#dissertation stuff

[foundress0fnothing]

I feel like my advisor shouldn’t be allowed to email me a “we need to meet next week to talk about your chapter” without giving any indication about what he thought about said chapter

[the-busy-ghost]

Posting word count here for this last chapter because there is absolutely NO WAY anything is getting done if I don't.

Goal is to be up to the end of my handwritten notes by the end of the day, which isn't much since it should only be about 500 or a thousand more at most? But I also need to draft the rest by hand so that I can type up another thousand or two tomorrow, so needs to be done asap.

Will check back in two hours.

[acertainidontknowwhat]

Petronius’ Satyrica has an uncomfortable scene that involves a mock wedding, or perhaps anti-wedding, between a girl no older than 7, named Pannychis, and a young man of 16, named Giton that is followed by a possible consummation.

Under Roman law this would be illegal; the minimum age that a Roman girl could become engaged to marry was 10 and even then under Augustan law she would be required to wait two more years, making 12 the accepted minimum age at which a marriage could take place. This is not to say that 12 was the common age of marriage for Roman girls, just the earliest allowed age by law.

But why would Petronius depict a 7 year old girl here? I don’t think it is a coincidence that Pannychis’ age is exactly within the age range when a young girl would be chosen to become a Vestal Virgin, between the ages of 6 and 10. This fits with the religious atmosphere of the scene involving the priestess of Priapus, Quartilla, as she conducts her ritualistic orgy that was prefaced as required for the atonement of a sacrilege. Quartilla says that it is the perfect time for Quartilla to be “devirginatur”, and thus, perhaps, become initiated as a priestess of Priapus herself, which is the exact opposite of the Vestals who remained chaste for their 30 years of service. The act of selecting a Vestal Virgin was called “captio”, the girl was ceremonially taken from her family to become a Vestal Virgin, whereas here it is Pannychis’ virginity that is “capta”.

Lastly, Pannychis’ name means “all-nighter” which while it can be interpreted as sexually suggestive can refer to the role of a Vestal as one who keeps vigil over the eternal flame and sacra (sacred items) in the temple of Vesta.

Petronius is no stranger to parody in the Satyrica, but making a travesty of the rites of the cult of Vesta, whose task it was to protect the eternal flame of Vesta which signified Rome’s preeminence as long as it burned, is one of the more daring parodies. Even more daring because the Vestals became closely connected with the emperor Augustus in 12 BCE when he became the chief priest of the Roman state, pontifex maximus. Instead of moving into the home traditionally reserved for the pontifex maximus, Augustus broke centuries of tradition by instead building a public shrine of Vesta inside his home on the Palatine hill, possibly containing some of the sacra from the temple of Vesta in the Roman forum, and thus the religious cult most associated with the safety of Rome was now under Augustus’ own roof. The safety of Rome now became connected directly with Augustus and the Vestals became more and more involved with the ritual acts associated with the domus Augusti (the house of Augustus).

[medieval-tales]

Today I accompanied my boyfriend to the treasury before his work and after mine. And then I waited for him in a cafe while he was teaching. I took advantage of that time to read a pending paper and then as a reward we ate cake.

[hrimceald]

So far tonight in adventures into academic writing on a very, very niche Old English poem:

- Someone claimed that the (very burnt/generally damaged) manuscript was used as a chopping board by a past owner;

- Someone else claimed that the elegy does not exist in Old English literature, and then proceeded to compare the poem to elegiac conventions in Old English literature, somehow;

- The bracketed comment in a published journal article which is either an incredibly meta authorial note, or an editor’s note which was accidentally left in the article: “(sure you want this word? it is rather negative)”

[donn-nimhe]

I read your tags re: queer medieval studies. There's a special issue of Medieval Feminist Forum coming out either later this year or early next that's specifically about trans studies. My friend wrote an article for it! So... maybe worth checking out if you want to work on trans Cu Chulainn?

OOH THIS WOULD BE AMAZING

if it’s this year

if it’s early next it might be too late to actually be useful because my dissertation will be due in like april so i’ll need to have done it by then

but maybe i could convince someone to let me read it early and cite it as “forthcoming” (academics do that all the time and i’m like… wow you got a sneak preview of the thing, how do i do that)

can you give me any more details of what it’s called, publisher etc so that i can try and follow it up? i found one other potentially useful forthcoming article but i haven’t been able to track down ANY information about when the book it’s in is going to be published and it’s driving me a bit nuts

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

just a quick fyi:

hi all! sorry to do this but i’ve gotta do my best to focus on my dissertation proposal and finish it asap so i won’t be doing anywhere NEAR as much blogging for like the next week and perhaps longer. so pls don’t expect as fast responses on things as usual and i will space out my queue more so that i don’t have to fill it with as much (although tbf, i will be filling it mostly with the #CareBearStare so be prepared for that lol)

wish me luck, this is hard and long work!!

[foundress0fnothing]

making sure to add italics for emphasis in this dissertation chapter just because i know my advisor hates it