This has been an odd sort of holiday so far. I've done more schoolwork than I did beforehand. Hm. I have about twelve pages before I'm finished with my Literary Theory readings for the whole of the semester. That's not counting things I may need to (re-)read for the essay I need to do. I've read the first chapter of Eliade's Myth & Reality, and re-read the first chapter of H. Frankfort's The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, this being the essay that was incredibly misinterpreted by acquaintances last year, because few people bother to think of myths in the appropriate manner anymore. I'm also going over the second portion of Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If you, fond reader, haven't sussed it by now, I'm doing an essay on myth-criticism. I may skim the Northrop Frye essay in our textbook, but that won't be a big deal.
I've spent most of today and yesterday working on my term paper for medieval literature, which is on Beowulf. And when I say "work on," much of that actually means "painstakingly translated Old English passages," as my professor wants us to work with the original language. Of course, I'd meant to go back (when I had more free time) and do just that anyway, but I accelerated that plan just a bit. I'm less than a page from the minimum, but I'm not worrying about that anymore - in fact, I'm beginning to worry about exceeding the maximum.
My computer's also reaching epic levels of slowness one might expect to find in the better class of laissez-faire sloth. I've no idea why. I should be procuring a new computer soon, though, which will be quite nice. We'll see how that goes. I'm sure getting data from this computer to the new one will be tedious and annoying.
I'm also reading Lynn Truss's second comic novel, Tennyson's Gift. It's a fictional story about real people - specifically, Alfred, lord Tennyson, Julia Cameron, and the Reverend Dodgson; that is, Lewis Carroll. They (apparently) all knew one another, and really, it just seems to function on its own. Carroll asks little girls if he can pin up their skirts for them after composing poetry for them on the beach; Tennyson doesn't wash very often and worries about his sons' madness (they don't have any); and Cameron takes photos of people in odd costumes and names the shots after events in Tennyson's poetry.
I still have to write a faux conference proposal concerning my Beowulf paper, for 833. Hm. I suppose I have to find a call for submissions, first.
posted by Greg at 2:13 AM
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