All entries for August 2006

Monday, August 14

Fulfilment of obligation to not shirk writing something worthwhile on finishing chapter

No, I didn't honestly think I could get away with slithering through the chain–link gates without producing a fuller report on my efforts yesterday. It's just that I'd finished the chapter, wanted to immerse myself in my few hours of guiltless freedom, had used up almost all my quota of written expression power et cetera…

Worth noting that the chapter was dangling about 400 words away from being finished for almost all of last week. All that I actually added yesterday lunchtime — although clearly, it was so taxing as to leave me too enfeebled to blog properly — was a concluding paragraph that questioned the wisdom of reading Boccaccio's Buccolicum Carmen as overwhelmed by the personal presence of Petrarch.

Try saying that with a mouthful of dry Weetabix…

My feelings on the chapter are that — although it is maybe a little top–heavy, with the power of analysis rather dwindling in the second half — it is fundamentally sound and definitely illuminates Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen in a way that Chapters II–IV do not and cannot. If I can't get it to Andrew before the start of term I hope to supply him with an email attachment for feedback.

Also pleased with having finished in less — alright, only one day less — than three weeks, which I suspect makes it my least sluggish chapter to date. I make it that there are about six weeks until my present library card expires and with almost 29,000 words in the bank, it may not be folly to think I can at least have the components of a Master's thesis together by that time. Mightn't be all corrected, revised, polished and refined but the body of the words themselves could be there.

What I have to smear the remaining 7,000–10,000 words between are; some kind of concluding section [a Conclusion], and my Introduction — both currently embryonic in my thinking; and my final — ironically enough, what will be the first in the final study — chapter, on the Latin eclogues of Dante.

I'm thinking Chapter I will be only half the length at best of the others, as there are only two poems and I may not be able to gather the resources on other medieval ecloguists to really bulk it out. At the moment, I envisage that the chapter will take as its epigraph Boccaccio's comment on all the bucolic writers between Virgil and Petrarch being "obscure and not worth considering" and use Dante's poems to ask whether Petrarch deserves to be thought of as a reviver of the Eclogue.

I have a few days this week where I can bury my nose in the books and set myself thinking about how the chapter will take shape. I'm away this weekend for a wedding and probably moving house next week so I could do with taking advantage of what time I have now, while I still have it.

So anyway. That seems fairly thorough. Can I go now?

: 14 Aug 2006 14:18 |  Tags: Boccaccio Classics Eclogues Ma Petrarch Research Virgil |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sunday, August 13

It appears two weeks have gone by since I last blogged. Very sorry about that.

Finished my chapter this afternoon, anyway. I am reasonably pleased with it.

Anyone wandering types who'd like to read, please email I.D.Fielding@warwick.ac.uk.

Only about 7,000 words left to write on the project. Plan to launch into my Dante chapter as soon as possible.

: 13 Aug 2006 15:40 |  Tags: Boccaccio Classics Eclogues Ma Petrarch Research Virgil |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem