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. 

London and the ESTC

As I promised, this week I will write about Oxford again instead of French novels. Well, sort of, since I also went to London this weekend. Anyway, let's just get to it.

Sweet ruff, Drayton.

So I spent the rest of last week reading stuff, like I mostly do. This week in my C-Course we were reading Drayton and Herrick, which are not my favorite sonnet sequences, but I guess they're kind of interesting because of their flaws. Drayton's Idea's Mirror is pretty uninspired...lots of the sonnets are pretty much a ripoff of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, except not as good. Actually the most interesting thing about Idea's Mirror is Drayton's persistence with it - basically when it came out in 1594 no one really liked it; the whole concept of it, which is writing Petrarchan-style love sonnets to "idea" as a personified entity, is perversely abstract. This, however, did not stop him from revising and reprinting the sonnets like four more times in different volumes of his other poetry. Perseverance is apparently the key to sonnet sequences. 

Too many poems, Herrick.

Herrick is a different story; after I finished reading the sonnets in his Hesperides (1648) and skimming through the rest of the 300 pages of short poems in that work I felt like I was losing my mind. His poems range from 2 lines to 100, and the collection has really no discernible ordering principles - it skips from topic to topic without any real cohesion or narrative thread. Most of the poems are written alternately to real noble personages and fictional imaginary mistresses with various colorful names; some of them are to himself, others to his book, others to readers, some about nothing. This one was one of my favorites:

Not every day fit for Verse. 

'Tis not ev'ry day that I
Fitted am to prophesy:
No, but when the spirit fills
The fantastic pannicles,
Full of fire, then I write
As the Godhead doth indite.
Thus enraged, my lines are hurl'd,
Like the Sibyl's, through the world:
Look how next the holy fire
Either slakes, or doth retire;
So the fancy cools:--till when
That brave spirit comes again. 

First of all: "not every day fit for verse"? Then DON'T FRICKIN WRITE. Jesus. Hesperides has 1,400 poems in it. Maybe you should take a break once in a while, Herrick. Secondly: full of yourself much? "'Tis not ev'ry day that I / Fitted an to prophesie" - uh-huh, sure. "Prophesying" is what you're doing, 'cause your poems are just that amazing. What an egotistical twat.

Someday I will have time to read this.

Man, that felt good. So moving on, as I said, I spent Saturday in London. What was I doing in London, you ask? Well the answer is being a BIG GEEK with the Anime Soc. Unfortunately Meagan couldn't make it because she was visiting family in East Sussex, so it was just me and the (other) otaku. We left early in the morning and took the bus and then the tube to right by the British Museum, where there's this cute litte comic store that I never knew existed, even though I've been to the BM like 8 times and stayed around that area for two week in 2008 - yeah, who knew? They actually had a crap manga selection but I had to try really hard to keep myself from buying The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, which I've been meaning to read since I got on my Neil Gaiman streak like 6 months ago. I've got it on my iPad but it's so nice to physically have the book. But then I have to fly home with it and attempt to make the weight limit. Sigh. 

Can't wait for the new season!

Anyway, we had lunch and moved on to Forbidden Planet, this rad store sort of by Covent Garden that, again, I never knew existed even though I've probably walked by it a bunch before. They're self-described as a "Cult Entertainment Megastore," or as I like to think of it, Geek Heaven. They had seriously everything geek: Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars, comics, collectibles, anime, manga, DVDs, books, etc, etc. I got a little 11th Doctor's sonic screwdriver since I obviously couldn't resist, and a copy of Newtype (the Japanese version) that came with sweet Star Driver pullouts since I obviously couldn't resist. Oh yeah, and I cried because they had a bunch super awesome, super cheap DVDs that I couldn't buy because of stupid region locking. Media distributors, why do you make it hard for me to give you my money? 

The last place we went was TokyoToys, which is around Leicester Square and was kind of a bust. They had collectibles and character goods but the selection was tragically limited and hardly any of it was actually imported. Mostly it just made me want to go back to Ikebukuro....boohoo. 

One of the cooler things I did in London was walk through Chinatown - since it was just Chinese New Year everything was festive...they even had a dragon dance going on down the main street. I also successfully dragged all the people I was with into a Chinese bakery so I could buy dan ta, my favorite chinese treat that you obviously can't get anywhere in Oxford. It's like a little egg custard tart that's incredibly delicious. I really ought to learn to make them myself actually; maybe it'll be my next culinary adventure! 

