I'm still not used to the fact that I live in the desert, in one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world. When I fly in and see the sun beating down on the mountains, the tall saguaros dotting the sparse expanse of desert, I still feel like I'm going on vacation, not coming home. Which isn't a bad feeling to have. Ali said that when she first flew into Tucson, she thought that the cacti landscaping was "so cute," until she drove out past the airport and realized that the same stuff grows wild along the roads. This is big sky country, and tumbleweed does occasionally blow across the road as you drive.
I am home. The night of graduation, I decided to go with Sorina to the airport, catching the bus at 2 a.m. We didn't sleep (this is getting to be a habit with me--I'm just waiting for all the sleep deprivation to kick in), watched a three hour Bollywood film with Reshma and Pat that had us laughing and crying and dancing over the sofas in Lincoln College's rec room. Then with their help, I dragged some extraordinarily heavy suitcases across Oxford to the bus station. (I was going to mail all the books and papers back - The Riverside Chaucer alone probably weighs 10 pounds - but even slow mail would have cost 54 pounds, so that wasn't happening!)
The idea was to drop off Sorina and my luggage, then head into London for the morning, hitting the British Museum again (I can't think of that place without a sigh), then coming back for my afternoon flight. I am rather impulsive. I don't always check out the options thoroughly, so didn't find out that they wouldn't let me check my luggage until 3 hours before the flight, and the storage place would charge me 24 pounds (48 dollars). So I stayed at the airport, took naps on top of my luggage, and looked like the Bride of Frankenstein by the time I climbed on the plane.
Rolled off the plane and school started the next day. I just heard this morning in the staff meeting about the liquid bomb terrorist plot - I missed that one by two whole days. I flew direct to Phoenix. I went straight to the Langs' pool and took a swim. There are worse things than coming home to a pool surrounded by mountains, lying on a raft and staring up into a cloudless sky. Yesterday I got in my car and drove, windows down, across the desert, back to Tucson.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Last Week in Oxworld
This week - my last in Oxford and England - the sun was shining, and while the paper occupied most of my waking (and dreaming) hours, I did manage to explore. There are a few things I never did get around to - piking on the Thames (that's similar to pushing along in a Venetian gondola), wandering through Blenheim palace, where they filmed Branagh's Hamlet, going back to the orgasmic British Museum. But all in all, I covered a lot of territory.
Tuesday I saw The Tempest in Stratford upon Avon, with Patrick Stewart portraying Prospero. It was a ticket I had procured on my own, not with the school, and so I had my first experience in the nose-bleed seats of the RSC Theatre, where I, the poor student, would have sat if I weren't in this masters program. All six of the productions I'd previously attended were tickets bought by the school a year in advance, so we were front and center, able to gauge shoe sizes and the viscosity of actors' spit. The balcony seats were a whole other experience. We were so high that at points the actors, walking forward on the stage, were cut off from vision. Having attended numerous balcony productions in the past, I hate to say, it does make a difference to the theatrical experience if you can only see the tops of performers' heads.
The performance was excellent, though, I could tell. :) The Tempest is set on an island off of Africa, and as such is usually imagined as a warm, even tropical island. This one set it in the Arctic/Antarctic, apparently based loosely on the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica 1914-16 expedition, in which their ship was crushed by pack ice but, despite lack of supplies, all the men survived. So this production had most of the characters bundled up, although, interestingly, only Caliban wore animal skins - and Prospero's magic cloak was made of animal skin. For those not familiar with the play, Caliban (of African origin) is enslaved by the Italian ex-duke and magician Prospero; Caliban is referred to as a deformed monster. But is he deformed, or does he just look different than the Europeans? That depends on the production. You can see the post-colonial issues this would raise.
The last day of class our professor, John Fyler, took the six of us to London to the National Gallery, British Museum, a cheese shop, but most importantly, the British Library, where we drooled over the oldest manuscript of Beowulf (circa 1100 a.d.), the Magna Carta (1215), a 15th century edition of the Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's first folio, and original hand-written manuscripts or scores by Woolfe, Joyce, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Mozart, Handel, et al. English teacher candy.
Every spare moment I worked on the paper...through dinner and breakfast, then with Sorina over my shoulder telling me to hurry up so we could go see Stonehenge. So I reluctantly emailed in an imperfect version that wouldn't get more perfect in the next few hours. We caught the train for Salisbury and a bus from there to Stonehenge.
Ah, Stonehenge.
You drive along the highway, come up over a hill and there it is - directly in line of view, just off the highway. Enormous. The stones are much taller and larger than I'd imagined. They won't let you walk within the stones or touch them anymore. Conflicting reports as to why: tourist destruction, the Druid/new agey congregations who descend on it for summer and winter solistice. It wasn't built by the Druids, who apparently came to England 1,000 years after building began in 3100 B.C. OLD.
Friday evening and Saturday Paul came to visit from Birmingham, and I dragged him all over Oxford, to the top of St. Mary's cathedral, past the ancient Egyptian arefacts at the Ashmolian museum, to the dark oak-paneled walls of the Eagle and Child, where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien met and smoked pipes.
