Attack of the Killer Homework

I just created my first exam. Pray for my students.

Turtles Forever is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. O. M. G.

Don't believe me? here's a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK0KsUd4iDo

How weird it is to read an undergraduate essay containing a passage of awkward autobiography. Who thinks that's a good idea, honestly?

Attention all: I have just joined the century of the Fruitbat.

I've got a really long couple days ahead, but golly, am I happier about teaching now. I just have to get all the REST of my work done in the meanwhile. =/

I just targeted a facebook ad to prank exactly one person.

Said in class yesterday, by me: "Using a quotation is kindof like going on a date. You don't just stick it in there, you have to take it for dinner first."

WTH were they thinking?

I'm back! I'm not dead. Trip was interesting, ask me IRL.

My first day of teaching is tommorrow. Science help up all.

that was a hell of a weekend. glad I can finally rest

Tommorrow, I'm moving to the following address:

447 Somerset Ave W, Apt 2
Ottawa, ON
K1R 5J7

Everybody update your rolodexes!

Working hard today. Lots of lifting in the afternoon; now lots of thinking at night. The first draft is done. Is this conclusion profound enough?

******

We now come to the question of why the Thornton romances employ Saracens as villains when stronger figures such as Mordred or Ganelon would suffice. The problem with the Saracens of medieval romance is that it is unclear whether they should be read as comic villains or romance villains. In his Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye argues that comedy is a movement from “Illusion to reality. Illusion is whatever is fixed or definable, and reality is best understood as its negation; whatever reality is, it’s not that.” Medieval fictional Saracens such as Laban from the Sowdone of Babylone are clearly comic caricatures, and their representation offsets the frightening reality of the armies which tended to prevail against the crusaders in the Middle East. Frye defines the genre of romance as follows:
The romance is nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfilment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy.
According to Frye, villains in romance are avatars of the negation of aristocratic ideals. In the romances discussed above, those ideals include land claims, non-Christian potency, a well-trained military, and a noble class united in focus.
We have noted that the creation of villains in medieval romance necessitates the enunciation and negation of ideology. In the case of our two Arthurian poems, the ideology at stake is that of national identity. Calkin notes that
[B]ecause Arthur traverses the borders between Englishness and Britonness, he cannot help but raise questions of group identity and identification in the larger insular context […] he offers different points of identification for the various groups implicated in both insular and English identities.
As such, the introduction of Saracens into this attempt to assert positively an ‘English’ identity suggests that this identity was somehow in dispute during the fifteenth century. Geraldine Heng suggests that the aristocratic milieu of Alliterative Morte prefers martial exploits to good administration. By contrast, Rowlande and Otuell suggests that the key to martial exploit is itself good administration. Although all four poems take the crusading ethos of Saracen vilification for granted, Sir Perceval of Galles, the most light-hearted of the four, is the only one which follows the crusading ethos to its protagonist’s death in the Holy Land. Sir Perceval displays an air of practicality absent from the French tradition of Arthurian romance: opponents are killed outright rather than taken prisoner, men are less submissive to women, the role of King Arthur is more potent, and the tone suggested by the inclusion of Saracen antagonists approaches that of the national epic. And yet the nationalism of these texts is itself problematic, as the ideal present in the Charlemagne romances of a unified Christendom proposes unification under a French banner. Moreover, they do so over the backdrop of a contracting Christendom fragmenting in Europe, losing territory in the east, and rent apart by a divided Papacy. The nationalism betrays itself when the territories comprising the Christendom united under France in the Chanson de Roland in the twelfth century are the very territories we see united under England in the Alliterative Morte.
The problem with Saracens in the context in which I describe them is that they are at best chimerical, and at worst bugbears. The only fifteenth century English or French identity challenged by Saracens was an imagined one. This is not to say that English or French national identities were not being negotiated; the Thornton evidence suggests that they were. What Saracens represent, however, is an imagined multivalent challenge to as-yet-undefined or unarticulated aspects of national identity. The literary Saracen represents axiomatically a threat to the weakest part of the fabric of society. The success or failure of the attempt to ward off the Saracen threat comprises an argument of the strength of this aspect of the societal fabric. If the threat is overcome, it is by exposing, defining, and defending the point they attack. In Perceval of Galles, that point is the unified land holdings of the nation and the customs that keep internal forces from harming each other. In the alliterative Morte Arthure that point is the sovereignty of the insular throne. In The Sege off Melayne, that point is the monarch’s prioritization of nation over crusade. In Rowlande and Otuell, that point is the gentry’s ability act in unison. In Thornton’s texts of the matter of England, Saracen threats are warded off decisively. In his texts on the matter of France, however, they are not. The utility of Saracen villains in Middle English romance must therefore point to a problem that only Saracens can solve: the articulation of national identity in the face of a Europe divided.

