All

Hurray! Rather a lengthy week has now come to an end – it’s been pretty exhausting, and the final hurdle isn’t, erm, hurdled over yet – but it’s also been nice to share the experience with you all here. This will my last report, since my final exam (next Wednesday) is a commentary paper, and, love you though I do, I’m not going to type out a page of Middle English text for your delectation.

The title to today’s entry is my favourite quotation from Thomas Duffett’s 1675 The Mock Tempest or The Enchanted Castle – a parody of Dryden and Davenant’s 1667 The Tempest or The Enchanted Island, in turn an adaptation of Billybob’s The Tempest. Can you work out which line it satirises? I’ll give you a moment.

Any guesses? ‘Thy Daddies Dead! Thy Daddies Dead!’ is Duffett’s reworking of ‘Full fathom five thy father lies’. Which is why I had so much fun doing the Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare essay – well, an essay I had to squeeze into the first of the following:

‘The Great Man’ (satirical name for Robert Walpole). Discuss how any writer or writers in the period represent greatness

‘Haywood’s importance as a writer is contingent on the theme that informs virtually all of her novels: the power of women’s desires’. Discuss in relation to Haywood and/or any other female writer of the period.
-I wrote about Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood, and how desire (esp. women’s desire) is used to present comic situations in the former, but more didactically in the latter

‘Our minds our perpetually wrought on by the temperament of our Bodies: which makes me suspect, they are nearer alli’d, than either our Philsophers or School-Divines will allow them to be.’ (Dryden). Examine the relationship between mind and body in any writer or writers of the period.
-Well, I wanted to write on Katherine Philips and coterie writing, so I used this question a little dubiously. She was published by some scoundrel or other, and reacted indignantly against this – I argued her response was due to the correlation between mind and body possible in a coterie, but impossible in publication. A bit hurried, but by this point I was so excited to be leaving the exam hall that I didn’t much care!

Don’t worry, only two left after today!

Today’s paper went much better than yesterday’s, I thought. You could say this was the wider spread of my prepared approaches; perhaps the generous nature of the exam paper. I like to think it was due to a little event that happened yesterday, as I was strolling around Oxford with my friend Mel. I was outside the Radcliffe Camera (a circular library thing, see Google-generated images here – very beautiful place to work) when a hoard of schoolchildren stopped me. They had a camera and a checksheet. Wherefore, pondered I. Turns out they had to take photographs of many different things throughout Oxford, on a sort of treasure hunt, and I fulfilled (pay attention here) ‘Take a photo of the cleverest person you see’. Me! Gosh. Now, I like to think this is due to an aura of knowledge and wisdom, rather than the fact that I was wearing glasses and tweed. But who’s to say. Was incredibly amusing – especially since I was holding a loaf of bread, and a carnation recently purchased from the florist. I love Oxford.

Anyway, this spurred me on to answer the following questions on the Renaissance period:

‘In a rising, mercantile, politically conscious, comparatively affluent society, there was a need for new visions of the good life, new paradises, new golden worlds, even new hells.’ Discuss some of the ways in which any one or more writers or playwrights of the period satisfied some of these expectations.
-I wrote on Utopias, and women in utopias, and woman as utopias. Enjoyed this one.

‘One of the distinctive features of Petrarchan poetry is it encouragement to readers to decode it in a variety of ways – as erotic self-evaluation, philosophical meditation, or moral debate’. (Gary Waller). Discuss, with reference to at least two writers of the period.
-Oo-er. Ignored the erotic bits, and wrote on Petrarchanism (and ambivalence to Petrarch) in the sonnet sequences of Spenser and Sidney. Love how I can do this without having read a word of Petrarch!

Do you agree that a good deal of Donne’s writing is self-advertisement?
-Wrote on Donne’s opinion of secular poetry, as these opinions appear in his sermons, and how it changed in relation to the site of preaching.

Back to normal book talk soon, promise! At least you have one of the finest literary products the twentieth-century saw, to illustrate this entry.

Having been delighted about the prospect of a Jane Austen centred exam today, you can imagine how aghast I was when said best-novelist-of-the-period-if-not-ever was not named in any of the questions. Tut tut. Anyway, I got her in there somewhere.

Oh, and I have a new carnation now. Lovely it is, too.

Questions for today (1740-1832)

Discuss any one of the following in literature of the period: art criticism; Unitarianism; ballads; parody; Irishness; the cult of the picturesque; forgery; travel; hallucinations
-Thought I’d include this motley crew in its entirety, as the utterly arbitrary nature of the rag bag amuses me. I went for travel, as I wanted to write on the links between travel and the Romantic Imagination, esp. Keats. Another one not given his own question, for the first time in many years.

