.  My paper was, well, what you would expect from a bright but inexperienced 4th year undergrad (when I wrote it).  It didn't turn any heads, but there was hardly anyone in the audience who would have had a turnable head.  By a mistake of bad timing, myself and one of the other people on the panel, another grad student by the name of Misty, got stuck in the city proper and showed up ten minutes late to our own panel.  I guess the moderator must have been freaking.  It was a lousy way to get started, but there you have it.  I didn't abandon academia.

So this is SEMA Take TWO!  I'm excited because I actually have legitimate friends this time - Sarah Noonan, a Washington U grad student and fellow Alex tormentee.  I also vaguely know a couple of the people from the department - David Lawton, Carter Revard (one of the most well spoken but long winded people I've ever met).  I shared a taxi with the latter to the train station while try to get the heck out of Swansea.  I wonder if he could sense the desperation?

Anyway, I'm really just killing time and I don't have anything else interesting left to say, so bon voyage!  I'll see you when I get back.

And.....we're back.  Yeah, I know I talked about trying to get this thing started, but it seems like my real life is busier than my overseas life.  But here I am.  That presentation I was all worried about, well, it went quite well.  Alex told me I have a natural grace and charm in my teaching.  Woo!  I guess it beats panic and desperation!  I think she was just testing me...

So one of the reasons I haven't been writing, apart from sheer business, is that I reached a kind of academic funk.  I think all of us academics have these points.  In one of my earliest posts, I offered the description from "Princess Bride" about the back and forth between exuberance and despair that comes with creation.  I was at the downward swing.  That's okay though because it genuinely is part of the process.  Grad school is a Hellish process which requires a constant process of intellectual struggle as you try to work something out, say something new, and translate your damn Latin.  So the upside is that I think I may have done all three of those (Except the Latin, perhaps, which is slipping this week...).  But I wrote what I think is a quite cool conference paper for my trip to St. Louis.  I leave on Wednesday.

My favourite chat line of today (in reference to our last Latin assignment which I'm blowing off to go to St. Louis):
Is it big?
She asks timidly
Like a virgin at a porn convention.

Wow....that's almost like a haiku.  On that note, I leave you in peace to deal with your own struggles!  More later!

Here I sit, once more, munching oatmeal and contemplating the world.  As someone who used to do an awful lot of writing (and still does, just on other topics), I find that the primary way I make sense of the world is through narrative.  So I've opened up my Livejournal to decide if I want to keep doing it.  I liked the completeness of ending it once the trip is done, but that sends the subtle message that my life is only interesting if I'm in England.  And that's a little depressing.  So how about we make a deal?  I'll only update this when I actually have something to say.  This will NOT be a forum for me to vent my frustration on people who aren't reading it (or who are), or to write long break up messages that I secretly want my ex to read.  I'll try to make it worth your while.

So lots has changed and lots hasn't since my last post.  Laura is now in Scotland, where she has ironically turned into me - drinking, hanging out with the rowdy crowd, singing O Canada at the top of her lungs with a cute Australian boy - and I have turned into her, doing my homework and mostly staying at home.  I guess that's the beginning of the semester for you.  Will and Jill are off with Alanna (their adorable child) in Calgary.

Classes have started for me, which always mean a mixture of intellectual bliss and panic.  Leaning toward the panic.  My stress level rocketed yesterday, and that tends to give me serious backpain.  I blame Latin.  And my penchant for overscheduling.  It turns out that conference Sarah invited me to (SEMA) is actually about two weeks away and I haven't done anything to prepare.  Like book a flight or a hotel room.  So I madly set about doing all of that.  Then, I foolishly signed up to do a presentation the day I was leaving.  It turns out that out of the twelve people taking Anglo-Norman Hagiography, only three are doing it for credit.  Kinda puts the pressure on to volunteer when stuff needs to be done.  And on top of that, I get to do the first real teaching I've had a shot at in my Ph. D.  I'm teaching the class for 30 minutes about English palaeography.  Not much, I know, but it still has got me all ramped up and amped up.  I actually dreamed about letter forms yesterday.  I was trying to explain Anglicana Formata.  The craziness has been compounded by random messages from Alex saying things like, "We don't have AV equipment so prepare to present from your handout.  We DO have AV but I can't print the handout.  We have AV and the handout, but some of your examples are wrong."  Which I'm not convinced they were.  One was scanned from a M. B. Parkes book specifically AS an example for the script I was talking about.  But there you have it.  Like some sort of strange reality TV show where they're trying to keep the ratings up.  But I think I'm ready.  As Peter W. suggested, I can always do it through interpretive dance.  I should've kept up the yoga if I wanted to do those curly Anglicana 'w's.  

