101st post.

Well, the last one was one of a series, so I couldn't really make a big deal of it being the hundredth.

So, it's been a busy semester, and not quite over yet - I've still some marking to do. It's also looking to be a challenging one next semester. The university has only offered me one marking position, which is almost $10/hour less than a TA position and only 37.5 hours total, as opposed to the 130 of a TA position. I had three marking positions last semester and barely scraped by, and now a) I'm to be moving out and renting next semester and b) on a third the income. So I shall have to go begging an RA position.

In addition, of the two courses I'm taking next semester, the mediaeval one is (theoretically, at least) to be conducted in French, and the other is - very modern. 18th century! They have regularised spelling and all!

Motivated by this, and the fact that I have a whole lot of thoughtful notes in my notebook for last year's Restoration course that I never did anything with, I've started a new blog called Protestants and Printing Presses (and other Newfangled Fripperies). It will only be updated intermittently, but it a mediaevalist-encounters-the-early-modern blog, as I'm chary of turning this one into an anything-goes blog. All my early modern posts from here have been exported over there, but they remain at their original locations as well.

And, in searching EEBO for woodcuts to use as a background to the title, I found a highly amusing title page which immediately turned into an inaugural post.

Meanwhile, I have some more posts on the Gilte Legende waiting to be polished up for here, and a delicious-looking book on mediaeval women and the gaze which I am looking forward to reading and responding to, so I may actually get a slight little holiday before next semester starts!

Merry Christmas to you all out there. I'm having one!

Chaucer, out of the mouths (et al) of babes.

Let it be known that 12-day-old Elizabeth is already developing literary opinions. She likes the Knight, is indifferent to the Squire, abhors the Shipman, dribbles at the descriptions of the Franklin's feasts and passes gas at the Cook. Most promising, she gets very excited about the Clerk, waves her arms enthusiastically at the idea of having more books in her room than pretty things and claps her hands to her mouth excitedly at the talk of buying books even without being able to get a benefice (tenure?). Let us hope she doesn't emulate him so far as to borrow money for books and forget to pay it back.

Thought for the day

It is rather pleasing to be living with people who respond to your solemnly and elaborately and slightly tipsily detailed explanation as to why the blossoming of western vernacular literature and the fact that we are not now speaking Latin is ultimately due to the mystic and passionate powers of garlic with "I think I love you".

And that this is given equal weight with your suggestion to mix the haloumi juice in with the melted garlic butter with which the naan are to be brushed.

Perplexing things about living in another country

- There are squirrels running everywhere, and no one cares.
- Pedestrian crossings do not make a noise when they change from 'don't walk' to 'walk'. I'm having to get into the habit of actually watching the signal.
- Where is the coffee?
- Getting used to a cat in the house rather than a dog. And consequently, to not jumping up and going to yell at her if you hear her eating or scratching in another room - she's eating and disposing of the eaten as she ought to be, not getting into the garbage.
- Rabbits ignore you. They sit beside the path and watch you placidly, and if you walk towards them, they'll eventually deign to lollop away a few metres, rather than transforming into a panicked flash of white tail heading for the nearest cover. And, here's the thing - they are not ill.
- No, really, that substance is not coffee. Where is the coffee?
- Retraining one's brain to default to calling people - and thinking of them - by title + surname, rather than just first name.
- I have no dog.
- Alright, that's an espresso coffee, but is it so hard to make it a good one?
- Crossing roads is dangerous. Suddenly I have to retrain every instinct about where the traffic is coming from. And apparently you can make a right turn (ie, a left turn) at a red light here.
- Having multiple university libraries available at once, just a short walk from each other.
- Squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, rabbits and deer - and woods just across the road! This would be a prime dog-walking area!
- If I had a dog.

A career choice...

You know those conversations that abruptly change the way you see your whole future life?

I had one of those a week ago today. A good friend of mine said, "Hannah? Come to Ottawa for your PhD." And we joked about it, and chatted about it, and I wandered over to look at the Ottawa University website, and the Canadian immigration website, and... somehow in there the conversation turned serious and it became an option. Given I live in Melbourne, it's rather a drastic option.

It would be a four-year course. A study visa lasts the length of the course to which you've been accepted, and I believe can then be extended to permanent residency and potentially citizenship, if one is a good and productive member of society. Four years is a good deal of your life to devote to another country, but the employment prospects for a... mediaeval researcher? mediaevalist? obsessed person? ... are a good deal larger there than here, which is why it is, in effect, a career choice. I'd be approaching thirty by the time I finished my doctorate, would have put down roots both professionally and in my personal life, and have to accept now that it's likely I'd never really be moving back home.

So, this last week, while trying to concentrate on expanding the very rough draft of my Honours thesis (trawthe and ambiguity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) and research for an essay on the criticism levelled against Edward II in his own time (which means reading as many contemporary sources as I can possibly lay my hands on, because the one I didn't find would be sure to disprove my line of argument), and while reading for and participating noisily in my two coursework seminars for this semester (this week, Malory's and the alliterative Morte in one and saints' bodies and relics in the other), and of course working at making other people's coffee in order to earn enough money to feed my beloved beagle (and, I suppose, myself)... my mind keeps wandering back to frantic details of freightage, Ottawan real estate, cost of living, scholarships, disposal of furniture and other "assets", which books to take, which clothes, what the flora and fauna are like over there and how it would relate to walking a beagle about (ticks? thorns in his ears? lynxes?).

Somehow in that time, it seems, the decision has already been made.

Providing, of course, that I can get a scholarship.