Saturday, February 18, 2012

Making My Way Back

Broceliande Forest
A grant has been granted and I am on my way back to Brittany.  To forests and friends and a landscape that has become legendary in the depths of my longing for it.  I will be working towards a wooden, painted choir screen from a small chapel in a small town called Le Faouët.  The article that is to follow will be, I realize, my first publication that seeks to introduce a work of art that has had very little play in scholarship. I'm leaving the massive stomping grounds of Chartres and the Roman de la Rose for these quieter woods.  There's folk religion and liturgical space, which are familiar territory, but a new navigation of the issues in ecocriticism. If I could leave tomorrow I would.

Iris at Montneuf
Being there without Mac and the children will feel very strange.  I will see them around corners and playing in fields and yearn for them, I'm sure.  And bring back little pieces of Brittany to prepare for their return, not yet knowing how we'll do it.  But I bet we will.  For two years Brittany has been a space of memory and story-telling, as well as a fertile ground for teaching projects and research.  Now it's about the become real again, and I breathe deep at all the possibilities.

8 comments:

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    1. Thank you - so much of this work is inspired by you! here goes a foray into ecocritical medieval art history!

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  2. Congratulations-- and bienvenue!!

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    1. aaaah - is it too early to start counting the days? hoping korrigans will do all my grading so that i can daydream only about the trip!

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  3. Congratulations!!! I realize we don't talk to each other enough. I had no idea. When are you going? How long will you be gone? What's the grant?

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    1. Hi sweets! it's an in-house faculty development grant - enough to get me there, and maybe even enough to bring me back! :-) so excited.

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  4. I found your blog by chance... via posts on the Babel group. I work on many 19th century things in Brittany and am/ would be thrilled to hear (more) about your project. Maura

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    1. Hi Maura - it's official: all things BABEL are wonderful! I'm eager to hear about your work, too, and where you've been with it. There's a very long Middle Ages in Brittany, yes? Meet you there! (Or in Boston in October hopefully!).

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