This is the essay I was docked five marks on, because it was submitted nine minutes late. Ah well. The mark was 68, a high merit, so it's now 63, still in the same range. (Three grades - pass, merit, distinction.)
I thought you guys might enjoy reading it. A big shout-out to beer_good_foamy, who allowed me to cite a piece of his.
ETA: I can at least embed the YouTube video I talked about in the essay.
I submitted two essays at the end of April; we are told to expect a three-week wait for the results in the case of shorter essays, four for the 'full-length', 4,000-word pieces.
In fact more than one critic stated that the play was not as bad as the reviews suggested - it was much, much worse. A friend of mine saw it, and that was his view too!
[The comments of the marker- yes, it is very vain of me to post these, hence the spoiler cut.] Unlike the production it reviews, this essay succeeds in being both serious and entertaining in the way it intends. Despite taking on a broader spectrum of evidence than the question suggests, it addresses the set question reasonably well. Despite some tendency towards high journalism in tone, it builds its own intellectual energy as an assured, stylish, and worthwhile essay in its own right, and it deals effectively with the potential and the limits of evidence.
The question you raise as to what is perceived as stilted and old-fashioned in speech and in theatrical style is both fascinating and, as you partly note, tricky to interpret.
As always, the journalist has put a slant on it all. The only person there with a blue rinse is in her 20s. Actually, it's blue, pink and lilac. This pensioner is actually a student, for all my white hair - and the age range of the student body is something the reporter totally missed. I find it weird that they felt the need to give the ages of all the staff mentioned, and there's a slightly patronising "Isn't this quaint?" tone in places. Still, it does give quite a decent feel of the place and the picture of the lecture (Ewan being really quite hard work on Hegel and Shakespeare) has a good range of people I know and like in it. The front row are mainly the staff - Martin Wiggins who is the epitome of the crazy professor is the white-haired guy at the front by the aisle. You can spot me two rows behind him, and I'm relieved that I manage to look reasonable alert and mildly intelligent. Three of the men in that front row are world experts in their own subjects.
Over the last few days I have received marks and feedback for the essays I submitted back in January. All were either high Merit (68) or Distinction. (72) That's OK, though obviously I'd have liked an extra couple of marks. I am still struggling with the very short word-count the Shakespeare Institute requires. I'm sharing the 2,000 word essay for the core course Shakespeare and Theatre.
So now I feel I can risk posting it here. It's quite short and deals with the forests and woods in As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Don't feel obliged to read it.
The weekend was amazing but tiring, and the last two days have been fairly full too.
[Cut for talk of archives and libraries and museums oh my!] Yesterday was a touch challenging as I had to meet the bus in Stratford by 9.30 and, after the traffic problems on Saturday I felt I should leave really early. Thus it was a smooth journey of under 20 minutes and I was there over half an hour before I needed to be.
The bus journey into Brum was dull, even if we did pass Cadbury World and Edgbaston Cricket ground. Once arrived (and that is a huge campus) we went straight to the Special Collections unit, which is separate from the library. Not exactly surprisingly its official name is the Cadbury Research Library - the family were and still are noted local philanthropists. We had to lock away all our bags, which is why I have no photos of my own.
Inside we entered a small seminar room with tables on which were big cushions, not for napping students but to support the spines of old books. You can see it in the video the University made about it:
We were greeted by Martin Killeen, who is in charge of the rare books collection. He had a book trolley full of stuff to show us - and by show, I mean put on the tables, allow us to handle and pass around and get hyper-excited about. There was an incunabulum (pre-1500 printed book, he explained kindly) of a book of hours which had been hand-painted and gilded over five hundred years ago. Still so, so beautiful. There were books we had been referred to over the weekend - the fabulous anatomical drawings of Vesalius, for example, in a first edition.
They had a few pages from the First Folio - they won't have their complete edition until next week. We were allowed to handle it - the text of A Winter's Tale - and find the stage direction Exit, pursued by a bear. We were in heaven.
Although it's officially called a library, the centre also houses a substantial archive and conservation lab, and we were shown that too - they are putting together an exhibition about Noel Coward, as they hold his archive. We saw them washing documents, cleaning them, mending them - all fascinating.
There was a tour of the main library as well, which was OK - they are in the process of preparing for the move to a new building next year, so things were a little chaotic, but we had a very lively and likeable tour guide.
