Ah ha!

I now have a blog.

This is amazing, I mean, it's a blog, and it's mine.

I just spent 3 hours at the Cal State Fullerton library. It was so cold in there! But I got some books to help me on two different papers.

The first paper will be on Shakespeare's Henry V. I'm going to use Plutarch and write on the classical theme that Shakespeare develops throughout the play. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to develop my thoughts right now, but I'm leaning towards one of three different specific areas of the text to exposit and then critique The book I looked at in the library was Holinshed's Chronicles of the Kings of England, Scotland and Ireland. It's an absolutely massive 3 volume history, but it's great because it's the history that Shakespeare read.

The first area of the text that would be interesting is the justification for war that Henry uses. It would be fun to parse out the archbishop's argument, and compare Shakespeare's version to Holinshed's, but I probably won't because I want to use Plutarch.

The second area of the text that I might do is the seige of Harfleur. Holinshed comments extensively on it, and I think that it's a rough parrallel event to the sack of Thebes that Plutarch records for Alexander.

The third possible option is the famous Saint Crispin's Day Speech. Comparing Holinshed's version to Shakespeare's version is really telling on the character of Henry. The flaw that it exposes is the flaw that the parrallel with Alexander the Great exposes, as well, so it's a pretty good way to integrate all three texts.

The other paper I was researching is on the Umayyad Dynasty in Spain, but nothing I found got me really excited about it. *sigh*