distracted

[truepenny]

Yesterday turned out to be about fighting ants instead of albatrice. Not my choice.

I was just settling in to make this post (or rather what would have been yesterday's version of this post) when I realized that those little black moving dots were not evidence that my retinas were detaching, but evidence of tiny black ants crawling across desk and computer.

heres_luck helped me move my desk out of the corner, and I swept and vacuumed and applied caulk to the stretch along the baseboard that looked like the most likely means of ingress.

This is not what debugging is supposed to mean.

Then h.l. helped me put the desk back, and I reconnected the computer to its umpteen gazillion peripherals ... and then there were errands that had to be run (there comes a point where one cannot argue with the need to get one's prescriptions refilled). And by the time I got back, it was late afternoon and I was frazzled.

I did read and incorporate (or assimilate, if you too were sufficiently warped by television in the 90s that the Borg are a default setting in your metaphorical lexicon) one of the journal articles I got at the library on Tuesday, and discovered that in my usual ineffable fashion I had contrived to get the wrong volume of another journal (which means another trip back to the library *grumble*whine*bitch*moan*). So what my to do list now looks like (if you're interested) is


1.) Read & use "Dismembering and Forgetting in Titus Andronicus, Katherine A. Rowe, Shakespeare Quarterly 45: 3 (Fall 1994): 279-303.

2.) Ditto "Greek and Roman in Seneca's Tragedies." R. J. Tarrant, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration, Resistance, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995): 215-30.

3.) Library. Return SQ 45 and HSPh 97 (AP books can only be checked out for a week, so that was going to need to happen anyway). Find and photocopy article from the correct volume of Renaissance & Reformation.

4.) Attack, subdue, and devour great stack of xeroxes.
     a.) Ackerman Alan L., Jr., "Visualizing Hamlet's Ghost: The Spirit of Modern Subjectivity." Theatre Journal 53 (2001): 119-144.
     b.) Hale, John K. "Hamlet and Oedipus: A Protest." Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 2:4 (2002): 108-15.
     c.) Kallendorf, Hilaire. "Intertextual Madness in Hamlet: The Ghost's Fragmented Performativity." Renaissance & Reformation 32:4 (Autumn 1998): 69-87. (Assuming I don't manage to grab the wrong volume twice.)
     d.) Maguire, Laurie. "'Actions that a man might play': Mourning, Memory, Editing." Performance Research 7:1 (2002): 66-76.
     e.) Sanchez, Reuben. "'Thou com'st in such a questionable shape': Interpreting the Textual and Contextual Ghost in Hamlet." Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 18:1-2 (Summer & Winter 1996): 65-84.
     r.) Littlewood, Cedric. "Seneca's Thyestes: The Tragedy with No Women?" Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 38 (1997): 57-86.
     g.) Motto, Anna Lydia, and John R. Clark. "Seneca's Visionary Drama." Listy filologické 120:1-2 (1997): 34-41.

5.) After (4e), a necessary interlude in the reading to thump the Hamlet chapter into shape to give my director. I promised I'd get that to her next week. Gotta love a deadline.

6.) Having finished with the xeroxes, 2 more things to read.
     a.) Coffey, Michael. "Generic Improbability in the High Style: Satirical Themes in Seneca and Lucan." Satura Lanx: Festschrift für Werner A. Krenkel. Ed. Claudia Klodt. Spudasmata 62 (1996): 81-94.
     b.) section on Seneca in Vasily Rudich, Dissidence and Literature under Nero: The price of rhetoricization. London: Routledge, 1997.

7.) By then my director should have given me feedback on the Hamlet chapter, so I'll need to fix the things she says are still broken.

8.) Take a deep breath.

9.) Walk into the machinery of the University. Be bold, be bold, but not too bold. Hope to come out the other side unscathed. And be-doctorated.


ALBATROSS!

Comments

[libskrat]

You know, I was dubious about my husband's dissertation topic being something his committee knows jack and shit about.

I see more wisdom in his decision by the millisecond.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes.

The chapter which has given me the least trouble (although it's the longest) is the chapter on Jacobean revenge tragedy, plays which few people read and even fewer write about. So there wasn't much reading to start with, and my committee didn't know enough about the plays to argue with me. Fantastic.

The Hamlet chapter, on the other hand, has been a nightmare. Except for the part where I actually got to write about Hamlet. That was pretty darn neat.

[larryhammer]

I like "albatrice" as a plural.

---L.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Credit belongs to misia.