To be a doctor...

Celebrate!! I have a PhD topic!!

I just got back from a meeting with Matt Townend, truly the most encouraging and inspiring professor at the CMS. I have been spending the last couple of weeks at the JBM, and it seems to have paid off, as Matt appears to find my idea quite exciting and trendy. I have decided to look at *ahem* THE THEME OF LOSS IN SKALDIC VERSE. Let the thunder roll.

Okay, it doesn't sound massively exciting like that, but it's really very neat. First I am going to make a survey of the vocabulary of loss in 11th-century skaldic verse and runestones. That's right, runestones. Cool or what? Then I will focus on the verse itself, and on how the poets express loss. The idea is to use poetry to expand our understanding of how people expressed emotion all those centuries ago, and to see how poets used the theme of loss to comment on contemporary events.

Anyway, that's a major weight off my shoulders. Now I have to start applying. And I need to find the money to do this.