beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I did not like it.

I'm trying to sort out which bits I disliked were performance and which were Shakespeare.
( Read more... )

You know that thing where you've studied and studied and now you have a deadline that's suddenly a week closer than it was when you sat down and decided to devote a week to working on this project and what you basically have is a book full of highlighter and a blank page?
I have that thing. ( Read more... )

I went to London!
0830 to 2100 door to door, with between 1200 and maybe 1700 spent in art gallery.
I went to the National Gallery and saw art up to Charles I, and a couple other pictures in passing. I listened to half the guided tour before it went well out of my timeframe. It started with The Ambassadors, and I guess what we learned in class was pretty good cause I pretty much knew all that stuff.
I have postcards now of many of the good bits.
Then we left that one and went next door to the portraits and looked at Tudor and Elizabethan portraits.

I think today I saw most of the pictures we've studied in class.
They are much bigger in real than in posters.
Also the colors have to be seen to be believed.

I didn't buy any books, mostly cause the big shop was by the other entrance from where we'd stashed our coats. I did get a dozen postcards. But they're all very pretty.
I resisted getting a A0 reproduction of anything, even if it would be really cool, cause I haven't got that much wall. Also cause I was going to spend that money on fixing the laptop.

The timing of today worked pretty much as planned, except I had not factored in that leaving the art place at everyone-leaves time means all of London is also leaving, and that means they're all trying to fit in to the same train. OMG remind me to never ever do that again. *Shudders*

So I spent... 7 hours travel and 5 hours looking at things? Hmmm, better ratio than when I went to the Doctor Who exhibition.

Home now. Had a bath. No offence to any individual bit of London, but put it all together and there's many many humans and I think any given line of sight had more people in it than Dereham streets do in an hour and then they all crammed in to the six feet around the doors on the tube train. And I had to hold on to a pole that like everyone else in London had been holding on to. And... argh. So I may be having a lot of baths soon.

But I looked at many many many many many pictures today, and the plan worked, and I only had trouble breathing when there were too many people to have the actual space necessary, so I think that's a multi point win.

Now I shall eat my pasta and sauce and remind myself to actually pack something not chocolate or pancake based next time and then to sleep.

(Pictures! Cool! And really big!)

I have a bouncy happy feeling of Things Done now, even though the Things, in general, did not get very Done.

I went to Renaissance lesson and contributed intelligently.
This was massively helped by having read the footnotes and handouts.
... I purely do not understand why people do lessons without doing the reading.

There was Working In Groups again. Unfortunately I'm tethered to the wall six feet away from others, so it was a bit more Shouting At Groups. Teach asked them to move to me but nobody actually did. I'm beginning to think I'm secretly a skunk and nobody telled me.

Working In Groups would feel a bit less futile if there was more Working. I mean, even after the becoming groups phase, there wasn't very good working. The task was to work on the opening soliloquy (did I spell that right?) of Dr Faustus, suggesting how we would stage it, with Renaissance clothes and props but a modern sensibility to the acting and directing. I kind of gave up on Groups and worked through the lines up to him dismissing logic. Then I looked up and tuned in to the rest of the group, and they were discussing how to dress up the Good and Evil Angels and how to get them on stage. I pointed out we were stopping several lines before that and only doing the bit with only Faustus talking. Then I went back and did some more up to when he gives up on medicine. I look up again, and they're talking about how Faustus should walk on carrying a laptop.
... I wonder if these people ever listen even a tiny bit and point out that, not only does that not fit the brief, but it does not fit thematically. He's frustrated with the limitations of knowledge, having studied everything available to him at the time. Give him a laptop and an internet connection and... well, we decided he'd sell his soul for such a thing, and I said I know the feeling.
... if he had the internet to study, he would not go to hell?
... this is not the usual idea about the impact of the net on morality...
( Read more... )
Y'all are probably less fascinated with Dr Faustus than I am right now, but as ever with drama I'm finding the more I get in to the details the more interesting it gets.