FINIS (and now for editing =/ )

One or two more bits to go, and then I've got myself a first draft!
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Sir Perceval of Galles, the Lincoln Thornton redaction of Chrétien de Troyes’ seminal bildungsroman the Conte du Graal, is six thousand lines shorter than its antecedent. The differences between this story and that of Chrétien de Troyes are significant, but what is most noticeable is the importance this poem places on creating a space of domestic tranquility. Sir Perceval of Galles constructs domestic space consistently in that it encompasses knights and rulers native to England who have work towards developing a concordant polity. The Red Knight intrudes upon domestic space by breaking apart a branch of the royal family. For this he is killed and his body burnt. Similarly, the Red Knight’s mother, a witch who heals him and appears to control a network of spies, is also killed and her corpse burnt. Perceval’s desire to burn the body of the Sultan suggests that these fires are a symbolic attempt to violently cleanse discordant elements from the landscape. The Saracen army is a direct threat to Lufamour’s rulership, as well as her family and bodily integrity, the Sultan having killed her family and decided to marry her against her will. Her messenger announces that:
Up resyn es a Sowdane:
Alle hir landes hase he tane;
So byseges he that woman
That scho may hafe no pese.
………………….
He wolde have hir to wyfe,
And scho will noghte soo.
Now hase that ilke Sowdane
Hir fadir and hir eme slane,
And hir brethir ilkane,
And is hir moste foo.
Perceval’s annihilation of the Saracen army allows Lufamour to once again live in peace, and upon their marriage, we are told that he wields the land well. The Giant, for his part is not only a grotesque Saracen, he is also the brother of the Sultan who has already disrupted Lufamour’s domestic affairs. The Red Knight, the witch, the Sultan, and the giant are clearly extrinsic threats that affect the domestic polity. In the case of the Sultan in particular, the threat he represents is his desire to destroy the familial and cultural ties of English domestic culture in favour of his own economy of might. By contrast, the poet’s vision of ideal domestic relations is wholly civil.
The violence with which Perceval treats outsiders is in some way to be expected. Perceval is young, and strong, and the violence fits the genre. What is curious is the poem’s strange imbrication of evidence which points towards a vision of a unified and civil English polity. Perceval, of course is Welsh, and he is related to King Arthur, whose claim to sovereignty as envisioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth includes the whole of Britain, including Scotland. Perceval’s use of his ‘Scottish spear’ to defend Arthur’s regime therefore suggests the poet’s holistic view of an idealized British nation. Perceval’s intermittent conflicts with native knights suggest the same. He encounters a group of riders who flee from him, thinking him to be the Red Knight who had previously been terrorizing the roads. It is only when Perceval announces that he is not the Red Knight whose armour he wears that he is warmly welcomed to the travelling band for the night. When Arthur and three of his knights arrive at the battlefield before Lufamour’s castle, Perceval believes the Sultan to be with them, and goes to attack. Wawain is chosen to meet him in battle, and yet worries that:
If I sle hym, or he me,
That never yit was fade,
And we are sisters sones two,
And aythir of us othir slo,
He that lifes will be full wo.
Neither Perceval nor Wawain desires to fight against another domestic knight if it can be helped. It is even so with the Black Knight Perceval encounters as a result of the theft of the bower-lady’s magic ring. Although they begin fighting as soon as they meet, the lady begs them to stop, and it is revealed that the magic ring is the source of their strife, whereupon Perceval offers to return it in exchange for his own, which he then uses to cure his mother’s madness and restore her to a place befitting her rank.
In this poem it takes very little effort to prevent violence amongst compatriot knights. Otuel, by contrast, has no difficulty slaying his own kinsmen so long as they remain Saracens. Over the course of his adventures, Perceval succeeds in purging the land of threats both foreign and supernatural to peace, prosperity and dynasty. We can see that villains are those who threaten domestic continuity. On retrospect, however, Perceval’s death as a crusading martyr suggests that the stakes are in some way the idea of civilization itself. If Perceval fights to protect the sanctity of the English way of life represented by Arthur’s court, his subsequent crusading impulse suggests that the destruction of Saracens is a goal that ought to be universalized. By shifting the focus of the rhetoric of crusade from and internal space to an external one, the poet suggests that Englishness itself is a panacea for the Saracen problem.
