8 April 2025
Well, my TMA 4 result came in, and I’m pretty pleased with the score. I did a bit better than I thought I did, bearing in mind my TMA 3 score. This leaves TMA 5 to do.
I’ve missed a few tutorials recently, and I’ve just bailed out of another one which was about Austen. I think I’m quite mentally tired from everything I’ve been doing recently.
I’ve also finished Confessions, which is a relief. My next step is to work through all the audio bookmarks I’ve selected, and then relate them to the printed text. I have started to go through some of the secondary readings I’ve downloaded. One was a waste of time, but the other was quite surprising; the critic had chosen exactly the same passage I had chosen, but now I’ve got a dilemma. Do I use that same passage and draw on the critics point, or use a different passage? I’ve also got to disentangle Burke and Kant, but I think I’m getting there.
A couple of other things: my registration for A335 is now complete, which is good news. I’ve also downloaded a few articles from various Cambridge Companion texts in anticipation of the EMA. I’ve not transferred them to my Kindle just yet, since I have enough to be getting on with.
Since I’m writing this after lunch, this means that my brain is pretty slow. With this in mind, I’m going to do a bit of semi-mechanical study, which means sorting my Rousseau bookmarks.
9 April 2025
I’ve nearly finished sorting out my Rousseau quotes, which took a bit of doing for one very simple reason: the audiobook version that I’ve been using is a different translation to the Oxford World Classics version that has been recommended to us by the module team! After downloading the Oxford version to my Kindle, I listened to the audio version and did a text search, and couldn’t find any of the passages I had just heard! For a few minutes, I had no idea what was going on. All this meant was that I had to work a bit harder.
I have two more things to do: review some earlier notes about Confessions that I made when I didn’t know how to use the Audible ‘bookmark’ feature, and to connect the passages I’ve selected to the page numbers in my dead tree version of the text.
Although my day job is working with technology, I’m a bit of a technology laggard. This morning, I’ve discovered an interesting podcast called Beyond Shakespeare which looks to be quite an impressive resource. (I also need to start listening to Software Engineering Radio). My next question was: how do I play them on my phone? It turns out I can use Audible, but the interface isn't great, and doesn't let you do easy searching or sorting of podcasts.
10 April 2025
Well, I’ve managed to figure out all the page numbers. It turns out that if you use the Kindle text search feature, it can give you a page number that corresponds to the paper edition, which is really helpful. I’m pretty sure there’s an easier feature, but I haven’t found it yet.
Although this isn’t strictly related to the TMA, I’ve been doing a bit of further exploring around Wikipedia. I’ve found a short biography of a chap called Ira Aldridge. If I was a filmmaker and I had to make a biopic of either Aldridge or Behn, who would I choose? I can’t answer that question. I need to read more about both of them. There’s a link between them both: Aldridge once played an adaption of Behn’s novel Oroonoko. Interestingly, Rousseau had heard about a translation of an adaptation of Oroonoko (p.542; see, I can do page number references now!) Everything is connected, in one way or another. I did a quick search on BBC Sounds, and there’s a couple of programmes about Aldridge, which I’m hoping to find the time to listen to.
Following Behn was an actor and writer called Susanne Centlivre, who has quite a body of work. I’ve never heard of her. Although there’s nothing on BBC Sounds, there a good set of articles about her work in the library, including a biographical summary. Both of her husbands died in duels (she couldn’t half pick ‘em), and apparently ‘played the heroine in her first play, The Perjured Husband’. By the looks of it, her most popular play is The Busie Body. A good search revealed a performance in Southwark in 2012, and a performance in Oxford in 2025. I haven’t found any biographies of Centlivre. I’ll keep looking.
Towards the end of the day, I ended up back at a site called LibriVox, which I first used when listening to recordings of Dubliners. Interesting, it contains plays by both Behn and Centlivre. I had a listen to the start of one play for a couple of minutes. I need to remember this resource.
And another resource; a web database called Theatricalia. A database of historical performances. Now, that’s a cool digital humanities project.
