Free at last…

And so the week draws to a weary close. I've delivered major lectures on Cultural Studies, Modernity and now a two hour blockbuster on All Of Medieval Literature, History And Culture, 450-1485 and I'm tired.

I hope the lecture was OK. There's so much material to discuss and much of it will never be mentioned again on the English degree, so I try to at least give the names of stunning work: Beowulf and 'The Seafarer' are given some attention, and Chaucer, but I also rammed in Layamon's Brut, Gerald of Wales, the Decameron, Gerusalemme Liberata, Gawain and the Green Knight, La Morte D'Arthur, La Chanson de Roland, miracle plays, morality plays, mystery plays, Everyman and all sorts of others, all sweetened with multiple clips from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though I didn't have time for these two, on the French and on medieval politics.

Yet more books

I'm feeling seriously rough today - swimming didn't help - and I've got a big pile of marking to do. Or rather, I should have, but 18 essays are mysteriously missing in the bureaucracy. Brilliant.

I got another book in the post today - Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian Romances. Unfortunately, I discover that it's a rather archaic 1914 translation and that I already have this copy. The up side is that the new copy is a rather pretty hardback. I'm also reading Team of Rivals by Doris Stearns Goodwin, who got into trouble for plagiarism in her The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds a few years back. The new book is astonishing - tracing the parallel careers of Lincoln and the rivals he integrated into his cabinet. It's astonishing partly because Lincoln's rivals (Chase, Bates, Salmon) were brilliant, committed, serious - how times change - and because Lincoln's elevation from desperate squalor to President was aided by luck so many times. According to my copy, Obama used it as a template for his cabinet.