The Full Monty

This blog is an experiment.  I am a Ph.D. student currently studying for my comprehensive exams.  I already passed my first exam but for the next two I would like to be more open about my process in a way that will also hold me accountable to my studying and research goals.  Hence this blog!  I have roughly nine weeks to get a comprehensive grip on a huge swath of early modern romances written in English and a number of influential travel narratives from the period.  I also need to become well versed in the current criticism surrounding these areas.

The blog's title is a phrase that can be found in most of the prefaces to early modern travel narratives.  What I find charming about it is that the narratives are rarely brief and their truthfulness is always suspect.  One of the things I am most interested in is the ways in which the genres of travel narrative and romance begin to overlap.  When travel narratives are parodied, in particular, the title "A Brief and True Report" carries extra comic weight.

I will be publishing my field statement and reading list (see following post).  Each week I intend to post short responses to what I am reading.  This way, by the end of the process I will have a series of concise summations that hopefully will be useful to me on exam day and as I write my dissertation (and will hopefully be not uninteresting to those who might read them).  On that note, as some things I may post here I might use for my dissertation I am keeping this blog "secret" for the time being.

Thank you for your patience--it may not be pretty, but its here, its live, and for these next months I will be showing the full monty of my academic thoughts and practice!