Tute-talk

Hey, everybody. Well, this week has been hard. I'm not going to lie--it's been really hard. I have had my first meetings with both of my tutors, and I have been to some lectures. I have officially started my Oxford academic life. Let me break it down for you:

On Monday morning at 10:45, Hayley and I had our first Medieval Literature tutorial where we discussed "where we can discern reality in The Canterbury Tales." If your face is making a very weird express, that's OK, because I can guarantee that mine looked about twice as worse. I was not reading for concepts of reality in the text; I was more focused on Chaucer's subversive religious couplets and social criticism. In fact, I had an argument a-brewing in my mind about how Chaucer uses comedy to deliver concerns about a corrupt Medieval Church, only that argument was shut down. Hard. My tutor told me, "No. Chaucer is not a theologian. Do not go down that road." So, after that hour of fairly traumatic fun, I hit the English Faculty Library for research on my Medieval paper about moral framework in the tales. That library, after all the time this week I've spent there, has become my new best friend.

Tuesday was interesting, as well. I checked my e-mail that morning, and after weeks from not hearing from my Wilde tutor, I get an e-mail saying that we're going to meet on Thursday, and to please compose a four to five page essay considering the background of Aestheticism. You remember that face from the last paragraph? Well, insert it here, too, cause I had no idea where to begin. I had a lot of Wilde main work under my belt, but as far as his influences, such as Walter Pater, J.-K. Huysmans, and others, I was completely illiterate. So, my plan was this: go to some lectures on Medieval Lit in the morning, and spend the rest of the day in the EFL (English Faculty Library). I took off to make it to a 10am lecture on Chaucer poetics, only when I arrive, I sit down in Lecture Theatre 2. I needed to be in Lecture Room 2. By the time I realized this and tried to get over to LR2, the room was filled and the next lecture that I wanted to go to at 11am was canceled. Basically, this means that from 10-12:30, I was in the EFL doing research on Pater and Huysmans and their influences on Wilde. I got some great quotations, and seeing as how I only had TWO DAYS to write this essay, I was really quite on top of everything. Except for missing those lectures...

Wednesday was great in the sense that I actually went to my first lecture! Now, lectures are not mandatory, but they provide a lot of information that might be difficult to get from just pouring over books in the libraries. Plus, they provide a social learning environment, unlike the one-on-one tutes. The lecture I went to was called "Aspects of Medieval Literary Theory" and it proved to be insightful, yet really dense. The material, even though watered down quite a bit, was thick--a lot of theory to grasp at once. I enjoyed it well enough, although I don't think it is particularly useful for my papers right now.

Thursday was such a bizarre day. First, Hayley and I went to a brilliant lecture of Middle English, specifically the language and theories of authorship in Medieval texts. Without printing presses, the authors works are given to scribes to rewrite, and scribes make mistakes. Scribes might actually change drastically the meaning of texts, accidentally or intentionally. It's pretty crazy. Also, I found the cultural connotations of different Middle English diction pretty fascinating as well. For example, words from French or Latin roots have more power than words from a Germanic root because French and Latin are used in law courts, official documents, Church decrees, and so on. This new knowledge will definitely come in handy for my Chaucer paper. Thanks, Dr. Barr!

After the lecture, I had my first Wilde tute at Linacre College. That was an, um, interesting experience. My tutor and I talked about Wilde, and I read him my essay that I had composed (although it almost felt like he forgot that he assigned me an essay, which was slightly unnerving...). He gave me a little feedback on my essay, stopping me after every paragraph to kind of gloss what I had written. We then went through Pater's Marius the Epicurean, and he explained to me what that was all about. It wasn't a bad session, but it wasn't mind blowing, either. I left kind of confused about what we actually accomplished and kind of unfulfilled.

Then that evening, I skipped dinner at Regent's Park because I had an audition with The Oxford Imps, an improvisational comedy group. They were pretty nice and fun people, and I did enjoy myself at the auditions, but I was certainly not on my A game. Not even my B game. In fact, I left thinking, "Well, there are plenty of other groups that I can get involved in because there's no way I got a call back." So what am I doing today? Well, I got a call back. They want to see me again because they liked my physicality on stage and my involvement with my scene partners; however, they want to see me out of my comfort zone a little more. Um...yeah, I think I can do that.

Also, today there are two more lectures I want to go to: one on Medieval and another on Decadent Gothic (which I think might help with Wilde). Yep. Wish me luck tonight, and also wish me massive amounts of luck on my Medieval paper. I'm a little nervous about both. Well, have a good week-end, y'all. (Man, I don't get to say y'all enough over here.)