In the alliterative Morte Arthure from the same manuscript, Saracens are a different kind of threat. Comprising peoples as disparate as the Indians, Africans, Arabs Turks and Persians allied with the Romans to the Norse, Danes and Goths who fight with Mordred, the Alliterative Morte defines Saracens as broadly as ‘any nation that fights against England’. Moreover, the poet is quite explicit that Arthur represents “Yngland” rather than just Britain. Whether they be aligned with Rome or Mordred, Saracens in this challenge not only the ethnic makeup of the nation, but also its autonomy. The Rome-aligned Saracens in this poem follow the standard definition, they are from the East, and fight alongside giants, witches, and fantastic weaponry such as towers on camels. When Arthur and his knights fight these foes, they do so to assert the independence of British territory from Roman control. In this case, ‘British territory’ is explicitly defined, and includes the outer islands, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Low Countries, most of France, Germany, Austria, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. I list these provinces not for the sake of exhaustiveness, but to exemplify that in romances such as this, as in Chansons de Gestes such as the Chanson de Roland, the enumeration of territory is itself the work of hegemony. Roland recollects and enumerates the provinces he has conquered in order to forge a Frankish nation out of disparate provinces; the author of the Alliterative Morte attempt to claim English territories in the same manner. Emperor Lucius is a villain because his demand of tribute bears with it a threat to the coherence of the English nation.
Though Arthur successfully defends his nation’s sovereignty, Mordred’s treachery succeeds where the Romans have failed. Though the Danes and Irish begin the poem as English subjects worth defending, their alliance with Mordred turns them into Saracens. As Sir Craddok tells Arthur:
Sir, thy warden is wicked and wild of his deedes,
For he wandreth has wrought senn thou away passed.
He has castels encroched and crownd himselven,
Caught in all the rentes of the Round Table;
He devised the rewn and delt as him likes;
Dubbed of the Denmarkes dukes and erles;
Dissevered them sonderwise, and citees destroyed;
Of Sarazenes and Sessoines upon sere halves
He has sembled a sorte of selcouthe bernes,
Soveraignes of Surgenale and soudeours many
Of Peghtes and paynims and proved knightes
Of Ireland and Argyle, outlawed bernes
……….
They rob thy religious and ravish thy nunnes.
And redy rides with his rout to raunson the poor;
In a word, Craddock’s message turns the previously loyal English subject nations of Denmark, Ireland and South Wales into nun-raping Saracens who rob the poor. By the time Arthur’s battle nears its end, the Orkneys, Austrians, and Norse have also become Saracen. Mordred’s treachery is therefore constructed not only as an affront to Arthur’s rule, but also a successful attack on England’s ability to retain sovereignty over all its holdings, and it is successful enough that Arthur sacrifices himself in order to bring peace. Though the external threat of the Roman alliance is disposed of as a matter of course, the internal threat of Mordred’s usurpation successfully weakens the dynasty. Yet the great sorrowful event of Arthur’s funeral represents a reunification of the national polity. In England, at least, reconciliation remains a possibility.
Though not specifically about crusade, the incorporation of the figure of the Saracen into these Arthurian texts suggests that their presence serves to make explicit the values of the nation. In Sir Perceval, those values include a propensity toward non-violent resolution of conflict between insular peers. In the Alliterative Morte, national values can be said to include military strength predicated on strong government. In both cases, England can be said to be a space where domestic unity is encouraged. By contrast, Rowland and Otuell presents a French polity that is divided and unruly, nearly bringing itself to ruin were it not for the aid of a recently converted Saracen whose very conversion is predicated on a divine miracle rather than military strength and has no compunctions about killing his own blood relatives. The Sege of Melayne presents a French army which rides off to fight an evenly matched foe, and is subsequently killed to a man. In this poem the French polity is so impotent that the most dramatic moment occurs when Archbishop Turpin lays siege to Paris with an army of priests, excommunicates Charlemagne, and takes command of the army in order to defend Christendom. Saracens are nebulous villains, but the Thornton Charlemagne romances use them as an opportunity to present true villainy as those agents whose actions most harm the state. Setting aside the fact that other Lincoln Thornton texts reinforce the connection between Arthur and domestic strength, and that other of the London Thornton texts display poor governance, divided aristocracies, and violence without end, it remains evident that these two manuscripts, taken together, construct parallels English and French plots, but with divergent results based on the milieu in question.