Lesson done I had an hour before an appointment so I listened to Brief Lives on audio CD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_Lives
Wiki mentions 'colorful gossipy tone'. What it doesn't mention is that it is, in parts, bloody *hilarious*. ( Read more... )
The meeting I was waiting for went less well. The saga of the laptop battery continues. ( Read more... )
After all that I'm up to 5 different people consulted... no, depends if you count the tech support guy and the people on the desks who say the other people aren't there... Ah, it might be up to nine. Which, hey, lucky!
So tomorrow I start again with a new set of phone numbers.

Yes it would be easier for me to pay for it out of pocket, but it's £92, ninety two pounds that assorted experts thought was already covered by the money already paid, and also having consulted those nine different people just giving up feels silly.

So then I went into town and bought lunch (vegetable pasties still of win) and headed for the UEA library with Huge Heavy Book OF DOOM to give back. The book is Civilization of Renaissance Europe, or something near to that, and it is Very Huge Indeed. I've carried it up and back to Norwich... 3 times? Due to failure to acutally get to the library. Today I got all the way there! Yaay me!
... the returns machine was broken.
There's a returns slot by the reception desk that should, probably, work just as well, but, well.

I spent an hour looking at pictures, specifically Boticelli's illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy. Gorgeous stuff. I borrowed a translation of Dante, though not the one I wanted, because someone was sitting in front of the shelf with their work spread out and since I couldn't see the book I wanted from standing either side of them I decided not to risk the chance that all the fuss of moving them might not result in finding the thing anyway.
I also borrowed a book on Classical and Christian references in Renaissance Poetry, which would have been more use before the poetry exam but still connects to one of the major themes of the semester. Teach can't lend her copy out because it is read to death and falling to bits, as she repeatedly tells us, so I shall see what is so cool about it.

Then I caught the bus home.
I got out a stop early and went through the supermarket and remembered to buy orange juice.

... *reads all that list*
... okay, so, yes, Things were indeed Done.

And now I have donuts.
... and sleepy.
... I think I had 4 hours sleep last night.

the good news is I have decided I like sonnets. I dislike the thread of misogyny and woman blaming that runs through many of the petrarchan or courtly love type ones, all that 'you're so unfair and unfeeling and horrible and all these bad words and if you're not you got to prove it by shagging me'. :eyeroll: Annoying. But ones that are all talking about love and how much you love and how confusing love is and how good the beloved is, that's kind of cool. Mostly though I like sonnets because they have a fixed form, they're short, they've got the volta in one of very few places, they've got a handful of rhyme schemes, and yet you can say almost anything with them. Bloody clever.

the bad news is I am totally going to bork this exam. I know a ton about the renaissance now that I didn't know when this semester started. That's a win. I've done a ton of studying. I've read books. I've read essays. I've looked stuff up on JSTOR. I've read life stories and got a feeling for how the Elizabethan court worked and realised it's so the tip of the iceberg I could happily poke around in there for years. This is all great. But can I use all that to write for ninety minutes on two sonnets? I would first have to know where to start. And, crucially, choose two and only two sonnets.

They have to both be by Sidney purely because I never got around to reading about anyone else. I'm tempted to pick a Shakespeare and compare a discourse of patronage and money references with the favour of princes political references, the pro poet with the courtier. But I'd have to know more Shakespeare to do that. And, rather unfortunately, I'd have to know more Sidney. I don't know how I don't know enough, but there you go, I look at the poems and I'm just a bit lost.

Can I go back to writing stories? Or reading them. Life stories and histories are apparently just as fun as fictions if I find the right threads to follow. Incredibly frustrating in a feminist way of course, because reality frequently is, but still fascinating.

But no. I cannot go talk about biographical references in Sidney's poems, not least because they were probably part of a game and the poetic persona of Astrophil might have been made up to cheer up the Stella lady, or because she asked for poems. It might be like a fic challenge, rather than your actual adulterous romance. Can't spend too long on his real life when all the books agree that's just one thread. And, also, I have to do close reading to bring in any such references, and... *blinks in vague incomprehension*

I'm sure I know what all these words mean. I looked up the difficult ones. If I could pick two and only two sonnets I could look up each and every one. But nooooo. Concentration fail.

