Pertinent advice for early-career researchers, delivered on the basis of the circus that was my application-submitting over the last couple of days:
If you have something accepted for publication by a journal – such as a an article or review – make sure to:
1. Remember that you wrote it, and it was accepted
2. Obtain a copy
3. Write it down somewhere, such as in your CV
4. Remember its existence more than 48 hours before the application deadlines for scholarships, postgraduate programs, etc.
Why, yes, I did manage to have a review published in a peer-review journal and completely forget about it, and spend some time wondering if my not having published ANYTHING AT ALL would impede my scholarship chances, and so on. I let my membership lapse with the Australian Early Medieval Association, so I didn’t get a copy of volume 5, and was thus not reminded. When I happened to glance at the book (Kleist’s The Old English Homily) and think “hmm, I reviewed that, didn’t I OH WAIT”, I actually did not know whether it had been published (because I didn’t keep in contact with the reviews editor, due to forgetting it), and nor did I have all the citation details and so on that you need.
The library own a copy of volume 5. The library have lost their copy of volume 5.
Fortunately, I have a very indulgent best friend, and the Centre for Celtic Studies was having a special lecture today so there were Celticists about. Be it known that Pamela O’Neil, editor of JAEMA, is a wonderful human being, the kind who opens up the envelope with the copy of JAEMA she was about to mail off to someone, and runs off photocopies for said very indulgent best friend. The Centre for Medieval Studies all already know I’m a scatterbrain, and now, let my reputation procede me into the Centre for Celtic Studies. :s
One day, I may establish myself as an organised and calm person. That day is not today.
On the bright side, mwahahahaa, I have a Publication Record. Of exactly one thing, and I don’t know how much reviews count for in the scholarship stakes, but something is better than nothing at all!
Between Women: friendship, desire and marriage in Victorian England – Sharon Marcus, Princeton University Press 2007.
This makes sense: although you can use literature as a historical source, and you can certainly do a literary analysis of a historical work like an autobiography, here, the division is one of fundamental purpose. The historical chapter attempts to reconstruct what women did, thought, experienced; and the literary looks at one or several author’s expression of an ideal – what women should do, think, experience.
It strikes me that this is exactly how Lunette and Laudine’s friendship functions (assuming you accept Cheyette and Chickering’s approach to “love” as a social contract within the poem; if you prefer to read Laudine as powerless, Lunette becomes an abusive friend): in the early stages of the poem, their debate over love and marriage provides us with an opportunity to assess each woman’s character and to understand, through their argument, the reasoning which eventually leads to Laudine’s marriage; and in the later stages, Lunette’s intervention serves to reconcile Yvain and Laudine and bring about a stable resolution to the romantic plot. Interestingly, unlike the Victorian era examples Marcus gives, Lunette and Laudine’s relationship is not without its own strife – which Yvain (in disguise) has to step in to resolve.