This one's for Hannah; now with content!
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Historian Steven Runciman has noted that “when Pope Urban preached his great sermon at Clermont the Turks seemed about to threaten the Bosphorus. When Pope Pius II preached the last Crusade the Turks were crossing the Danube.” This was due to their superior technology. Ambroise’s chronicle of the Third Crusade (c. 1190) displays Christian awe at Saracen technology. During the siege of Acre, Ambroise notes that Saladin fights with
So many mangonels, such store
Of stone throwers and machines of war,
So many craftsmen with deft hand,
Both foreign and from his own land,
Greek fire in jars so numerous,
So many weapons murderous.
Later, Ambroise remarks that the Christians led by King Guy were only able to take Scandalion because Saladin was unaware they were moving towards it. Ambroise’s chronicle makes it evident that the Christian victories in the Crusades happened in spite of their martial and technological superiority.
While Muslim technological superiority was an accepted fact, it was nevertheless treated with some disdain. Writing about Gerbert D’Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II (c.946), William of Malmesbury equates Gerbert’s scientific knowledge, with Saracen magic. Malmesbury writes that Gerbert went to Spain “to learn astrology and other such arts from the Saracens” who “devote themselves to divination and witchcraft, as their national custom is.” Gerbert is praised for his seizure of the abacus, his knowledge of the astrolabe, and his knowledge of arithmetic, music astronomy and geometry. This account—the pope-to-be travelling to Spain in order to seize the technology and knowledge of the Saracens—an account written some two hundred years before Ambroise’s suggests that knowledge of Muslim technological superiority was so widespread that it could be considered common. It is an equally common trope in Middle English Crusading romance.
Two English texts whose plots centre about the incorporation of Saracens and Saracen technology are The Sowdone of Babylone, which exists in a unique fifteenth-century manuscript, and The Romance of Duke Rowland and Sir Otuel of Spayne from the London Thornton manuscript. The Sowdone of Babylone begins with the description of the Saracen hero Ferumbras’ siege and destruction of Rome. The Saracen army is successful in part due to their use of
An engine that was i-throwe—
That was to the cité ful goode—
And brake down towers both hie and lowe.
Seeing the success of his siege engines, Ferumbras calls to his army, saying:
Shewe forth here nowe your crafte
For Mahoundis love, that gevith man foode,
That ther be no toure lafte.
Upon seeing the destruction wrought by Saracen technology, the pope himself laments that the Saracens “brekene oure walles, oure toures alle/ With caste of his engine.” This siege of Rome casts Saracen technology as integral to their war effort, but later on in the poem the Christian knights Roland and Guy, holed up in a tower with Ferumbras’ sister Floripas, sustain themselves with her magical girdle that prevents starvation. Moreover, the primary movement of the plot of The Sowdone of Babylone is that of conversion. Ferumbras’ conversion and subsequent efforts on behalf of the French army are integral to the inevitable Christian victory, as are the efforts of his sister, both of whom convert. The importance of the conversion of Saracen warriors is writ large in the romance of Rowland and Otuel.
At the beginning of Rowland and Otuel, the poet is quite clear that the Saracen knight Otuel is the “moste […] prouede of myghtis,” commands the “flour of cheualrlrye,” and is “þe beste knyghte” that Roland has ever fought. Following his conversion to Christianity, however, Otuel vows to “distruye þe heythyn blode.” What is interesting is that after Otuel’s conversion, he acts as a better knight than Roland, who runs off alone with Oliver and Ogier to attack the Saracens as soon as the Christian forces land in Lombardy. Finding them bloodied and fleeing from ten thousand Saracens, it is the convert Otuel who reproves their shameful and selfish actions, and it is his efforts which effect the protection of Lombardy from the Saracen army. The significance of depictions of Saracen military and technological strengths is that what is desired most by the Christians in these romances is not, in fact, the destruction of all things tainted by Saracens. The Sowdone of Babylone and Rowland and Otuel both express the importance of the Christian incorporation of superior elements of foreign cultures without compromising the Christian society into which these elements move. The problem is that this desire for positive incorporation makes it difficult to uniformly paint Saracens as villains, as the ideal position is that of Saracen conversion, which is in these texts primarily a matter of vocabulary. Apart from their religion, Saracen characters must be categorically indistinguishable from Christians in order for incorporation to be possible.
Representations of Saracens in romance tend to vacillate between two extremes. As I have just mentioned, there is a categorical movement towards representing them as idealized knights whose only fault is their religious or cultural allegiance. On the other hand, in order for Saracens to be adequate foils for strong heroes, sometimes their representations tend towards the cartoonish. The Emperor Garcy in Rowland and Otuel is portrayed little differently than Charles himself. Like Charles he allows his knights to challenge the opposing leaders, and like Charles he feels sorrow for the deaths of his men. By contrast, the Sultan Arabas in The Siege of Melayne, having captured Roland and demanded that he convert, responds to Roland’s counter-offer of conversion to Christianity by laughing and bragging about how many Christian symbols he has burnt, and says that he “sawe at none no more powstee/ than att anoþer rotyn tree/ one erthe,” before demanding that somebody bring him a crucifix to burn. This depiction precludes the possibility of Arabas’ conversion, due to his lack of respect for the Christian faith. Most egregious, however, are depictions of Saracens who do not even have respect for their own faith. Laban, the eponymous Sultan of The Sowdone of Babylone, can be seen eating serpents, making his vassals drink blood, and vowing over and over by Mohammed that he will have the upper hand over the Christians the next time they fight. Laban eventually destroys his own idols in a paroxysm of frustration with his silent and impotent gods. Saracens such as Ferumbras and Otuel are able to convert as easily as saying so, and the only difference between these characters’ Muslim and Christian personas are the names of the gods or saints they invoke. Conversely, Saracens such as Arabas and Laban figure themselves intractably as beyond the power of the Christian faith, yet their mission is to convert the Christians they fight. These competing representations serve to muddle the category even further.
Given confused position of the Saracens in Middle English romances descended from the chanson de geste tradition, the constraints of the genre can at least be said to necessitate them. Both chansons de gestes and Middle English Charlemagne romances are at their core stories about the clash of cultures and the rhetoric of war, conversion, and crusade. What can we then say about the inclusion of Saracen figures where we would assume that they are extraneous to the tradition, such as in the Romances of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table? Even given that Saracens are a means for romance authors to engage with the process of cultural differentiation, their dual representations as more civilized and more barbaric remains problematic. Moreover, the Middle English romances that are the topic of this discussion express a generic fluidity that the French tradition does not. Indeed Middle English texts that self-identify as romances link themselves to tales of Charlemagne more often than they do not, and a large number of them claim to be working within “a related but distinct English tradition—English not only in language but also in subject matter.” Following that the English Arthurian tradition links itself to the Charlemagne unproblematically, the incorporation of Saracen figures into Arthurian texts must be considered to be a particularly English creation.

Here's my setup for the whole argument. As usual, *any* commentary is good commentary.

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This paper examines the tradition of villain depiction as a function of literary tradition and propaganda. In order to understand the literary position of the Saracen, we must first understand the history of the word’s use in fiction. Though the Middle English poems I discuss can all be broadly categorized under the genre of ‘romance’, the French and Anglo-Norman tradition from which the matter of these texts derive can be broadly separated into the traditions of the chansons de geste, which focus primarily on the figure of Charlemagne, his peers, and their battles to defend Christendom’s religious integrity, and romans, which generally depict Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and tend to focus on travel over battle , though even in the French tradition these divisions were beginning to blur. Yet even as early on as the Chanson de Roland, Saracens, though unquestionably antagonistic, are nevertheless portrayed with positive characteristics. Roland portrays the Muslim worship of Apollo, Mohammad and Termagant as foreign parallels of the Christian trinity, and implies that Christians and Muslims speak the same language . These linguistic and religious unities are emphasised by the poet’s insistence that “Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit” [Pagans are wrong and Christians are right]. This characteristic of wrongness or rightness appears to be the only differentiating feature between the two groups.
As Sarah Kay argues, the chanson de geste tradition recognizes implicitly that “the identification of the enemy as an alien never entirely loses its emotive force,” yet the categorical instability of the Saracen—their undefinability—creates a number of problems. Kay notes that:

"Peoples who are Christian in one text are may be Saracen in another; names given to Christians in some texts can be assigned to Saracens in others…Some Christians convert to Islam…And many Saracens become Christian."

