Guest blog post for York Mystery Plays

http://www.yorkmysteryplays.co.uk/guest-blog-trail-mysteries-eleanor-bloomfield/

The mundane and the marvellous

This is legitimately my working life in the Arts Assignment Centre ;D via

stamping assignments ~ scanning assignments ~ filing assignments ~ counting assignments ~ stapling assignments (see above) ~ impaling one's thumb on badly stapled assignments ~ requesting students to please include a cover sheet with their assignments ~ students' smiles when they collect assignments and find they've done well ~ having to tell students, "No, sorry, your assignment has not been returned yet" ~ realising how very rarely people actually notice the person on the other side of a reception desk ~ being polite and nice for an entire working day ~ laughing with office mates ~ commiserating with fellow PhD students ~ the lunchtime rush in the common room kitchen, and the delicate dance between fridge, cupboards, microwave, drawers, sink and dishwasher ~ arriving first in the morning, and the secret satisfaction of knowing one has the entire English department to one's self ~ afternoon tea parties in the common room ~ passing the provisional year review two months early ~ having people explain just how highly they rate (or don't) a PhD in medieval drama ~ being told by a Professor in the field that a PhD in medieval drama is "necessary work" ~ writing 1,000 words a day with ease ~ writing 300 words a day with an effort greater than squeezing blood from a stone ~ having a conference abstract accepted ~ having an article rejected ~ trying to present ad lib for the first time ~ booking a one-way flight to England for a summer of research ~ the generosity, academic and otherwise, of strangers ~ an inbox full of replies to a call for information on the York plays ~ academic detective work ~ when one's university computer dies (again) ~ renewing library books ~ scribbled pencil notes ~ a paper-strewn desk ~ poppies in Albert Park ~ oak trees in full green leaf ~ the overloaded and heavenly scented philadelphus bush behind Old Choral Hall ~ the power of poetry ~ the Clocktower striking noon ~ walking down to St Pat's after lunch ~ people watching ~ the Pop-up Globe opening again soon ~ summer...

Have you seen the York Mystery Plays?

Just received university ethics clearance for interviewing people involved with the York Mystery Plays. Now I need people to talk to! Please get in touch or help spread the word!

YORK EVOLVING: CHANGE AND PERMANENCE IN THE 

YORK MYSTERY PLAY CYCLE

CALL FOR INFORMATION

Eleanor Bloomfield, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, is researching modern revivals of the York mystery play cycle and is seeking first-hand accounts of the plays. Anyone who has seen, or been involved with, any performances of the York plays from 1951 to the present day, and is willing to be interviewed regarding their memories, impressions and experiences, please contact e.bloomfield@auckland.ac.nz or write to Eleanor Bloomfield, The University of Auckland (English, Drama and Writing Studies), 14A Symonds St, 206-646, Auckland 1010, New Zealand. Confidential interviews will be held in Britain between March and September 2018. Approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee on 10th October 2017 for three years. Reference Number 020006.

The Solitary Student

A blissfully quiet working day on the Arts reception desk (thanks be for university holidays) gave rise to this piece of arrant nonsense, herewith shared for your amusement with apologies to William Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper:

The Solitary Student

Behold her, single at her desk,
Yon solitary student for a PhD!
Writing and weeping by herself,
Stop here, or quickly flee!
Alone she sits to tax her brain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the halls profound
Are overflowing with the sound.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, forgotten, far-off things
And drama long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Target word count not met today?
Article rejected? Feedback causing pain?
University computer just died (again)?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her thesis had no ending,
I saw her groaning at her work,
And o'er the keyboard bending;
I listened, motionless and in thrall;
And, as I tiptoed down the hall,
The keyboard tapping continued still
Sapping mind and heart and will!

PhD update: six months in

When I started this blog its avowed purpose was to be a forum for my research and academic work. Looking back over my posts from the last few months, it seems to have turned into more of a Pop-up Globe photo fest. (Sorry-not-sorry;  je ne regrette rien.) So, without further ado, here is a brief roundup of my recent much ado about nothings; or, my accomplishments in academia since starting my PhD.

• writing and presenting my first conference paper; attending my first conference 

• presenting at the university's School of Humanities PhD students' seminar series

• writing up my Blackburn conference presentation as a paper and submitting it to the Cerae journal (it made it past the desk-reject stage and is currently under review)

• being invited to contribute a chapter proposal to an edited collection of essays on the family networks of medieval/early modern merchants (go the Blackburns!)

