My bookshelf to me a kingdom is

Since I have a crappy camera in my cell phone, I thought I could take pictures of all of the books that I own, to be used as decoration when I discuss each of them in turn. Bar any embarrassing ones, but there are very few of those anyway.

So let this be an introduction into a series of posts where I bring to the public eye the contents of my bookshelf (and the floor next to my desk, where I keep my favourite ones). Because what could be more interesting than seeing tiny pictures of books in bad quality and reading about my take on them? Absolutely nothing, you guessed right.

But before I get down to business, I must bring to every reader's attention an interesting point that I found out about only recently.

The title for this post was derived from the poem My mind to me a kindgom is, published in 1588, traditionally attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (1543(?)-1607). I always try to come up with titles that have some pretentious, quasi-artistic literary allusions in them.

Dyer was a contemporary of Shakespeare's, a courtier poet whom inter alia George Puttenham praised in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), an account of notable English writers at the time. Which by the way I absolutely had to have on my laptop at home in its original spelling, so I can read it over and over so my heart with pleasure fills.



Wordsworth is quite alright you know. And I like linking every other word to a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is a good source for trivia that you don't want to memorize, especially if it doesn't matter whether the information is in the end accurate or not.

Now here comes the funny part. More recently (in 1975 in The Review of English Studies Vol. 26, to be accurate), the poem has been attributed by Stephen W. May to the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (1550-1604).

(Young Edward de Vere)

Before that, Alden Brooks had proposed in his 1943 book Will Shakspere and the Dyer's hand that the above-mentioned sir Edward Dyer was the true William Shakespeare. In other words, Brooks claimed that Dyer wrote the works of Shakespeare, not the man who went by that name at the time.

You may wonder what's so funny about that, because surely it makes sense that authorship questions often arise with several hundred years old texts? Well, in this case the question is of considerably more interest than in general.

I wrote a paper on the Shakespeare authorship question, and one of my sources was a dissertation by one Dr. Roger Stritmatter. He is a proponent of the Oxfordian theory which claims that it was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who wrote the works that are generally attributed to a man called William Shakespeare.

Dr. Stritmatter had included in his appendices the aforementioned poem, with the intention of demonstrating how similar Edward de Vere's and Shakespeare's writing styles were.

(On the cover of the dissertation is a photo of Edward de Vere's Geneva bible!)

At the time of writing the paper, I didn't realize that the poem wasn't even originally attributed to de Vere!

I was aware that the traditional author of the poem, Sir Dyer, was an alternative Shakespeare candidate himself. But I never realized just how eager the so-called Oxfordians were in appropriating all the works in English literature to Edward de Vere.

Even without knowing about this, there were several problems with the analysis of the poem, and I simply dismissed it as one more of Dr. Stritmatter's farfetched, uninterrelated and badly argued points. In all fairness, though, he was relying on Stephen May's analysis.

As if there weren't enough reasons to doubt anything that Shakespeare authorship heretics write, I was confronted by yet another. The more I learn about the issue, the more ridiculous it becomes in my eyes.

I wish it didn't have to be like that, as in the beginning I was very sympathetic to their cause. But the fact that I like to call it a cause is itself telling. It aggravates me how political the issue is and has always been. Many people probably see no evil in mixing scientific research and politics, but personally I find it disturbing. I'm too much of an idealist, and politics really isn't for idealistic people.

So what I'm trying to say is, stay tuned for more discussion on the Shakespeare authorship question. I've got files and folders full of goodies related to the issue, just waiting to be ridiculed.

(My "souvenir" from Edinburgh. It has served me well.)

I'm not going to make fun of anything on purpose even when it's begging for it, since I'm fighting teeth and nails against becoming partial to any particular candidate.

I don't think I mind it either way, whether it was the earl de Vere or Shakespeare from Stratford, or anybody else for that matter, who wrote those famous plays and sonnets. No reason to mix 'n' match the author and the works, right?

I'm learning, me of all people

I never expected a test book to be so interesting as one dissertation on 19th century Finnish family life.

When I read history books, I'm constantly surprised by how different things were even in the recent past. I suppose that shows how little I know about history. Even hearing from my mum about her childhood simply blows my mind.

Her aunt ruined her teeth because she thought that a lump of sugar will heal a toothache! I'm so glad that most people these days are much more health conscious. Even though not that many are willing to live accordingly.

Anyways. So far I've learned, among many other things, that until late 19th century marriages were arranged (EDIT: only among upper class families I should add) so that the husband was at least 10 years older than the wife. If the age difference was any smaller, it was actually frowned upon.

