Odd topics for articles

Writing articles and conference papers may be my only outlet for really strange (or silly) paper ideas:

• Comets and Astronomical allusions, Defoe, Lady Mary, and the GM
  
• Horses, William of Orange, the Irish, and Swift
  
• Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Akerman's Jeanne Diehlman, bodies, and resignation
• Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and George Eliot, early cinema adaptations, realism, and 19C visual media
• Amanuenses as objects or subjects???
  
• ...

I will keep updating this list... None of you anonymous and random readers better steal my embryonic ideas! They're my babies!!!

Martinus Scriblerus is a no-no

I just finished rereading Martinus Scriblerus and realized that there is no way I can write an entire chapter on just that alone. This is rather funny, but I thought the text was much heftier because I read it on ECCO in its original, first edition format. I thought the text was at least 150 pages, but it's no more than 70 or so. Ha.

I did rethink the idea of rereading... I am considering a way to expand it into rereading, recreating, and rewriting. I could then examine new editions, sequels, and the 18C fan fiction... This would actually work well with my interests in adaptations and the theoretical spaces created through practices of re-creation.

Hmm... something to mull over after I finish my last course...

Some general texts I'm keeping in mind:

• The Dunciad
• Gulliver's Travels
• Robinson Crusoe
• Moll Flanders
• Roxana
• Pamela
• Shamela
• Joseph Andrews
• Anti-Pamela
• Clarissa
  

Back to Square 1

Remember that show on PBS? Wow. That was when math was not only cool but totally do-able.

Anyway, I met with my actual adviser, who happened to be in town this week. Looks like I'm going back to the partial drawing board. My current idea was too narrow. He kindly stated that he could see it work as an article but not as a dissertation topic.

However, I think I want to stick with the concept of rereading practices. So, I need to find out ways to broaden the idea and limit it to choose specific texts.

Things I will be looking for after this semester is over:

• Prefaces
• Epilogues
• Advertisements
• Changes in Editions
• Sequels by the same author and other authors (the fanfic!)
• Marginalia and annotations
• Literary Criticism
  
• Whether I wish to examine satires, dramas, novels, etc.
• Secondary criticism
• A notion of how my argument will progress through the texts I am using
• What I found joyful about studying specific 18C texts... maybe this will give me a clue about what I should write on.

I also should find out about my new teaching appt for next semester. The fun never stops!

Some questions I am thinking about:

• How do authors engage their readers into a practice of rereading?
• How do authors reread their own texts?
• In what way does an author address his reader? Does this truly reflect the common response to a text?
  
• What does it mean to engage with a text through writing your own sequel and/or annotation?
• Are the ways we read and reread different when we approach different genres? Why or why not?