The purpose of my journaling has changed considerably over time. This marks a new beginning – into professional studenthood.
I’m now a master’s student at the University of Edinburgh, under the tutelage of James Loxley.
The discussion that prompted my application was very welcoming, and I find myself in the privileged position of working with a scholar whose work and demeanour I had come to appreciate.
James’s reputation for geniality precedes him. He attracted quite a crowd at the initiation. Amusingly, one of his previous students shared an anecdote about him dressing up in period costume at a museum. Brilliant!
There arose the chance to spill my interest in Knightmare. Another tutee alongside me was familiar with ‘the greater game’, and was glad to be reminded of it.
Fearsome start
With no taught requirements, this is a distance arrangement. But it’s intense at times. Four consecutive 270-mile round trips during the initiation week familiarised me with the wonderful Northumbrian coastline.
My first supervision and first assessment – an annotated bibliography to be completed in 24 hours – coincided on a very long Thursday, when I swiftly grew to understand how little I know. Where do I begin to form the basis for a 30,000 word dissertation?
Talking through my undergraduate dissertation, a candidate soon emerged: the Royalist poet, Thomas Jordan.
Jordan is deeply embedded in Royalist writing culture. He’s a playful, engaged, and highly capable – if inconsistent – poet, with possible links to Shakespeare and Jonson. He was also involved in the first official appearance of an actress on stage in 1660.
Only one study on Thomas Jordan exists, from over 50 years ago. It’s far from the comfort zone of Andrew Marvell.
This space may end up as an academic diary, encouraging me to explore ideas in the environment where they will best uncover themselves. It may end up as something else entirely.
My interest in the seventeenth century often overlaps with contemporary issues. How does one decide between circulating thoughts privately and publicly? Which occasions prompt a particular emphasis to write, not to write, or to write and then conceal?
Writing a long dissertation over twelve months requires steady progress, and I’m hopeful that white space will draw it from within.
Writing Privacy 
At the risk of destroying your world view, maybe your life is not so much circles, as a spiral? In which you circle *around* but gradually gain size – from A levels, to B.A, to M.Sc and onwards. I guess, if every spiral has an end, eventually you’ll go shooting off this world completley and into the hands of God
🙂 That doesn’t destroy a world view at all. I am not in any sense a mathematician, and it’s only through art/literature that I might have any vague sense of philosophy. I would believe as much in ‘spheres’ as in circles, and while Andrew would know far better than I, spheres surely must have any number of spirals within. I suppose when we think of vicious or virtuous cycles, we are thinking of some kind of spiral upwards or downwards.
This kind of philosophical interest became more interesting when looking at George Puttenham’s ‘The Arte of English Poesie’ when he considers the literary merits of different shapes. The square, in relation to the English private garden, was ‘of constancie’, and Marvell’s stanzas in ‘The Garden’, comprising 8 lines of 8 syllables, are poetic squares. I had never checked Puttenham’s ideas on the circle. I do love your sense of hope: it seems like the general nature of a spiral is one travelling downwards, as would occur with gravity and your example. For you, spirituality able to transcend and invoke the opposite, that’s most uplifting.
In fact, I’m reminded of those charity coin machines you often find in supermarkets – place a coin in, and it roles down the vortex of its own accord, gaining speed and majesty, until finally and compltley it is gone to where it was aiming for all along