I am a god (little g) of Research

I have to take a break from the paper I'm working on before I proof it, print it, and turn it in. I think that you should have to feel my pain and here's how I'll try to make you. Remember your bibliographies in college (or high school for that matter)? Here's what one looks like in Grad school. This is actually a shorter one for me with it's twelve entries (I'm still missing one; a video of which I can't find the info). This is for my paper "Order and Disorder in Dryden's Conquest of Granada."

Armistead, Jack M. “The Higher Magic in Dryden’s Conquest of Granada.” Papers on
Language and Literature 26.4 (1990): 478-88.

Brockett, Oscar. History of the Theatre. 8th ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon,
1999

Coltharp, Duane. “Radical Royalism: Strategy and Ambivalence in Dryden’s
Tragicomedies.” Philological Quarterly 78.4 (1999): 417-37.

Davis, Paul. “Dryden and the Invention of Augustan Culture.” He Cambridge Companion
to John Dryden. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 75-91.

Dryden, John. The Works of John Dryden. Vol. 11. Ed. H. T. Swedenberg jr. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978

Ebbs, John Dale. The Principle of Poetic Justice Illustrated in Restoration Tragedy.
Saltzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1973.

Kropf, C.R. “Political Theory and Dryden’s Heroic Tragedies.” Essays in Theatre 3.2
(1985): 125-138.

Mathew, George. “Sexism in Dryden’s Criticism; From Text to Context.” CIEFL Bulletin
14.1-2 (2004): 93-112.

Reinert, Thomas. “Theatre and Civility in Dryden’s ‘Essay’.” ELH 65.4 (1998): 857-76.

Thompson, James. “Dryden’s Conquest of Granada and the Dutch Wars.” Eighteenth
Century: Theory and Interpretation 31.3 (1990): 211-26).

Warren, Victoria. “From Restoration to Hollywood: John Dryden’s Conquest of Granada
and James Cameron’s Terminator Films.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary
Culture, 1660-1700 27.2 (2003): 17-40.

Welcome Freshmen

I learned today that I will have been given a teaching assistantship for next year. I will be teaching a section of Freshman English Composition. So if you know any high school seniors who will be coming to UCO next year, warn them now.

Entertainer Number XII

I am giving you some more of my entertaining primary research of eighteenth-century junk. The following appeared in the 12th issue of "The Entertainer" on January 22, 1718. It is purportedly a letter form the President of a Mug House in the city [of London] to the President of the Constitution Club at Oxford. It is obviously a fake made to demonize a certain class of people but it is fun to read, nonetheless.

Sir,
As we are embark'd in one common design, I thought I could do
no less than congratulate you upon your late advancement. And, believe me,
that
the majority of voices you gain'd it by, is a greater honour that all the
Liberal Sciences in that place [Oxford] can confer. THere seems to be in this
distinction between your CLUB and ours; yours is a constitution of CAPS, and
ours is a constitution of CLUBS. I am order'd by our society to propose to you a conprehension; that the
same rights, priviliges, and immunities may be in common to
either society; and that a coalition may be more confirm'd, we demand the
privilege of being admitted ad eundem.

We doubt not but we cab
pass our examinations, and shan't disgrace your
society; we love mischief
for mischief's sake, and can bend like a blade, can
swear and forswear to
every point of the compass, insult magistracy, drink
damnation on
Alphabetically, break windows, demolish lanterns, knock down old
women,
purloin swords, steal hats, and MOHOCK the Tories.

We are as great
heroes in evil as your selves; like masked miffes [misses?: f and s
were used interchangeably in
18th century], we
own our selves children of darkness.
When danger is remote, we are commonly
boldest.

I, and four more of our gang bravely beat a boy of seven
years old, and our
Vice President held a quarter of an hour's skirmish with
a blind basket-woman of threescore and
ten [seventy years], and had like
to come off victorious.

Litany of Woe

I am a veritable collection of complaints! And I know that neither of my readers is interested n my problems but it makes me feel better and it fills copy space to get it all out there. Yesterday I went to my doctor to have a sebacious cyst removed from my shoulder. It was not a big deal at all but it was unsightly and can become infected so is is best to have them removed. Since a three cm in diameter chunk of my body was removed, I was stitched up and placed on Amoxicillin to prevent infection to the wound. It might help to not that I NEVER go to the doctor so I NEVER take prescription medication. That means that my body is totally unprepared and so I get to suffer side effects. So I have spent the last 24 hours with my stomach tied in knots and a splitting headache (headache is not listed as side affect so apparently it is just bad timing.)

Oh yeah, and I am spending my spring break writing a paper and catching up on reading... while all the under-grads are in Florida spending their parents' money.

The Dog Days of March

The season hasn't even started, but Gary Sheffield (formerly of the Yankees, now of the Tigers) is already clearing benches. Well actually, it was Todd Jones and Sox third base coach DeMarlo Hale. But it all started from Sheffield.

GO SOX!

The Fable of the Cannibal Moraliz'd

One of the most tedious and most rewarding things about graduate school is Primary Research. That means pouring over rare books on microfilm. That's what I spent an entire day doing today. I found an 1801 article probably by Charles Brockden Brown reviewing his own book Wieland, as well as his critique of a sermon given by William Brown over the evils of the whims of French enlightenment thinking, a tabloid from 1718, and a literary periodical from 1756 with review of an article about venereal disease where the writers say, "We may without ceremony venture to pronounce this performance a nauseous composition of most wretched trash, wrapt in the vilest language imaginable."

Also of note was something I found with no use to me but to entertain, which I thought I would share with my reader. It is entitled "The Fable of the Cannibal Moraliz'd" and was printed in the magazine Memoirs for the Curious in 1701. I'm giving it to you in its entirety with emphasis and spelling intact, exceot where I have substituted the modern "s" where the text had "f."

THE fable is this. A certain English ship, passing by the
coast of Madagascar, toward the end of last summer; some of the Ships
Crew, taht were sent on Shoar to take in Fresh Water, make Report of a man of a
Prodigious Size, and all over hairy like to a Satyr, which they saw upon the
Land coming to Drink. THe Name of the Vessal must be called the Tempest, and the master of it is Mr. Goodman: But as for the
Man-Monster, because no Name could fit him, he must be Content to pass without
one. However to distinguish him, the Crew do call him the CANNIBAL; for
Reasons that are pretty Obvious. They say, he Lives by Blood.: and that
his greatest Delicacy to Feed , is Human Flesh. Now, there was no
Attempting to Seize on Him by main Strength; his Force being almost as
Prodigious, as was his Bulk; which was so great, that Goliah was hardly
Worthy to be his Squire: Wherefore, Circumventing him by a Stratagem, they left
him a Strong and Sweet Spanish Potion to swallow, by which means, both his Head
and Heels turn'd Giddy. And thus was he Bound, by the Direction of Mr. Goodman, and by his Crew, led in Chains Triumphantly. So he that
appear'd before as a Mighty walking Oak, is himself now tied to the Mast of a
Ship: And is a spectacle as much of Horrour, as he was before of
Admiration. So for the Fable: being Believ'd by many Thousands, about the
end of this last Month for a Reality.

The MORAL

Success often makes men Drunk. And Policy, is to be Preferr'd before all the Strength in the
World, be it never to Prodigious.