Since I have all this work to do, I should probably hit my backs again and try to be productive.  But I'll let you know how it goes!  It'll either be brilliantly successful or crash and burn.  Or I'll put people to sleep.  And ramble.  Who knows?  Stay tuned.

Another successful day at the Bodleian.  Still the most beautiful library on earth.  I woke up today feel absolutely horrible.  Despite having slept for a good twelve hours, I still didn't want to get up in the morning to face the day.  But I eventually dragged myself up and to the library, where I managed to snag the seat I grabbed yesterday - and the best in the place, I might add - which had a window overlooking a little park.  I found a great manuscript.  It was another tall and skinny one, but this one finished every item of text with "Amen quod Kate" followed by a drawing of a fish, or a flower, or a fish with a flower in its mouth.  Seriously.  And it wasn't always the same fish.  There were slight variations, but there were fish showing up on every couple of pages.  The book itself was quite neat, since it was filled with a number of romances and moral texts including "Sir Orfew", a Englishized version of the myth of Orpheus, turned into an Arthurian-styled romance.  One of the coolest Middle English texts in existence.

I broke up a long day at the library - 9:00 am to 7:00 pm- with a couple of healthy breaks.  I joined Katrina for lunch.  I had a baguette with goat cheese, figs, chutney, tomato and cucumber.  It was surprisingly delicious!  She showed me around Oriole College where she lives.  Massey has got nothing on these colleges, boys and girls.  Nothing.  They are wasted on the undergraduates.  Afterwards, we went for a walk down to the river.  Their river was nice enough, but it wasn't as central and as leisurely as that of Cambridge.  After another bout of manuscript examination, I met Katrina and Sarah for coffee.  We went to a coffee shop based out of the nearby church.  We ended up drinking cafe lattes in a cemetary, which wasn't nearly as creepy as it sounds.  I joined Sarah again for dinner, which stretched on longer than I think either of us anticipated.  But in a good way.  It's nice to have someone to talk to about my work.  We basically just talked about cool stuff we had found in books, and what the various implications might be for the field.  Despite living in Massey and being part of the Centre, I still haven't had many academic discussions that have actually advanced my research.  This whole research followed by food is pretty cool.  I feel like I'm actually participating in discussions that may influence the field in a couple of years. 

Now that I'm thoroughly caffeinated, I'm debating whether to call it a night and try to get some sleep, or to continue wandering.  I decided to stop in at the cemetary outside my building.  I'd never really walked around a cemetary, and it was kinda cool.  A little eerie too, since it was getting on 9:00 pm and the light was starting to fade.  The headstones were all from the 1800s.  There were a couple of mausoleums.  It makes me want to see the necropolis in Toronto when I get back.  It was nice to get the exploration bug again.  I thought the cold had beaten it out of me.  Appropriate amounts of coffee and tea will fix pretty much anything, apparently.  Why did no one tell me about this before?

So here I sit once again, staring at a Departure board, stuffed with egg and mayonnaise sandwich (for which I paid using only 5 cent pieces), and thinking ahead to what comes next.  This may well be my last posting.  I wanted it to be well-crafted, poetic and perhaps a little inspirational.  Like a really good movie voice-over.  Of course, I was up at 6:00 am in order to catch several trains to get here, so vaguely coherent may be the best that I can offer.

