Strong Verbs Are Just Better

It is approximately 12 hours until my thesis is due.

I have finished the basic editing. Some quotes to put in, some lists to make, footnotes to check. Oh, and a consistency error to smooth out if I get time. (But can I be BOTHERED?)

LOOOK AT THIS EMAIL I JUST RECIEVED!

Dear Amy,

I am delighted to tell you that your paper, "Gender, Power and Heroism in Ælfric’s Judith,” has been selected by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship as the Best Paper by an Undergraduate Student in Medieval Feminist Scholarship. We had fourteen essays to consider and the field was very strong. The members of the prize committee were especially impressed with your ability to handle a complex range of sources and theories to address a provocative and important subject.

You will receive five years’ membership to the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and your paper will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Medieval Feminist Forum. I will contact Professor Felice Lifshitz, the current Issue Editor of MFF, and Michelle Sauer, the Managing Editor of MFF, who will work with you on the final edits necessary to prepare your essay for publication.

Please accept my congratulations and my best wishes for continued success in your work.

Very sincerely,
*IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE SMFS*

Verily! I

* Was engaged in paid employment for 5 hours this morning.

* Went to the library and obtained many books on the Chanson de Roland, and also some books on AS England including the Encomium Emmae Reginae and an overnight loan of David Hills Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England.

* Read said Atlas. All of it, except for the bits about coinage and salt mines. Observed many interesting things (eg- King Cnut, once crowned King, never went north of Oxford or east of Shrewsbury).

* Translated fifty-odd lines of Beowulf

and

* Read 500-odd lines of Roland.

I am smug now.

* tonight, it looks like I get to bed before one am
* I have fingerless gloves and new socks
* my chapter plan took me only an hour or so. About a factor of twenty LESS than I spent angsting about my lack of secondary sources and Stuff To Say.
* turns out i DO have Stuff to Say, straight from the primary source. AND
* I spotted something Jonathan Wilcox didn't. *smugness dance*

Have I mentioned my HUUUUUGEMONGOUS academic crush on Jonathan Wilcox?
Um. Said crush has been *severely* delimited to the strictly academic realm, courtesy of that... stylish... profile photo...

2500 words in seven hours!

What was supposed to be a short half-chapter-y thing blew out into a giant 4000 word essay, but DUDE I AM SO AWESOME. *Does the dance of Manuscript Comprehension* I have *a* purpose, several uses, and several audiences. OMG I AM FANTASTIC. *And* analyses of two texts. WOOT WOOT WOOTY WOOTINGTON.

ed: like I said last time I properly finished a chapter: this is my crack now. Best feeling ever. Really. And compared to many other good feelings, quite simple (if slow) to achieve.

In other news... It's 2:15 am and I haven't made my bed. This deflates my ego.

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.

WHEEE! I just handed in half a chapter! This is the awesomest feeling ever. *Bouncebouncebounce*

Fortunately, I get to do this again and again, all year. And, unlike undergraduate essays, I don't have to start all over again, it will all keep going and going and WHEEEEEEEE!

On the other hand, my half chapter is already 1000 words over length, and still needs more stuff added to it. Fun.

So I set out to create a manuscript description, happy in the knowledge that no easy-to-use description of Cotton Nero A.i has already been made.
What I want in a MS description:
* items clearly laid out, with modern English descriptions where appropriate
* first lines of homilies in Old English
* texts identified by their common title as well as their MS title
* clear quire divisions within the list
* references to editions
* the ability to scan the description either quire-by-quire OR by content type

Which means a table. Vertical axis numbering items and listing foliation. Horizontal axis listing content type (Insitiutes, laws, homilies, other). So one can scan down the 'homily' column if one so desires, or one can isolate the fifth quire, or whatever. FABULOUS.

BLOODY DIFFICULT TO CREATE IN MS WORD.
An exel table would be fine. Lovely. But difficult to print out and bind into a thesis.
So we have lots of individual one-page tables, which have to be prevented from binding themselves together and aligning cell widths (the Homilies column, for example, having been squashed up when there are no homilies on the page, so as to make space for Institutes).

And then I discover that you can't footnote a table.

This, people, explains why no one has made a user-friendly Manuscript Description of Cotton Nero A.i.
But I will not be defeated! When I am done, the Reader will be able to flick through my table with ease!
Sigh. The Reader will be me, and whatever unfortunate souls mark the thing. Oh, the futility.