Jamieson Ridenhour

A brief break from giving and grading exams. I just finished grading Intro to Lit exams on the Drama unit. “Denouement” is not a character in Much Ado About Nothing. “Spectacle” is best defined, for purposes of this exam, as “everything seen in a theatrical production–the visual apparatus of a play,” not “another word for eyeglasses, good for watching plays from a distance.”

Points for effort, though. Okay, not really.

The London trip is a mere 19 days away. My biggest concern right now is how expensive it’s getting–the pound is at a 26 year high against the dollar. According to the Guardian, it’s officially at $2 per pound, although the on-the-street exchange rate is closer to $1.89, still high but somewhat better.

In putting together some links and other info for my traveling students, I found this great article on the London Underground’s Lost and Found department. I love stuff like this. The thought that someone could lose a large theatrical coffin or six full-sized mannequins on a Tube train seems outlandish, but I wouldn’t put it past me f I was thinking of something else. The scatterbrained are legion, and I am among them.

I had my most unusual (so far) student attempt to get out of my absence policy last night. My policy deducts 10 points off the final grade for every four absences, and excuses absences that are due to documented illnesses (which means a doctor’s note) or university-mandated activities (the overwhelming number of athletic absences). My unnamed student (let’s just call her “Cocky,” shall we?) had five absences already, and emailed me to say she had gotten sick and would have to miss her conference with me (which was scheduled for the day of the email) and the following day’s presentation of her research paper (worth 25% of the final grade). I emailed back and said I hope she felt better, bring a doctor’s note. I assume she found this an imposition, based on her informing me, two emails later, that it is against Federal Law to use attendance as part of grade calculation and that “I don’t think the University of Mary losing its accreditation due to violation of Federal Law would be good for anybody.”

I like to think my reply was restrained. I didn’t actually use the word “bullshit” or “cocky little freak,” and I think that warrants some kudos. In case any readers out there wonder, it’s generally considered bad form to repeatedly break an established policy and then threaten legal action against those who put the policy in place when it seems like you’ll suffer consequences. Put more succinctly: it ain’t my fault you can’t drag your ass to class.

My colleague Wes Jones just sent me the link to a blog that makes me terribly happy. Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog purports to be written by the man himself, with occasional input from contemporaries like Sir John Mandeville. It’s in pretty good Middle English, and if you can follow the language it’s really funny. Perhaps it’s only funny for English teachers, but I was laughing pretty hard. Search around and find Chaucer’s medieval pick-up lines (Do sheriffs administere thee to those who breke the kinges peace? Bycause thou lookst “fyne.”) Good stuff. Can’t wait to use this when I teach Chaucer in the fall.

In other literary news, the Dickens World theme park is due to open in Chatham next month. I don’t know that I can do it better justice than its own web site, so click over there and gape. There’s been much discussion and consternation on VictoriaList about it, the substance of which can be summed up by a good opinion piece in the Guardian by Victorian scholar Judith Flanders. For the most part I agree with Ms. Flanders–it’s likely that a theme park built around my favorite author will serve up sanitized and family-friendly versions of the most familiar novels while avoiding all the dangerous and upsetting material. It is the dark stuff that gives Dickens his power, and without that what you have left is Oliver!–fun for sing-alongs but hardly great literature. The “Fagin’s Den” attraction probably won’t include prostitutes like Nancy, and even if Nancy is wandering the plaster cobblestones of Dickens World, I bet money the customers won’t see her brutally beaten to death by her live-in lover, as happens in the novel. Likewise, smallpox, horse shit, and the sort of London particular that caused multiple asphyxiations a year during the mid-19th century don’t make for family-style fun. And at any rate, I fear that the focus will be on the better known works–I’m not hopeful to find Our Mutual Friend or Dombey and Son well-represented at the park, and forget about Barnaby Rudge.

But frankly, Dickens has survived worse. He’s been bawdlerized and reworked and pirated and filmed (with greater or lesser degrees of success) and adapted. Does anyone remember Henry Winkler in an updated version of A Christmas Carol back in the late seventies or early eighties? If Dickens can survive that, he can surely survive a Magwitch log flume ride. And Dickens himself was a populist and a lover of spectacle, as well as a lover of things-that-pay-homage-to-Dickens. I suspect he wouldn’t be averse to Dickens World. He might possibly be first in line.

The worst thing about Dickens World is that it opens May 25th–a full week after I’ve come back to the States. There goes my chance to meet Little Nell.