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News in History! (See what I did there?)
I got an A on my 2nd paper! I was absolutely thrilled--because for a number of reasons, I wasn't sure how good that paper was. I wasn't really feeling the material as much and kept changing my mind on which topic I would write (he gave us a choice of three). Also, I got an A- (not a full A) on the first paper which made me unhappy, and frankly I connected with Eloise and Abelard much more, and wasn't sure if I agreed with his reasons for the minus. Someone suggested I should contest it but I detest grade grubbing and would only do that if I truly felt wronged. I just have to figure out how to get the A without compromising what I really want to say.
Anyway, this second paper was quite taxing, I pretty much SWEATED it out. The papers all have to be between 4-6 pages and it is easy for me to skate right up to the edge of 6 pages, I can wax quite eloquent! I was kind of feeling my way through this one--the topic on which I finally settled was to explore the scientific elements of Bernardus Sylvestris's Cosmographia, and then compare them to Roger Bacon's scientific writings. The former is an allegory about the creation of the universe divided into two parts--"Macrocosmos" and "Microcosmos" (which deals with the creation of man and explicitly positions man as the mirror-image of the universe). As a piece of literature it's a little...overwrought, with long incomprehensible passages about Sylva and Noys and Hyle and the swirling darkness and I don't know whatall. (It's a little easier to "get" when you compare it to the Great Clearances of the early Middle Ages, with man taming the darkness of the forests by leveling them. Order out of chaos was a big thing at this time.) But when you start reading Cosmographia as proto-science, it's pretty interesting, lots of descriptions about the four elements and their properties, and noticing patterns in the universe. In the introduction, I wrote: In a way, Cosmographia could be seen as the macro-Hamlet, its message “What a piece of work is the universe.”
I plowed through the discussion of its scientific elements, then Man (The First Scientist? As I wrote Man is then both outside observer and integral participant, scientist and high priest. Science is in fact the seat and justification of man’s authority… ), then moved on to Roger Bacon, whose Opus Majus was much more explicitly scientific in purpose, format and tone. Blah blah blah about scientific elements, comparisons, etc. etc. Then I'm at the ending (having SWEATED this out, this paper really did make me work) and I write: In fact one might even see in Opus Majus—or in Bacon himself—the realization of Cosmographia’s “ruler and high priest of creation”: Surveyor, Perceiver and Thinker, the one cosmos governing the other, exercising the “gift of reason” and in doing so, fulfilling the promise of Science. I'm all pleased with that, it wraps it up. I am barely under 6 pages at this point. I reread the paper, trying to see it with a fresh pair of eyes, and I pick up on the Hamlet reference again and it hits me: I add to the end of the paper, right after the last sentence, what a piece of work is man. This is now literally at the utmost limit of 6 pages. Then it occurs to me--I think the line is what a piece of work is a man, I was remembering the song in Hair (which of course references both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet both explicitly and thematically, and there's a song that goes What a piece of work is man/How noble in reason/In form and movement, how express and admirable). I google it to make sure of the correct, Shakespearean phrasing, then I go back and add one letter and a space to the quotation. BAM! That takes me over onto 7 pages. Arrrgh! At this point I've already resorted to widening the margins to give me more room, so I'm reduced to--get this--reducing the font size between paragraphs juuuuust enough to get that down to 6 pages again. Is that pathetic or what? I told Anya, and she said "oh man, normally it's the other way around, you're trying to pad it to make it longer." I said "I know! I know all those tricks too!"
So anyway, wasn't quite sure how good it was. Today, on my way to class, I took a bad fall on the scooter, really slammed my left side and was actually kind of stunned when I picked myself up. I got to class and was in a bit of a daze and the professor was talking about de Meun's Roman de la Rose, and how boundary-challenging it was, and he was saying "there's a word, for that--oh, what is the word for something that's trying to push the boundaries?" I burted out "transgressive?" He said "YES! That's it, thank you." Hermione is back :) He was talking about the scientific writings and saying that one of the students had complained about them, saying s/he didn't really like them, and he said that every year someone questions them, and he doesn't have to include them, he could include instead political writings or theology, and why does he include them? He then said that this batch of papers was the best on the science writings that he'd ever had in all the time he's taught the class. He said "not everyone but most of them were extremely good." But I thought "you don't know, maybe yours was one of the few not-so-good." He hands them out at the end of class, I scuttle back to the subway platform and thought "well, let's have the bad news." BAM! A! A full A. The difference between an A- and an A is so small, but so significant!
