In the zone

Okay. I've officially absorbed all I can about the Western canon. I started with Beowulf at nine this morning and finished with Song of Solomon a few minutes ago. I discovered as I rehearsed my spiels about Joyce's modernist aislingí; borderer tensions in Henry V; objectification and agency of women in Donne, Herrick, Keats, Yeats, and Heaney; and the relationship between Wordsworthian Romanticism, Shelly's Defense, and Emerson's transcendentalist essays, that I could easily take up an hour or more with just them if my committee gives me enough rein to do it, so that makes me feel pretty good. (I can also do a mean analysis of Jude the Obscure and naturalism if necessary, then throw in some Ian Watt as he relates to Pamela and Emma, not to mention go on for aaaaages about time, layers of consciousness, and unreliable narration in Woolf, Conrad, and/or Ford. As long as they start me out on one of these--and I'm betting it'll be the objectification topic, as it follows directly from the thesis, which we'll spend the first half hour talking about--I'm good to go.)

Tomorrow I'm going to sit and just re-read some of Boland's poetry, because, hey, probably a good idea to have it fresh in my head, and also to remind myself that, oh, yes, I do actually like her work, even after the past year working so closely with it.