06/12/08

Jeff's article reminded me of the "carpenter" moment in the Spenser-Harvey letters. Spenser wants to let the meter distort the pronunciation of the word, while Harvey won't let him. It's another, albeit slightly more conventional, case of what Gascoigne claims about words that fit into the mter and it's a case where we actually have two people from the period arguing about it. I find that fascinating.

Not sure whether it helps or hurts my thesis--what I really need is another middle case, rather than another linguistic case--something closer to Puttenham, than Gascoigne (Rather my Puttenham example.)

Goose giblets wrapped in waste paper doesn't quite get me there, I don't think. I feel like I'm making no progress, but then, I 'm not reading anything that should get me there. Mostly I'm learning German.

I saw a book that looked good on Sex Between Men--oh, in the Love book--I should maybe read it before Leonard's class. But then, Leonard's class may do that, in which case I shouldn't. I wish I had a syllabus.

This type of writing really is draining when there's nothing on my mind. It makes me want to get out there and read something, except I have this German class. I wonder if I would want to get out there and read if I didn't have it.

I'm making good progress, through. I need to find a German academic article that I can submit. Ideally, something on bad poetry.

Greene's funeral is the other thing I'm thinking about. There's a neat footnote that says (on a potential date for the text) it's hard to believe 2 years would have passed between these verses composition and their printing. That is to say:

1) That the verses seem occasional and like they'd lose interest with time
2)That the verses seem bad and surely would have been revised over two years.

But what the hell is this book? It's egregious, boring poetry, with badly repeated lines. Is it a parody? If so, of what? Is it a false attribution--that I can believe, but it charges me with finding another R.B. poet. Is it just a text thrown together for publication after the death of Greene?

This is something I should look into. I wonder what--Danter, I think is the printer's name?--was printing. And I wonder if there are other Greene funeral volumes coming out at around the same time. Yay empirical questions. They make all the difference/.