The trip has been mind-blowingly amazing.  I can navigate the the British rail and tube system.  I've discovered potentially publishable work.  I networked with everyone on the bloody planet.  I almost learned how to steer a punt.  I saw Roman ruins, Gothic architecture, and a bunch of red phone boothes.  The only thing I didn't master by the end of the trip was how to open a bottle with a key without leaving scars.

The truth is that they would have all been just places to visit if it hadn't been for the people I've met along the way.  That's really cheesy, but I thought that travelling was often a lonely, isolated kinda thing.  This was really different.  The benefit of being a grad student is that people (except other grad students) take pity on you, and buy you food and alcohol.  But apart from those kinds of things, the people were truly awesome.  I find it weird that I could miss friends already that I've only known for a couple of days.  But they were often intense days--full of drinking and manuscripts and over-caffeination.  I find myself in the role of a Southern belle, genteely whispering into the ears of those I meet, "Ah always depend on the kindness of strangers."  The strangers have been kinder, wittier, more inebriated than I ever would have expected.

My clock seems to have already set itself back the requisite five hours, so it's one step ahead of me.  I haven't really had a problem with mentally wrapping my head around the time difference, but now I find it quite odd.  I got used to people having lunch while I had dinner, or Laura preparing dinner when I had just got in from a night out.  But the concept of re-synchronizing seems very odd.  It totally blows apart conventional notions of time as linear.  It's like when you get onto the plane, you hit some sort of field that drags you slowly backwards in time.  One book described jet lag as leaving your soul behind in one place, and then waiting for it to catch up as a numb, worn-out shell.  My soul's over here right now, but it will return in time.

So before I left, I asked myself to reflect back upon who I was five weeks ago.  I'm a little older now and a little wiser.  I feel much better about becoming an academic--it really feels like the place for me.  I used to hate conferences, but I've enjoyed *most* of the ones I've attended over here.  I learned to take more risks, and live by the skin of my teeth.  Or hang on by the skin of my teeth?  I don't remember how the cliche goes exactly.  So I hope that's what I'll bring back with me--besides a backpack full of scotch, a stuffed terrier, and notes on twenty manuscripts. 

So I'll sign off with those words that best describe my trip:
"You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best. 
I've been gone for a month.  I've been drunk since I left.
These so-called vacations will soon be my death.
I'm so sick from the drink--I need home for a rest."

But I'll be hitting the skies some time soon.

The rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge is fairly well known, but I have to come down on Cambridge's side.  Oxford is beautiful, and perhaps even more medieval looking than Cambridge.  The library is what all libraries should be.  You walk up a winding staircase about four floours and enter the most magnificent place in the world.  Leatherbound volumes sit on all the bookshleves - most of which are actual manuscripts.  The windows have stained glass.  The ceiling is crisscrossed with painted beams. Unlike the open, likely antiseptic library of Cambridge, the Duke Humphrey library divides its seating into stalls that accommodate about four people.  Yesterday, mine had a window that overlooked a beautiful park.  Seriously, Laura, when you get to Edinburgh, make sure you take a trip to Oxford and get yourself a reader's pass just so you can see it.  The only problem is that the librarians are slightly snottier about what they'll let you see.  Cambridge would give you pretty much anything.  Oxford guards its relics jealously.

But despite the library, Cambridge has the river.  Oxford apparently has one too but I haven't managed to find it yet.  The river creates a far more idyllic landscape.  Perhaps it's also that I've managed to catch some sort of niggling cold that has managed to knock ass over teakettle.  Since I only have three days at the library here, I don't even get to take a day off to try to recovery.  I'm normally a bit of a sop the first day I'm sick - specially if I desperately want a bit of a break anyway.  But I did a full 9:00-6:00 stint yesterday, and then promptly collapsed in bed to watching Gilmour Girls.  Despite hitting the sack at 10:00 pm, it's still been a very slow morning as a wander about in grotty misery.  The cold has sucked away all excess energy, which means you may not get these messages until I'm back in Canada.  I don't want to bother lugging my laptop anywhere.

