Bracket Spotting

Yesterday, I chatted to a friend via text, trying to find a day to take a walk together, and touch base. We hadn’t seen each other for a very long time, although we live in the same town (entirely my fault!). Sunday, I said to her, would be best, as on all the other days […]

Remember the Porter! Or the bracket on the 5th of November

ve been teaching Volpone by Ben Jonson today, and, in my preparation for the seminar, discovered the wonderful British Library pages on early modern drama and dramatists. They also showed an autograph letter of Jonson to Robert Cecil, James’ secretary of state, and secret service guy, written just days after the revelation of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. On […]

Speedy Reading. Or not.

Do you know those heads-up at the head of an online article, telling you how long it’s likely to take you to read it? I do appreciate those, although they smack of the capitalist obsession with effectiveness and brevity. I want it ALL, and I want it NOW, without actually making any kind of (shiver) effort… If […]

and death i think is no parenthesis

So, my fellowship starts next month, but I’m giving a paper on the project at my old uni in Geneva, and started some research. I’ve done a fair bit of that already, since the brackets were an alternative PhD project, and have been with me for many years now; but it’s alwas nice to return […]