Saturday evening was graduation, and I sang soprano (!) with the madrigals. Sort of glossed over the high F, but otherwise, we sounded fine. It was an easy crowd, most of them just glowing with the knowledge that they'd finally completed a five-year master's program and were going to drink Pimms in the rector's garden (normally off-limits to us plebians). They knew they'd made it when they got to walk on the grass - the green, green grass that the master lawnsman would cut every other morning and lovingly smooth with fertilizer. I put my toe on it, and it was soft and spongy like moss on a faery hill.
Tuesday I saw The Tempest in Stratford upon Avon, with Patrick Stewart portraying Prospero. It was a ticket I had procured on my own, not with the school, and so I had my first experience in the nose-bleed seats of the RSC Theatre, where I, the poor student, would have sat if I weren't in this masters program. All six of the productions I'd previously attended were tickets bought by the school a year in advance, so we were front and center, able to gauge shoe sizes and the viscosity of actors' spit. The balcony seats were a whole other experience. We were so high that at points the actors, walking forward on the stage, were cut off from vision. Having attended numerous balcony productions in the past, I hate to say, it does make a difference to the theatrical experience if you can only see the tops of performers' heads.
The performance was excellent, though, I could tell. :) The Tempest is set on an island off of Africa, and as such is usually imagined as a warm, even tropical island. This one set it in the Arctic/Antarctic, apparently based loosely on the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica 1914-16 expedition, in which their ship was crushed by pack ice but, despite lack of supplies, all the men survived. So this production had most of the characters bundled up, although, interestingly, only Caliban wore animal skins - and Prospero's magic cloak was made of animal skin. For those not familiar with the play, Caliban (of African origin) is enslaved by the Italian ex-duke and magician Prospero; Caliban is referred to as a deformed monster. But is he deformed, or does he just look different than the Europeans? That depends on the production. You can see the post-colonial issues this would raise.
The last day of class our professor, John Fyler, took the six of us to London to the National Gallery, British Museum, a cheese shop, but most importantly, the British Library, where we drooled over the oldest manuscript of Beowulf (circa 1100 a.d.), the Magna Carta (1215), a 15th century edition of the Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's first folio, and original hand-written manuscripts or scores by Woolfe, Joyce, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Mozart, Handel, et al. English teacher candy.
Every spare moment I worked on the paper...through dinner and breakfast, then with Sorina over my shoulder telling me to hurry up so we could go see Stonehenge. So I reluctantly emailed in an imperfect version that wouldn't get more perfect in the next few hours. We caught the train for Salisbury and a bus from there to Stonehenge.
Ah, Stonehenge.
You drive along the highway, come up over a hill and there it is - directly in line of view, just off the highway. Enormous. The stones are much taller and larger than I'd imagined. They won't let you walk within the stones or touch them anymore. Conflicting reports as to why: tourist destruction, the Druid/new agey congregations who descend on it for summer and winter solistice. It wasn't built by the Druids, who apparently came to England 1,000 years after building began in 3100 B.C. OLD.
Friday evening and Saturday Paul came to visit from Birmingham, and I dragged him all over Oxford, to the top of St. Mary's cathedral, past the ancient Egyptian arefacts at the Ashmolian museum, to the dark oak-paneled walls of the Eagle and Child, where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien met and smoked pipes.
Saturday evening was graduation, and I sang soprano (!) with the madrigals. Sort of glossed over the high F, but otherwise, we sounded fine. It was an easy crowd, most of them just glowing with the knowledge that they'd finally completed a five-year master's program and were going to drink Pimms in the rector's garden (normally off-limits to us plebians). They knew they'd made it when they got to walk on the grass - the green, green grass that the master lawnsman would cut every other morning and lovingly smooth with fertilizer. I put my toe on it, and it was soft and spongy like moss on a faery hill.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Still Writing
It occurs to me that part of the problem with writing papers is that coming up with a thesis is still mysterious.
It's true that you can train your mind to look for certain patterns, ask certain questions and think more critically about genre, style, narrative chocies, etc. There are key themes that occur throughout literature (and life): public versus private modes of behavior, the search for and construction of identity, individual vs. society, questions about the function of text, and of interpretation and misreading. But when it comes down to it, what makes a great thesis is the mind making a connection when you're staring out into space. Magnitudes of brilliance aside, it's really not all that different from the scene in A Beautiful Mind when John Nash sees patterns in the people around him in a bar. You've been poring over the material and made lots of lists--every time the word "chaunged," "exchaunge," or transfigure comes up in a book, for example--but nothing makes sense until the brain goes 'Aha!'
Of course, sometimes it never does. Then you write a paper that is mostly trite and boring, hoping that your painstaking research and your brain-bashing come across anyway.
Try explaining this way of coming up with theses to a high school student.
I don't. I demystify as much as possible with all the above tricks about themes and patterns and word usage. But I understand why so many of my students struggle writing papers or coming up with theses (although it is so incredibly easy to come up with ideas for them...easy to do for others...). I think (don't tell them!) that I'm going to go a tad easier on the grading this coming year. I was a hard ass last year, and they came to respect me for it, but...when I think of some of the work my students have done this last year, I remember my own (much less accomplished) writing at the same time in high school, and am so proud of them.
