One thing before I got to sleep the sleep of the disorganised:

Queer theory is awesome.

I take back the sweeping general condemnations of Theory, generally, and re-issue them with the caveat bad theory. GOOD theory reassures you that you are not mad for finding bondage jokes in Sir Gawain.¹ GOOD theory also provides you with cultural analysis lines down which you can take your non-salacious grammatical study.

BETTER theory would've said more about transgressive *female* sexuality instead of tying it all up with male-male desire. But hey, one can't have everything.

1. Someone has written an article entitled 'Anal Rope'. I must hie me to Fisher and, ah, pin it down.

AHAHAH.

this in an email from Dad just now:

a JW just came knocking on my door. But no, he wasn't out visiting the heathens with pamphlets of enlightenment, he wants to buy my BMW!

How odd.

It's a BMW motorbike, incidentally, not a car. Just so you don't get overrated ideas about my family.

(no subject)

I love my thesis.
Strangely, I only seem to love it on TUESDAYS. As on Wednesdays I have to see my supervisor, that means every week I wind up saying 'well, I didn't get inspired until last night...'

Meanwhile, I may just have a posthumous crush on Dorothy Bethurum. With one pending for Dorothy Whitelock, and Mary Bateson being also under consideration. Am, of course, entirely in love with Patrick Wormald, as any right-thinking Wulfstanist ought to be.

I have read exactly four works dealing with Wulfstan's Commonplace book or parts thereof. Two are perfectly easy to understand. Two are utterly incomprehensible. Reasons? We have two options:

* Stuff written about the Commonplace book a least half a century ago made more sense, perhaps because they knew less about it. Things get more complex as they go along, in academia. Bethurum added some more manuscripts and sources to Bateson's study, and now when looking at works from the last ten years it's all incredibly complex.

alternatively:

* Women are just easier to understand. Dorothy and Mary vs. men whose first names I've forgotten.

These two propositions will be examined by reference to Loyn's introduction to the manuscript, and I may also have to look at Thorpe's version of the Exerptiones, to give me some old male works, and the one by the modern women whose names starts with A.