highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (grammar time)
highlyeccentric ([personal profile] highlyeccentric) wrote2008-05-01 02:11 pm
Entry tags:

If I ever see Craig Ronalds again

(which is unlikely, since he disappeared in Mysterious Circumstances), I am going to have to make exaggerated gestures of gratitude and adoration.

Good things Craig Ronalds has done for me:

* carefully annotated all the way through Fisher's copy of Die "Institutes of Polity", translating relevant bits of German and scribbling down which MS Jost has put where, every time the layout gets confusing.
* marked off useful articles in England Before the Conquest.

and best of all (not that I cared at the time...)

* taught me functional grammar. Which, as a philological tool, is aggravating and not fun at all. But he was the first person to get me to engage with the words on the page, so to speak, to get me thinking about the way grammar encodes certain things about a character. Particularly verbs. Perhaps Craig can ultimately be blamed for my obsession with verbs of thought (I remember analysing the lack of thought-verbs assigned to the character Phuong in The Quiet American, for his class).

now I have awesometastic thoughts about Sir Gawain and grammar, and I wonder if, without Craig and his stupid functional grammar course, I would be thinking these thoughts now?

[identity profile] goblinpaladin.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
Wow, Ronalds sounds pretty darn awesome.

[identity profile] highlyeccentric.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 04:48 am (UTC)(link)
he had his drawbacks.
he was aggravatingly cheerful. and said functional grammar class was dreadful, really. but it was, on the other hand, LESS dreadful than all the other first year english subjects.
academics look 'tut tut'-ish when you mention Craig, and purse their lips like there's something they want to say against him but won't in front of students.

[identity profile] goblinpaladin.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
OOOOH. MYSTERIOUS.

Maybe you can find out when you are a postgrad? How is that Jenny Green does not know?

[identity profile] highlyeccentric.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
english department, not CMS.

[identity profile] goblinpaladin.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, but JG knows everyone.

(Anonymous) 2008-05-01 07:11 am (UTC)(link)
It's not really an interesting story. I think you might be reading too much into the academics' reactions.

H.

[identity profile] goblinpaladin.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 07:21 am (UTC)(link)
Don't spoil our fun.

I think he was kidnapped by space nazi gypsies, personally. And the academics are under an oath of secrecy.
ext_3638: I'm in ur history, emphasising ur wimminz (Default)

[identity profile] kayloulee.livejournal.com 2008-05-01 11:56 am (UTC)(link)
Space nazi gypsies in a submarine with lasers and ninja bears, obviously.
ext_3638: I'm in ur history, emphasising ur wimminz (Default)

[identity profile] kayloulee.livejournal.com 2008-05-02 04:07 am (UTC)(link)
Yep!
(reply from suspended user)