So that was pretty much the excitement of the weekend, and since yesterday I've been mostly just working on my new research project for my B-Course, which has so far involved spending hours on EEBO (Early English Books Online) and the ESTC (English Short Title Catalogue) searching for names of printers of various narrative poems printed in the 1590s, which is a lot more troublesome than it might sound, actually. The problem is that on some title pages the printer will spell his name Richard Jones, on others R Jhones, or R. I., or Richard Iones, and the ESTC doesn't search for variations, so you have to do a bunch of searches spelling it as many ways as you can think of to get a comprehensive list, which looks something like this: 

Yesterday I was pretty excited because I thought I was on a new track with this project, but after spending all that time on the ESTC today with little to show for it I'm feeling kind of discouraged about it all. There are definitely some interesting relationships between the printers in this period, but I'm not sure if there's anything there to write about really. Hmph. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the Bod and rifle through some more catalogues to see if I can't kick up anything interesting on this topic. I'm supposed to email my professors with a tentative topic/title by Friday, and give a presentation on this next Tuesday,  so hopefully I will have something a little more concrete to go on by the end of the week at least. 

Well it's getting late here so I better wrap up this post. Next week might be kind of hectic since it's getting into the second half of the term and things are getting intense. Don't worry, though, devoted subscribers, I will still make some time for the ol' blog. 

TTFN,

KQ

Let your galaxy shine!

P.S. In my post last week I referred to GONZO as a studio that was dead and gone, which I thought they were since they went bankrupt like 2 years ago and pretty much disappeared. Well apparently the universe was determined to prove me wrong, because not three days after I wrote that they apparently rose from the dead and announced that they're working on a second season of Last Exile. Go figure.

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

This week was rather uneventful aside from coursework and reading again, so I thought I'd do something a little different. Over the weekend I finally finished Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo and am prepared to avow that it is absolutely the best adaptation of Dumas's novel I have come across. So instead of talking about me reading in the library this week (yawn) let's talk about The Count of Monte Cristo, shall we?

This edition has pretty good notes, if you care.

Believe it or not, I happen to have a dark and emotional history with this novel: in fifth grade my slightly eccentric teacher, apparently overexcited to be teaching a child as bookwormish as I, made the assuredly well-intentioned but shockingly misguided decision to suggest this novel to my ten-year-old self for a book report project. Obviously it was an impossible task; the novel, even in the abridged version that she gave me, still comes in at 400 pages (the unabridged page count is something more akin to 1,300), which is a little much for a ten year old's two-week-long book project. As you would expect, the complicated themes and involved plot went way over my fifth grade pigtails. The only thing that stuck with me, for some reason, was the name "Mercédès" and an impression that the novel was damp and dark, garnered, apparently, from the portion of the story where Edmond is imprisoned in the Château d'If. Scarred by this frustrating experience, I went through life without picking this hated book up again--that is, until last summer.


I really read The Count of Monte Cristo (in unabridged form) for the first time last August, mostly because Drew had the book lying around and was bugging me to read it. This time, probably on account of the fact that I actually understood what I was reading, I fell instantly in love. Despite the outrageous length of the book--such wonderful prolixity, I am certain, can only be found in novels born into the nineteenth century--I was left wanting more.

 Crap.

Naturally I turned to the the 2002 movie adaptation starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pierce, since I had heard from some people (you know who you are) that it was a fantastic film. Well. Let's just say that, upon viewing, I found myself in humble disagreement with that assessment. Actually, I thought it was frakking horrible. 


The intricate plot was parred down to its simplest elements; the characters whittled away at until they were merely bombastic caricatures. Edmond did not become the Count of Monte Cristo, he just put on some fancy clothes--there was no sense of transformation, no evidence of the unwavering conviction that drives the Count throughout the latter portion of the novel. The Parisian younger generation, with the exception of Albert, had also been completely cut out of the script in the interest of streamlining the plot. And poor Albert, who happens to be one of my favorite characters in the novel, was reduced rather inelegantly to a plot device, the screenwriters cheerfully rearranging his parentage to achieve a tidy happy ending to their film. No, this adaptation was certainly not for me. 

