A Dissertation Story

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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby starlooker » Fri Oct 07, 2011 6:07 pm

:hatsoff:

I do not mind at all! I'm flattered!

Congratulations, Ollie!!!
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into the wind, unafraid.
There's another life out there...

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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby steph » Fri Oct 07, 2011 6:11 pm

Yay Ollie!!!!!
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Jayelle » Fri May 18, 2012 9:33 am

Hijacking Kirsten's old thread to tell a bit of Paul's story.

Paul submitted his PhD proposal (a 15 page outline of what he'll cover in his thesis) last month. Unfortunately, he attached a slightly older draft to the email, one with mistakes he'd been told to fix. The committee sent back a scathing response including words like "we are embarrassed" He was duly chastised, but annoyed that they didn't consider that it had been the wrong attachment. The grad chair emailed back "Well, I thought it might have been the wrong draft, but I put it before the committee anyway." Basically, a dickish dick move. It would have saved a MONTH of work if he'd sent one email saying "Is this right?"

So, Paul changed things and resubmitted.

Today, he got a note back saying that his proposal is approved (YAY!) - essentially the same draft he would have sent in the first place. So this all could have happened and been happy a month ago.

Then, the best part. The grad chair who had been a dickish dick sends a second email with "Here are the processes for comprehensive exams" with an attachment. It is - wait for it - the wrong attachment. It has taken every ounce of self-preservation for Paul not to send an email back with a scathing note.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Rei » Fri May 18, 2012 2:25 pm

Maaaaaan... even my most polite reply would be laden with a scathing omission without taking a solid bit of time off before replying.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Boothby » Fri May 18, 2012 2:56 pm

Well, I hope that Paul's response showed the grad chair how it SHOULD have been done....
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Caspian » Fri May 18, 2012 3:03 pm

I said: "Is this meant to have the processes for comprehensive exams? I think you have accidentally attached the wrong pdf." Then I mentally added: it could happen to anyone. Like me. Like how it happened to me and you were completely uncivil about it.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Boothby » Fri May 18, 2012 3:12 pm

Is there a "mental note to myself" BBCode you can use? Like our "Spoiler" codes?
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Caspian » Fri May 18, 2012 4:57 pm

So since I'm here.

As Jan said, my thesis proposal has now been approved. That means that I'm officially allowed to start preparing for comprehensive exams.

At my university comprehensive exams for English PhDs work like this: I write one four-hour exam and two three-hour exams, most likely on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the same week. The four-hour exam is in my thesis area, one of the three-hour ones is on another time period, and the other three-hour one is on something else.

My proposal has been approved so now I can confidently say that the four-hour one will be about Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (as well as other Middle English Arthurian Romances). 15th century.

One of my three-hour exams will be on 16th century literature excluding drama (so Shakespeare's poetry but not his plays), and the other one will be on literary theory.

Now I have a bit less than a year to read 30 books per exam area, plus supporting articles and such. I get to (have to) put those lists together myself, which is kinda daunting because I don't feel like I know much about the topics yet. I plan to know boatloads about them come January though.

First up: reread Le Morte Darthur, cover to cover.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Eaquae Legit » Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:48 am

I am just INFURIATED that one of the most important bits of the manuscript I'm working on is also one of the most poorly written. There are made-up words, no obvious starts or ends to sentences, and terrible, terrible grammar. AUGH.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Caspian » Thu Jun 14, 2012 7:41 pm

Okay, so I've reread le Morte Darthur and my examination committee was approved. For my three exams, one on Middle English, one on 16th century (ie early Renaissance/Reformation), one on theory, I have five supervisors who must all approve my reading lists for all three exams. This committee is made up of one (1) Old English guy, one (1) Victorianist--he's the grad chair so he's on everybody's committee, one (1) Narratologist/theorist, and two (2) Renaissance experts. Which leaves a major gap in the area of Middle English, my actual area.

Oh well.

Now I need to finalize a reading list for each area and get them approved by my committee members.

In the mean time I'm going away for two weeks and I need to keep reading while I'm gone, so I'm trying to find things I need to read that I can put on my Kindle, preferably for free, so that I don't have to pack a metric tonne of books.

