Sunday Scholar

I was lucky enough to have about three hours to myself this morning before the rest of the family made its appearance. For some reason I was really determined to see if I could get some writing done, rather than just surfing the internet as I usually do over my leisurely breakfast, and lo and behold it worked (and really, it was equally entertaining).

I pretty much rounded off my analysis of the cabin scene in Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre. There's some more background information to add, including discussions of the various discourses (Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian) regarding the cabin, but that will have to wait since I don't have the sources lined up. I did spend some time skimming the parts describing Norway in Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796). That's such a fascinating book, and the attitude she has parallels much of what one finds in Amtmandens Døttre. I'm now up to 2067 words for the chapter, so around 10,000 (and a ton more research) to go.

WORDS WRITTEN: 1056

Why, hello

I really didn't think I would be posting anything here for a good long while, as I have had a nasty list of non-research, non-writing tasks to get through before the Easter break. But somehow today I found myself with a two-hour block of time and no desire to work on my taxes or grading, and the only thing else I could possibly justify doing was starting in on chapter two of the cabin book. And so I did.

I typed in the title and the chapter sub-headings, pasted in a section on Hansen's "Luren" and started writing new material on the "fisker Anders hytte" sequence in Collett's Amtmandens Døttre. Boy does it feel good to be underway again!

WORDS WRITTEN: 1011 (only 11,000 or so to go...)

Done as dinner

I spent four hours today working on my conference paper on Trolljegeren, and I think I'm calling it done. I actually spent a lot of time on it yesterday, but that was mostly just reading articles and the Asma book, re-watching the film, and taking careful notes. Today, though, I wrote. I had four pages (1086 words) from my writing session last week, and now I've reached the bottom of page eight, which is pretty much the limit for a 20-minute conference paper for me. I think it came together really well, and I'm looking forward to putting together the slide show to accompany the talk. I have tons of still shots to choose from. The film continues to crack me up, and for me at least it functions very well on a bunch of levels. The comedian Otto Jespersen, who can be a total asshole in his satire, is spot-on brilliant in the roll of Hans the troll hunter. He makes the entire film.

I'm sure I'll do a little more tinkering between now and the conference, but it sure is a relief to have this squared away. My next two tasks are US tax returns and my job application, and then it's back to the cabin book and chapter two.

Words written: 1683

ETA: Yikes, that has to be a record: three days of work for a conference paper?! Surely there's something wrong here.

Reading day

I woke up in the middle of the night with some ideas for my conference paper that I jotted down before going back to sleep. Unfortunately they turned out not to be so good when I woke up in the morning.

Instead of writing, I spent the day reading Stephen T. Asma's On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. It's a good read, but it's not really helping all that much with the Trolljegeren paper. Sigh.