Grad School Report - Spring 2008 (Week 9)

[osito71]

Short week distorted by the fact that I took Friday off from work to lay around all day with a heating pad on my back trying to soothe away the knot that seems to go away as the day progresses only to return overnight to some new spot that only has its inaccessibility to a single man living alone in common with the last spot, just barely avoiding a

Comments

[ladybird97]

Yes! I knew you'd like Gerald :)

He's a fascinating writer, especially from a postcolonial perspective (which I totally knew you'd dig :). He's Welsh (obviously) but spent most of his career trying to cozy up to the English, who were perpetually in the process of trying to conquer Wales, so there's this sort of double vision in his writing, because he can see things from both the Celtic and English perspective. And a bunch of his half-Welsh-half-English relatives were among the leaders of the conquest of Ireland - a lot of those knights he mentions are his relatives. He's also got a subversive undertone to a lot of his writing, with all the stories of Irish saints taking vengeance on the Normans who don't respect them.

(yeah, I can chatter a lot more about this if you want :) Gerald is awesome.)

[osito71]

Yeah, we talked a lot about his "doubling of identity" (another post-colonial idea), in particular his comment about the lack of Irish saintly martyrs, and the implication that the English-Irish conflict will create some.

Oh, and chatter away! :)

[ladybird97]

Yes! See, Gerald is the only one who can see both sides of the conflict. The Irish and Welsh literature of the time depict the English as just another one of the many warring factions - but Gerald knows that this is a mission of conquest. So he can create all these stories of vengeful Celtic saints, because he's the only one who has both the knowledge of that particular style of saint's lives and the knowledge that there's really something for them to take vengeance for.

I've also had the beginnings of an article percolating in my mind for ages about the way Gerald uses humor. This is more prevalent in his writing about Wales, but he's got quite a few characters who tell jokes or use humor to communicate, and they're always in a position of relative powerlessness. My ultimate argument will be that Gerald himself is using humor in this way because he's out of power...but I need more than 5 pages worth of stuff before I can turn it into something real :)

[apintrix]

I am also amused by the untroubled assertion of a "real self". That's a seriously problematic idea! How old is this professor?

[osito71]

My guess is his late 40s/early 50s. If he were any older than that I would be really surprised.

[apintrix]

then he has no excuse. :)