The Week I Conquered My Fear of Special Collections

Hello again, devoted followers. It's time for another foray into my oh-so exciting life in Oxford. It's week 5 here which basically means it's go time in terms of coursework. Next week our classes end and our essay titles are due, after which we can't talk to our professors about our papers anymore, so everything has to be ready to roll for the next three-ish weeks. Accordingly, the last week for me has been full of research, presentations, and paper topics. Let me walk you though it.

So not only were topics and titles for the B-essay due to our professors last Friday, but I also had to give a presentation on Tuesday about my topic. Unfortunately, at the time of my writing last week, I still had no topic to speak of. Needless to say, I spent Thursday and Friday in a mad hunt for a research project/prestation to give.

Radcliffe Science Library - the SRR is in the basement :(

Thus it was that on Thursday, unable to avoid it any longer, I finally worked up the courage to go down to the Special Collections Reading Room and order up a manuscript. Some of you might remember hearing about the Special Collections in this post when I had my introductory tour in Michaelmas term - yeah, and I haven't been back since, because it was way too terrifying. The Special Collections works on a different system than the rest of the Bodleian Library because it deals with manuscripts. First of all, none of the catalogues are digitized, so if you want to find something you have to physically go look through these big volumes called the Summary Catalogue to find your manuscript. Then to order up your MS you have to physically fill out a slip of paper and hand it to the librarians, at which time they will put in the request and you have to wait a few hours or overnight for it to be brought up. Basically it's a difficult system to navigate. Then once you get your MS it is even more scary because you're handling pieces of writing that are literally hundreds of years old. On the other hand, oddly enough, you can order up early printed books from the 16th century through SOLO (our online catalogue) just like you would a book printed yesterday; the only difference is that you can only order it to special reading rooms like the SCRR.

MS Rawl. poet. 120

Anyway. Early on Thursday I was reading an article about the attribution of Francis Beaumont's poem Salmacis and Hermaphroditus that referred to a MS copy of the poem in the Bodleian, and decided I had no excuse not to call it up and look at it myself. Newly inspired, I marched down to the Radcliffe Science Library (where the SCRR is right now thanks to renovations) and threw myself upon the mercy of the librarians there. With their help, I managed to find the MS I was looking for - MS Rawl poet 120, if you were wondering - and ordered it up for the next day.

Thus, I spent most of my Friday in the SCRR looking at a 17th century MS copy of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in addition to a printed copy of the poem from 1640 and a related book, The Metamorphosis of Tabacco, printed in 1602. The MS was really cool to look at, but unfortunately did not inspire a paper topic. The Metamorphosis of Tabacco, on the other hand, did, which was great, since Friday was the day I needed to declare my paper topic. I spent the rest of the weekend working on the presentation I had to give on Tuesday on my newfound topic, and even got to take some pictures of the books I was working with:

Title of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus  in MS Rawl. poet. 120

Title page of The Metamorphosis of Tabacco.

I won't go into too much detail about my topic/presentation since I'm pretty sure none of my readers care that much about the finer points of early modern literary scholarship, but here's a basic overview of the stuff I'm working on: Salmacis and Hermaphroditus and The Metamorphosis of Tabacco are both Ovidian narrative poems published anonymously in 1602. Since then, scholarship has attributed the poems to Francis and John Beaumont, respectively, using various verbal echoes, MS attributions, and external evidence based on the dedicatory and commendatory poems in both editions. My plan is to examine the problems of attribution involved with these two poems, and perhaps try to establish a coterie or network of poets to which the Beaumonts belonged using the clues in the frontmatter of the books. Neat, right?

Actually this was really a week full of paper topics, since earlier today I met with my professor and settled on a topic for my C-essay. That one is going to be on characterization and persona in Drayton's Idea's Mirror, which I talked about last week. I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about this topic since it means I might finally get to do some close-reading, which I happen to be bomb at. Oxford tends to lean generally toward more historicist scholarship, a perspective that I've been trying to get the hang of for the last term and a half, but I think in this essay I can play to my American-trained strengths a little more.

The best part of picking this topic today though, actually, was that it required me to go fetch a book that I will be basing my argument on. It so happened that the EFL's copy was checked out and the only library that had the book was the Taylorian, which I'd never been to before. Imagine my surprise when I walked in and discovered that this library is gorgeous:

Don't worry, I found this picture online. Taking pictures in the library is not allowed!

Right? I can't believe I'd never been there before. This may be my new study space, although it's a little ways to walk from my place.

So that was basically the last week for me. Sorry this post was academia-heavy, but basically the only thing I've been doing for fun is rewatching Code Geass with Meagan while we take breaks from studying. I know, the exciting life of a grad student. Until next week then; I'll try to spice things up a little next time!

KQ

My week can always use more Lelouch.