Stuck in a Book

I think I may have inadvertently fooled some people into thinking I was finished with the examinations last Friday – afraid that wasn’t quite the case. My crazy set of exams was finished then, but the final final final one was this morning. I have now officially ended my university career, and am all set to enter the world of reality. Wow!

Come on. You could hardly expect me to finish without showing you the Red Carnation in action. Here it is, sitting contentedly on my lapel, all ready to perform its task. I’ve been through the mill a bit, but the bulk of the achievement falls on the shoulders (or floral equivalent) of these carnations.

The exam today was Middle English Commentary – but, as promised, I shan’t bore you with the pages of Middle English text. Suffice it to say, I recognised where both citations came from, in Pearl and Troilus and Criseyde (not to be confused with Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, on which I wrote in my first exam) – this was nothing short of a miracle. And then I was the very first person out of the exam hall – very strange, there were three of us from Magdalen out of the building first, and the assembled crowd of 100+ all burst into cheers as we left. Obviously it was at the finalists in general, but it still felt rather exciting.

One of Oxford’s stranger traditions, and one which dates to quite recent times, I think, is ‘trashing’. When one comes out of exams, one is punished for all the moaning one has committed, generally through the liberal application of glitter/flour etc. My friends decided that buckets of lukewarm tea were appropriate… Oh yes, this blogger is not privileged to know sophisticates such as himself. But luckily it was a beautiful day for sitting on Magdalen’s lawns, and thinking about the nothing I have to do for a long time.

In the spirit of celebration, alongside a lovely letter from Barbara-from-Ludlow, a jumper arrived in the post today, which I ordered quite a while ago. The design is shown to your left… it amused me.

Finally, here are the books I ordered from Hesperus Press – very exciting to receive these in the midst of examinations. You might recall, from my first mention of the publishing house, that they lured me in with mention of the pair I like to call Janey and Ginny. That makes them sound like a pair of schoolchildren, doesn’t it? I speak of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, the two female titans (titanesses?) of literature, so far as Stuck In A Book is concerned. The idea of them as schoolchildren has got me thinking… and sketching… I wonder what they’d be like? Probably not friends – Woolf would be rather the sardonic, cleverly rebellious pupil. Austen much more likely to be teacher’s pet, while affectionately impersonating the teachers behind their backs. Then again, both would have relished the opportunity to go to school, so perhaps they wouldn’t have left the library.

Anyway, where was I? Supposed to be praising Hesperus Press, but got distracted and did some sketching (this was GOING to be a sketch-free blog entry) – but I must tell you which books I bought.

Lesley Castle – Jane Austen
Monday or Tuesday – Virginia Woolf
The Platform of Time – Virginia Woolf

These are in the line of not-so-famous-books by famous authors, which I mentioned before, and are extremely inviting. Lesley Castle is from Austen’s juvenilia, which I have read, but do not own (thanks Our Vicar’s Wife) – the correspondence of Miss Margaret Lesley and Miss Charlotte Lutterell is a wonderful satire of the epistolary novel, and with moments of absurdity allowed only to peep into Austen’s novels. Her early scribblings are characterised by this irrepressible humour, and sense of the absurd, which (in my amateur way) I connect with Voltaire’s Candide. No-one else seems to see the comparison, but it works for me – perhaps all the others have perused Voltaire in the original, whereas I have to settle for my green Penguin translation. Lesley Castle comes with two other of Austen’s early work, and is a must-read for anyone who has got to the end of the six novels, and wishes there were more – though be prepared for, as the Monty Python people might put it, Something Completely Different.

Monday or Tuesday is the only short story collection Woolf printed during her lifetime (she could hardly print anything at any other point, could she?) and contains such gems as ‘The Mark on the Wall’; ‘Kew Gardens’ and ‘An Unwritten Novel’. Great access to Woolf if you’ve not dipped a toe in before, as they exemplify her style in miniature, but also have a peep at ‘A Society’, which demonstrates Woolf’s amusing side – and shows she didn’t take Extreme Feminism as seriously as some might fear, while still presenting valid feminist points. My old copy is a rather tatty Dover edition, and the cover of the Hesperus one is SO beautiful, and they had a discount…

The Platform of Time is a new one for me – reviewed by dovegreyreader on 3rd May 2007. Hesperus printed the review. Not much to add – this is a collection of Woolf’s sketches and memoirs of family members and acquaintances. Most of it available elsewhere, but useful to have it all together, in another rather pretty volume.

Here’s me talking about how attractive all these books are – time I let the covers do the talking. Feast your eyes; give in; open your wallets. MUST talk to Hesperus about my cut…

Oh dear, this is going to be a brief entry – having blitzed a week of exams, my mind seems to have gone for hibernation, and refuses to do much but sleep and… actually, that’s all it’s happy to do at the moment. Just a quick post today, and then more tomorrow – when I will finally tell you what I received from Hesperus. If you look at their latest catalogue, you’ll see that Your’s Truly has been included in the review section, with the post I put up a few days ago. Fame AND glory, I think you’ll agree.

So, I’m sure you’re asking, why the Phantom-of-the-Operaesque pictures for today? Well, to finish the most intense week of my University career, I, like Cinderella, went to a ball. I’m afraid that’s where the comparisons with Cinderella end – one of the endearing things about Oxford is that appearances are deceptive. There we all were in our Black Tie, and among the attractions was… a Bouncy Castle. I kid you not. I haven’t been on one for many years, and I’d forgotten how exhausting the things are. That’s right – I’m too unfit for bouncy castles.

The ball was the annual Leavers’ Ball at my church in Oxford, and a lovely, lovely evening. Photos up of all the leavers, great atmosphere and good, clean fun, as they say. Oh, and in case you haven’t guessed, it was a Venetian Masquerade ball, hence my rather dashing mask, purchased from Ebay. What a wonderful thing the internet is.

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?