Making the rounds

I met today both with my major professor and with the professor over in the religion department, both of whom will be conducting my comprehensive exams a little over a year from now. Dr. Medine (over in Religion) liked my comps list, and Dr. Freer thinks I have an article-in-the-making cooking with my Milton paper. That makes three papers that I'll be shaping up to submit for publication next year (one on Milton, one on Wordsworth, and one on Irving), plus three that are themselves shaping up into a book-length project that still needs a couple chapters (they're in my mind and in my notebooks; I just need to write them) and an introductory essay (also in my mind but not yet in my notebooks). Oh, and then there's comprehensive exams to be taken and a dissertation out there to be written. I think next year will be a busy one.

Wednesday's Job lesson was rather run-of-the-mill, but the grand shape of the book is really coming together, I think, for the students. I think also that when the book makes its turn around chapter 38, the ending will be that much better for our knowing the structure of the first four-fifths of the book.

J.B. gets weirder with every scene, which makes it a joy to teach.

Although my paper proposal for Hegel class was atrocious (I fear that I might lose esteem with Dr. Cole--that's how slipshod it was), I actually have a pretty strong idea of what I'm going to be writing. My Milton paper has a definite shape. The real X-factor this semester is my Beowulf paper. But I have a hunch that I've done more thinking and research already than have my compatriots, so at least we'll all suffer together as the end of April approaches.

And in one more development, I took some time yesterday (between grading and preparing for classes) to write a scene from my perhaps-never-to-be-finished Saul novel. I like the way the scene sounds. I only hope that I'll have the time some day to build a book around it.