I’m doing some research on Anglo-Dutch relations in the mid-seventeenth century. This means, among other things, paging through EEBO results. At the top of the sixth page of results, I found this:

The Dutch-mens pedigree or A relation, shewing how they were first bred, and descended from a horse-turd, which was enclosed in a butter-box. Together with a most exact descripton of that great, huge, large, horrible, terrible, hideous, fearful, … prodigious, preposterous horse that shit the same turd; who had two faces on one head, the one somwhat resembling the face of a man, the other the face of a horse, the rest of his body was like the body of an horse, saving that on his shoulders he had two great fish finns like the finns of whales, but far more large: he lived somtime on land, but most in water; his dyet was fish, roots, … A very dreadful accident befel him, the fear hereof set him into such a fit of shiting, that he died thereof: … Also how the Germans following the directions of a conjurer, made a very great box, and smeared the in-side with butter, and how it was filled with the dung which the said monstrous horse shit: out of which dung within nine days space sprung forth men, women, and children; the off-spring whereof are yet alive to this day, and now commonly known by the name of Dutchmen; as this following relation will plainly manifest.

And that’s just the title.

Today’s Perfect Stars comic (”Very Inaccessible Comics”) is sheer lit-dorky brilliance.

Our Clarissa reading group met for the first time Friday night. About twelve of us, mostly students and a few professors, are reading the book in something approaching real time, with a bit of shifting between now and mid-April to even the reading load from week to week. We have different prior experiences of the text: some have read it before, some have taught it, some have abandoned it after valiant past effort. Some have read (shudder) the abridged version — including me. (It was assigned when I was a callow first-year in my very first college English class.) Some of us have examined the HRC’s editions last semester, looking illustrative ellipses for our exhibit. We’re all excited about reading it, because we’re dorks. The reader-response consensus to date: Clarissa is saucier than one might expect, and everybody is impatient for Lovelace’s letters to begin.

I brought lemon poppyseed cookies, baked at the last minute from a recipe I’d never made before. They’re a bit of work, but they turned out to be delicious — light, sharp with lemon and crumbly-sweet. (I used another teaspoon of lemon zest in the dough, which does require a few more spoonfuls of flour, at least at Austin levels of humidity.) I’d been thinking about making oatmeal raisin cookies, but, as one of the professors attending said, those are too comforting. This book needs something a little acidic to suit it.

Icicles in bed

Originally uploaded by Katharine B.

It’s the first day of the spring semester, technically, and we’re having an ice day. I’ve been trying not laugh too hard about this, or be too much of a “snow snob,” as T. said, but I can’t help it — the last time Smith closed for weather, I think we had about three feet of snow, and the college hadn’t closed for thirty years before that.

So far this means hot chocolate with amaretto, reading the NY Times online, and a bit of Okami. No word on whether UT will close tomorrow, as well, though the forecast does contain more freezing rain.

I took this photo from my bed this morning; hence the upside-down icicle parade.

And it is, in fact, snowing. Just a bit.

Friday I looked at a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Divine Comedy, with marginal notes in Latin. Tiny, spidery, beautiful pale blocks of notes, accompanied by sketched “manicules” — also known as digits, hands, fists, or indices, apparently — pointing out important passages in the main text. At least two different annotators had worked on the text; I’m sure there were more, but I could see two definite unique scripts (and drawing styles). Some of the manicules had sweet petal-like sleeves. Some had wrists like pretzels.

For another class, I pulled several copies of Friedrich Rehberg’s Drawings faithfully copied from Nature, at Naples (1794) — Piroli’s engravings of Rehberg’s drawings of Emma Hamilton’s Attitudes, that is. They’re more striking than they were in the modern reprint I first saw, and I still can’t understand why so many modern critics call them “failed” drawings. (More on that whenever I get my paper on visual representations of Emma worked up as an article.) Two of the copies are printed entirely on bright orange paper, which is odd.

I looked at The Waste Land, ostensibly to study its notes & glosses — but, being a stereotypical literature geek, I’ve been obsessed with that poem since my freshman year of high school, and those notes are so familiar that I can hardly see them as paratext any longer. They’re like a little friendly murmur under the melody. A professor I TA’d for several years ago called the tone and apparatus of the poem elitist, and, while my students seemed to sympathize with his complaint, I couldn’t. Whatever Eliot meant to impart, those notes were a promise, when I read them first. This is how much I know, how much I’ve read and understood of the world; you can read and know and understand this much, too.

Last Monday night, Kelly Link gave a wonderful reading at the Joynes Reading Room at UT. It was followed by one of the most interesting Q&As I’ve ever attended, pleasant chatting over food (provided by the Joynes Reading Room, hurrah), and then an even more delightful dinner at El Chile. Kelly read a story called “The Wrong Grave,” which will be published next year. I think it set the tone for the evening — when we weren’t talking about publishing, at dinner, we mostly told creepy stories (of ghosts and of brains, which can be just as scary). It was, in fact, a lovely night.

Tomorrow morning I present a paper on Charlotte Charke in my bibliography class, and then it’s grading, more paper-writing, and more grading until mid-December. I promise to post at least once more before Christmas.

I ended up seeing The Prestige last weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. (No spoilers here, just general comments.) It’s a big movie in some ways, grandiose, and still not quite as good as Memento — it’s not as sharp or strange or haunting, less disturbingly possible — but mean, tight, and clever. It mostly made up for the awfulness of Batman Begins.