This morning we went to the Shakespeare Centre, which is part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and another institution which is part library, part museum, part archive. We get to be members there, so we can use all their research collections. They have DVDs of every production at Stratford since the early 80s, and some earlier (including the Peter Brook Midsummer Night's Dream I saw when I was 14!). They laid out some of their treasures for us to look at - so picspam ahoy!
That's the outside.
They had all the Stage Manager's reports from a Romeo and Juliet I took a school party to see in 1986, including a reference to the fact that "Mr Bean refused to wear his microphone as he thought the audience could see it." This amused some of my fellow-students, thinking of Rowan Atkinson, until I pointed out the photo of a very young Sean Bean in his first role at Stratford. (Yes, he was Romeo, so he died in that show too.)
As we were leaving there was a line of little girls from a school in Leamington waiting to go in. They cater to the very young too.
I am so very lucky to have this chance to study the greatest writer ever in his own home town. And the Institute's own library (a mere 60,000 volumes directly relevant to Shakespeare) is not to be sneezed at either.
I have barely had time to look at LJ, let alone post, this last week. In the last fortnight both girls have visited and Shopping has occurred, I've had major dental work (prep for three crowns, five and a half hours in the chair. Arjun likes to be thorough.) and started my course at the Shakespeare Institute.
Thus I have also read three plays, (watched films of two of them) a long poem and several academic articles. I have also attended a 'welcome' tea-party, a formal induction, a meeting to sort out presentations for the term (I have to do two, on Venus and Adonis/Rape of Lucrece and on Hamlet. In only fifteen minutes each.), seen Henry V live at the RSC, been to a lecture on Hamlet attended by Stanley Wells and Clive Swift (Hyacynth Bucket's husband, inter alia), participated in a playreading of The Duchess of Malfi and attended fifteen hours of lectures and seminars since Friday evening. It's wonderful, but it's pretty full-on.
Next week is a little lighter, with only a trip to Birmingham University library tomorrow, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust on Tuesday (they hold the entire RSC archive!) and a lecture and playreading on Thursday. After that it should settle down, though I do have five plays to re-read by the 13th of the month. Just as well I enjoy reading Shakespeare.
In the interim, a post by tx_cronopio and an afternoon session on Shakespeare's language made me think about dialect words and local language. So, because I can, here's a quick poll on words which I grew up knowing.
On the whole I think I know who is a Brit and who isn't - the results will definitely show that, I think.
Off to bed. I have to be in Stratford by nine fifteen tomorrow. So far this week I've twice been seriously delayed by accidents on my route, and this drive will be during the rush hour. I'm hoping two out of seven isn't a typical proportion.
Or Nerd. I don't care which you call me. I have received my schedules for the modules I am doing in the Autumn Term. The Institute seems to prefer to cram a module into a number of whole days rather than a regular two-hour seminar slot. This will lead to much intensive (and, I rather expect, exhilarating) work. Beneath the cut I am posting the schedules themselves. As Miss Jean Brodie said, "To those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like." This is very much the sort of thing I like.
I don't want to bore people with Shakespeare stuff. I'll always put it under a cut, but should I make a special filter? Here's a chance to make a poll, because we all love Teh Ticky.
Poll #2020828Gill and her interminable Shakespeare geekery
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All. Participants: 43
Should Gill make a special filter for these posts?
The marks and feedback for the Thackeray essay arrived today. 67, which is a good Merit, but lower than the other essays except for the catastrophic theory essay. The fact that the tutor of the course was second marker for this probably didn't help, but the feedback pointed out genuine issues and I'm not going all sour grapes. Really.
So, that's the MA finished. A comfortable average in the high 60s, so they would have to be spectacularly mean not to award me the degree; I'll hear officially in about a month and graduation, if I go, is in January, the week after F's wedding.
The bad news is that apparently there's a rule that says you can't do the same qualification twice, so it looks as if I won't be doing any studying this year apart from signing up for Italian again. This saddens me. I may try applying for an MFA for next year, but I have to come up with a project for that. Possibly finishing my YA novel.
In other news, Dave is now painting the downstairs loo and the fitter has finished most of the tiling in the bathroom, which is looking good. He should be finished in a couple of days, he says - there will be photos. It's so wonderfully not-green, so I love it already.
