Balrog of Hardcore Geekery, waiting on the bridge

[truepenny]

I'm about to start talking about my dissertation. Fly, you fools!

This is kind of a State of the Dissertation Address, which I'm posting here not because I expect anyone to be fascinated, but because if I stick it in a public forum, I may actually be goaded into working on the gorram thing. Must. Finish. Fucking. Dissertation.

(Just realized that parsing "Fucking" as a verb in that phrase results in an extremely disturbing but not entirely inappropriate image. Probably the rest of y'all should stick to parsing it as an adjective.)

So this is what I've got. (If you're reading this--well, you're clearly crazed, but you'll probably want to know that my dissertation is on ghosts in early modern English revenge tragedy. E.g., Hamlet's father.)

1. An introduction on the verge of developing clinical Multiple Personality Disorder. Also, only limited and tangential relevance to actual chapters. (Note to self: in future, write introduction last.)

2. A short but bearable chapter on pamphlets about hauntings (1642-1683). Written last, but clearly belongs first.

3. A chapter--even reasonably complete with secondary sources and shit--on the Roman tragedist Seneca and his influence on early modern playwrights.

4. 2/3 of what used to be a chapter on Elizabethan revenge tragedy, but is now merely a discussion of The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd) and Richard III. (The other 1/3 got the hell out of the relationship and is developing beautiful autonomy and self-love on a beach in Bermuda--see #5 below.) The wreckage needs to be reconstructed as the chapter on Eliz. rev.trag. it originally was, which means it needs a third play, and really, Truepenny, there are people out there besides Shakespeare, ya know. So, another non-Shakespearean revenge tragedy from the 1590s. I'll have to go troll my notes. Bleah.

5. A chapter on Titus Andronicus and why Lavinia is a ghost even though she doesn't die until the very end. Partially equipped with secondary sources.

6. The Obligatory Hamlet Chapter.

7. 10 pages on Jacobean revenge tragedy: The Atheist's Tragedy, The Changeling, and The Revenger's Tragedy (by Tourneur, Middleton and Rowley, and, well, either Middleton or Tourneur, respectively). This needs to be its own chapter. I know that. I need to quit being a lazy slattern, bite the bullet, and reread the plays, so I can find something to say about them. It's really not that hard.

(Or I suppose I could combine #4 & #7 and just have a chapter on revenge tragedy from Elizabeth to Charles. Still need to find another Eliz. play, tho'. But that idea might help. Ponder.)

8. A promise, made in a moment of rash optimism, that the conclusion would talk about 20th c. horror and why it's the rightful heir to the genre. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, why do I say these things?

Mostly, though, what needs to happen is the secondary sources, which I haven't been dealing with all this time because I knew if I tried to force myself to do all the secondary reading before I wrote anything, the writing part was never going to happen. I hate secondary reading. I'm an English major because I'm in love with good writing (also why I'm, hey, a Shakespeare-geek), and the sad, sorry truth of the matter is that most academics have a prose style that blows dead bears. Oh, I am so not kidding about this, it's not even funny. Secondary reading is boring and unrewarding, and let's face it: it's a hoop. It's another fucking hoop that you have to jump through to win approval, pats on the head, and a piece of paper, which to me has lost most of its practical meaning because I've discovered that I'd rather be dipped in honey and staked out over an ant's nest than teach. (One surefire way to tell me and heres_luck apart. *g*) Once I've got the PhD, I'll be able to call myself Dr. Truepenny instead of Ms. Truepenny. Yee-fucking-haw.

I'm an approval-seeking over-achiever. It's who I am. HL has pointed out to me that I don't have to do this. I can abandon the Marie Celeste right here and go join #5 on that beach in Bermuda. But no matter how much I bitch, I honestly want to finish this. I want my meaningless piece of paper. I just don't want to do the gorram work.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

1. When Rysmiel informed the bank that hereafter the correct form of address was Dr. Rysmiel, they increased the limit on the credit card by a thousand pounds. (There is no pound key on this keyboard. I don't believe it.)

2. Dan Simmons The Hollow Man?

3. Being "Dr" would give you an extra 5 points on your application, should you ever wish to emigrate to Canada.

4. Can you quote the bit in Tam Lin? (Unfortunately, TL can only be the heir of this stuff if everyone in it died in the end. Hmm. Have you read Garner's Red Shift?)

5. Being "Dr" makes you gender-neutral.

6. Was it you who told me that Hamlet's father's ghost exactly balanced Catholic and Protestant views of ghosts? Can you do anything with that and revenge in the different traditions? There's Banquo's ghost as well. And Helen of Troy's in Faustus, though I do see that's not the same.

7. Think how lovely it will feel when you've finished it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

7. Think how lovely it will feel when you've finished it.

Oh, I am, I am.

I probably was the person babbling about Hamlet's father and Catholicism vs. Protestantism. It's gotten to be one of my set pieces (as in, I sort of wake up halfway through and think, Oh, here I am on this hobby horse again), both because I think it's fascinating and because so many people don't know it. And it makes Hamlet, as a play, so much more comprehensible. And because I can talk about Hamlet for hours and hours and not get tired of it. The Hamlet chapter and the Titus Andronicus chapter were the most fun to write, and partial though I am to Titus, I can admit it isn't one of Shakespeare's best plays.

Do you mean the bit in Tam Lin with The Revenger's Tragedy? That actually causes me problems when I read TL because I don't agree with Pamela's interpretation of the play and thus tend to get jolted out of the story by the lit. scholar part of my brain waking up and yelling. Mind you, I think what she does with TRT is bloody brilliant, but I always feel like the play itself is getting short-changed a little. Of course, I also love TRT with a morbid and demented passion, so I'm more than a little biased.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I meant. I was thinking about ghosts and plays and the ghost in TL picking up books.

I don't know TRT at all, I wish someone would put it on because otherwise I'll just have to give in and read it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I've never seen TRT performed, although one of my friends once performed in it. And I don't think there's a video out, although there is one, bizarrely, of The Changeling with, even more bizarrely, Bob Hoskins as De Flores. I have heard, sadly, that is isn't very good. But TRT really is insanely weird and morbid; I just don't think it's misogynistic so much as it's misanthropic. Any play where you end up unable to tell the difference between the heroes and the villains is not a play with a particularly optimistic view of human nature.