Back to class again--we were talking about the Roman, and he asked for thoughts--I said I thought it was kind of devolutionary, that the professor had said earlier in the term that one of the geniuses of this culture was that they were able to transform all this aggressive, militaristic, rapacious energy and channel it into the interactions of courtly love, which rewarded gentlessness and restraint--and here is de Meun upending all of that and mocking it. He nodded vigorously. Going further (I didn't say this in class, this is occurring to me now), perhaps it is because the clerical culture that received the Roman so well were far enough removed from the chaos of the Dark Ages that they took the relative peace for granted and thought the whole courtly love thing was just soooooo played out. I dunno though, the 13th century wasn't THAT peaceful. Not quite the complete balls-up trainwreck that was the 14th century, but still, they had a few Crusades going on yet). Anyway I also mentioned that I saw a comparison to the works of Neil LaBute (Roman de la Rose is pretty explicitly misogynistic under the guise of satire, so much so that de Meun basically inspired the birth of what we would now call feminism, although they referred to it as la querelle de la Rose--BTW, please note that the paper to which I just linked from by a Sweet Briar student!) I said that LaBute has a complicated reputation, that he is seen as pretty misogynistic and I wasn't sure if I agreed, because portraying misogyny is not the same thing as endorsing it, but he too (like de Meun) is criticized as taking the satire, the "hook," too far. You could hear the minds of 3/4 of the class, who've never heard of LaBute, checking out but the professor really liked this.
Oh, and in other news--the woman for whom I work on Mondays and Thursdays had me go to Barnes and Noble yesterday to get some Christmas gifts, and she told me to get one for myself, so I got a book I've been eyeing longingly for awhile, The Little Ice Age, by Brian Fagan. YUM. Glaciers swallowing Swiss towns whole and torrential rainpours leading to had harvests and famine--sign me up.
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It's funny, before my parents left Minnesota, I was going through some of my old boxes and found a lot of my theatre history and theory papers and was re-reading them. I was pretty freaking good at it! Especially the comparison papers. Whew.
I remember when I used one for a theatre history paper and then asked my German teacher if he would take extra credit for an adapted version of it, since it had to do also with some of the Novellen we were studying. I was such a lovely little nerd. I miss college sometimes.
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I find that you start seeing connections *as* you're writing the paper--the final image of Bacon as the realization of Sylvestris's Microcosmic Scientist did not occur to me until I started writing about the Bacon stuff. And get this--the professor loved it, he wrote "Your joining of the two thinkers (a task difficult to perform) is nicely done." I'm also seeing an early version of Coleridge's uber-artist at the end of "Khubla Khan," "Weave a circle round him thrice/and close your eyes with holy dread/For he on honey-dew and fed/and drunk the milk of Paradise." This kind of mystical vision of the Thinker--be s/he Poet, Scientist, Musician or other--someone who communes with the angels by virtue of their insight.
I kind of love and get super-stressed out at writing--I love it because it's a natural form of expression for me, I'm comfortable with it, but I also get stressed because, since I know I do it well, I want to write the PERFECT paper, I'm constantly wondering how to refine that phrase, or--open it up, I guess, include (appropriate, insightful) references to other media, or disciplines. Hence the Hamlet references, or in my paper on Julius Caesar, I actually had some very poetic turns of phrases. In one of my English papers, one on Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," I'd been discussing the image of the Nightingale, whose song triggers the poet's transcendent experience. As he details what is happening, and starts to emerge from his vision, the poet writes:
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
I wrote "the Nightingale is in fact only a nightingale." My professor absolutely loved this essay and wrote a compliment that I'll never forget, saying "this kind of paper makes our enterprise a pleasure."