Framskritt

Things went a little better today. For one thing, I got to be a student again, as we had a guest lecturer from the University of Copenhagen, Finn Hauberg Mortensen. He talked about the Comparative History of Nordic Literary Cultures project that I'm contributing to, and then later in the day he gave a lecture on the structure and rhetorical style of Ludvig Holberg's Moralske Tanker.

What went especially well for me today was conceptualizing the book. Rather than freaking out over the fact that I'm not writing yet, I've decided that I need to write a prospectus (a chapter outline, or "disposisjon" as it's called in Norwegian) in order to integrate the new thoughts and texts that I've been thinking about. It helped just to line up the chapters, list the key concepts, cultural events, and authors that I think will define them, and play with titles for them. It's a way of clarifying and refining my ideas, at a stage where I feel I'm not yet ready to write them. It's a weird stage to be in. Usually with articles it's so short that I don't even notice it--I can just jump in and start writing since the scope is so narrow that I can't go too far wrong. With this book, however, the scope is so huge and there are so many pieces that have to be in place first, that I can't really just jump in, eager as I am to do so.

I also did a little poking about on literary figures who might fit into the Enlightenment section that I've been trying to develop: the Norwegian civil servant/conspirator Povel Juel, who wrote a poem extolling the virtues of the simple life of the Sámi and the peasant farmer; and the Danish-German writer and salon hostess Friederike Brun, who is interesting to me not because of her work but because she had a Norwegian cabin built on her estate, Sophienholm, along with a Chinese pagoda and other exotic buildings. A colleague had also suggested Claus Frimann's poem "Birkebeener-Sang," but I read it and didn't see anything that I could use directly. But clearly I need to read more of his work, since he's really into the whole peasant thing, and has a book of poetry called Almuens Sange.

KE and I are both on pins and needles this evening. E is participating in his first ever sleep-over at his preschool. I think it's great that the teachers are willing to arrange it (two of them are sleeping over with the kids in the "gresshoppe" group of seven 5-year-olds), but I'm so worried about E! He refused to pack his pacifier (which he still sleeps with every night) because he was afraid the other kids would think he was a baby. He still has accidents (most recently this morning) and I would hate for that to happen to him there. Argh! We're both sitting here with our cell phones at our sides waiting for the call to come and get him. It will be very exciting to see how it goes!