Now happily ensconced in London once again, I can get back to the furious content-production for which I'm famous. Not immediately, of course, for there is much I must do before I can get back into the groove properly, but a recent development is very promising indeed as far as this blog is concerned.
Some readers may remember my attempts to hornswoggle the government into giving me money to research Gilbert in some regard over the course of my MA year, and they, duly impressed with my application, thought it worth supporting. I had regretted that any actual study of our great man would be unlikely, as the fellow best-suited to supervising a year-long research project on the subject is on sabattical this year, but as I would certainly give them good value for their money whatever project I turned my hand to, my conscience was more or less clear.
So it was with surprise and delight that I discovered that one of the senior professors in our department, with whom I have always been on excellent terms, has some small affection for GKC and had been nursing a growing interest in the man's works. A few meetings and exchanged e-mails later and I'm happy to report that I will be able to fulfill my earlier hopes, though not in precisely the way I had imagined. Rather than looking at Chesterton as a subtle precursor to various popular and modern literary approaches (chiefly post-colonialism and cultural studies; it's a long story), I will instead be looking at him in the context of the anti-modernist movement which seemed to have its last and greatest gasp around his time. Sidelights on Whitman and Eliot will also be inevitable, for the thing is primarily concerned with his poetry, but I'm alright with that.
It seems likely, then, that I'll have plenty to post about in the coming months.
Some readers may remember my attempts to hornswoggle the government into giving me money to research Gilbert in some regard over the course of my MA year, and they, duly impressed with my application, thought it worth supporting. I had regretted that any actual study of our great man would be unlikely, as the fellow best-suited to supervising a year-long research project on the subject is on sabattical this year, but as I would certainly give them good value for their money whatever project I turned my hand to, my conscience was more or less clear.
So it was with surprise and delight that I discovered that one of the senior professors in our department, with whom I have always been on excellent terms, has some small affection for GKC and had been nursing a growing interest in the man's works. A few meetings and exchanged e-mails later and I'm happy to report that I will be able to fulfill my earlier hopes, though not in precisely the way I had imagined. Rather than looking at Chesterton as a subtle precursor to various popular and modern literary approaches (chiefly post-colonialism and cultural studies; it's a long story), I will instead be looking at him in the context of the anti-modernist movement which seemed to have its last and greatest gasp around his time. Sidelights on Whitman and Eliot will also be inevitable, for the thing is primarily concerned with his poetry, but I'm alright with that.
It seems likely, then, that I'll have plenty to post about in the coming months.
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