New blog

http://cowpersbunny.wordpress.com.

Meeting with adviser

I met with my adviser last week, and he helped me brainstorm an interesting dissertation topic. I'm currently doing research to see if it's a topic that will pan out. It's difficult to say, from my perspective, because it seems like there are a lot of "trendy" topics right now... So, I can't really be sure what will work out as a strong topic for publication in the future. However, I can say that the topic interests me more than what I had before.

Currently reading:

• Gabrielle Starr's text on lyricism and the novel
• Rothstein's System of Inquiry
• Anti-Pamela

Currently thinking about: detachable conventions in 18C prose fictions.

Ooo-la-la

I've just started rereading Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, and there are several things I've noticed now that I never noticed before:

• Many allusions to Pamela, Joseph Andrews, and Shamela
• Close resemblances to Moll Flanders and Roxana
• A leit motif of ships and nautical stuff
• Feigned movements/actions of sentimentalism... the dabbing of tears with hankerchiefs, the head turn of modesty, etc.

It's really tempting to write on this book. REALLY tempting. I seriously need to think about why.

On another note, that may be related, I've started thinking about addressing texts that are capable of shifting affective congruity... Writers intentionally move their readers from becoming emotionally involved with the text to skepticism or laughing against the grain of the characters (oscillating emotional congruity, elisions of sentiment and satire). Some texts that work this:

• Tristram Shandy
• A Sentimental Journey
• Humphrey Clinker
• Clarissa
• Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
• Tom Jones
  
• ...

Does Bowsell do this too? What about anyone else? Do we take this idea for granted? And what happens when reread these texts... do the moments of emotional congruity change or remain the same? Do writers insert new ways of reading the texts for each repetition?