Feeling very flat this evening, as if I've failed, which I know is very silly and I'll get over it. I feel, once again, second-rate. Better than third-rate or fourth-rate, but still. It's my default brood and I need to snap out of it. I have (pending) an MA from a prestigious university. Durham still means a lot more, though. I think I need to write fic to pull my head out of the mess.
I haven't posted for a while, for which I apologise. I've been a swot, basically - yesterday was the deadline for my penultimate essay for the MA course.
In other news I spent a fair amount of time helping out my not-son-in-law's sister with an AS retake in English last week, which involved re-reading Frankenstein, and a load of Yeats. She seemed to find me useful, but it took a little time. My form of displacement activity, I suppose.
Last night my brother rang me - my mother is back in hospital again. She will be 89 in August, and has all sorts of bodily ills, though her mind is still all there. We'll be going up to Bodelwyddan Hospital to see her at the weekend.
Next week Dave and I are due to go to France next week on our annual holiday. We'll be driving down to the little town of Uzés in the Gard département (as in "Pont du Gard") for two weeks. There may well be picspam.
February is a short month, so there is objective support for my feeling that this has come around again astonishingly quickly. Nothing at all to do with my getting old. Nope.
Normal morning routine; husband brought me coffee just before he left for work and I read some academic stuff on my Nexus as well as my usual web haunts until the end of Women's Hour, mainly because I'm enjoying the serial of Shirley, and if I have to get reading done, why get up when bed is warm and I don't have to put the heating on if I'm there? (Yes, I'm a slob, my ancient student habits have returned.)
And it's here again. The speed at which the months pass alarms me.
Wednesdays are generally busy uni days for me this term. I woke late(ish), showered, dressed and spent a couple of hours going over the material for the seminar - "Victorian Materialities" is the class I'm doing for credit this term, so I like to check I've done all the reading.
One of the great things about being in an academic context without the need to focus on grades or building up a portfolio that will enhance a career is that I can attend all sorts of "extras" - like the Charlemagne Day last week in London but also various events at Warwick. This week there were two.
On Monday there was a fascinating discussion on imagination and creativity, "Is Imagination More Important Than Knowledge?", which was filmed, so I may even turn up somewhere on the university website. It was an exploration about what "creativity" actually means across different disciplines, the extent to which the concept has been co-opted into managementspeak, and the way in which it often in practice means "new and original but not too new or alarming, thank you." "Creativity" so often implies a "product", which all too easily becomes a commodity and part of the cash nexus. "Imagination", OTOH, seems to have overtones of freedom, a lack of constraint. And is something considered suspect by people in positions of authority.
It was fascinating and fun, and fuelled by cakes and coffee, and even after we were interrupted by a fire alarm (my third this term, grr) we went back inside to talk more. There were people from English and writing, Maths, Law, Business, Physics, Classics and Chemistry, undergrads, postgrads and staff. For almost the first time I felt the description of the university as an "academic community" wasn't just hype.
Then on Wednesday I had my scheduled session on Victorian fiction - this week on The Moonstone, a huge, blockbuster novel, arguably the first crime/detective novel but full of unsettling overtones of race, class and imperialism. Very enjoyable, however.
After a quick pause for coffee I then went to a lecture by a retired academic, Catherine Alexander, on Shakespeare and War: Aspects of Co-option - about ways in which politicians and writers have attempted to adopt Shakespeare as a member of their own team in political or military terms. The Germans, for example, claimed he was one of the great foundations of their literature, along with Goethe and Schiller, and sneered at the British who, in early 1914, had only just set up their own Shakespeare Association, while Germany's was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary! April 1914 was, of course, the 350th anniversary of the Bard's birth. By the tercentenary of his death, two years later, Europe had other concerns - but his "patriotic" speeches were much to the fore in considering this precious stone, set in a silver sea. She was fascinating on the topic of the use of Henry V in wartime, the careful editing of Olivier's film to remove anti-French scenes, and Michael Bogdanov's use of the same play in the 80s to take a stand against the Falklands War. Not to mention more recent uses of the plays to cast a light of wars of our own century - Othello particularly comes to mind there.
As this was Official English Department, the snacks were even posher afterwards - there is a definite hierarchy of food associated with guest lectures - and there were cream puffs and scones with clotted cream. And an opportunity to chat at length to the speaker and a lovely undergraduate. And "we band of buggered" may just have slipped into the conversation!