But this is where Gankutsuou comes in. A 24 episode show made between in 2004 by the sorely-missed animation studio GONZO, this is, as I said, the best adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo I have ever seen, and a work of art in its own right. Able to spread the story over twenty-four 22 minute episodes, the show is allowed, unlike the movie, to take its time with the characters and plot, leading to a rich, complex story that captures much of the spirit of Dumas's work without slavishly binding itself to every detail of the original, creating something that is much like The Count of Monte Cristo, but also contains enough fresh material and original twists to make watching it an adventure even to those familiar with the novel.


Gankutsuou takes a scifi twist on The Count of Monte Cristo, transplanting the story from 19th century France to a futuristic setting where the ships travel through space rather than the ocean and the exotic Monte Cristo, about whom there is something literally alien (let's just leave it at that--no spoilers), comes from "Eastern Space" to a futuristic Paris where Danglars trades stocks through an AI broker and Beauchamp takes photos for his newspaper on a digital camera. Yet the setting, while intriguing, is still hardly the most interesting thing this adaption has to offer.

See the textures? The whole show's like that.

Certainly the first thing one notices upon viewing Gankutsuou is the unusual visual style. The animation makes use of intricate patterns and textures layered into digital animation, rendering even simple character designs unexpectedly elaborate and calling attention in unexpected ways to the movement of the figures on screen. And while this technique tends to give the animation a flat, two-dimensional quality, it is contrasted visually with liberal use of CGI for backgrounds and vehicles, adding to the futuristic, almost surreal setting of the narrative. Although I'm usually not a big fan of CG 3D-ing up my traditional animation, in this instance it really works, and the contrast between the flat textures and the CGI elements complements the setting that meshes futuristic science fiction elements with features of 19th century Paris. It's something that one really needs to see in action to fully appreciate, but suffice it to say that the art in this series is like nothing you've ever seen before.

Now for the story: let me begin by introducing you to our young protagonist. No, not Edmond Dantès--that's Albert de Morcerf there on the left. Gankutsuou is told from the perspective not of Edmond Dantès/Count of Monte Cristo but instead from that of the child of Mercédès (Edmond's fiancee) and Fernand (the man who stole her from Edmond). This change in perspective is, I think, the real genius of this adaptation.


Albert occupies an extremely interesting position in the novel, because he is simultaneously the child of the woman Edmond loved and the man that he hates, rendering Monte Cristo necessarily ambivalent towards him (an ambivalence which comes to a head in the duel between the two in Ch. 90 of the novel). Meanwhile, Albert himself has complex feelings towards the Count, seeing him first as a close friend, almost a father figure, and later as a bitter enemy. The switch in protagonists allows Gankutsuou to make these tensions and ambivalent feelings the focus of the narrative, and in doing so, Albert emerges as a foil to Monte Cristo, an echo of the young and naive Edmond that we catch only glimpses of in this adaptation, soon to be betrayed by the Count just as Edmond was betrayed by Albert's own father.

The extended saga of Edmond Dantès's life, while lovely in a long, expansive novel that can afford to take its time with its narrative, is the death of film adaptions. Instead of wrangling with the lengthy exposition and multiple time-skips, Gankutsuou drops its viewer directly into the Parisian milieu--in medias res, as it were--and into the shoes of Albert, voiced by the wonderful and talented Fukuyama Jun (who at least two of my readers also know as the CV of Lelouch Lamperouge). The Count, voiced by the deliciously sinister Nakata Jouji, becomes a looming, mysterious figure; the viewer is swept up in the cares and concerns of the younger generation as their familiar lives are dismantled by a ghost from their parents' past. 

As I said, this is a fabulous adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo; however, don't expect it to be faithful to the novel in every point. While starting out incredibly close to Dumas's novel, Gankutsuou does go on to depart from the source material significantly later on in the show. I feel like I shouldn't spoil it in case this post actually inspires any Count of Monte Cristo enthusiasts to go watch it, but let's just say that episode 18 ("The Duel") left me crying like a little girl because I did not expect it to end the way it did. The resolution of the show is also quite different from the book, and while I'm still not sure how I feel about the way it ended, I still immensely enjoyed watching Gankutsuou's take on Dumas's enduring tale. 


