Day 15

Today was a good day, for many reasons.

1) No use whatsoever of AK.

2) I went to the British Library. I looked at rare books (Paul Greaves 1594 Grammatica Anglicae, which bears further consideration, and the 1553 Pierce the Ploghmans Crede, which does not, as the most interesting bits, e.g., the printed marginalia, have been cut away. Rotten 18th century collectors). I am never, ever going to get to see early printed Spenser in person, but that is neither the end of the world not a very big deal, really, when you get right down to it. Were I a hardcore Spenserian-cum-book historian, that would be one thing. But I'm not, so it's fine. For once, I'm interested in what a book says rather than what it looks like.

3) While at the British Library, I ran into Roger and Josh. We had lunch. While I would characterise myself as doing somewherer between "just fine" and "very well" here in London, it was wonderful to see some familiar faces and hear some familiar voices. I'm realizing the degree to which, back in Philadelphia, I was absolutely spoilt in terms of interlocutors, people who know about my work and topic and who have, even in a tangental way, seen ir develop over the last three years.

4) This evening, I attended a terrific talk on transgender time and the middle ages. I'm not sure I agree with everything that was said, in particular I think the categories of transgender and queer were elided in potentially problematic ways, but on the whole it was an engaging and exciting talk. The application of contemporary theory to medieval texts (here, Caxton's translation from French of the moralized Ovid) often and perhaps inevitably goes awry, but I still appauld anyone who tries. If nothing else, I think it queries in a vital way the category of "literature" as theorists often unproblematically posit it (particularly those thinkers whose primary intellectual and philosophical engagement lies elsewhere, as in gender or sexuality). I loves me some queer medievalists, which is to say I loves me some medievalists, because I think anyone who does medieval studies is at least a little bit queer.

5) I met some delightful people at the reception after the talk, and am presently tipsy in the way one can only become on red wine that one is not paying for. London is wonderful, obvsiously, but a departmental talk-- not my hall, not a bar, not the BL-- is quite clearly where I need to go to find My People.

6) There is a wonderful store on Charing Cross that sells Japanese candy in bulk. It's not the best dinner, from any standpoint, but it is delicious and very much the proper thing to munch on while one reads Bede's Ecclesiastical History.