I did feel a little sad, though, that none of the university's own experts on the Early Modern period were there. "Community" has different meanings in different places, it seems.
Off to bed, now. Tomorrow I have to do a presentation on The Tempest and Montaigne. It's all go.
I've been auditing a fabulous course this term, called "Seven Basic Plots", but only incidentally using Christopher Booker's book of that name. It's run by Ian Sansom, who is a lovely bloke, full of energy and enthusiasm. I've had to read a book each week (we started with Madame Bovary FFS) and also write a short story in the vicinity of a thousand words or so.
It's just possible that I may have "cleansed" a couple of earlier fics and submitted them earlier in the term, but I have also done some new work for the course. The feedback has been encouraging. In a couple of cases BtVS fans may recognise an inspiration. Here's one. Very much G-rated. Cecily:
I am genuinely finding a great deal of joy in my studies right now. On Wednesday I was with the seven-year-olds again. It was dry and occasionally sunny, so we took them on an "expedition" around the school grounds - or, rather, out of the Stinky Swamp, through the Wondrous Wood (where we fought off werewolves and hid from an Evil Bagpipe Monster who was actually leading a "wedding procession" of the entire infant school in their bestest outfits.) Then we crossed the Pebbly Path, beat off trolls at the Bridge, then trudged across the desert 9rescuing me from a cave that looked suspiciously like a football net en route), along the rugged path and up the volcano, from which they described to me all the things they could see. This included a lair of giant scorpions, so we had to find sticks/wands that turned into swords so we could destroy the scorpions (pause to explain to Ella what one of those is) and then a heroic charge back to the safety of the Great Hall. At which point my team of intrepid writers settled down to spend over half an hour writing about the adventure, even Isaac, who is very reluctant to use a pencil at all (he's bright, has lots of ideas, and I wonder if he may turn out to be dyslexic.) They all wrote a fair bit, and Daniel covered two sides, which he was immensely proud of. I was proud of them all. And knackered.
Then back to the uni campus for a meeting to finish checking the hard-copy proofs of our Anthology. (Yes, I'm going to be published. Or, at least, two chapters are. The rest is not actually written as such yet, though I have Plans.)
On Thursday two YA authors who had been at Warwick came to talk to Writing students (because the Writing MA people are pitying about the English MA and the English MA staff are snooty about the Writing course. We students just love the opportunity to do some courses from each.)
I've been a bit sparse on LJ of late, so it follows that when I do actually have things to write about I can only post by crossposting from DW. Karma or something?
Officially there are no seminars/lectures/tutorials for MA students in the summer term. In practice I find that, as long as I don't mind being the only person not in possession of or working towards a PhD, there are lots of guest speakers, reading groups and seminars I can find to assuage my compulsive communicator leanings. There was a very interesting session last week about interdisciplinary gender studies, with a genuine range of disciplines, although a lot of time was spent debating inter/trans/cross and various other prefixly forms of disciplinarity, and the way it fits into the neoconservative/neoliberal project. (Are they the same? Am I the Good Slayer now?)
Yesterday I spent the morning playing with seven-year-olds, on the WWPS programme - a bunch of "tall writers" go into a primary school to work with children jaded by "literacy", to try to get them excited about writing. It is certainly needed - in the first session they were really concerned about the need to use compound sentences and put in lots of commas. :-( Yesterday my partner and I had them lying on big sheets of paper, drawing outlines of each other (no, we weren't setting up a murder investigation) and then considering the outside and the inside of a personality - Stanislavskian building a character, but more fun. And a boy who told us he hates literacy wouldn't stop writing to come to join the group by the end of the session - a result, I think.
It is so depressing seeing conscientious, committed, intelligent, experienced primary teachers having to follow official guidelines and drain the life out of creative writing when the children are seven. And it's so clear that they have no idea how sentence structures might work to improve their own writing - just parrot the terminology. That's all Mr Gove wants. Grrr.
Then back to campus - I'm providing an unofficial taxi service for some of the students who are campus-bound - and into the library for a couple of hours. It's almost worth what I'm paying to do the course just to have access to a decent academic library, with real books I can actually take out. I'm struggling to imagine Palace Green Library, the Durham main library of my era, with a coffee shop and panini available for study. But then, we 'ad it tough. Uphill, barefoot in the snow, both ways...
