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truepennyI'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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
