The Final Countdown

With only 24 days remaining until my MA dissertation is due, I stumbled last night onto an article on the study of literary stylistics. Now, I’ve been fairly thorough in my research, and for the last 6 months I’ve been reading everything I could get my hands on regarding the relationship between language and literature, particularly the Medieval. And somehow, SOMEHOW, I’ve completely missed the very existence of an entire (albeit obscure) academic discipline which is just that—the relationship between a work of literature and the language in which it is written. And it’s called stylistics.

The article, dated 1976, provided some basic definitions and broke down the discipline into subcategories. To my credit (I just love tooting my own horn), I had managed to construct my diss. utilizing almost the exact same disciplinary divisions; divisions I created having spent 6 months reading superfluous and barely relevant material. What the article did do, in addition to giving me a dozen new avenues to explore, was to provide me with a whole new set of nomenclature for my work. I knew before what I wanted to say, and now I have the words to say it.

I’m completely pumped up about my work, I re-wrote my entire Ph.D. research proposal in my head at 2:30 this morning (and damn, what a doozy!), and I’ve got 24 days left for the dissertation. It’s a sprint to the finish. I’m into the last 500m, my quads are on fire, my vision is blurry, and my throat feels like I’m breathing hydrochloric acid. I was down by a length at the half-way, but I’m coming back and rowing through. I’m gonna lay the field to waste. As Herebe says, “game on.”