Saracen representations in the English tradition are even more unstable. Calkin notes that “the Saracen knight seems to exist simply to provide an arena for Christian knightly endeavour,” and suggests that the literary function of Saracens was oppositional. Calkin argues that:

"What the Saracens reveal…is that Christian characters are troubled by, and react to, the otherness of Saracens only when those ‘foreigners’ are performing better at knightly functions…the Saracen irritates his Christian counterparts most when he is doing a better job at the same tasks that Christian knights are supposed to perform The problem, essentially, is that of envy and competitiveness, of similarity in a separate entity provoking aggression."

The problem of Saracen representational inconsistency becomes overwhelming when we consider Sharon Kinoshita’s argument that chansons de geste have from their earliest extant exemplar attempted to construct Christian or proto-nationalistic collective identities, as made explicit in the Chanson de Roland when Roland, in his death speech enumerates and incorporates the various provinces comprising Frankish territory, including realms as far out as Poland, Constantinople, Scotland, Ireland and England. These narratives employ the figure of the Saracen for the construction of national identities.
The problem that this employment creates is twofold. On one hand, though Christian representations of Muslims in the Middle Ages were predicated on the rhetoric of the Crusades, the reality of the matter was that Muslims were technologically and militarily more advanced than the Christians who fought them. On the other hand, as my discussion of the Thornton romances aims to bring to light, the propagandistic utility of Saracens was as self-evident as their definition was unstable.

I just got my copy of the Ad.ver.sary remix album and it's amazing. Go buy it. DO IT!

Okay, so I've finally started writing my paper. Here's my abstract (that was already accepted). I think I'm just going to explain my terms and do som analasys, rather than put a bunch of critics up against each other. That seems better for a conference context. Also, please excuse the terrible references. They want this in the 'Oxford' format, which is in the midst of baffling me.

Why so Saracen? Using Villains to Define the Nation in the Thornton Manuscripts.

In medieval romance, the Saracen is a breed of villain as ubiquitous as it is elusive. As early as Chanson de Roland, the otherwise worthy Saracen Emir of Balaguer whose noble bearing is qualified by the phrase ‘had he been a Christian’ . Though the word commonly refers to Turks, Arabs and Moslems , in later Middle English Romances it describes such diverse groups as the Romans, Greeks, Austrians, Danes, Norse, and Irish . That such a wide spectrum of nations and peoples can be grouped together so easily regardless of problems of historical accuracy or geography suggests that Saracenness is a primarily rhetorical category
The broadest categories of Saracens in Middle English literature appear in two manuscripts compiled by Robert Thornton in the early fifteenth century. In the Lincoln Thornton manuscript , the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Perceval of Galles present battles against Saracens as precursors to unifying exiled English knights with their homelands . Moreover, The Siege of Milan and Roland and Otuel in the London Thornton manuscript depict France as a divided polity beset by Saracens whose military and technological superiority are offset only by the Christian faith of its defenders . Thornton’s Saracens appear to function as vehicles for depicting England as a site of concord and France as a site of discord.
In her book Saracens and the Making of English Identity, Siobhain Bly Calkin argues that Saracen figures informed the construction of English identity at the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War; this paper will therefore examine the socio-political subtext of the Thornton manuscripts near the war’s end . This paper will read the depictions of Saracens in the Thornton manuscripts as a procedural expression of the delineation of English and French identities throughout the Hundred Years’ War in the aim of showing that the broad categorization of Saracens employed by Robert Thornton was integral to the construction of a fully differentiated English national identity.

So I just got a job at U of O in the Fall. I'll be teaching my very own class!

Fall 2009

ENG 1100 FF – Workshop in Essay Writing

Monday 16:00-17:30; Wednesday 14:30-16:00

Fuck Yeah.

Also, OMG my nerves!

I think I just finished the first draft of my final course-related paper ever.

This makes me sad.

Today was stupid weird. First, I had my LAST CLASS EVER in the morning. This was followed by my reciept of an invitation to meet the EMPEROR OF JAPAN in July when he visits Carleton. Then, while house-hunting I found this cheap place on the Quebec side that has a big house, two acres of land, and a BARN, that I'm incredibly interested in renting to throw parties in. WTF.