Last night, skim-read Beloved, scouring it for themes, connections and quotations in light of the general argument of my soon to be written (fingers crossed) paper; presently at page 157 of about 500 in V., doing the same. Obviously a different mode of reading from the more leisurely dégustations in which I engaged first time round this year, but the fundamentals still come through - Beloved made my insides churn, gave me the chills, and clutched at my throat, while V. is dazzling me once more and choking/surprising/forcing lots of laughter on my part. One thing I'll say for honours (and there's much to be said, but I won't say it here) is that it's well and truly put reading and literature back to the forefront of my life.
Anyway, this is where it stands:
Thesis [7 November]: 6800 words (/10 000). Still not in great shape, but after meeting with François today, I feel that I ought to be able to pull it all together with a bit of application (ha ha, hermeneutics pun).
Contemporary Historical Fictions [7 November]: 1800 words (/5000). I'm pretty happy with the exposition and initial theoretical critique - ie, these 1800 words - but talking it through with Sarah yesterday made me realise that I still need to do a bit of work on this part. That should be fairly manageable, though, and once I've finished going through V., the textual part, browsing of secondary sources for citatory window-dressing, and closing (anti)metaphysical gesturing shouldn't be too difficult. Aim to get this one done fairly soon, I think.
Reading The Subject [7 November]: 0 words (/4000). Not seriously worried about this yet, but beginning to get just a bit nervous that I still haven't settled on a topic. Intend to read Lacan's reading of Poe's "Purloined Letter" soon (then Derrida's reading of Lacan's reading) and maybe reevaluate the uses of Lacan for literature a bit more sympathetically (and less foundationally) - someone (Liz?) said, after my presentation in class on Tuesday, that my outline sounded like a thesis more than a coursework paper, and they were dead right. Probably do The White Hotel rather than Mrs Dalloway.
Recent European Philosophy [17 November]: 0 words (/5000). Needless to say, haven't given this any thought at all. It's gonna be a Heidegger-filled 10 days or so, which could be really good, but could also get pretty ugly...
