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gogmagogWell, a little before midnight I packed it in on my paper; unfortunately, there's one major rough spot that I can't rhetorically sand away, so I'm e-mailing my prof to talk about it. D:
Specifically, my argument is that vertical physical/social motion in the Middle English poem Cleanness is the same thing (supported by a look at word usage and the beginning of the poem), and that upward physical and/or social motion is always followed by punishing downward physical and/or social motion. (The poem was written in an era when social mobility was really beginning to increase with urbanization, and you get people like the "new men" who are neither lower-class nor truly upper-class - what's now being called the "middling classes" - so basically I'm saying that the poet is warning his audience against attempting to take advantage of this and rise from their current social class.) This argument pretty much holds true (with the slightest bit of sophistry) for everything I look at - Lucifer, the Flood, the Dead Sea, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar - except for one major incident which kind of has to be a cornerstone of my paper, as it's one of the three major incidents in the poem (the destruction of Sodom and Lot's escape from it). The problem is that in this section, the punishing downward motion comes first, and the upward motion happens afterwards (and they also happen to different people).
On the plus side, my summer class may not be as unpleasant as I was thinking it would be. I just finished one of the readings for the first day, entitled "Dancing With Professors" (you can read it here) which basically argues that academic prose is impenetrable because, and I quote, "professors are the ones nobody wanted to dance with in high school." That is, they're the ones who sat on the bleachers all "I'm thinking serious things in a very dignified way, I wouldn't want to dance even if you ASKED me, go away cretin," and that attitude carried over to academic writing. XD
(In semi-related news, have the Awful Guide to Graduate School. It's funny because it's actually not that far from true.)
Edit: My other reading for class today is pretty good too...how can you not like an article with the sentence "A real book manuscript doesn't look over its shoulder, worrying that Foucault is running after it in a hockey mask"? XDDDDD
Specifically, my argument is that vertical physical/social motion in the Middle English poem Cleanness is the same thing (supported by a look at word usage and the beginning of the poem), and that upward physical and/or social motion is always followed by punishing downward physical and/or social motion. (The poem was written in an era when social mobility was really beginning to increase with urbanization, and you get people like the "new men" who are neither lower-class nor truly upper-class - what's now being called the "middling classes" - so basically I'm saying that the poet is warning his audience against attempting to take advantage of this and rise from their current social class.) This argument pretty much holds true (with the slightest bit of sophistry) for everything I look at - Lucifer, the Flood, the Dead Sea, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar - except for one major incident which kind of has to be a cornerstone of my paper, as it's one of the three major incidents in the poem (the destruction of Sodom and Lot's escape from it). The problem is that in this section, the punishing downward motion comes first, and the upward motion happens afterwards (and they also happen to different people).
On the plus side, my summer class may not be as unpleasant as I was thinking it would be. I just finished one of the readings for the first day, entitled "Dancing With Professors" (you can read it here) which basically argues that academic prose is impenetrable because, and I quote, "professors are the ones nobody wanted to dance with in high school." That is, they're the ones who sat on the bleachers all "I'm thinking serious things in a very dignified way, I wouldn't want to dance even if you ASKED me, go away cretin," and that attitude carried over to academic writing. XD
(In semi-related news, have the Awful Guide to Graduate School. It's funny because it's actually not that far from true.)
Edit: My other reading for class today is pretty good too...how can you not like an article with the sentence "A real book manuscript doesn't look over its shoulder, worrying that Foucault is running after it in a hockey mask"? XDDDDD
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 03:17 am (UTC)And you must share the hockey mask Foucault article <3. There should be a Freddie vs. Jason showdown between all the most obscure, abstract postmodernist crazies.
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Date: 2007-05-16 02:22 pm (UTC)Can you tell I am kind of going through grad school withdrawal right now? Hahaha.