The Poetics of Bodily Transplantation, 1702 – 1902

Hello LitSciMed Cohort…

The Bust of Gladstone Sitting Proudly (and Justly So)

… many of whom I have now had the very great pleasure of meeting on this first day in Gladstone’s residential library.  And what a wonderful library it is, too.  There is a beautiful fire in the lounge (though ‘lounge’ does not do it justice) and before the week is out, I would really like to capture the crackle of this lovely fire, as it has already become part of what defines the experience of St Deiniols for me.

A Word in the Ear of Charlotte Sleigh

Today there was a most wonderful presentation by Charlotte Sleigh, who spoke about something that I suspect underpins most of our research in one way or another: Empiricism in the Novel.  I won’t expand upon this, as it will no doubt be very well documented in others’ blogs.  The texts, videos, and powerpoint files will also be available soon, too and anyone interested in anything post Restoration will not regret spending a few minutes browsing this material when it is available.  I learned a lot.  I am becoming increasingly interested in the Romantic period in the UK and how ideas central to the notion of ‘bodily transplant’ came to be formed here; what does the Romantic period contribute to the development of this practice (and theory)? This presentation really got me thinking about what came before the Romantic Period and texts that might be still relevant for me since they were still in circulation and went some way to inform the (then) contemporary practices and ideas.  What about the circulation of texts from other countries at that point, too? When thinking of truncating a project’s purview, I have been thinking (and have been told) that I must limit my searches to only what is written in those periods.  Now quite a bit of what came before seems fair game.  In one sense, it frees me but in another it makes the task of writing a Ph.D. all the more daunting.  As soon as one narrows their searches, they find a whole lot more relevant literature.  I doubt it will ever end!

Mark Llewellyn, who worked here as a post-doc, must be one of the only people who can decipher (most of) Gladstone’s handwriting.  While he, unfortunately, couldn’t find anything of use to me in his fantastically titled ‘Glad Cat’, he certainly found some fantastic annotated texts for Sophie and Jackie of which I am more than slightly jealous! I am rather surprised that this library allows one to take the books up to their room.  I don’t know whether Gladstone has anything that will be directly relevant to my research but I must sleep with a Gladstone Annotated volume next to my bed just so I can say that I’ve done it!

The Glad Cat

And this is the Glad Cat: the catalogue of Gladstone’s annotations et cetera.

Finally: the postgraduate presentations, of which I was one.  I think Sharon is uploading some documents of these presentations so I shan’t describe them all.  Save to say that I particularly enjoyed Will’s presentation on (early) Science Fiction, which I take a passing interest in, merely for pleasure, you understand.  Must make a point of talking to him about all this!

So, it’s the start of a very long week.  I should get some sleep but I have a presentation to give as soon as I get back to London! Perhaps I can present on Harvey…

Night night all.