There's nothing like reading a nice Victorian novel to set the mind wandering on the subject of marriage.
It's probably a good thing that elections are still really difficult to predict. Everybody was forecasting a major victory for Obama tonight, which would have given him an almost unbeatable lead. Instead the New Hampshire voters produced a narrow victory for Hillary, which leaves the race still very open. Edwards was a distant enough third to be in trouble, but he'll stay in the race until South Carolina. Obama answered a lot of doubters (myself included) by winning Iowa, but one of the remaining questions was how he'll perform as the front-runner instead of the underdog. Obama still looks to be in pretty good shape, but it remains to be seen what was responsible for this upset victory for Hillary. If she's managed to make voters doubt his message of hope, then we're in for a tight race, but it's likely to shift back to Obama if this victory was fueled by the sympathy she got after the crying incident.
One of the things I love about grad school is the fact that I'm able to sit down in classes full of creative people and create things like the following anti-Strunk & White revision of a sentence from Swift's "A Modest Proposal":I have the awareness that the flesh of young humans, ideally humans within the age range typically defined as infancy, is indeed capable of being processed by the gastrointestinal tract, in ergo facto providing the necessary je ne sais quoi of a meal more delicious than the love of Baby Jesus.
This afternoon I came across the following article by Robin Sowards (a professor of English): "Why Everyone Should Study Linguistics". It's interesting to see someone articulating what I have often thought of only in vague terms, namely that students and teachers of literature should study linguistics.
My interest in linguistics comes largely out of my frustration when I have to get students to unlearn things they have been taught about writing that are counterproductive. He captures my thoughts exactly: Surely grammar is the only domain in which virtually the entirety of literary scholarship is willing to accept uncritically the received wisdom of the nineteenth century.
He does a very good job of explaining how to develop an understanding of linguistics as a complement to literary analysis, but I worry that anyone who is not already at least somewhat interested in linguistics is unlikely to be convinced by this essay. It seems clear enough how important such knowledge is when working with students' writing, but I suspect that a stronger case must be made for linguistics' utility to literary criticism before anyone will start requiring linguistics courses.
This is the time of year for looking back and making grand pronouncements about what we will or will not do in the coming year, even though a year is a long time and New Year's resolutions rarely make it through January. It is nice to look back on where I've been and where I hope to be going in the coming year.