18 April 2025
Whilst on holiday I finished reading Janet Todd’s biography of Aphra Behn. It was a cracking read. I feel as if I’ve learnt a lot, particularly in terms of history, but I have a lot to do to make sense of it all. What I really took away from it all what the way in which Todd detailed the politics of the time, and concerns that influenced what Behn did, and how it influenced the theatre of the time. I found myself doing various Wikipedia searches about various playwrights, kings and characters she mentioned.
With an eye to the EMA, I’ve immediately gone onto a biography of Swift, by Jonathan Damrosch. Although it covers a similar period in history, and points about political machinations are shared, I couldn’t help but feel that Todd covers the history in greater depth. I’ve not got too far into it, but there’s a clear sense that Behn was hugely more accomplished. I read an interesting section where Swift tries to write Pindarics (a form of celebratory poetry), and the overwhelming view was what Swift wasn’t very good at this, whilst Behn clearly excelled. As I read, I’m going to highlight bits that might connect to the EMA question.
Turning to my final TMA, I’ve started to put my ducks in a row. I’m hoping to spend a few hours today making sense of all my highlights. I’ve even gone so far as reading bits of a Roman text (but obviously not in the original Latin). There’s also a tutorial to listen to, which I hope is going to be helpful.
I feel that I vaguely know what I’m doing for TMA 5. I have just got to go ahead and do it.
23 April 2025
I did manage to submit my TMA 5, which I was really pleased about. It was a nice break, but I could have done without catching a joyous combination of norovirus and covid-19, which has been somewhat frustrating and debilitating. I was going to see a production of Richard II at The Bridge theatre, which I was really looking forward to, but all that has been put on hold.
I now think I’m on the mend. I’ve booted up my laptop to read over my TMA, make a few edits, and read over my TMA 1 again. The reason for looking over my TMA 1 again is to make sure that I’m not going to be repeating myself when I get to my EMA. I might also have a rummage in the library to see whether I can find some useful papers. On my informal to do list is a look through the Norton book on literary theory and a listen of a couple of tutorials I’ve missed.
Whilst on my norovirus and covid death bed, I watched an adaptation of Persuasion, which was quite helpful. I was struggling with the audio book when it got to the later chapters; I had no idea what is going on. I’m still waiting to fall in love with Austen (as some of my fellow students clearly are), but it isn’t quite happening. It might still happen.
I also did a tiny amount of prep work for the next module. I listened to an In Our Time podcast about George Elliot. Although I’ve heard of Middlemarch forever, I’ve never read it. It is definitely on my summer reading list.
I nearly forgot; I did finish reading the Swift biography. The final chapters emitted sadness. It makes me want to visit St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin to see where Swift was dean.
I’ll have to see how far I get today. I don’t think I’m going to be doing very much.
28 April 2025
I’m still sick from Covid. I seem to be chased by a low grade temperature. I’ve taken to having walks around my local park, to try to get my body moving again, whilst listening to podcasts about Oliver Cromwell. My reason for torturing myself with this is twofold: the first is that this is a bit of history that I have never studied, and I thought it would be useful to learn a bit more to learn about puritanism and its impact on restoration theatre (which has, unexpectedly, become a geeky interest). There’s also a link to the forthcoming EMA which is all about the link between history and literature.
On the topic of the EMA, I’ve annotated a whole bunch of papers using my Kindle, which I now need to make sense of, and figure out whether I need to download any more. I’ve also discovered that there’s some source materials in the back of one of the texts I’ve selected. I’ve also read through some really useful articles that I’ve found in my Norton book.
Now that I’ve created a template document, and have created a table of contents to structure my EMA, I’m going to reference everything that I might possibly need in the EMA. When I’ve done this, I’ll probably start to pull out a whole bunch of quotes. Then I’ll have a direction of travel.
One thing I’m not sure about is to how to reference my independent study work. Having a quick look through a summary of the study options, I do recognise the additional reading I’ve done what accompany the texts I’ve chosen. I think this means that I should be okay.