First Impressions.

The purpose of this blog is to be an online reading journal for my graduate independent study in Chaucer and the Transmission of Text.  I am in my final semester of graduate school, and this is one of my last projects in my program.  Looking back over the many years I have been in college and graduate school studying the English language and its literature, it seems fitting that at the end of my academic journey, I am performing research on the beginnings of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.  While the project of course includes a proper annotated bibliography and research paper, my professor and I agreed that a blog would be an appropriate outlet for a reading journal, specifically in context of studying the transmission of The Canterbury Tales from manuscript to print, as a whole as well as individual portions from it's composition in the late fourteenth-century through the end of the sixteenth century.  I think that a blog fits nicely with this theme in several ways.  First, the idea of writing academic papers for the purposes of evaluating my interpretation and mastery of the material is one thing; it is another altogether to post openly my writings on a public forum where potentially anyone with an internet connection can access and read them.  Secondly, just as there was a shift in the transmission of text from manuscript to printed editions those hundreds of years ago, today we too are witnessing a shift in the presentations of literature, from printed books to ebooks, websites, blogs and other various computerised outlets.  It seems only fitting then, that in studying the effects of the transition from one form of transmission to another from a distinct point in history, I employ one of the current iterations of textual transmission change in my analysis.  

To this end, my intention with the blog portion of this class in twofold.  First and foremost, I am required to post my weekly reading assessments on this site.  I have provided the syllabus as a page on this blog so with a schedule of readings, so that should anyone be interested, they can read along, or anticipate the pace and structure of the readings.  Secondly, rather than simply write a straightforward analysis of the readings, specifically from the tales, I am going to try and incorporate the relevance of the text to my own life and experiences, whenever applicable.  Blogging has always seem a natural outlet for me, being an avid reader and writer.  However, I never thought that I had a unifying theme to maintain a blog that would not devolve into some sort of online journal or confessional.  It is my hope that I can incorporate some of my proclivities for creative writing and observation in a cohesive manner through the lens of Chaucer and his tales.  Indeed, it seems that the entire process of my academic pursuits has been a pilgrimage of sorts, with characters that I have traveled with along the way.  Hopefully, there will be some posts of interest, some insight shared through this outlet, and of course, some insight gained on my part to the relevance of literature in my life, and the relevance of its transmission in receiving literature.