• writing to This England magazine with a plea to those who have seen any productions of the York Mystery Plays since the 1950s, asking them to get in touch if willing to share any memories or information. (NB this request still stands, so anyone reading this who has been involved in any way with the mystery plays and has stories to share, please leave a comment!) So far this has yielded email contact from two lovely people who have sent me information about the Hastings mystery plays, a Times article reporting the £500,000 loss made on the 2016 York Minster production of the plays (what a shame), a copy of the 1957 York Festival Programme, a copy of the Exodus pageant performed in that production, and one very grateful PhD student with a renewed faith in the kindness of strangers.

• applying to, and being accepted for, the University of York's visiting PhD student programme for a year; then balking at the prospect of paying £16,000 in tuition fees and having to decline the offer!

• volunteering as a reader/reviewer for the Hortulus journal

• attempting to learn French, which is pretty much indispensable for working with Middle English; and also, as it turns out, with early 20th century avant-garde drama. Alas, so far this has not been an unqualified success. My working knowledge of the French language is still largely restricted to what I have picked up from watching Henry V at the Globe. Couper la gorge!  

And looking ever onwards and upwards, here are my goals-still-in-progress:

• passing my provisional year review (eek).

• getting to York for the 2018 production of the mystery plays, and to explore the archives and city records there and at Lancaster and Bristol, as a 'visiting academic' (no fees required) as opposed to a 'visiting student' (large fees required).

• ditto getting to Toronto University, where productions of the full cycle were staged in the 1970s and '90s.

• submitting a paper proposal to the 2018 International Medieval Congress (IMC) in Leeds – and being accepted! 

And so, back to work...

HUMANITIES POSTGRADUATE SEMINAR SERIES
MON 27 MARCH, NOON, PAT HANAN ROOM, ARTS 2

Fortune, Family and Faith: On the Trail of the Blackburns, 1400 – 1450

Nicholas and Margaret Blackburn senior
(detail from St Anne Window, All Saints North Street, York)
Photograph E. Bloomfield

Throughout the first half of the fifteenth century the Blackburn family – rich, astute and ambitious – were among the leading citizens in one of medieval England’s most important cities: York. The Blackburns were a mercantile family whose roots lay in Lancashire; during the fourteenth century they moved into Yorkshire and in the late 1390s to York itself, probably with the expectation of making their fortune there. From the detailed wills left by Nicholas Blackburn, the family patriarch, and his wife Margaret we know that this expectation was fulfilled. The wills reveal how the Blackburns’ lives were shaped by two over-arching concerns: faith and family. Linking and facilitating the two is fortune; the distribution of wealth stipulated by the wills illuminates the Blackburns’ relationship with both God and family, and is the means by which these relationships are expressed and delineated. 

English PhD students' picnic

click to enlarge :)

'Here is my space, kingdoms are clay'

Yours truly hard at work (looking like a startled gazelle) on the Arts reception desk!

I survived my first conference...

... and survived too four nights in student halls, in a rather dismal and depressing brick-lined little room with horrible lighting, inadequate pillow and duvet, and a window that was jammed open and refused to be shut. Still, the fact that the hall was half-way up the Wellington cable car provided a much-needed note of glamour. And after all, was dir nicht umbringt, macht dich nur stärker. 

The conference itself was very good, well worth attending and not quite as scary as I feared. The two hundred and fifty (ish) delegates were split fairly evenly between postgraduate students and established academics, a reassuring ratio even if I still seemed to be one of the youngest people there. The whole conference was flawlessly organised, managing at the same time to be friendly and supportive and providing me with a host of new ideas, resources and connections.

My paper (Family, Faith and Fortune: The Blackburns 1400 - 1450), which I had been dreading for months (see here), seemed reasonably well-received. (I just hope nobody noticed how much my hands were shaking.) Afterwards I was encouraged by two people who heard it to write it up as an article and submit it to a journal, so it looks as if neither you, dear reader, nor I have yet seen the last of the Blackburns.

The man who started it all: Nicholas Blackburn (and his wife, Margaret)

After the conference I stayed on for an extra day, a PATS (Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar) at the National Library of New Zealand on 'markings and marginalia.' This included presentations by three academics in the field and a question and answer session at the end of the day, but the best bit was looking through some of the medieval and early modern books and manuscripts in the library's collection. This being NZ, we were told to wash our hands and then let loose - no white gloves! 

