Tuesday, 16 May

As I suspected: yesterday's slog, though torturous, was just a rite of passage to freer and easier writing. I spent about five hours at the computer today, discussing Petrarch's paraphrasing — in various of his letters — of Seneca's theories of imitatio. Inserted — for the sake of clarity, as to my meaning — a little extra padding into the rudimentary introduction I wrote yesterday and ended up with over a thousand words banked on the chapter. 1,600 total.

The Learning Grid experiment continues to progress with pleasing results. I have been tipped off as to the presence of the postgrad–only PC cluster in the Main Library's Wolfson Room [the University probably has let me know but I'm too ignorant to have realised] but only if things get desperate will I venture over there. I am quite keen to settle here after Week 8 and through the summer months, when the wobbly–lipped revisionites have all cleared out.

Plan is to do the same tomorrow, and get stuck into the next section — which will reckon directly with Petrarch's theories of poetry [that is, not just of poetic imitation] and how the Bucolicum Carmen represents pastoral cast in his own image, if you will. If I can manage the same as I did today I'll be very happy…

: 16 May 2006 18:03 |  Tags: Classics Ma Petrarch Research |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem