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Saturday, September 16, 2006

All Your Tea Are Belong to Bronteana

It has been quite awhile since I posted about studying the Brontes. Long time readers will remember my distress when I received an acceptance from an excellent school I could not afford to attend. Well, I'm there! Thank God for the government of Canada and surprise scholarships! I've been here for over two weeks now. I believe I chose wisely. I spent the first week exploring. I could not ask for a more beautiful campus: on the first day I walked down the hill to the ocean, later I discovered a marsh on campus complete with a family of ravens, and there are plently of lovely spots to sit under an oak and write. The dinning hall is in a Victorian hall. I was let into the library which was precisely like a gentleman's study, except for the stained glass window of 'poetry and prose' inspiring a young woman to write. I even heard someone singing a 19th century art song to accompiament on the piano forte yesterday!

And there are actually books about adaptations of Jane Eyre- in the main library which has its own waterfall... I was able to compile a working bibliography of twelve sources! (An article I came across regarding the musical gave me a chuckle for how patronising it is to those who attend music theatre rather than opera). My work is off to a great start, but there are difficulties. Last night I discovered to my horror that I cannot play all of the 1973 BBC mini-series on my laptop! My first reaction was: how will I cope with not watching the repartee all year? And then I realised I also needed it for my thesis. I hauled out the other DVDs and they all work fine. This is simply one of those cruel turns of fate- I know it is.

But I hear my mother is sending me a care package with 300 bags of tea. (I was sick this past week). I also have a new text to guide my efforts to create a hypertext Bronte resource: Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age. Very exciting!

More genuinely exciting... one more hour until the BFI screening of Jane Eyre 2006!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How great that you could attend the school that you aspired to! Congrats! Sounds absolutely beautiful. Which school is it (or are you incognito for now?)

As always my best wishes to you for your studies. Speaking as a former grad student, I know that you will enjoy the scholarly life. That library sounds fabulous. Keep us filled in on the setting and your progress. It sounds like an inspiring place.

Brontëana said...

I have given up on staying incognito after the departmental secretary sent an email to the dept. informing them of my activities! Oh well. The school is Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is very inspiring but a total change from what I am used to. The scale, the quality, the environment is all drastically different.

What did you study in grad school?

Anonymous said...

I just looked at the Dalhousie U. site which led me to Nova Scotia pix. So beautful. Some of the beach pix remind me of the beaches on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where my husband and I vacation. The colors are so similar.

I did my research in computer graphics and interface design and earned my Master of Fine Arts and Master of Computer Science degrees at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Anonymous said...

Yay! So pleased for you! I hope you enjoy your studies, and they lead to greater things. :-)