Woops

Oh poop. I forgot again. The worst part is, I forgot because I've been being so productive! This weekend, I have done lots and lots of reading for Milton, read half of Burmese Days by George Orwell, and nearly finished my prospectus. Yay! I spent all Friday afternoon and all of Saturday in the library, camped out on the floor in the Milton section on the fourth floor. I went back over the literature review of my old prospectus from last semester first to see what needed to be updated. Then I compared what I had there with what I had written for that annotated bibliography essay. It's funny how our writing improves over time without us really even knowing it's happening, isn't it? I mean, that old prospectus? No. Just no. But I could definitely work with that annotated bibliography essay. So I found some more sources in the library, re-skimmed some of the sources from the old prospectus, and I think I have something to be proud of for class on Monday.

Additionally, I am apparently a total masochist because I told Dr. Dobranski that I would have my prospectus to him before Thanksgiving, so good job, me. So now I'm trying to focus on my methodology and summary of argument. In looking over Dr. Samuel's notes on my draft from last semester, I am noticing that she wanted much greater development of my methodology section. I'm planning on really using a formalist, text-driven approach with an emphasis on historical context. What is that?
New Historicism? And since theory is not my primary goal, should I just concentrate on my source material? For example, I will of course be working with contemporary secondary sources, but I also am using EEBO to interact with some of Milton's contemporaries. As for the Summary of argument, I think I have that figured out, and if it's totally unfeasible, Dr. Dobranski and I can discuss that over a pool of my tears.

Finally, I wanted to note that in reading all of these scholarly articles both for my thesis and my other classes, I've started noting various formats that the authors use--like where their theses are, how they interact with secondary sources, how they state a problem, and how they provide context. Yay for learning useful things!