I could probably go on a while longer comparing the novel to the show, but not without the risk of severe spoilers and boring you all to death. In fact, if you're still reading at this point, I commend your perseverance. I'd better take my leave here, since I've already spent far too long on this post when I should probably be reading about books as gifts in the seventeenth century England, not opining on Japanese television adaptations of French novels. Anyway, I hope I inspired some of you pick up The Count of Monte Cristo or rent Gankutsuou from Netflix (NB: for the love of all that is holy, please don't watch it dubbed); next week I promise I'll talk about Oxford again, so stay tuned!


Au revoir,
KQ

Second Week and Sonnets

Hello again, faithful readers. It is second week for me here in the land of crumpets, and I've already turned in a paper and given a presentation...we waste no time here at Oxford.

19thc. etching of the Lower Camera, where I spent my week.

So I spent most of the rest of last week rather uneventfully in the library reading up for the paper I had due on Monday in my sonnet course. I actually picked this week to go for two reasons, 1) so that I could get it out of the way before B-Course presentations, and 2) because the topic was "Monuments and Frames," and I thought, how hard can that be? I've had monuments, death, and immortality floating around in my mind anyway for a little bit since I'm working on stuff like that for my dissertation, so it seemed like it would be easy. Yeah. Then I did the reading.

It looks like this now though.

Apparently our professor is all about literary theory, which is horrible for me, because I hate theory. All the secondary readings she assigned us were full of lit-crit/psycho-babble that went way over my head...which of course was a problem for me, since I needed to be able to talk about some of them intelligently in a paper and presentation. Seriously, I cannot express how horrible these readings were. And, to add insult to injury, only ONE of them was even explicitly about sonnets. What the heck? Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about here:

"When an object speaks in riddles, it reveals its true 'substance.' That is to say, the innate obscurity of matter in the history of physics, like the inscrutability of things in lyrics poetry, betrays the inescapable role of language in depicting nonempirical qualities--the invisible aspect--of material phenomena."

WAT. So I thought I would have better luck with the primary sources, but they were basically a bust too for "monumental" topics. On the other hand, I was introduced to a new woman writer who I think I could grow to hate almost as much as I hate Margery Kempe. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the work of Anne Bradstreet, but if you don't want to be slowly bored to death, I recommend you stay as far away as possible from her poetry. I was subjected to some of her "sonnets" within the last week and I have to confess I've never seen more unremarkable sonneteering in my life. Here's one her poems:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

I'm sorry, but being a Puritan housewife in seventeenth century Massachusetts still does not excuse trite couplets and uninspired imagery. Needless to say, my paper ended up being a thinly-veiled hate letter to Anne Bradstreet. Luckily my professor isn't too terribly attached to her, so I got away with it in my presentation on Monday by framing my hate as questions about her writing style. Mission accomplished.

More Izaya, courtesy of Pixiv.

So preparing for this and sort of reading for my B-Course pretty much occupied most of my week, although the monotony was briefly punctuated by Anime Soc on Friday with Meagan, where I got my weekly Izaya fix and discussed Madoka Magica and Level E (still my new favorite show) with my fellow geeks. I also, most unfortunately for my free time, discovered Pixiv this week, which is an online community for artists like deviantART, but better and in Japanese. It is also an even bigger time-sink than tvtropes [warning: if you click that link, you may be stuck for the rest of the day, so clear your calendar], since it's easy to spend hours looking at pretty pictures and following the image tags from search to search. Like when you go on Wikipedia to look up Tunisia and 2 hours and 200 hotlinks later are reading about the wild haggis.  In spite of this, I did in fact get my paper/presentation in on time, but I should probably quit before I become permanently addicted like I already am to 4chan, which, incidentally, is arguably the scariest place on the internets.

Yep, that's the library again. Starting to see a pattern, are we?

Looks like I'm going to spend the rest of the week in the library again; three of my classmates gave excellent B-Course presentations this morning and I still haven't figured out how to call up an manuscript to the Special Collections Reading Room (luckily my presentation isn't until fifth week). I seriously need to make friends with some early printed books in the near future so that I will have something to say/write a 5,000 word essay on by end of term. I also need to get back to work on my dissertation...I haven't heard anything from my supervisor yet so I'm kind of going to hope he forgot about me for a little while longer since I haven't prepared anything yet. In fact, I think I might go look up some books in the library catalog right now; just writing about it is stressing me out. Until next week, devoted followers!