Up to now I've been reading things that were always obviously going to be on my reading list but now I need to decide what to read next before my reading lists have been fully approved, knowing that I might be reading something I don't need to. Which isn't then end of the world, really, but it does kinda suck to waste time when I have a long list of things to read in a short time anyway.
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Eaquae Legit » Fri Jun 15, 2012 6:22 am

Middle English is not my speciality, but I saw this in the department today. I hope it's of some use to you.

http://middleenglishromance.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: A Dissertation Story

Postby Caspian » Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:15 pm

Okay.

So as I said before I need to have three reading lists for three exams to be written sometime around December/January.

My theory advisor was impressed by my current list, so I think that one is set!
My Middle English advisor and my Old English advisor are both happy with my list for them, so I'd say that one is set too.
My two Renaissance people think that maybe one more round of refining and I'll be done there too.

So yippee! Probably by the end of the week I'll have this all locked.

I spent Monday gathering books from the library and filling my Kindle. For the interest of absolutely nobody, is my reading list for the next five months:

Middle English

1. Malory, Le Morte Darthur.
2. Layamon Brut
3. The Stanzaic Morte Arthure
4. The Alliterative Morte Arthur
5. Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle
6. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
7. The Auentures off Arture
8. Ywain and Gawain
9. Sir Launfal
10. Gower, Selected Poetry (Carole Weinberg, 1983)
11. Chaucer, Dream Visions and Other Poems (Kathryn L. Lynch, 2007)
12. Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
13. Langland, Piers Plowman
14. Hoccleve, ‘My Compleinte’ and other poems. (Roger Ellis 2001)
15. Lydgate, Mummings and Entertainments
16. Sir Orfeo
17. King Horn
18. Havelok the Dane
19. Gamelyn
20. Squire of Low Degree

On Chivalry

21. Lull, The Book of the Order of Knighthood

Devotional/Penitential Works

22. The Book of Vices and Virtues
23. The Pricke of Conscience
24. The Book of Margery Kempe
25. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings

Secondary Sources

On Malory

26. Field, P.J.C. The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory. 1993.
27. Boulanger, Jennifer. “Righting History: Redemptive Potential and the Written Word in Malory.” 2009.
28. Hodges, Kenneth. Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur. 2005.
29. Kelly, Robert L. “Penitence as a Remedy for War in Malory's ‘Tale of the Death of Arthur.’” 1994.
30. Noll, Catharine. “Malory's Morte Darthur and the Rhetoric of War.” 2010.
31. Whitworth, Charles W. “The Sacred and the Secular in Malory's ‘Tale of the Sankgreal.’” 1975.

On Romance

32. John Finlayson's "Some Definitions of Medieval Romance”
33. Whetter, K. S. “Subverting, Containing and Upholding Christianity in Medieval Romance”

On Chivalry

34. Maurice Keen, Chivalry
35. Radulescu, Raluca L. “How Christian is Chivalry?”

On Spiritual Life/Devotion/Penance

36. Ackermann, Felicia “‘I may do no penaunce’: spiritual sloth in Malory's Morte.” Arthuriana 16: 1 (2006): 47- 53.
37. Cherewatuk, Karen. “Malory's Launcelot and the language of sin and confession.” Arthuriana 16:2 (2006): 68-72
38. Postles, David A. “Penance and the market place: a Reformation dialogue with the medieval church (c. 1250-c. 1600).” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 54:3 (2003): 441-468.
39. “Proceedings of the Fourth Lateran Council”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990)
40. Jerry Root, “Space to Speke”: The Confessional Subject in Medieval Literature
41. Robert R. Raymo, “Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction,” in A Manual of
Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, ed. Albert E. Hartung (New Haven: The Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1986)
42. Haran, Michael, Medieval Thought, 2nd edn (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992)
43. Watson, Nicholas, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” Speculum 70 (1995): 822-863.
44. Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988)