‘My sister, my sweet sister…’ (Byron, ‘Epistle to Augusta’). Examine the treatment of sibling relationships in the work of any writer or writers of the period
-I wanted to write on Austen and letters, but nowhere to stick that. A while ago I did an essay on heroes as fraternal, in Austen, so that went in… and I used letters as the boundary between fraternal and lover, as they were only socially permissible betwee siblings, and the engaged. Definitely a “Hmm” question.

‘You say that I want somebody to elucidate my ideas, but you ought to know that what is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care’ (Blake)
-the first 8 questions are to ‘provide the theme of essays on any authors or works of the period, not necessarily those from which the quotation is drawn’. So I wrote on social and linguistic placement in Sheridan and Goldsmith.

Half-way now, folks.

An update, you ask? Well, I live to serve.

Today was Middle English, which was the subject of one of my first blog entries. As you might recall, I am not overly enamoured by the topic – but with a great deal of revision, I felt quite prepared for it. And I think it went quite well – questions below, as before, though I’m afraid Dell Laptops don’t run to have a ‘thorn’ key. I’ve used a capital P instead, in the title to today’s blog, and, for the fortunate uninitiated, read it as ‘th’. Make sense now? Thought not.

Before I gallop on with the questions, thought I’d give you a Carnation Update, since I know that’s where all your attention is really directed. Well, I was putting my jacket back on, at the end of the exam, and discovered I had a stalk pinned to my lapel. (As Our Vicar’s Wife said over the ‘phone, just be thankful it wasn’t a heron. Ho-ho.) The head of the carnation was lying on the floor – a bit like the beheading of the Green Knight, if you will. Sad.

Ok, stop begging me – the questions are here. Do feel free to send essays to me… I somehow feel you won’t.

-Is the romance better at articulating social anxieties than it is at imagining solutions for them?
Yes, say I. I talked about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the competing moral codes of shame/honour and guilt/innocence.

-‘[T]he pleasures of fiction exceed the disciplinary control over its meaning, carving out spaces of resistance to the trascendent values of Christian morality’ (R. James Goldstein). Discuss in relation to fables AND/OR any other writing in this period.
I went for the ‘any other writing’ option, and wrote on Gower’s Confessio Amantis.

-What resources does the dream vision offer to any writer or writers from this period?
How irritatingly vague. I wrote on Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess and Parliament of Fowls. As did, I imagine, most of those in the exam hall. I threw in a bit of Lydgate for variation. Lucky examiner.

Tomorrow… 1740-1832. Or, as I like to call it, opportunity to legitimately write about Jane Austen.

Thanks for all your kind wishes! Day 1, and Shakespeare (or Billybob as he is affectionately known among certain English students at Magdalen) is dispensed with. Think it went quite well – I shall include the questions I addressed further down the page, should you be interested.

Firstly, though, let’s have a look at another little tradition Oxford has for exam time. (And, by the by, I forgot about wearing the suit jacket in my sketch yesterday… luckily I remember for Real Life). It’s those carnations, that’s the tradition – and one of the ones I like best in Oxford. They even have their own website, though quite why people would mail-order them when they’re abundantly available in the local florists, I’m not sure.

This part of the exam uniform is not compulsory (something non-compulsory in Oxford? Heavens) but is done by almost every student. Not sure when it originated, but the idea comes from having a white carnation in your red ink pot throughout the exam time. But we don’t have ink pots, and so we fake the gradual increase in ‘redness’ which would be occasioned by this scenario – so, pinned to our lapels, we have a white carnation for the first exam; red for the final one; pink for everything in between. It’s also traditional to have them bought for you by someone else – my friend Phoebe picked up these beauties for me. So – white carnation down, pink one tomorrow morning. Only pricked myself once this morning with the pin, but have yet to sleep for a hundred years.

So, onto Billybob. Turn your eyes away now, if the thought of exams is too much. ABC writes that her daughter came out of her SATS exam thinking Hamlet ‘awesome’ (presumably the play rather than the person, who is rather an idiot) and quite rightly points out that this is The Point, rather than getting certificates. One of my proudest moments was getting a Mathematician to enjoy Coriolanus. We were in the Philippines (on a month with some churches, doing slum work etc.) and had a fair few spare hours, so I persuaded two of our group to join me on a read-out-loud of Coriolanus, each taking eight or nine roles. Worked quite well, with only a few occasions on which we had conversations with ourselves… great fun, I recommend it.