Adios,
KQ

More Pixiv art; you guys should be used to seeing Star Driver by now.

Happy New Year from Oxford

Welcome to 2011! I'm sure my faithful readership has been heartbroken in my absence, but fear not! I have returned!

I guess Lee is kind of a BA too.

I had an extremely relaxing holiday at home, discounting the day after I finished reading Good Omens, when I read the article about the dead birds and fish in Arkansas and feared that the world was truly ending.  Having recovered from this brief moment of anxiety, much of the rest of my break was constructively employed watching Battlestar Galactica with Drew and catching up on my backlog of Gintama episodes while Drew was busy playing Team Fortress 2.  By the way, did I mention that BSG is frakking (yeah, see what I did there) awesome? I'm still in the second season, so no spoilers guys, but my impression so far can be summarized like this: Blondie Cylon is a man, Gaius is horrible, Apollo is pretty, Starbuck is a total BA, Adama is frickin' Gandalf, also, I was kind of hoping the President would die of cancer. Spaceships! Robots!

My feelings exactly.

Moving on - I have finally arrived back in Oxford after the long Christmas holiday. Luckily I didn't have as much trouble getting into the country as I did getting out. No snow on the ground here anymore, in fact it was positively warm (12°C) when I arrived last Thursday, although now it's gotten colder again. Good thing I got more socks for Christmas! I spent most of the weekend getting over jet-lag (still working on that actually) although that did not stop me from going to the library on Friday to read about sonnets (ugh).  I also managed, however, to see The King's Speech on Saturday, which was amazing. Then I went to sleep again because my brain is still very confused about this whole time zone change thing.

It's Tuesday night here, and believe it or not I've already had both of my new classes for this term. This term I only have a B-Course (bibliography/editing) and a C-Course (elective, kind of)--my A-Course (survey course) ended last term. Yesterday I had my C-Course, "Life and Death of the Sonnet." This one seems like it's going to be interesting, not least because we get to read a lot of sonnets, which I love:

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed;
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got:
I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
I lov'd, but straight did not what Love decreed.
At length to love's decrees I, forc'd, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.

From Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence...lovely, isn't it? Unfortunately we aren't doing much Sidney in this course, but Donne is nice too, though I've always thought Milton's sonnets were a bit stuffy. Also unfortunately, my position paper and presentation for this class are due next Monday, so I am hitting the library hard for the rest of the week so that I can say something about sonnets as monuments next week.

Oriel College quad

This morning I had my B-Course in Oriel College, which I'd never been in, and which I found out is really pretty.  I also enjoyed B-Course way more than I thought I would.  It's more about technical details of editing than literature, so I was kind of nervous for it, especially since my B-Course paper is due at the end of this term and I still don't really know how to do this kind of research, but I actually really enjoyed it.  Today we talked about editing manuscripts and what kind of decisions an editor needs to make when presenting scholarly (or more popular) editions of texts that exist in one or multiple manuscripts, possibly with different readings.  Hopefully I can figure out a way to work on something for the B-Course essay that relates to my dissertation without completely overlapping.  Maybe readership and circulation for Hero and Leander or some such thing? I'm sure I'll figure it out soon; six week terms go by pretty fast.

Level E: Gintama+Hitchhiker's Guide+oldschool bishie=win.

Meanwhile I've been settling back into life here, getting groceries, making my room not smell like cleaning products, going to the library, and of course watching my new favorite show, Level E. I also finally got my ATM card sorted out for my bank here (for some reason this took like 8 weeks and 5 steps to accomplish) so I feel like a real resident of the UK, which is probably a good thing since it looks like I'm gonna be here until the end of June when I hand that dissertation in.  I did manage to bring one box of mac and cheese with me from home, a thing which they apparently don't have here at all, so when I get really homesick for American cuisine I'll bust it out; otherwise it's fish n chips and cottage pie for the rest of the year.

Now that I'm back in the UK, I'll try to update once a week again, so stayed tuned for more of Kelly's Adventures in Oxford next week!

KQ out.

Shout APPRIVOISE!!