Despite all my whining when I was in Cambridge, it does feel nice to get back to looking at manuscripts.  I got a neat one yesterday which was filled with works by Lydgate, Chaucer and Hoccleve.  But it was mostly love poetry, rather than Chaucer's big ones.  It was interesting to see him recast in the light of what we think of as the Renaissance poets - the lovelorn sonnet-writers.  That was more of the voice of Chaucer that they managed to pick up.  The book itself was interesting since it had a date of 1650 pencilled in on the front with a note saying, "I bought thys boke and intende to trade ytt for a bettere one."  I think it had a kind of Auchinleck-y production model to it.  It's divided into booklets, which contain different kind of works and are often top-heavy with the big stuff.  Also, there was obviously exemplar problems since some of the works are incomplete and the end has been added in by a later hand.  There's probably something more worth writing about in there, but I now have enough articles on my plate.  Plus a paper to write for October and two language exams to pass.  August is going to be a busy month

You can see that my thoughts are already heading back across the pond.  It won't be long now until I'm back in Canada where the madness will continue.

esterday I ventured out to Aberystwyth with the crew from Duke (minus Matt who had gone back to London).  Despite my misgivings, it ended up being worthwhile but for entirely different reasons than those I had expected.  For one, it was nice to see the pretty bits of Wales.  The countryside is lovely, full of patchwork fields and sheep.  Many sheep.  The Welsh love their sheep.  The city too was grimier than, say, Cambridge, but a far cut above Swansea.  We started off at the National Library where we were going to see the Hengwrt manuscript, the earliest extant Canterbury Tales book which had been copied out by the famed Adam Pinkhurst.  Seeing the manuscript was...nice.  It wasn't electric.  It wasn't incredible.  It was nice.  Part of the problem is that I've now seen tons of manuscripts that I've go to page through, touch, and smell.  Seeing a book turned to a single page behind glass--even one of such fame--was such a removed experience.  For all accounts and purposes, it kills the book because it removes our ability to interact with it.  Nevertheless, I genuflected along with all the other Chaucerians.

Afterwards, we had a seminar where we were introduced to some of the other manuscripts of the library.  These manuscripts were actually passed around, but under the watchful eye of the librarian who made sure we looked but did not touch.  I was entertained, and slightly irritated, by the way that the scholars treated the book--they oohed and aahed over catchwords, and basically poured out any bit of knowledge they had about book production.  These are the people who generally wouldn't turn up to a book history session if it was taught by Pinkhurst himself.  See, there's me being supercilious.  But they were obviously trying so hard to impress each other, that I just shut up and didn't bother joining the conversations.  Even when what they said was blatantly wrong.  When you know what you're dealing with, you don't need to spout.  This was one of the first times I totally felt knowledgeable and in my element. 

We wandered around the city for a little while and went to visit the ruins of the castle.  What I liked here was that there was a playground set up right outside, so the castle had actually been incorporated into something halfway between a park and a kid's area.  There were no ropes, no barred entrances.  The kids ran amok, climbing on the rocks and whatnot, and I found I liked that kind of interaction far better.  I suppose it's like putting the Hengwrt behind glass.  It keeps it safe, but removes it from real life.

On the way back, I had a two hour conversation with a scholar studying the Danish reception of Chaucer.  Who knew the Danes had translated Chaucer?  Not I.  But I had a chance to talk for a while about book history, and, again, I started feeling like I was actually contributing useful ideas.  This continued this morning.  Having checked out of the dorm, I took a taxi to the train station where, lo and behold, there were a good seven Chaucerians standing around.  I actually ignored them for the first fifteen minutes until one young guy mentioned his name was Arthur B---.  Alex had told me to read his dissertation sometime last semester.  I had enjoyed it, but disagreed with parts.  Eventually, I wandered over and said pretty much that.  A minute later, I realized I had come off as a complete jerk.  And not just a jerk, a graduate student jerk.  So I apologized and ended up sitting with him on the train home where we talke amicably about the Auchinleck manuscript and Book 3 for several hours.  I caught him up on some of the ideas thrown around at the conference, and we discussed what I had thought was a bit of a weakness in his argumentation.  In the end, I suggested a possible solution.  He turned out to be a really nice guy.  He reminded me a lot of Powell. 

