Student Research Assistants?

We have a small MA program, and one of the ways the department tries to help these folks financially is with research assistantships.  Faculty apply for help, and get a student assigned for so many hours.

I've tried in the past, but I don't really know how to use student time well.  When I was a grad student, I had a research assistantship, and my task was to independently find everything written on a given text (which I also read), make photocopies, read and annotate/summarize them, and then prioritize them for my supervisor so that he'd know which I thought were most important or interesting for his work.  Then I'd hand over the hard copies.  I also read his works in progress and gave feedback.  I learned a TON doing the research, because it was in my field and his work is really interesting.

I tried to have past students do that sort of work, but it didn't really work out.  They had a harder time finding appropriate resources, and they don't want to take time to read original texts, aren't interested in the field, so don't really feel a benefit to themselves.

I'm thinking of applying for a research assistant this year, and hoping you folks can give me ideas for using their time wisely and well.

Thanks!

Canon Question

I'll explain why later, but for now, I just have a question.  Interpreted broadly, what literature in English written between, say, 1475 and 1700 should every English major have read?

(I'd love to hear why you've chosen your choices, too!)

9 September: London for "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix"

Last Saturday, I went with a colleague here to a symposium, "The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix" at the London Metropolitan Archives.  It was really interesting, fun, and I learned a lot.

One of the most interesting papers for me (because I learned a lot) was Christopher Matusiak's paper on "The Cockpit at War, 1642-1656."  (I may not have the title precisely, because I was taking notes and am reading from them, and not an official document.)

Matusiak argued that despite legislation against theaters/plays, four houses played through to 1649.  According to my notes, these were the Cockpit, Salisbury Court, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.  Even after 1649, three more carried on playing.

[Am I the only one who didn't know that some companies kept playing after 1642???]

According to Matusiak, the companied argued against the validity of the Parliament's ordinances against theaters/playing, since they weren't Acts, since they hadn't been signed by the monarch.  That's interesting, no?

He talked about Christopher Beeston's widow, Elizabeth Beeston, aka Hutchison (also an aka used by Christopher Beeston before he died), who controlled the cockpit for some years, until 1658, when the lease expired.

Another really interesting paper was Stephen Watkins' paper on "Davenant at the Cockpit."  Watkins argued that from 1658-9, Davenant performed three works at the Cockpit, The Siege of Rhodes, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, and The History of Sir Francis Drake.  From what Watkins said, these were sort of opera pieces, with music, and recitatif, rather than what we traditionally think of as plays.  So they may have avoided trouble by not performing plays that were proscribed, but something else.  Watkins pointed out that since the Protectorate was at war with Spain in the 1650s, there might have been a more relaxed attitude towards these performances because of their subject matter.

The Siege of Rhodes had the first legal female actor on the London stage.  And not using cross-dressed boy actors may have made the morality thing less of an issue.  Interesting stuff, for sure!

In my notes about the paper, I wrote "Ballad-vs-Dav[enant]'s play [line break] John Evelyn [line break] 6 May 1659 --> didn't like play."  So either John Evelyn wrote a ballad, or maybe wrote about a ballad and that expressed dislike of the performance.  In either case, it would be evidence that there was a performance.

After the symposium, my colleague and I went to visit the approximate location of the Red Bull, near Haywood's Place now.

We also stopped to see what's left of the well at Clerkenwell, which is weirdly behind a big glass window in an office building.

Milton Lost and Milton Regained

For some reason, over break, I had the desire to reread Lycidas.  It's been a long, long time since I've read it, since, probably, I was preparing for my GREs.  At that time, I was reading in a study group, four of us at a city-located state university that (rumor had it) hadn't been able to buy new books for the library for some years.  We were all in the MA program, and all wanted to go on for a PhD.  So we got together and studied the Norton's, English, American, and World.  We met a couple times a week for most of a summer (all while working, too), and at the end of the summer, we took the GREs.

We worked really well together, each of us pretty much caring about an area, and having taken courses in that area more than the others.  So I helped a lot with the medieval and earlier early modern, and Eve did modern British, and Joy did modern American.  And there was a man whose name I don't remember right now, but he loved Romantics, and so he helped with the Romantics.  He made "Tintern Abbey" work for me, and it wouldn't have without him.

But none of us knew much about what we then called the "long 18th century" and so, well, that was my weakest area. 

And yes, Lycidas was there; I know we read it, and I know I didn't appreciate it.  And over this break, I was thinking, maybe I would get it now?

So when I got back from visiting family, I looked in my school office, and couldn't find my copy of Merritt Hughes.  I think pretty much everyone who studied earlier lit in my era had a Merritt Hughes, right alongside our Riverside Chaucer and our Witherspoon and Warnke.

