Sunday, 27 January 2013

all the Homer things

This is not the same Polydorus.
Have been working away steadily for the last week but not updating, because I have to give a paper on Oswald next week and haven't got time to work, teach, write the paper and update too.  I've got 8 more death scenes and about 16 similes to nail down.  Whenever I see a new simile my heart sinks because I know it will likely be hard to find where Oswald has transplanted it from.  On the other hand it's rewarding work.  She did something particularly cool with the death of Polydorus as his father Priam looks for him, which she juxtaposed with the simile of Ajax guarding Patroclus' body like a lion guarding its cubs.

Still, it really is time to stop researching and start actually putting it together as a paper.  But I'm so close to being done!  This is a mistake I always make mind you - I always think that once the research is done the paper will write itself, possibly overnight while I'm sleeping, if I leave out a bowl of milk for the fairies...

In fact once the research is done the paper will take every bit as long to write as the research took to do, something Mac Wallace told me (frequently; over and over; in the hope that someday I would take note), and something I tell my students all the time as well.

 I don't know if my students pay attention.  I know I never do because there's always this One! Last! Thing! I want to find out first ... which of course will lead to another interesting thing ... but I must stop now.  It's not as if I don't have enough material.

But I'm so close!
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