The books included a thirteenth-century Bible, rather plainly written but copiously annotated, especially in the Book of Ecclesiastes; a fourteenth-century Bible rather more decorative, and with funny curly doodles to some of the letters by a bored scribe; a seventeenth-century treatise on divorce; a seventeenth-century edition of the Papal Bull against the teachings of Martin Luther; a printed catalogue of a collection of natural history, to which someone had carefully added beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of various specimens in the margins; a folio of Ben Johnson's plays - at the end of Sejanus some long-dead owner had hand-written a withering review of the play, saying it was over-wordy with not enough action; and a seventeenth century Bible translated into Irish.

This is where I wished I had worked harder at Latin (and, come to think of it, the Bible) when in school... most of the texts were in Latin and a good working knowledge of the language would have made navigation much easier! 

We were allowed to take photos of the manuscripts, but for personal use, and I am not going to put them up here as that would constitute publication and I don't want to get entangled in copyright issues. But ask me by email if you want to see my seventeenth-century doodlings of toadstools, or the beautiful jewel-like colours of a medieval calendar, or how a medieval scribe ruled the guidlines for writing.

All in all, a very positive experience. Thankyou ANZAMEMS for having me, and to all my family and friends for their advice, support and good wishes. An extra thankyou to my mother who came down to Wellington specially to hear me give my first conference presentation.

How (not) to write one's first conference paper

Step 1. Write and submit abstract in blithe abandon because it is bound to be rejected by the Very Important Academics on the conference committee and so one will never have to face the terror of writing and presenting the paper resultant upon said abstract.

Step 2. Forget all about conference.

Step 3. Abstract is, to one's complete and utter surprise, accepted.

Step 4. Rejoice.

Step 5. Delight gives way to terror upon the dawning realisation that now one does have to write and present a paper in front of Very Important Academics.

Step 6. Attempt to comfort one's self with the thought that the conference is next year and so one doesn't need to start work on paper for several months yet.

Step 7. (Attempt to) forget all about conference, but with occasional guilty flashes of "what about that paper?" penetrating one's conscience.

Step 8. Attempt to comfort one's self by telling self (and others) that one is "thinking about one's paper," and as everybody knows thinking about things is half the legwork.

Step 9. One's family gently starts to enquire about status of (as yet non-existent) conference paper.

Step 10. Attempt to assure one's family, and self, that there is plenty of time yet and one shouldn't have to worry about writing a paper over Christmas.

Step 11. Realise that time is ticking inexorably onwards towards the Fateful Day.

Step 12. Panic.

Step 13. Write paper in two days flat and feel very smug.

Step 14. Realise paper is utter rubbish and feel very depressed.

Step 15. Attempt re-write of paper.

Step 16. Realise that what one wants to say does not at all match up with what one submitted in the abstract.

Step 17. Feel very depressed.

Step 18. Realise that every other presenter will be in the same position and feel vaguely cheered.

Step 19. Start work on slides.

Step 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. Work on slides.

Step 26. With trepidation and trembling, show draft of paper and slides to one's family.

Step 27. Gulp.

Step 28. Attend to feedback of family; rework paper and slides.

Step 29. Show latest draft to family.

Step 30. Attend to feedback; rework paper and slides, etc.

Step 31 - [insert as many as appropriate]. Repeat.

Step @£! Practise delivering talk orally, and realise that one sounds like a BBC presenter from the 1950s speeded up.

Step *@~!! Sternly tell one's self that one must SLOW DOWN and BREATHE.

Step ^%:+!!! Hyperventilate.

Step ~$¨6´/ !!!! Have hysterics.

Step &\|{=!!!!! Export Keynote slides to Powerpoint and play them through a PC. Realise font has changed, text has moved, and images have terrible resolution. Sternly remind one's self that one has been well brought up and is not allowed to cuss and swear.

Step ⚔⚚♾!!!!!! Attempt to learn paper by heart so one can present without recourse to one's notes in stylish, elegant and professional manner.

Step ☢⑀␢⚠︎␦!!!!!!! Nightmarish dreams about presenting paper increase exponentially in intensity.

Step β℀Ω✦⚛!!!!!!!! Go in search of the Pimm's.

Step 😱 Pray.