Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Monday I read Crabwalk in its entirety. Yesterday I began the introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray, but went no further because I needed to study a little for the entomology lab and lecture finals. I anticipate a "B" for the class, which is acceptable enough, considering I only put in about that much work. Dr. Thorvilson told me I was a good student, which made Lauree glowy inside.
Monday afternoon I sat at my usual perch on the bench in the foreign languages building, snout buried in Crabwalk, when Dr. Larmour (the Classics graduate advisor) subtly placed a flier before me as he passed by. It advertised a symposium for a comparative literature course, at which two of the Classics graduate students were to read. 'You should attend ["should" in the sense of "must"].' Yesterday as I sat among the tiny audience, dutifully and diligently prepared to take notes, Dr. Larmour approached and said, 'By the way- be sure to ask questions.' Wunderbar, habe ich gedacht.
Travis wrote something entitled, "Clarifying Catharsis: On Golden's Intellectual View of Catharsis in Aristotle's Poetics". Steve read a slightly more straight-forward paper: "The Reality of Freedom and Power in Camus' Caligula". Questions aplenty arise at these sorts of readings, but mine are not necessarily as pertinent as they might be, and I encounter severe difficulty in trying to formulate an inquiry about something I have not read myself. I asked Steve, at least, whether he had encountered any instances of the historical Caligula perhaps enacting moralizing legislation, in seeming contradiction to the character of him as presented by Seutonius and Camus. I found nothing immediately refutable in Steve's paper itself: he writes and speaks well. Travis posed a greater problem, because he writes ambiguously, somehow (despite having a clearly stated thesis).
Dr. Larmour commented afterward, "See? One can always find something to ask." Ugh. As long as I get Brownie points.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 2:46 AM]