Astrophel and Stella 1, 2, 3, 5, 23, 31, 52, 54, 67, 71, 72, 81, 107, 108

'Petrarchan love is a game in which three powerful discourses meet and join hands: love, religion and politics'
Examine evidence of these three discourses and of any conflict and contradictions between these in the two sonnets you have chosen.

There's other quotes I could start with but that love/religion/politics one is so my sort of thing in the general way.

Have to pick one from early and one from late, to demonstrate the divided structure of sonnet sequences, how they change (in this case from idealisation/frustration to outright physical desire, iirc). If I pick 1 or 5 I have to be really excellently good because we've been over them in class in detail and I'd have to get more out of them, and I wouldn't, really.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/stella.html

Here, have a read, see what you think...
*sigh*
*headdesk*

Right. Tomorrow, teach will tell us how to answer so we pass. I hope.
Tonight I sleep.


ETA: So this would be the pre-exam panic attack on schedule then? Yes.
I just remembered why spending last weekend partying was not, in fact, the entirely stupid choice.
I need to learn to relax.

I saw a wol on the bus! Erm, Owl. Yes. I can type it the right way around even if I never can say it without slowing right down.
I see magpies often and often, but today there was a lovely big owl sitting on a tree that turned its head right around to watch the bus go past. Win!
Also I had chocolate biscuits. So I has much happy.

I started today not happy at all, grumpy, feeling ill, and with a red bill from college to sort out. Blah.

The red bill was duly sorted, ( Read more... )

Then there was a lesson on Renaissance sonnet sequences.
( Read more... )

And I borrowed another Ovid book, this one the Erotic Poems. Teach read out a bit in class, and the dude was not subtle. This should be fun.

... also, I kind of want to take it to the Hub, on the offchance I could get certain persons to read bits out...

... don't know yet, have only heard that one section...
... also, everyone there is Torchwood geeks, but that doesn't mean they're classical poetry geeks. Is possibly not a great plan.

I need something to keep my attention on poetry. Imagining it in a Welsh accent may well help. Or American. Certain Americans. Or... well, anyways, voices.
... I guess I can see Teacher's point about 'aloud'.

Thursday we will be studying Shakespeare sonnets, which will be fun. Also Mary Wroth, the one woman on this bit of the course. So far the crit essay we're referring back to doesn't help specifically with reading those ones because it was pre-feminism so hadn't heard of her.

... yes, got to love those up to the minute sources in English Lit.

I read a couple more essays from one of the Renaissance books. I should put the title in here but it's on the other side of the room and I can't be bothered. Something about Renaissance Writing.

one was about patronage. ( Read more... )

I am grumbly. This isn't the kind of analysis I like. I like stuff that I can translate into ways to get on and write better stuff.

Operation 'read the handouts' has been derailed by finding that both Blackboard pdf and photocopied paper versions are really bad copies with some pages missing, words chopped off, and a duplicate page at the end that chops off the vast majority of the footnotes.
Luckily it has the full cite on the top and I can dig it out of JSTOR.
Which means reading it in pdf on my computer, but that's okay.

How can someone just not notice it goes from page 1 to 4 in the middle of a sentence?
and teacher said this handout has been used for years.
*blinky*

