I've been getting really interested in Maria Edgeworth, especially after reading Ennui, which I feel is a less clean novel that Belinda, but also a much more interesting one. I think one of the reasons for this much be that, with Maria Edgeworth’s own interest in her own Irish heritage, her Irish novels have something at stake. Ennui turns on a weird plot twist—one that shouldn’t work (two babies switched at birth) but does, because of the questions it raises about class and nationality, and how these identities are formed. At the moment I’m trying to tease out what position the only Scots character, Mr McLeod, plays in the text. From there I want to start looking at letters, at literacy and both the naming and renaming that occurs in the novel, but also the specifically French names and motifs that occur. So, I feel that Maria Edgeworth and I will be spending some time together over the coming months. Best of all (well, best of all to a nerd like me) is the fact that I think a lot of my research and thinking will tie nicely into the things I want to think through for my thesis, starting in September, on nineteenth century British representations of Australia, and their relationship to national identity.Spring break is creeping up on me, and I’m starting to think I’m just not going to make it to Louisiana. (Sad—I just haven’t lined it up early enough. Perhaps it can still happen a little later in the year.) So, I’m thinking of finding somewhere a little closer, and setting off for a few days by myself.
I’ve been thinking through poems a lot—partly because I’ve been studying poems in my Modern & Contemporary Poetry & Poetics subject, and also more generally because I’m trying to make a little time for it each week. I’ve been asking David Gewanter to give me assignments—strictures—so I sit down and write something each week. Even if they begin as an exercise, of course I end up getting absorbed and spending some real time on it. Today I got a chance to sit down and look through some recent pieces of work, and I feel like he talked so concretely about the work each poem was doing. There was something so refreshing about it. It made me want to break apart my poems—break apart language—and get somewhere new. I feel that I’ve had an overwhelming schedule lately, so it was nice to sit down and think about this all in a concentrated way. Also, I feel that over Christmas I finished (for perhaps the eighth time) a manuscript, and now I feel like I’m casting about, trying to see what sticks in terms of new subjects. Some of the things I’ve been playing with for a long time—the Hansel and Gretel poems—could end up being pretty drastically re-formed. There’s something lovely in this.
I’ve managed to keep Sunday a complete blank for now. I’m still wondering if I can get myself out of town for the day—someplace not too far away, but distinctly non-DC. Fingers crossed.