Anyway, Corry didn’t come up today, for me at least. Here are the questions I did, and the vague outline of the essays I attempted.

Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words!
My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point
Than can my ears that tragic history (III Henry VI)
Consider the competing effectiveness of narrative and staged action in one or more plays
– This was great, as I wanted to write on reported scenes in The Winter’s Tale, and other Late Romances

I was adored once too (Twelfth Night)
Write about self-knowledge in the works of Shakespeare
– I wrote about Cressida vs. Desdemona, and how the former’s realisation of previous textual voices (Homer, Chaucer, Dekker…) and depth of self-investigation was what prevented Troilus and Cressida from being unproblematically tragic, like Othello.

… in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Discuss the role of errors in Shakespeare
– This essay was easily my worst, as kinda ran out of time. Wrote on twins in Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, and the distinction between visual and linguistic identity, and the importance of perception (and errors thereby). Hmm.

You’ll notice that Stuck In A Book (aka me) is dressed a little differently today. Indeed, he is in full academic regalia. Tomorrow my Finals begin, and will continue until the 23rd May, so I wanted to warn my regular readers – entries will be a little sporadic. In fact, if the perculiarities of the Oxford English Language and Literature Examinations hold little interest for you, it would be better to avoid this page for a week or so. Don’t worry, I shan’t mind.

And now let’s play a little game, with the sketch. Can you spot the mistake? Other than that I appear to have become left-handed (oops). Or that there are only two pieces of paper. Or various inaccuracies of perspective. Or… Ok, the ‘mistake’ I’m talking about is the mortar board (or ‘cap’ if you’re feeling in the mood for a bit of vernacular) – in Oxford, it is STRICTLY PROHIBITED to wear these items before graduation. Indeed, there is a fine of £35 to be paid, if a student is seen committing such a heinous offence. But here’s the catch – we HAVE to have them in the exam hall – indeed, we are not permitted entry unless we clutch it in our nervous little hands. I daresay it would be an enormous distraction, should I glance up from my papers and notice the lack of a mortar board around me, so it all makes sense.

And the gown. Yes, not a Scholar’s gown, I’m afraid (I didn’t get a distinction in first year… if only I hadn’t referred to Kristeva as a man) but those funny dangly bits are indeed there. Various rumours exist as to their original purpose – my favourite is that they are to hold shillings, for busking students. Seems unlikely, as they couldn’t possibly perform that task. The dangly bits, not the students – I’m sure the students could busk.

Anyway, enough about the uniform (which, to disobey that injunction immediately, we voted last year to keep). I’ll give a quick mention of the exams I have, and when I have them, so that you can have a vague idea of what it is an English student does – and return for those days you find particularly interesting.

Monday – Shakespeare
Tuesday – Middle English
Wednesday – 1740-1832 (which we call ‘Romantic’, but shouldn’t)
Thursday – 1509-1642 (Renaissance)
Friday – 1642-1740 (Restoration)

the following Wednesday – Middle English commentary

And that’s your lot. They’ve sneakily turned Middle English into two papers, so that the optional thesis I did last September can’t eradicate both of them. I.e. my final grade will be influenced by Middle English, whether I like it or not…

So, yes, I shall keep posting – but I’m afraid it’ll only be updates on the topics I wrote about, and so forth. Luckily that’s still quite bookish.

Aunt’s Aren’t Gentlemen is one of my favourite PG Wodehouse titles. I haven’t actually read the book, you understand, but the title sums up pretty much everything I enjoy about Wodehouse.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about today. Do you ever come across a book, through perfectly sensible literary paths, which makes you sit back and think “how on Earth did this become a part of my collection?” The connections which led to purchase are wholly admirable, but… Well, if you have to murmur the title to anyone sotto voce, then that’s a sure sign. If there’s a ready-made reason for buying on the tip of your tongue – “Oh, it seems strange, but I bought it because…” – then perhaps you’re in the same boat as me. How did I ever buy Cordial Relations: The Maiden Aunt in Fact & Fiction?

I’ve been reading the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Katharine Moore, on and off, for a few weeks – the latter kept mentioning the writing process, and consequent publication, of her book Cordial Relations (while making very clear that the title was Heinemann’s idea, not her own). Eventually I capitulated.

The letters are very interesting (have I mentioned them before?) Moore wrote to Grenfell after hearing her criticise a poem on the radio, leaping to the poem’s defence. A few tentative missives back and forth, and then the two became correspondents up until Grenfell’s death – though never met. Quite like blogging/internet friendships, really. But some amusingly odd letters – Moore often saw Grenfell on stage or in concert, and would write of it afterwards. How strange to see your correspondent on stage; stranger to think your correspondent could be somewhere in an anonymous audience. A fascinating scenario. Would I know if I walked past other bloggers on the street?

