dissertation woes
I went this past week to pick up Leslie Lockett's _Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions_) published 2011, U of Toronto Press. Her first chapter is my dissertation/writing so far, minus a consideration of homilies. Seriously. She says everything I was going to say about the state of the field, about the biases in thinking re soul-body relations in medieval studies, about the so-called Augustinian view being dominant in the field but actually the minority in AS England. She anticipates every objection I've had as I've read, and I suppose after spending a year+ covering exactly the same ground she's covering here, my objections are fairly well-informed. She answers every objection within a page or two. And she did it all in a chapter and change. She then goes on to discuss the mind, mostly, for the rest of the book, but this is not because she collapses mind and soul, like Harbus, but because she ranges over the entire narrative corpus for her first chapter, including treating the dialogue in the Soul and Body poems, and uses the corpus itself to form her argument. This is stunning (in a sort of sick, "I have wasted the last year trying to articulate this stuff"-feeling kind of way). She articulates the problems, and she *answers them* with a corpus-based model which outlines a four-part model of being (with distinct life, soul, spirit, and mind, at least prior to the 11th century, with life-force being the first of the four to lose distinction and merge into a more unitary model by becoming associated with soul), and she furthermore has the audacity to be absolutely *right.*
The only thing she has not done that I was planning on doing is consider these homilies (so far she does not treat homilies much if at all). But she has just published not only my entire framework and thus a giant chunk of my page count so far, she has drawn (solid, very well argued, subtle) conclusions and put forward a model or worldview that should -- must -- change the way we read and translate some of this work. It is a very good model, and she is on solid ground so far theologically as well as philologically. She is absolutely right. But she has left me with nothing to say. I have no Chapter Two, and no need to write the planned material towards an Anglo Saxon ontology.
This would have made my life easier if it had come out a year ago. Now, though -- well, it kept me up all night last night. So. The homilies it is, and linking OE to the ME work is where it is. And I will just have to restructure this thing and confine myself to answering her call for action and contextualizing my work within hers. I will use two homilies to argue for reframing the conversations surrounding the soul-body debates in OE, and then I'll see what I have when that's done. Advisor says, since the homilies have been so much work, to make the current chapter an edition of them, essentially, but i am not actually qualified to do this, esp for homilies that I have no access to in terms of mss. I can't even get the fiche images right now. I am not really capable of doing a proper edition.
I tried so hard to sleep, but I was awake when the sun came up, lying in bed freaking the hell out.
ETA: And she discusses the homilies I've been working on. the poem I was building my first chapter around. She has an entire chunk on corporealized soul, not just as a sort of literary thing but as an actual ontological/theological concept. I am doomed. I have *nothing to say that she hasn't said.* It is a *brilliant* book and if I didn't have six months to finish this diss I would be relishing it. I imagine I can find another angle eventually, but I just do not know how I can find it within the next week. This conference paper is going to be extremely embarrassing.
The only thing she has not done that I was planning on doing is consider these homilies (so far she does not treat homilies much if at all). But she has just published not only my entire framework and thus a giant chunk of my page count so far, she has drawn (solid, very well argued, subtle) conclusions and put forward a model or worldview that should -- must -- change the way we read and translate some of this work. It is a very good model, and she is on solid ground so far theologically as well as philologically. She is absolutely right. But she has left me with nothing to say. I have no Chapter Two, and no need to write the planned material towards an Anglo Saxon ontology.
This would have made my life easier if it had come out a year ago. Now, though -- well, it kept me up all night last night. So. The homilies it is, and linking OE to the ME work is where it is. And I will just have to restructure this thing and confine myself to answering her call for action and contextualizing my work within hers. I will use two homilies to argue for reframing the conversations surrounding the soul-body debates in OE, and then I'll see what I have when that's done. Advisor says, since the homilies have been so much work, to make the current chapter an edition of them, essentially, but i am not actually qualified to do this, esp for homilies that I have no access to in terms of mss. I can't even get the fiche images right now. I am not really capable of doing a proper edition.
I tried so hard to sleep, but I was awake when the sun came up, lying in bed freaking the hell out.
ETA: And she discusses the homilies I've been working on. the poem I was building my first chapter around. She has an entire chunk on corporealized soul, not just as a sort of literary thing but as an actual ontological/theological concept. I am doomed. I have *nothing to say that she hasn't said.* It is a *brilliant* book and if I didn't have six months to finish this diss I would be relishing it. I imagine I can find another angle eventually, but I just do not know how I can find it within the next week. This conference paper is going to be extremely embarrassing.