Renaissance

45. Spenser, The Faerie Queene
46. Spenser Colin Clout’s Come Home Again
47. Spenser A View of the Present State of Ireland
48. Harington, John.Trans. Orlando Furioso.
49. Sidney The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia
50. Sidney The Old Arcadia
51. Sidney A Defense of Poesy
52. Robinson, Richard. The Auncient Order, Societie, and Unitie Laudable, of Prince Arthur, and his Knightly Armory of the Round Table
53. The Heroicall Adventures of the Knight of the Sea (1600)
54. Thirty-Nine Articles
55. The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward VI.
56. Tyndale, William. The Obedience of a Christen Man.
57. The Sidney Psalter
58. Ascham, Roger. The Schoolmaster
59. Gascoigne Princelye Pleasures
60. Tyler, Margaret. The Mirrour of Princely Deedes and Knighthood.
61. Vives, Juan Luis. The instruction of a Christen Woman. Trans. Richard Hyrde.
62. --- The Office and Duties of an Husband. Trans. Thomas Paynell.
63. Bale, John. A Comedy Concerning Three Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ.
64. Woodes, Nathaniel. The Conflict of Conscience.
65. Wager, W. Enough Is as Good as a Feast.
66. More, Thomas. Utopia.
67. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince.

68. Poems of John Donne
69. Essays of Francis Bacon

70. Hamilton, A. C. “The Bible and Spenser's Faerie Queene: Sacred and Secular Scripture. 1992.
71. Hodges, Kenneth. “Making Arthur Protestant: Translating Malory's Grail Quest Into Spenser's Book of Holiness.” 2010.
72. King, Andrew. The Faerie Queene and Middle English Romance: The Matter of Just Memory. 2000.
73. Rovang, Paul R. Refashioning “Knights and Ladies Gentle Deeds”: The Intertextuality of Spenser's Faerie Queene and Malory's Morte Darthur. 1996
74. Summers, David A. Spenser's Arthur: The British Arthurian Tradition and The Faerie Queene. 1997.
75. Kaske, Carol V. Spenser and Biblical Poetics.
76. King, John N. Spenser’s Poetry and the Reformation Tradition.
77. Werth, Tiffany Jo. The Fabulous Dark Cloister: Romance in England after the Reformation
78. Alex Davis. Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance.
79. Petrina, Alessandra, and Laura Tosi. Eds. Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture.
80. Hughes, Phillip Edgcumbe. The Theology of the English Reformers.1965
81. Hume, Antea. Edmund Spenser, Protestant Poet.1984
82. Eisenbichler, Konrad. Renaissance Medievalisms.

Critical Theory: Sociocriticism

83. Goldmann, Lucien. Method in the Sociology of Literature.
84. Cros, Edmond. Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism.

Cultural Studies

85. Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.”
86. Benjamin, Walter. “The Storyteller.”
87. Horkheimer, “Art and Mass Culture”
88. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society”
89. Adorno, “The Autonomy of Art”

Dialogism and Intertextuality

90. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination
91. Kristeva, Julia. “Desire in Language.”
92. Kristeva, Julia. “Revolution in Poetic Language.”
93. Beasley-Murray, Tim. Mikhail Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin : experience and form (2007).
94. Todorov. Mikhail Baktin: The Dialogical Principle.
95. Holquist, Michael. Dialogism.
96. Orr, Mary. Intertextuality.
97. Allen, Graham. Intertextuality.
98. Heyworth Allusion and Intertextuality.
99. Irwin, William. “Against Intertextuality.”
100. Riffaterre, Michael. “Compulsory Reader Response: The Intertextual Drive.” Intertextuality: Thoeries and Practices. Ed. Michael Worton and Judith Still.
101. Riffaterre, Michael. “Intertextual Representation: On Mimesis as Interpretive Discourse”
102. Onega, Susana. “Intertextuality.” Symbolism Volume 5. 3-33.

Discourse Theory

103. Davis, K. Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time.
104. Barthes, Myth Today
105. Mills, Sara. Discourse
106. Genette, Gerard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree.
107. Kroeber, Karl. Retelling/Rereading.

Historicity

108. Strohm, Paul. “Historicity without Historicism?”
109. Strohm, Paul. Theory and the Premodern Text
110. Cohen, J. J. “Time Out of Memory”.
111. Nolan, Maura B. “Historicism after Historicism.”
112. Aers, David. “A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists; or, Reflections on Literary Critics Writing the ‘History of the Subject.’”
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