Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Welcome: The Peasant Revolts

I think that I really began circling the drain when a colleague of mine casually mentioned during a graduate seminar that he had lately begun to dream in iambic pentameter.

This alone should not have had an enormous effect on me.  After all, my friend was then in the throes of his dissertation and . . . well, let's face it, that kind of full-contact experience is going to leave a mark.  And didn't my seventh grade Spanish teacher (the guy who always wore novelty ties shaped like freshwater fish) tell us that, when you can dream in the language you're studying, you've really started to master it?  And didn't the Anglo-Saxon scops so thoroughly absorb the rhythms and patterns of formulaic poetry that they could spin elaborate swathes of metrically-correct verse on the fly?  There were plenty of precedents - most of them quite admirable.

All the same, I felt an unexpected lurch of vertigo.  An unpleasantly cold sensation slid greasily down my back and the conversation in the classroom faded to a muffled buzz.  I didn't know why, but for the first time since beginning graduate studies, I seriously questioned whether or not I could teach Medieval literature as a career.

Now, this colleague of mine was (and is) a fine, upstanding, socially conscious, family focused, fiber eating individual and a scholar of uncommon brilliance to boot.  No doubt he could have dreamed in dactylic hexameter without feeling any ill effects beyond, perhaps, a mild headache and an occasional urge to wade through piles of the Greek slain outside the walls of Troy.  Nor was he an isolated case; the English Department was fairly swarming with energetic, clear eyed, glossy coated students on their way to rewarding careers in academia.  Those who knew me well, however, could already see the signs that I was becoming mentally and emotionally unmoored, not unlike several other students and professors of my acquaintance - the ones with the haunted, dark-ringed eyes and the furtive, rodent-like movements as they darted through the stacks in the dark, less frequently-visited corners of the university library.

After all, I was stalled out on year five of what should have been a two-year MA program.  Unable to organize my thoughts constructively on paper, I had begun to hold forth on fourteenth-century complaint poetry at Christmas parties, children's birthdays and even the occasional funeral.  I'd squandered precious hours dragging my bride up and down the Thames on our London honeymoon, looking for the church where John Gower (1330-1408) was buried. All I needed now was to begin dreaming in Middle English couplets, and that would seal the deal.

In short, it was time to come up for air.

I had help, of course.  My wife obliged through an effective mix of steady encouragement, loving support, and threats of extreme physical injury.  These persuasions were enhanced by the arrival of my son - a tiny, exquisitely delicate creature for whom, I soon began to suspect, the narrative structure of the fifth book of the Confessio Amantis was of peripheral concern at best.

So it was that I girded my loins, took up my staff and wandered back out into the desert that is the modern business world, the carrot of filthy lucre dangling in front of me every step of the way.  This blog is about, in large part, where I've ended up and what I took with me when I turned away from Medieval studies as a full-time pursuit.  In part, it's about what the practical effects might be on one's non-academic, professional life after swimming about for several years in the words of people who returned to dust long before one ever entered the scene.  It's also about whether or not I can look back long enough to finish my MA thesis while escaping the fate of Lot's wife when she looked over her shoulder to see if she'd left the iron plugged in.

But most of all, there will probably be a lot of complaining on the subject of whatever my current gripe happens to be.  Vox queritantis in deserto:  "a voice of one whining out in the wilderness."  Off we go.

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