Thursday, 7 September

And so with another entry, I can mark out another three-week lacuna in my blog where nothing worth recording was accomplished on my project. I can only defend myself by claiming that I was detained by other committments; moving house, visiting family, discussing and feeding back on Kate’s theories on the significance of satyrs in vase-paintings, for her now-handed-in dissertation.

Still, with my various other duties fulfilled I have returned to work this week and, virtuously, completed all 3,000 words of Dante chapter (Chapter I) in the matter of three days. Ultimately, the meagreness of source material [there’s only two Dante eclogues, and the second of those probably isn’t his] meant that it was something of a struggle; I can see now why the scholarly treatments that I found tend to be either very succinct, or padded with all sorts of peripheral information. I hope that what I’ve done falls somewhere between the two.

My thesis stands, overall, at 32,000 words now. I can go away to Catalonia next week [did I not mention that this entry would mark the beginning of another lacuna?] with only my Introduction and my Conclusion pressing on my conscience. Whether, between them, they’ll make up the shortfall of my 40,000-word requirement will be the main cause for anxiety—but then, there’s still plenty of scope for details to be sourced from Andrew’s various inspirations and added to my already-written but still-unpolished chapters before I have to hand in.

I have christened the study In the Guise of Tityrus: the Pastoral Tendency of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. There were a couple of alternatives, but that’s what I’m going with for now. Any feedback [unless it’s to tell me I’m poncy and gay] is welcome.

: 07 Sep 2006 17:19 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem