Forthcoming article on Zimmer's Alliterative Poetry
Well,
I'm having the loveliest day today. Just got the peer review back for
an article I had submitted, and it begins: "This paper is an enjoyable
and effective discussion of Zimmer’s work against the background of the
alliterative poetry. . . . "
Mind you, that's the exactly the sort response that I expect to receive every time I submit a paper for publication, but alas, the vast majority of the ice-cold hearts of cold-blooded reviewers remain unmelted. . . . :)
Still, what's extra nice is that I greatly admire Zimmer's work, and this will be the first peer-reviewed article on his fiction.*** The subject matter -- alliterative poetry -- is also an entirely new field for me. Literally everything I know about the topic was learned in the process of researching Zimmer for an entirely different article on his work (which I submitted for publication a few weeks ago, btw). In fact, prior to that researching process, I had never even encountered Zimmer's alliterative work or understood their influence on his prose style.
Interesting tidbit: usually, academic writing is a process of agony for me. My other Zimmer article, for example, took me four painstaking months, and my Donaldson article on gender violence took at least 5 months and possibly even six. This alliterative poetry essay, though, was composed in only two weeks. I'm still not entirely sure what made things so relatively easy. I suspect it may have to do with the straightforwardness of the argument -- anything requiring abstract concepts and careful theorizing, as those other essays did, just ups my agony factor to 11.
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***A quality fan article by Bruce Byfield did appear in 1985, however.
Mind you, that's the exactly the sort response that I expect to receive every time I submit a paper for publication, but alas, the vast majority of the ice-cold hearts of cold-blooded reviewers remain unmelted. . . . :)
Still, what's extra nice is that I greatly admire Zimmer's work, and this will be the first peer-reviewed article on his fiction.*** The subject matter -- alliterative poetry -- is also an entirely new field for me. Literally everything I know about the topic was learned in the process of researching Zimmer for an entirely different article on his work (which I submitted for publication a few weeks ago, btw). In fact, prior to that researching process, I had never even encountered Zimmer's alliterative work or understood their influence on his prose style.
Interesting tidbit: usually, academic writing is a process of agony for me. My other Zimmer article, for example, took me four painstaking months, and my Donaldson article on gender violence took at least 5 months and possibly even six. This alliterative poetry essay, though, was composed in only two weeks. I'm still not entirely sure what made things so relatively easy. I suspect it may have to do with the straightforwardness of the argument -- anything requiring abstract concepts and careful theorizing, as those other essays did, just ups my agony factor to 11.
---
***A quality fan article by Bruce Byfield did appear in 1985, however.
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