By the end of the century, general attitudes were already changing more towards the present-day atmosphere. Now it's the complete opposite, for most people.

But it's interesting how different opinions people have on this. My mum for instance almost had a heart attack when she heard that my cousin married a man 10 years her senior.

To be fair, it was partly due to the fact that the guy had become bald very young, and in the photo that my mum saw he was on crutches, having had broken his leg recently. But still, it definitely has made me wonder if my mum would ever approve a similar situation in my case.

But it's not all bad. I discussed this with an old friend of mine and she thought 10 years is perfectly acceptable - because it's worked for her parents so well! So it seems that everything is relative.

Another friend prefers younger men, as does her sister. I can see the temptation. Being in the position to corrupt an innocent young man. But seriously speaking, all these differing opinions just go on to show how there can be no consensus on age differences today.

The bottom line seems to be that whatever floats your boat, you should go for it. In this age of relativism, I guess it makes sense.

Generally, I don't really care about it that much myself. If it works, why worry about age. I've noticed that if I'm interested in someone, I just don't care. The only reason why I'd be worried is if I became a widow for 20 years.

But honestly I don't believe that a huge age gap can work that often. And could the older person really be interested in someone much younger?

It amuses me how calculating I am sometimes. I just want to be in for the long haul.

A Million dead poets would gladly attest - or would they?

In my view, the Shakespeare Authorship question is a tangled web that would probably take a lifetime to unravel in its entirety.

I was rather disheartened when I tried to find accounts of the matter which actually would have tried to remain objective. I'm still on a hunt for an author who's genuinely trying to find the truth, rather than trying to defend his or her respective candidate as the true Shakespeare.

But maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe you're not supposed to be objective. Maybe the only reason why anyone would be interested in the matter is that they actually care about who the author is.

Be that as it may, personally I still believe that you don't have to have a "favourite" candidate in order to be interested in the question. All this "bitter trench warfare", as it's been called, is entertaining and amusing in its own right.

I admit that my notion of "entertaining and amusing" may differ from the more generic meaning of those words. For instance, I couldn't resist a chuckle when I read the description of the Oxfordian Richard Whalen's 1994 book, Shakespeare - Who was he?. (There's an imaginative title for a book if I ever saw one.)

Let me quote whoever wrote the description:

Most intriguing are the many direct parallels between Oxford's life and Shakespeare's works, especially in Hamlet, the most autobiographical of the plays.

To elucidate the terminology for everyone: Oxfordians believe that Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare. Their candidate is usually called Oxford, though the man himself preferred to sign his letters as Oxenford. At least we know he had a sense of humour, or it's just another manifestation of the flexibility of Elizabethan spelling. Which is also one issue I must touch upon in the future.

So Hamlet, "the most autobiographical" of Shakespeare's plays. The "direct" parallels between the play and the earl's life are used as an argument on his behalf, because – here comes the gist of it – the play is the most autobiographical of them all.

Of course, whether a work is autobiographical or not can only be determined if you know who the author is. Please, please correct me if I'm wrong on this one! If I'm not, I've just found another ridiculous circular argument from the Oxfordian camp. (Not that the "orthodox" Shakespearians haven't excelled in that area for their part.)

To drive home the point of this post: even with a quick 5-minute search on the authorship question, you're bound to run into irrational, silly or just plain stupid arguments.

In countering the inevitably ensuing frustration from all that, my weapon is to make light of it. But even my sense of humour has its limits.

I was going to present a rough draft of all the issues that I'm going to cover in my forthcoming series on the authorship question. Turns out that instead, I was once again amused slash annoyed by an Oxfordian statement, and consequently thrown off course. This is going to be an interesting journey, I can tell.

[Insert witty title]

(WARNING: If you don't feel like reading a lengthy post about the author's boring life, this isn't for you.)

The yayness factor has re-entered my life again.

Let's conduct a detailed analysis of what that means exactly.

Since I like FPS (First Person Shooter) games, I chose bullet points as a method for structuring my post. (For the record: I'm a pacifist, but I like to shoot and kill pixely effigies of various kinds of animate beings.)

Yayness is a notoriously challenging concept to break down into distinct ingredients, hence the need for great care and caution when formulating the statements. In plain terms, this entails vigorous soulsearching.

• I finished relinking the pictures. My blog looks pretty again. Sort of.


• The sun started to shine yesterday. I can't get enough of it. The winter will be long and dark enough.


• I came up with a new topic for research.


• My feet aren't sore anymore. I can go back to jogging almost everyday.


• It's only 4 weeks to my conference presentation and I finally got round to writing a draft.