Now back to my own paper. Here is the introduction, first paragraph, and conclusion, for those of you willing to struggle through the Middle English quotes.
* * *
It's true that you can train your mind to look for certain patterns, ask certain questions and think more critically about genre, style, narrative chocies, etc. There are key themes that occur throughout literature (and life): public versus private modes of behavior, the search for and construction of identity, individual vs. society, questions about the function of text, and of interpretation and misreading. But when it comes down to it, what makes a great thesis is the mind making a connection when you're staring out into space. Magnitudes of brilliance aside, it's really not all that different from the scene in A Beautiful Mind when John Nash sees patterns in the people around him in a bar. You've been poring over the material and made lots of lists--every time the word "chaunged," "exchaunge," or transfigure comes up in a book, for example--but nothing makes sense until the brain goes 'Aha!'
Of course, sometimes it never does. Then you write a paper that is mostly trite and boring, hoping that your painstaking research and your brain-bashing come across anyway.
Try explaining this way of coming up with theses to a high school student.
I don't. I demystify as much as possible with all the above tricks about themes and patterns and word usage. But I understand why so many of my students struggle writing papers or coming up with theses (although it is so incredibly easy to come up with ideas for them...easy to do for others...). I think (don't tell them!) that I'm going to go a tad easier on the grading this coming year. I was a hard ass last year, and they came to respect me for it, but...when I think of some of the work my students have done this last year, I remember my own (much less accomplished) writing at the same time in high school, and am so proud of them.
Now back to my own paper. Here is the introduction, first paragraph, and conclusion, for those of you willing to struggle through the Middle English quotes.
* * *
‘The yerde is bet that bowen wole and wynde’:
(The stick is best that will bow and wind...rather than the one that breaks)
Worldly Mutability and Spiritual Constancy in Troilus and Criseyde
The end of Troilus and Criseyde seems to advise young lovers to reject the mutable world for immutable heaven:
And of youre herte up casteth the visage
To thilke God that after his ymage
Yow made, and thynketh al nys but a faire
This world that passeth soon as floures faire. (v.1838-41)
Yet this is less of a rejection than an acknowledgment that the world is lesser than heaven, transient but at times beautiful as “flowers fair.” All things in the created universe are subject to time and thus to change; empires fall and are built again. Troilus and Criseyde, in its celebration of romantic love and its depiction of love’s tragedy, recognizes that change is often part of a greater cycle of creation and destruction. Only God and, through him, heaven are constant. But while constancy of faith in God is the spiritual ideal, fixity of purpose, when affected by the mutable circumstances of the temporal world, can become entrapment, leading to stagnation or death. Within the confines of a poem, fixity of language shuts down meaning, and stories can become repetitive, flat, and eventually obsolete. Chaucer’s poem demonstrates the necessity of flexibility in a world in which external forces can overturn man’s attempts at immutability and immortality.
The most physical representation of entrapment comes in the form of characters from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Procne, Philomela, Niobe and Myrrha all enter Troilus and Criseyde as part of the natural world, the animals, plants or objects they have been metamorphosed into. Identifying these non-human objects by the women’s names provides a strong sense that the women themselves are still trapped within the forms, still reliving their respective tragedies:
The swalowe Proigne, with a sorrowful lay,
Whan morwen com, gan make hire waymentynge
Whi she forshapen was; and evere lay
Pandare abedde, half in a slomberynge,
Til she so neigh hym made hire cherterynge
How Tereus gan forth hire suster take. (ii.64-69)
Procne (“Proigne”), as a swallow, can fly but cannot escape her tragedy, of which she has become a perpetual reminder. The nightingale recalls Philomela, the victim of rape; sweating marble recalls the unceasing sorrow of Niobe; and the myrrh tree’s oils recall the tears of Myrrha. Ironically, the transformations have caused these women to become fixed symbols, often for the tragedies they hoped to escape. So too will Criseyde’s name become a symbol for falseness in love, and the real motives of the person Criseyde will cease to exist.
The paradox of mutability is inherently due to perspective. This includes not just that what one person views as fortune another views as misfortune—as when the narrator refers to Troilus’ first sorrow (falling in love) as “Blissed” (i.308)—but the concept that humans’ limited perspective might not see that the mutability is part of the natural scheme of things. “[When] Chaucer’s characters, including ‘Boece,’ the type of the prisoner of Fortune, complain of nature or the stars or Fortune as the determinant of their plight, they are wrong, and simply do not have a large enough vision to get at the real causes. … [T]he failure to perceive causes beyond the natural scheme and Fortune is that ignorance of providence which is pagan and can be damning” (Barney 448). Seen from a distance—of emotion on Pandarus’ part, of time on the author’s and reader’s, and of spiritual ascendance on Troilus’—mutability itself is part of a cycle that is fixed, like fortune’s wheel. What Troilus and later both lovers view as disaster is perhaps winter in the cycle of their lives, and necessary for spring to come again.
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