I was not late for class this morning.
Well, technically I was, by about five minutes, but the teacher was still stuck trying to make the DVD play properly. I don't think it counts if the teacher takes ten minutes to get organised after you arrive. I had time to get the computer set up before I had to take notes, so that's okay.
The renaissance is interesting. I must email my answers from the lesson to the teacher. I shall first leave the computer to defrost. I just got in and computers don't like temperature changes.
I've done a bunch of reading and it's all interesting.
After the lesson I got a vegetable pasty and a cookie (and the cookie froze in my pocket, which was an interesting taste sensation). I looked in the shop for Doctor Who audios but there were only 4 I don't got yet and I wasn't sure I wanted them. I think they're endings and I want beginnings.
Then I caught a bus to the UEA. Talked to E from the S3. Then took books back to library.
Well, book. Overdue. But hey, it's back now.
Then I spent the afternoon in the oversize art books section looking at the Renaissance art. I looked at one book all about jewelry. Because I know what will hold my attention. It links to what we were saying in class today because the half of the jewels that didn't hark back to the Bible were linking to Ovid. Oh, and there were some boats, some jewish engagement rings, and some portraits of royal people.
Then I looked at portraits in other books. Royal people don't look very consistent. Their jewels are more consistent than their face. Some artists must have been very flattering, or else some were rather unwisely unflattering. It's interesting.
I caught the bus back home from outside the UEA.
I listened to the BFA Dreamtime on the bus today. It was a bit... well, I don't know much about Australian aboriginal cultures and Uluru, and I'm not thinking I know more after listening to this audio, but it fits poorly with most other DW. I mean, usually there's science and logic to find out about. In Dreamtime there's an old guy in a rock and everything everyone believed turns out to be trueish. That's... wonky. I dislike it. Even if the solution was to get everyone talking to each other, which is always a good one.

Then there was snow.
I have decided snow is much better the other side of glass.
I have also realised that I should check the severe weather warnings *before* deciding to spend the day in the library, because they were all orange and getting snowed on was predicted, so it wasn't very clever.

But I am home now, and warm, and I will shortly have pancakes.
win.

I read more of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
I'm slowing down as it gets closer to the end. I think it's because there's only so many times you can read how everyone dies / turns into birds / turns into crying rocks before you're all 'wait, did I read this bit already? no? whose name was it? which bird? why did it matter again?' And then I put the book down again.

I did like the bit where Ulysses and Ajax get in an argument. It's basically a bit argue between a hero who is good at hitting things until they die, and thinks he's therefor the best, and a hero who is good at persuading other people to hit things until they die while he sneaks around back and steals the important stuff, and thinks that works better. Fighter vs trickster, soldier vs general, sort of thing. Ulysses the tricksy wins, of course. I quite like the bit where he explains how secretly everything everyone else did was an achievement of Ulysses, because without him they'd all have run away or something. The bare faced cheek of it, even if it is true within the story, is quite brilliant.

Also, Circe rocks. I realise she's supposed to be the baddie, and the way she mostly does stuff because some bloke doesn't love her is a bit annoying, but she just goes around changing people into things in large numbers and, and I think this is unique so far, changing them back into humans when she feels like it. And, okay, when Ulysses tells her to. But it's just fun. Greedy mens into pigs! Big long description of what that felt like!

BTW, in this translation, 'groin' means snout and 'tush' means tusk. It's, erm, easy to misread. And somewhat boggling.

Astonied means astonished, standing as if turned to stone. The story explains. Just in case we were wondering.

I forget who was doing what to who when I gave up for the evening, but I predict someone will shortly fly away and someone else will turn into a rock. There was only once it was a flying rock, when a Cyclops threw it, but that was nice for variety. Also it managed the triple and turned into a river too.

Okay, so I'm a bit bored and snarky now.

There's good bits and proper sad tragedy and bits where you get really annoyed at someone who is about to get theirs messily and all that, it's just it keeps on happening.

I want to swap and read about miraculous births and stones being turned into people. Which, come to think, there was a bunch of at the start of the story. But I'm fed up of everyone dying and then the story following the next nearest people until all of them die too. People die, we get it, can they do something else interesting too? Sheesh.

So. Anyway. Book. Classic. Interesting.

"The players also made use of an elaborate range of properties. Henslowe's 1598 inventory includes tombs, a chariot, a bedstead, and other properties fairly often used, but also two steeples, several trees, two moss-banks, a hellmouth, and the city of Rome. The last item may have been a painted hanging"

... may?

Theatre: Bigger on the inside.



Speaking of, the Globe theatre had 20 or 24 sides according to this book, and it was the Rose that had 14.
We do not live in Doctor Who.
*sigh*

(Book is Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama. Which I technically don't need to read for months yet. But it's interesting.)