This is the beginning of my blog for UCC, “Werre and wrake and wonder”, a line extracted from the opening stanza of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’m excited and a little nervous to start my adventures in blogging. I’ve never attempted to blog in an academic sense. The same applies for casual blogging with extensive entries. The days where sites dedicated to extensive forms of blogging existed, like Myspace or LiveJournal, were pretty much defunct by the time I started to use the internet. I suppose Twitter functions as a platform for blogging now, if you bypass the character limit by making threads. But I digress. I hope that this experience of owning and maintaining this blog will aid in lessening the anxieties I have surrounding it.

I have a few uses planned for this blog, namely as an opportunity to critically evaluate the texts I’ve encountered throughout academia and outside of it. After finishing my undergraduate degree in UCC(I studied English and Psychology) and developing an affinity for medieval literature, pursuing an MA in it seemed like an inevitability.

I have specific research interests in Middle English literature – particularly revolving around themes of sin, transgression, horror and disease within its contents. I’m also interested in feminist theory: UCC’s Women in Literature module acquainted me with critical theory and helped me to construct critical arguments. My favourite theorists are Virginia Woolf and Julia Kristeva – the latter I’ll definitely be referring to on this blog! Admittedly, I fit into the “jack of all trades, master of none” stereotype, so here’s your disclaimer for when I deviate from my proclaimed interests for discussion of other ones. I also paint, so some of my work might be included.

I believe English literature is an interdisciplinary subject by nature, made up of many elements: history, philosophy, politics. The list goes on. It’s one of the reasons why I think studying it is a worthwhile pursuit. There’s always an opportunity to find an area of fascination. I hope to find and develop a niche to fit into over the course of these blog entries.

Thanks for reading!