Anyway, I then discovered that Katharine Moore also wrote, and was rather intrigued by this volume. Seemed quite an arbitrary categorisation, but also quite an interesting one. Have a brief think – who do you reckon will get in? Of which maiden aunts can you think? Only had a quick flick through so far, but can tell you that the book includes sections on Jane Austen, Caroline Fox, Emily Eden, Dorothy Wordsworth (hmm, not very maiden, surely), Louisa M. Alcott, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau; Aunts to the Brontes (where is that pesky accent?), Gibbon, Lamb and Emerson; fictional Aunts in Ivy Compton-Burnett, Saki, Dickens, and, indeed, Wodehouse. What a wonderful selection of people! And a fascinating schema under which to approach them. I look forward to perusing…

And now I can proudly boast the title of this book. Maybe. Any other strange titles you feel the need to defend?

Sometimes it isn’t what you know, but whom you know… (I always get paranoid about who(m) on here… hope that’s right. Apologies if not). And today I want to point the finger at dovegreyreader, who so callously included me in the little list of links at the side of her blog. Callous, I say.

Well, of course I am joking, and am grateful for a longstanding e-friend to point others in my direction. But did she realise that her fame has spread to the independent publishers of the world? And they’ve realised something: these bloggers visit dovegreyreader for a reason – they probably quite like a nice book or two. Or three. Or eight hundred. Probably not adverse to hearing about them… wouldn’t mind a quick email… and catalogue…

And this is how I was the recipient of a very nice email from Ellie, of Hesperus Press.I feel I should make that more clear. Hesperus Press. There we go, that should get your attention. Ellie suggested that I might be interested in a catalogue – well, by now my head was dizzy with the fame of having my blog recognised by an Official Body. I practised my signature a few times on some napkins (definitely the one with the bows looping round the S – though a speedier moniker would have to be developed for occasions when the crowds reached triple figures) and sent an enthused reply. A quick check of their website, you see, showed me that they had books by Virginia Woolf AND Jane Austen. If you’re still wondering why I was excited, then we need to have a chat.
Can I quote my friend Ellie for a moment? “We specialise in revitalising and reprinting neglected classics, and in translating into English major or meritorious works that have somehow evaded translation.” All very admirable. I am especially taken by the reprints of not-so-famous works by famous authors – for the collectors out there, here are the works that Penguin haven’t published in a pocket edition. Alongside Austen and Woolf, authors include Alcott, Bronte (give or take an accent I can’t find), Collins, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Fitzgerald, Gaskell, Hardy, Lawrence, Mansfield, Melville, Pope, Shaw, Shelley (M & P), Thackeray, Tolstoy, Twain, Wharton and Wilde. And those are just the authors in whom I’m especially interested. (Pretty certain that ‘whom’ was warranted).

Ok, the authors are great. But let’s get judging books by covers – Hesperus’ are stunning. Not really obvious from the picture, but do check out the website. Howsabout another link? Here we go. They’ve gone for that close-up-detail thing that works so well, and looks so impressive. Let’s face it; I want them all. And when do you not need these books? That’s a much better way of phrasing it… And they’re an independent publishers, as I said, which always make me feel like I’m Saving The World in general, and Baby Seals in particular.

So my first order has gone in. Update when the books arrive…

I’m not working on commission. Yet…

Oh dear, I think it may have just swung past Thursday and into Friday. But I shan’t let that deter me from my post. Via Danielle, I think, I came across a great little website called ‘Booking Through Thursday’. The premise is: we bloggers get a bit of a day off from thinking. Instead of pondering the bookish direction any particular post will take, the good people of BTT have done the thinking for us. I answer the question, and await others to do the same in the comments – everyone’s happy. I’ve only just noticed the website, but it’s been going on steadily for quite a while, and provides diverse and intriguing approaches to bookishness. And hopefully I’ll be able to tack on an apposite sketch.

This week: where DON’T you read? (the previous week was ‘do you R.I.P.? i.e. read in public – and obviously everyone did!)

So… where don’t I read. Well, there certainly aren’t any places I’d be too ashamed to read – but there are some places it’s not practical to whip out a novel. Church, say, or a tutorial. Have done it in lectures before now, when they got too tedious. Not at a birthday party, though might at a regular dinner party; not during Neighbours… And not at the dentist. You?