Projects and Panic, Oh My!

So I've been organising my ideas for an MA thesis idea. I'm a little nervous, because so far the idea hinges on something that I haven't looked into nearly close enough. (Not entirely, but enough that I would need to re-think some ideas if it turns out I'm wrong.) I strongly suspect that fables are telling of cultural assumptions about people, but I don't have any evidence or theorists who support this idea to reference yet. Once I have that, I will feel far more comfortable pushing my ideas forward regarding fables and disability. I suppose that means once I've read a section of Metzler's book and I've done some homework that is actually due for classes and grades and such (Classes? what? I have to do work other than my personal projects to pass and graduate? dang...)

Here's hoping I'll survive this next month of projects and maybe I'll be able to find these useful things for my own work.

An Update of Sorts

I am sure that all two of you are waiting with bated breath to hear the results of the e-mail I was writing a while ago.

So far it is optimistic! They sound interested, although understandably cautious. Right now the conversation is on hold until the prof I was talking with returns to York from a trip, which will be later in August.

And until then I have work for one more week and at the same time I prep for my trip to York to visit Eaquae Legit.

And in that time, I am making trilobites from copper wire.

Prepping for Applying to Grad School

So I'm looking to apply to the Research English and Literature programme at the University of York. I really want to do a research degree instead of a taught degree, and as their Medieval Studies programme only does a taught degree for the MA level (and their course modules are very sparse and uninteresting to me), I will try to look at medieval stuff through the English department. There are a number of profs who are both in English and Medieval Studies (which is multi-disciplinary at York), so that should not be a problem there. What I do need to do, however, is find a topic that I would like to research for a year, that I can research for a year, and that someone will be willing to supervise me for.

I am seriously thinking about studying disability in medieval fables and the roles that disability and the disabled have in medieval fables and in fables in the middle ages. One source I can look at is the Romulus Anglicus version of Aesop's fables, said to be written around late antiquity or the early medieval period, as well as Alexander Neckham's Novus Aesopus, assuming I can find a copy. One thing that cannot be contested is the presence of disability in Aesop, and by these two sources, it is evident that they were used and re-worked in the medieval period. The real question there would be, is there enough to write a thesis? A search of Google, JSTOR and of the UofT library system suggests that at the very least, Aesop and disability has not been deeply examined (which means either I suck at searches, I've found a new and exciting topic and it's mine all mine, or there's not enough to make it worthwhile to write on it). I could also look at other fables from the middle ages, which would take at least a bit of searching.

And now that Greg has shown up and helped me write an e-mail to a prospective supervisor, I wait! *Quakes with FEAR*