Snow Day

So this post is coming a little late, but my Michaelmas Term essay owned my life until Thursday afternoon, when I happily handed it in and then returned a zillion books to the library. Turning in a paper here is like applying for a passport...too many steps. I had to submit my essay at the Exam Schools submission desk, with two copies in a sealed envelope that had only my candidate number, then in a separate sealed envelope INSIDE the larger envelope a signed declaration with my name and essay title on it. Then when I handed it over they gave me a receipt for my paper so I can prove I turned it in. Ridiculous.

I was supposed to leave on a British Airways flight on Saturday to come home for Christmas. Little did I know that it would start snowing that morning and that BA would shut EVERYTHING down because of this. All flights canceled.  Not delayed, not rebooked. Just canceled. So, after a 5 hour bus ride back to Oxford (snow on the roads=traffic), I am now back in my flat, with a new flight on Continental that is hopefully leaving on Tuesday, and looking out my window at the foot or so of snow that got dumped on Oxford.

Good news is, it's pretty! I went out yesterday afternoon to buy some food (since I had gotten rid of it all since I was supposed to leave yesterday) and took my camera with me:

View from my window

Outside to door to my flat

Meagan and I made snow angels...her's in way prettier than mine. Apparently there's a learning curve to snow angel-making.

Telephone booth in the snow

The statue in front of the Bodleian Library...lookin' fancy in his snow-shawl

The Radcliffe Camera

Hertford College quad

Snowy trees

Meanwhile I am pretty much stuck here chillin' with my suitcase all packed. I managed to watch two full seasons of Castle...which I have learned is AWESOME. Crime shows like Law & Order and Bones are totally my guilty pleasure, and this one also combines literary nerdiness. Also there is an episode where they go to an underground steampunk club. Where do I sign up?

I am such a sucker for steampunk

 

Hopefully I will be able to get out of here tomorrow morning in spite of all the snow, since I'd rather not be stuck here for Xmas. I hope everyone else if having a lovely holiday; and wish me luck!

KQ

Sawako makes snow seem kyaa-tastic even when it's grounding my flight

The Case of the Christmas Market, and Other Stories

New MCR album...it's alright.

Hello again, faithful readers. It's freezing here (literally, it's -4C outside) and I am writing this post while drinking hot cocoa and listening to the new My Chemical Romance CD -- which, by the way, is kind of growing on me despite my initial poor impressions of it and my general distaste for concept albums, though it is no "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" (anyone else listening to MyChem?). I thought about putting on some Christmas music, but I decided I can't afford to get into Xmas slacker mode until I finish my work here.

It is week 9 here, and most of the undergraduates have now gone home (the term is officially only 8 weeks), so the city is relatively empty and the libraries are filled with serious-looking graduate students...including myself, I suppose. Class is over and all I'm working on now is my C-Course essay, which is taking shape slowly but satisfactorily. Since we have the extra week and a half, I've been working on it in a leisurely way, which is kind of nice since I've been able to do all the reading I wanted to do for it and now I can still take my time outlining and writing. On the other hand, it encourages procrastination since I still have over a week until this is due, and I keep reminding myself that this is a LONG paper and that it is also technically my first piece of marked work here so it has to be up to scratch (my paleography exam was graded but doesn't count toward my final mark--and in case anyone is wondering, yes, I passed it, so if you need any sixteenth century documents transcribed I am now qualified to do so. Keep me in mind when you find that lost manuscript of Love's Labour's Won in your attic).

One of the stalls at the Christmas market

Of course, with the focus on research and writing, this week was also pretty uneventful. The one exciting thing I did was go on a St Cross-organized excursion to the Christmas Market in Cirencester, about an hour away from Oxford. This was pretty cute: they set up a bunch of little wooden stalls in the middle of town that sell Christmasy food like mulled wine and brownies, and crafty things like handmade ornaments and quilts. Going around the market actually didn't take too long so we got a chance to explore the town, which had some nice shopping and a sweet Roman museum, since apparently Cirencester used to be a Roman town. The highlight of my trip was eating Belgian waffles at the market and buying fluffy earmuffs (they're totally gangsta), and I even snapped some photos, though it was ridiculously cold on Monday so I didn't take my camera out as often as I should have.

More Christmas Market!

You know you're in the Cotswolds when sculptures of sheep look this epic.

The Roman museum was full of these creepy/awesome manikins in Roman garb.

Pretty mosaic depicting Orpheus taming the beasts in the museum.