I’ve seen some comments about the movie feeling hollow, or failing to earn its emotional resolution. If someone could point out to me what emotional resolution Nolan was trying to earn, I’d be intrigued. It’s a story about life-warping obsession; it’s hollow for a reason.

I wanted one more turn in the story, though. Or, rather, I wanted the movie itself to pull a final sly trick on me, something I’d only realize later. Did anybody else want that, too?

My life-warping obsession, these days, is the eighteenth century. Here’s what I’m working on now:

1. Charlotte Charke project.
2. Project for Lit. of Maritime Empire class — possibly Henry Neville, possibly Samuel Foote?
3. Teaching, as always. Lots of essays coming in tomorrow morning.
4. Label for small class-designed exhibit in the HRC: ellipses in Evelina.
5. Kelly Link’s upcoming reading! (November 6, 7:30 pm, the Joynes Reading Room at UT. More details very soon.) Wheee.
6. C18 interest group for the department? First idea: reading Clarissa in real time.

I’m writing this post from the courtyard in between the HRC and the English buildings, via the HRC’s wireless connection. Oddly enough, there’s no reliable wireless in the English building. This courtyard is one of my favorite places to sit on campus, though, so I don’t mind.

It’s been a crazy week. I had a presentation Monday, a class observation Tuesday, and a short paper due today, and I feel drowsy and slow. I’m looking forward to a relatively restful weekend full of sushi, reading for my paper project on Charlotte Charke and grading some short assignments — probably with my apartment windows open, as it’s finally cooled off. Perhaps we’ll go see a movie. Any opinions to offer on The Science of Sleep, The Prestige, or Marie Antoinette?

Someday, this blog will contain regularly-updated content. And by “someday” I meant “possibly in December, when I have a moment to think.” Right now, I have rather too much grading and reading to allow for original thought. So: here are a few lists. Some are hierarchical; some are not.

My favorite book-ogling experiences in the HRC thus far:

1. Chaucer, Cardigan manuscript of the Canterbury Tales.
2. Two of Oscar Wilde’s letters, which I transcribed for class earlier this week — both were just a sheet front and back, written from France, before his trial. In the first he asks a friend for a loan of ten pounds; in the second, to a different friend, he explains that he’s switched hotels because the previous one kept sending his bill up every morning with his coffee. Poor Oscar. He had lovely big messy handwriting, only a few words to a line.
3. Shakespeare, First Folio, Norton facsimile (as previously explained).
4. Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1891. Like a cracked whip on the page. One of the editions had a facsimile of a poem in the first few pages — and, shockingly, her dashes are just little dots! She had a big sprawly script, too — for some reason I’d always thought of her as someone who would’ve written in little cramped letters. I’m glad I was wrong.
5. Defoe, Colonel Jack: married FIVE TIMES to FOUR WHORES, says the long title, the capital letters rubricated. I think Defoe had some kind of rule for himself: the last phrase in a long title must contain a complete falsehood. (Crusoe does this, too — “rescued by pyrates,” my ass.)
6. Taylor’s Workes, with a triple dedication, and each dedicatee given his own delightfully obsequious epigram.
7. Hooke’s Micrographia — the illustrations!
8. Johnson’s Dictionary — the heft!

Noteworthy events of the last month or so:

• Having my first conference paper proposal — on the romance plot and Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote — accepted for the ASECS conference in March. There was much rejoicing.
• Finding an excellent space (the Joynes Reading Room) for Kelly Link’s upcoming reading at UT. More on this as it approaches.
• Having another dissertation idea pop into my head. Er, hello.
• Follett opening their first new flagship bookstore, Intellectual Property, right next to campus. They have literary criticism in their clearance section! And they gave me a free tote bag. I’m easily won.

The best things I’ve bought at the farmer’s market recently:

• squash blossoms (which I cooked this way, with the addition of a bit of cornmeal to the batter — they were excellent over rice with teriyaki sauce)
• banana and cinnamon empanada baked by a local Brazilian restaurant
• local spinach — I was in spinach withdrawal
• blueberry bran muffin

With T.’s encouragement, I bought okra today — at the co-op rather than the farmer’s market, but it’s local stuff. I’ve only eaten it twice in my life. This must mean something about my level of Texas acculturation, but I’m not quite sure what.

Last Friday I got to touch the Cardigan manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. You can see pores in the vellum, and on one of the last pages, somebody long ago drew a faint outline of a woman in the wide margin of a right-hand leaf. If I recall correctly, she’s wearing a saucy hat.

I also looked at the 1818 Frankenstein: on the inside cover of each volume, the owner wrote, 6 days. I assume that’s how long it took her to read? (I’m guessing gender based on handwriting.) And, while less exciting from a my-god-that’s-old point of view, I looked through a Norton facsimile of the First Folio. I’d never sat down and read the Epistle to the great variety of readers before, but it’s really wonderful. Here’s the beginning:

To the great Variety of Readers. From the most able, to him that can but spell : There you are number’d. We had rather you were weighd. Especially, when the fate of all Bookes depends upon your capacities : and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well ! It is now publique, & you wil stand for your priviledges wee know : to read, and censure. Do so, but buy it first.

I’m taking a bibliography class that requires lots of hours in the HRC, ogling books, so you’ll probably get to hear about all the lovely things I look at this semester. This week it’s a series of Joyce manuscripts, which I imagine I’ll be less enthused about; but who knows? Books can be so charming in their physical selves.