Then a postgrad reading group on Victorian material culture which was enormous fun. Properly interdisciplinary, it was hosted by Art History but had historians, lit and languages people as well. We discussed some amusing readings - a Victorian book advising people to collect rare books as a good financial investment, so very solemn it was hilarious; an article which could have been in Hello with very few changes, describing the tasteful home of a family of artists; an oleaginous description of a visit to her august Majesty's home at Osborne; some selections from Henry James. Lots of really interesting discussion of taste as a marker of class and education, attitudes to "new money", art as part of the financial nexus. I'm not even "doing" anything Victorian this year, but I was able to sustain my part in discussion if only because of decades of teaching novels at A Level. I was even able to point them to Gradgrind's rant on interior décor in Hard Times and show them a house referenced in one of the readings, which even the art historians hadn't heard of.
Today I had an enjoyable planning session with my partner, Robyn - we are going to take our "team" on an adventure next week - then to Bicester to visit oxfordia, her mother, who is staying there this week, and the divine Miss G. It was lovely to chat in my somewhat rusty French and be plied with coffee and a small girl.
Now I have few excuses for procrastination. I have two thousand words of "reflection" to add to my creative writing submission, due Monday. I have had many months to do this. I will just check FB and then get to work. Though it's after midnight, so perhaps I should just get a night's sleep and be fresh in the morning....
I finished the essay yesterday and submitted it online, then handed in a hard copy this morning. One does wonder why it couldn't be marked online too, but never mind. The important thing is that I can put Virginia Woolf back in her box and nail it down. OTOH, I'm planning to read more of Winifred Holtby some time.
Many thanks to my flisters who offered me support, suggestions and links - some of them were really useful and made it into the final essay. 6,514 words out of a maximum of 6,600. Oh yes.
Now back to our scheduled service. In this case it means reading two plays by Edward Bond and one by Harold Pinter for this time tomorrow. One of the Bond plays was last produced in London in Hammersmith, directed by someone I taught back in the 80s. Funny how these things work.
I am deep in The Essay currently, and working on a section about literary references. One I'm finding interesting is the heroine meeting the hero when he is on a horse - astride the mighty stallion, pulsing with power etcetc. Both Woolf and Holtby use it in the books I'm working on (Orlando and South Riding) but in interestingly different ways.
Can anyone think of any other examples, before 1928? I know about Jane Eyre, and there's another good one in Sense and Sensibility, but I'd like a few others if possible, especially in popular literature.
I might promise to be your slave forever if you can find me other examples, but I'd probably be lying. I'm off to look at TV Tropes, so if I'm not back soon, send a search-party....
I feel sorry for the tutor faced with marking umpteen six/eight thousand-word essays in ten days time. I feel sorrier for myself, however, for having to write it.
It's for the dreaded "Feminist Literary Theory course. Nuff sed. I'm looking at Virginia Woolf and Winifred Holtby in terms of their relationship with the past, and specifically the literary past.
Thankfully the book the university library had only one copy of, Holtby's Women and a Changing Civilisation arrived (via Amazon) from the US fifteen days earlier than it had been promised. I have thoroughly enjoyed it - balanced, rational, well-researched. It's a feminist polemic, like A Room of One's Own, but much less precious than Dear Virginia.
Holtby refers to "the population problem" and also to Marie Stopes, with approval. Does that mean she had eugenicist leanings? I do hope not. She is so much more interested in a woman's right to work on equal terms and for equal pay than in the provision of a room and a comfortable income to the talented few.
I am also expected to look at Orlando in connection with South Riding, which is interesting mainly because they have so little in common as novels. It's interesting that Woolf was writing A Room of One's Own more or less at exactly the same time as Orlando - she seems to consider novels as the greatest form of modern literature while writing an anti-novel.
I'm wittering. I may also be either absent or spamming over the next few days - be warned. My brane hurtz already.
We had a longish seminar last week on how to write the critical/reflective essay which is required to go with the creative piece submitted for assessment. I found it interesting and helpful, and am putting my notes here in slightly more coherent form for ease of access - don't feel obliged to read them.
In which I ramble about life, the universe, the Buffyverse, the world of my work and studies, my family, my friends and my sometimes overheated imagination...
beer_good_foamy, who allowed me to cite a piece of his.
Clicky to embiggen.
blah
All in the past