So let me offer a few thoughts on my visit to Swansea.  I seemed to enjoy an unexpected spike in my sex appeal.  The French and the Brits are resistant---but the Welsh!  They can't resist me.  The first night I went out, I kept having my hand kissed by random people.  I don't know if the name Helen brings out some sort of chivalric recessive gene or what.  This is unusual because Lesley did not get any hand kisses.  Bizarre.  Plus the random potato chip pick up lines. 

In terms of academics, I feel like I was able to put together some more ideas.  The main strands in Chaucer studies seems to be widening the field of multilingualism and recognizing the way that Chaucer - and other English poets - thought of themselves in a "cosmopolitan" environmen.  Londoner had a tendency to be wildly xenophobic at times; at the same time, Chaucer was both a diplomat to France and Italy while engaging in the poetry of other places.  concurrent to the strains of internationalism were strains of regionalism.  How was English actually a series of vernacular languages rather than just one?  I think dialect studies has a lot to offer here.  Particularly, I'm interested in the way that romances may have achieved a kind of linguistic exotic appeal as a result of being translated from different dialects of English.  (The background here is that scribes had various written dialects, since Middle English tended to be written out in something approaching phonetic forms.  When a new scribe got a text in a different dialect, he would copy it out in his own dialect - mostly.  Sometimes bits, like rhymes, would remain in the original dialect.) 

In terms of manuscript studies, there seems to be an increased focus on identifying the major scribes of Middle English works in the fifteenth century.  The fifteenth century is very sexy at the moment.  Pre-Chaucer Middle English is also becoming sexier.  Will R----- and Orietta D- R--- offered similar perspectives on ways to examine manuscript traditions that pre-date Chaucer.  One particular methodological approach is to try to study traditions of multiple manuscripts such as the South English Legendary (a collection of saint's lives that survives in over a hundred manuscripts).  That has received some resistance from those who say that we can learn everything we need to know from a singular manuscript.  However, I think that's just plain stupid. 

I think that as we begin to generate more and more data about the ways that scribes worked through intensive codicological and palaeographical analyses, we always need to be reaching towards the big picture.  What does this tell us about the imaginative possibilities of writing which an author faced?  How does this change the way authors may have thought about books?  What does this tell us about reading communities and writing communities?  I think that the kind of information people like Lynne M----- provide (she identified Adam Pinkhurst) needs to be interpreted to see how it can open up the field of literary analysis.  Cause lets be honest - that's the fun stuff.

So Swansea turned out to be a blast even though the town itself was pretty obnoxious.  It grew on me though.  Any place that celebrates weekends by dressing up to drink is okay by me.  I had more of a chance to experience the local "flavour" than most others at the conference.  Let me give you a quick example of some of the endearing quirks of the Welsh.  The taxi I caught was driven by a former Welsh choir singer who had travelled the world as part of the choir--to Carnegie Hall, the Sidney Opera House, etc.  He had sung as a boy until his voice broke, after which time he had given it up.  One night in the pub, after he had a couple of pints, he had gone to the loo.  Someone in the loo started singing, and he joined in for now particular reason.  Afterwards, the fellow exclaimed, "Good God!  You're a Welsh pavarotti!"  He was offered a place in the choir right away. 

***

As a side note to all of this, I write this entry having been recently locked into the garden outside my window.  I wandered out to try to get better cell phone reception and didn't bring my keys.  All the doors locked behind me.  I banged and shouted for a good twenty minutes, until I managed to catch the eye of someone across the street who fetched the porter to help me.  Oxford is beautiful, but I feel a bit irritated at it.  Specially since I had to go to three colleges before we managed to figure out where I was supposed to be staying.  Curse you and your ancient seat of learning!