Dear Disney, why are you keeping this movie from the UK?

So yeah, that's about the only exciting thing I did this week, besides pay too much money to see Megamind in 3D, which was cute but probably did not need to be viewed in three dimensions. Also, I like Tina Fey better in 30 Rock than as an awkwardly-proportioned CG character. Seriously, why does DreamWorks's character design always have to be so hideous? I thought they had finally hit their stride with How to Train Your Dragon, but maybe the weird, chunky character design just worked for them there since it was about awkward teenagers, Vikings, and dragons. In Megamind everyone just had expansive foreheads and weirdly straight hairlines. Anyway, Megamind was fun but I can't wait for the 3D trend to die out.


But wait! (you're thinking) Didn't that movie come out like a month ago? Yes, yes it did. In the STATES. The UK gets shafted on movie release dates. Tangled doesn't come out here until January 28th. What the heck! I'm practically living in a third world country here. A third world country that just arrested Julian Assange and has double-decker buses and tea and the BBC. 

Speaking of the BBC, and since I have nothing else urgent to impart to you this week, I think I will take a second to introduce you to my favorite BBC item that I've discovered since being here: Sherlock. This show (miniseries?) actually aired over the summer, but there was still buzz about it when I got here, so I watched it a few weeks ago and was totally impressed. The show is a "contemporary update" on Sherlock Holmes, featuring the dynamic duo solving crimes in modern London. This seems kind of hokey at first glance, but somehow it really works in this series, and whatever is lost in Victorian aesthetic is made up in the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Sherlock has all the banter and bromance elements that made the recent Guy Ritchie adaptation featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law enjoyable, without the superfluous romantic subplot and ridiculous steampunk plot devices that made it terrible. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a simultaneously intriguing and exasperating Holmes more akin to Hugh Laurie's House than Downey Jr's swashbuckling interpretation in the 2009 film, and Martin Freeman (slated to play Bilbo in The Hobbit, incidentally) plays a capable and empathetic everyman as John Watson, making a perfect foil to Cumberbatch's quirky Sherlock.

One of the best parts of the show for me was the way they managed to show Holmes actually deducing things instead of just running around nabbing criminals. In this respect Sherlock seemed to take its cue more from crime shows like CSI and NCIS than the action-movie approach of Guy Ritchie, and this is also where the modern setting of the show was perfectly utilized. Of course a modern Holmes would use his smartphone to Google weather conditions in the UK when he finds his victim with a wet umbrella in her bag. Or look up maps of the city to find alternate routes when tracking a criminal. The series also definitely had its moments of melodrama and camp, but since I don't mind a little camp (more Star Driver, please), I enjoyed it all. And as a Conan Doyle fan, I thought this series was infinitely superior to the movie that came out last year (as much as I heart Robert Downey Jr), and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for some quality BBC/Sherlock Holmes action.







One more thing I thought I'd leave you with in the spirit of British culture and literature: this poster I saw in Tesco on Monday.

England loves tea and punk rock, obvi.

"These doors save enough energy to make over 4 million cups of tea per year." That's right, everything you have ever heard about England (or learned from watching Hetalia) is true. The British standard unit of measurement is apparently the cup of tea. This is the way to put things into perspective in England: how many cups of tea could I make with the energy from those doors? Not, "How many light bulbs could I turn on?" or "How many homes could I heat?" with that energy. No. It's cool to sit in a dark, cold room as long as you have a kettle and a cup of tea. Keep calm and carry on, Brits. ...Although I can't really speak here, since I have totally been going native not only with my tea consumption but unintentional use of Britishisms like "posh" and "smart" (as in well-dressed). I'm afraid I'm going to go home and ask someone where the queue begins. I've got to get back in touch with my down-home Amurican roots. Oh wait, I was an elitist Californian to begin with. Never mind then.

Sorry for the eclectic post this week, but I know no one really wants to hear about early modern collaboration and Shakespearean attribution studies, which is what I've actually been doing all week. I'll be working away on my paper for the rest of this week too and sooner than I think I'm going to be heading back stateside to celebrate Christmas! I'll definitely update again next week, although after that it might be spotty for a while since I'll be at home, and hopefully seeing some of you over Christmas!

Adieu,
KQ

Kuroshitsuji does Sherlock Holmes, because Toboso-sensei is awesome.