Anyway, I looked in my school office, where I found an edition of Paradise Lost I used last time I taught it.  And I looked at my home office, where I came up empty.  And when I was at school, I looked again.  And at home, I looked again.  I'm pretty organized about my books.  At school, I have three big shelving units.  Top left shelves are Shakespeare editions.  Middle Left and bottom left is for books I'm using, reference books, oversize books, and some storage.

Middle is criticism, alphabetically by author.  All the way.

Upper right is modern plays.  Then medieval and early modern texts excluding Shakespeare.  Then a few novels and modern poetry and such.

And then reference series (MLA Approaches to Teaching, Cambridge Companions, the sorts of books that I'm likely not to remember the author, but to remember the series.). 

Then there are school stuff: advising manuals, catalogs and such.

At home, in the office, two big shelves: Left is criticism, alphabetically by author.  Right is Shakespeare, then early modern lit by author, then some reference stuff (dictionaries, etc).

Novels are in another room, as are birding books and such.

So, I should have been able to put my hands on Milton right away; he should be there, right after Middleton and before Rowley.  But no.

And this evening, for some reason, I looked again in my home office, and I noticed a thick book in the criticism section with a brown paper bag cover, the sort of cover I put on books that are worn but worth taking care of.  And yes, it was my Merritt Hughes Milton.  What it was doing there, I don't know.

But now I get to reread Lycidas, and I'm hoping I get more out of it than I did the first time.

Blogging with Henslowe!

Someone on my facebook feed posted about this new blog, going day by day through Henslowe's "diary."

Way cool!  Check it out!

Hurray for the Bodleian!

Amidst the doom and gloom (aplenty here in the northwoods), here's great news from the Bodleian Library, in cooperation with the University of Michigan (credit where credit is due)!

Click that link and you're taken to an article about how the Bodleian and U of Michigan are making early texts available to the public for free!

From my short exploration, it looks like you can get full access to keyboarded and coded editions (is there a better term?) of the texts in modern fonts.  So, texts that haven't been keyboarded, you can't see more than the bibliographic information. 

So, if what you're after is the "content" coded in the words, this is fantastic!  It's way easier for most of us to read modern fonts than, say, black letter fonts.  That's especially true when the digital versions are hard to read.

Here's a link to the actual resource hosted at the U of Michigan.  I was able to search right off the bat, and then encouraged to make a guest account to have full access.  I made a guest account (email address and password), and was able to look at a text that was keyboarded, but not one that wasn't keyboarded.

So, basically, this has a lot of the good parts of EEBO without the expense.   You don't get to see digitized images, but for most uses, this is exactly what people need most!

I say, hurray for the Bodleian and the U of Michigan!  This is a boon to book lovers!  Thank you!

Reading Records

It's odd what catches the eye.  I should have counted how many people are listed as "idiots" in the records.  Meanwhile, this caught my eye.  I think she's the wife of this guy, and the daughter of you know who.  I didn't realize Philip Sidney had kids, though.  She's not listed there in the wikipedia entry for Sir Philip.  But she is listed as the daughter of Frances Walsingham in her entry.  But that entry says she died in 1614.  This seems to say that she died in on the 1st of September, 10 James, which I think would be 1613? 

Visiting

I visited a colleague's class on Friday as part of the personnel review process.  It was really good.  There was smart conversation about some interesting texts.  When I have classes go that well, I feel pretty darned good about things.

And tonight, I'm prepping to fill in tomorrow for a different colleague who's ill.  Fortunately, it's comp, and we're all supposed to teach comp in basically the same way using the same basic program.  Frustrating in some ways, but it means that there's a shared vocabulary.  And, theoretically, if someone walks into my class on a given day, they should find themselves in familiar territory, and within a few days, give or take, of their own class.  That is, at this time of the semester, we're all doing the Blue Project, and probably finishing that up and starting the Green Project.  So, my class has peer editing its Blue Project, and has the assignment for the Green one, and we'll begin working on the Green while they put the finishing touches on the Blue and then turn it in.  Voila.

Except the course I'm filling in on tomorrow seems to have cut one of the projects completely. 

I don't really know what's up (the chair and head of comp stuffs do), but it makes me feel like my own abundant inadequacies with this comp program aren't quite as inadequate as I sometimes think.


In other news, tomorrow is the anniversary of a VERY big day in history.  Or at least it was big when it happened.

It's also the anniversary of a mildly famous concert which became, in one form or another, the name of an album that contributed to a rock and roller's rise to fame and fortune.

Anyone want to take a shot at the anniversary game?

Zombie Argument

Here's a book review (well, not quite a book review, more a short commentary that mentions the book it's supposed to review?) about Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy, by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells (Cambridge UP, 2013).

I could take bets that this book won't convince anyone who's already totally convinced that Oxford did it.  In the study.  With a pen.

Periodicity

Here's a really interesting post from JJ Cohen at In the Middle on "Early Modern."

Periodization is both useful and problematic, and Cohen does a good job getting at that.  You should go read!