• I have several writing projects, which is infinitely better than just sitting down and reading books and panicking about not being able to focus for five minutes.

Each of these points merits elaboration. Well, not the first one. Nor the second. Let's take point number three first under the microscope.

(a) I try very hard not to get too excited about my new idea for research, because I don't have much extra time at the moment (except for blogging, there's always time for blogging!).

Long story short, I'm not entirely happy with expanding the topic of my thesis into a dissertation. One reason is that it doesn't seem important enough as a (set of) research question(s). Another is that I feel as though it lacks challenge.

It was definitely a challenge when I first started working on it. The literature was full of studies on it, yet no one had anything particularly enlightening to say about it. By the time I finished my thesis, after tremendous amounts of working hours, I felt like there wasn't much more to say.

After 120 pages, claiming that you've only scratched the surface seems overkill. I plan to write an article or two on some particular issues related to it, because my results deserve to be published. But overall as a topic, it looks like a dead end.

As for my new idea, once I'd thought about it, I started wondering why I didn't think of it before. It's a topic I stumbled upon two years ago when doing background reading for my thesis. I never quite realized what a great topic it would make.

Now that I've been pondering on it, the possibilities and the breadth of what I could do is simply mindboggling. Finally a topic grandiose enough (to grammar geeks at least), and challenging enough for driving me up the wall. I don't see a point in researching something unless it's a challenge; something that seems impossible to make sense of at first sight.

The rest of the ingredients of my newly found state of yayness don't need that much explaining.

(b) I could really use new trainers.

(c) I've been avoiding the thought that I have to give a full 30-minute presentation in ICEHL in Münich in about a month. I go through these periods when I'm extremely antisocial and I hate the thought of any kind of social interaction. But the key in getting excited again about the presentation was to remind myself why my topic is so interesting, to me at least. If I focus on how interesting my message is, I don't even mind the fact that I'm in front of an audience.

I looked at the time table, and noticed that there are not only many many Finns, but also two more people from my university: my professor, and another senior colleague. I've never met him. We come from the same university, and I finally get to meet him - in Germany.

(d) Last but not least, I'm happy to have found some time finally for writing. For quite some time now I've preferred writing to reading.

I feel like I've partially lost my ability to focus on reading. It's not as bad as it was in the past, but it's still difficult for me. It's strange. I can literally stare at one sentence for 30 minutes, then move onto the next one. It's not convenient when you're trying to read several books for a test. I can manage, though - it just takes me months to read two or three books, that's all.

But writing I find very easy to focus on. Being able to arrange your thoughts in the process is a definite plus. More and more, I'm falling in love with writing for a blog. Even though I barely have any regular readers, it's therapeutic and exciting and useful for developing my writing skills.

In the name of preserving the sanity of my dear reader(s), I promise I'll keep it short(er) in the future. What's more, one of these days I shall post a new painting as well

What is and what never should be

This has been a strange summer. Too much rain, too little sunshine. Too much paranoia, too little sanity. Too much to do, too little accomplished as of yet.

I've been strangely emotional lately. This morning I cried when watching my usual Days of Our Lives show, while sipping my morning coffee.

My excuse for watching a soap opera is that they're very funny and entertaining, and I genuinely believe that they tell you something about the culture. Take Salatut Elämät, for instance. There's a grain of truth to whatever's happening. Big issues - drugs, death, abuse, alcoholism, school bullying, gambling addiction! So it's a little exaggerated - what would you expect from a tv show?

My excuse for crying over a fictional character is that I'm not in my right mind until I've had my two cups of coffee in the morning.

On Days of our lives, they had the funeral of a young boy who got killed off in a hit-and-run. You often see children killed in soapies, because they don't have much of a role. It still sucks. He was so cute!

The driver was incidentally the boy's newly found stepsister. Being a police officer, the poor father had given her a temporary license to drive, even though she'd just been in a car accident! Gotta love the irony in that, sick as it may be.

The American Catholic funeral is different from the generic Finnish funeral, but it was still touching. The actors and actresses are really good. Many of them have been acting on Days for most of their lives! I wonder how weird that must be, playing the same character for 30 years.

Wandering off: It looks like it won't take that long after all, to relink my pictures. One third to go.

I noticed that the quality of the bigger versions is not terribly good. I blame Photobucket. Apparently I had a setting on which resizes the pictures that I uploaded, so they're not as big as the originals. To add to the misery, I don't have the originals available in Tampere, and it took forever to upload them!

Nonetheless, I added the phrase "click to enlarge" underneath all the thumbnails, so from now on everyone will know it's possible to do so. Just don't expect anything fancy.