This week in writing

With the end of semester work mounting, writing the blog has slipped my mind.  I meant to post a second time last week to reflect on the how writing my Shakespeare research proposal went.  I wrote the thing, received a good grade, but was nonetheless dissatisfied with my process.  Formulating ideas for papers remains challenging for me.  I can't seem to approach the task in an organized way.  Picking my topic of interest came easy, but my proposal stopped short of a tentative thesis.  My process seems to require a large (excessive?) amount of time of up-front reading.  To get my ideas for writing a sophisticated paper, I feel the need to read extensively on the topic, and jot down ideas as I go and find areas that are not yet fully developed.  Especially with something like Shakespeare (or Moby-Dick), where so much has been said and thought out, this feels necessary...the chance of stumbling on an original idea simply from reading the text seems remote.  The problem is that when I am reading through critical material without a clearly defined thesis or question, I get sidetracked and pulled in many diverting directions.  I continued my hunting for a thesis on Shakespeare tonight, and I feel like I may be honing in on a workable idea.

With respect to Moby-Dick, I feel relatively comfortable that I now have found a workable idea (exploring Ishmael's and Ahab's stories as reactions to a maternal presence).  As my focus has developed and turned, I may need to do additional research (into masculinity and MD, into feminist theories on the maternal, into orphans and MD).  I received some preliminary feedback from Dr. Noble, who has agreed to direct the project.  He expressed interest, but has requested a bibliography that relates to the argument I intend to advance (that Ishmael and Ahab can be read as reacting to their lack of maternal, generative power).  It remains to be seen if what I can provide will convince him that I have a viable argument.

I continue to be appreciative of the help and focus that Proseminar is providing me.  Breaking the prospectus into manageable pieces and bringing them in for peer review makes the project feel manageable.  I did some work last weekend on working up a methodology.  What I wrote ended up being way too lengthy and detailed for what is appropriate, but the effort does not feel wasted.  It forced me to think through my argument in greater detail and start collecting evidence.  I haven't started revising to produce a working methodology, but I am optimistic that, having done most of the hard work last weekend, I can condense and refine what I have without too much pain.