'Characters' Section: Spider Diagram

I decided to complete a spider diagram regarding my structure, and decided to consider my potential areas of investigation for the section on 'Characters'. However, I have found doing spider diagrams rather unwieldy when planning essays, so may resort to a different type once I'm more settled on developing my idea.

Of course, these ideas are subject to change once I have a great breadth of critical texts to draw from, so therefore will be more closely informed.

Potential Primary Research

Being that my essay relies predominately on secondary research and analyses, it seems redundant to ask the opinions of my peers on a piece that is, admittedly, very obscure. However, having some measure of contemporary, public perception of the play could be useful to refer to, or to inform my own comments. However, there are difficulties.

Would it be worthwhile asking my peers what they perceive as the 'conventional Shakespeare play', or even the conventions at all. Would it work best to instead have them read excerpts from the text with a small measure of context, and ask for a few paragraphs interpretation of it? Would it work best to instead have them watch a version of the play (if I can find one that is readily accessible; YouTube could be helpful for this) and give me a brief commentary on their thoughts?

These are things I will have to discuss with my supervisor in regards to its relevance and the most successful manner to conduct primary research. For now, I feel it most relevant to read and collect texts useful to my essay.

The Arrival of the Book

Recently, my copy of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' arrived from my order, and I am anticipating a quick skim and then detailed analyses of key quotes, after I have affirmed my plans with my supervisor, and then developed a solid idea of what I intend to analyse. The copy I have is as follows:

'The Two Noble Kinsmen'

The Oxford Shakespeare

Oxford World's Classics

Oxford University Press

General Editor: Stanley Wells

Edited by Eugene M. Waith

Reissued 2008

I intend to read the lengthy and informative introduction that forces the actual play text to start on page 75, therefore (hopefully) giving me a complete and detailed concept of all manners relating to the play.

Alongside this, I hope to make a visit to the local university library and attempt to find some of the physical sources for the JSTOR/Google Books, or to find the textbooks I've found particularly relevant, or to discover more useful texts.

Assembling the Texts

Being that I need a somewhat-solid idea of which texts to use for my EPQ, I feel that, given my prior research documented in these places, that I should consolidate the knowledge I've found so that I have one uniform location for  which I can refer to when finding texts. I've divided them into 'Necessary' (Should give me a critical perspective most relevant to my essay), 'Useful' (Texts that provide useful information), and 'Additional Context' (in which the title describes itself). I hope to acquire all of the 'Necessary' texts, and hopefully many of the 'Useful' ones to aid my essay.

Necessary

"Is this winning?": Prince Henry's Death and the Problem of Chivalry in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Peter C. Hermen
pp. 1-31
(JSTOR)

The Jailer's Daughter and the Politics of Madwomen's Language
Douglas Bruster
pp. 227-300
(JSTOR)

Emilia's Argument: Friendship and 'Human Title' in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Laurie J. Shannon
pp. 657-682
(JSTOR)

"'The Neutral Term'?: Shakespearean Tragicomedy and the Idea of the 'Late Play'
Gordon McMullan
pp. 115-132

(JSTOR)

Early Modern Tragicomedy
Subha Mukherji, Raphael Lyne
'Studies in Renaissance Literature'
Volume 22
DS Brwer, Boydell and Brewer (publishers) 2007

(JSTOR)

'Palamon and Arcite'
John Dryden

(Google Books)

'Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture'
Carol Thomas Neely

(Google Books)

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-friendship
'Shakespeare and Friendship'
Will Tosh

(British Library)


Responses to Tyranny in John Fletcher's Plays
ROBERT Y. TURNER
Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 4 (1989), pp. 123-141

(JSTOR)

Review
Othello by William Shakespeare, E. A. J. Honigmann; The Two Noble Kinsmen by John Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Lois Potter
Review by: Brian Vickers
The Review of English Studies, Vol. 50, No. 197 (Feb., 1999), pp. 79-84

(JSTOR)

Sex Averted or Converted: Sexuality and Tragicomic Genre in the Plays of Fletcher
Verna A. Foster
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 32, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1992), pp. 311-322
(JSTOR)


Useful

"For What We Lack,/We Laugh"; Incompletion and "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Paula S. Berggren
pp. 3-17
(JSTOR)

Shakespeare's Imperiled and Chastening Daughters of Romance
Charles Frey
pp. 125-140
(JSTOR)

"Like a shadow,/ I'll ever dwell": The Jailer's Daughter as Ariandne in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Nichole Dewall
pp. 15-26
(JSTOR)

"Seeking the Medieval in Shakespeare: The Order of the Garter and the Topos of Derisive Chivalry"
James N. Ortego II
pp. 80-104
(JSTOR)

Rewritting Perfect Friendship in Chaucer's "A Knight's Tale" and Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum"
Robert Stretter
pp. 234-252
(JSTOR)

The Language of Madwomen in Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists
Maurice Charney, Hanna Charney
pp. 451-460
(JSTOR)

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship
John D. Cox
pp. 1-29

(JSTOR)

Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies
Karl F. Thompson
pp. 1079-1093

(JSTOR)

'Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine: Staging Female Characters in the Late Plays and Early Adaptations
Lori Leigh

(Google Books)

A Concordance to 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' by Shakespeare and Fletcher'
Clarice Crawford

(Google Books)

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/daughters-in-shakespeare-dreams-duty-and-defiance
'Daughters in Shakespeare: Dreams, Duty, and Defiance'
Kim Ballard
(British Library Article)

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-madness
'Shakespeare and Madness'
Will Tosh

(British Library)

Review: Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare Only
Shakespeare Only by Jeffrey Knapp
Review by: Joseph Campana
Modern Philology, Vol. 110, No. 4 (May 2013), pp. E248-E251

(JSTOR)

"“Chaucer (of all admired) the story gives”:Shakespeare, Medieval Narrative, and Generic Innovation" (pp. 85-110)
From:Renaissance Papers 2009
Edward Gieskes
Edition: NED - New edition
Boydell & Brewer, Camden House (2010)

(JSTOR)

Review
The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare by Ashley H. Thorndike
Review by: Martin W. Sampson
The Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1902), pp. 239-247

(JSTOR)

"Something Rich and Strange:Shakespeare’s Approach to Romance 11 July 1982" (pp. 425-439)
From:Northrop Frye's Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance
Editors: Troni Y. Grande, Garry Sherbert
Volume: 28

University of Toronto Press (2010)(JSTOR)

"Gentleman-like Tears": Affective Response in Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Late Plays
Robert Henke
Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1996), pp. 327-349(JSTOR)

The Absolved Riddle: Sovereign Pleasure and the Baroque Subject in the Tragicomedies of John Fletcher
Herbert Blau
New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 3, Interpretations (Spring, 1986), pp. 539-554

(JSTOR)


Additional Context

"Shakespeare's Flop: John Waterson and The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Zachary Lesser
pp. 177-196
(JSTOR)

"Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion"
Annotated Chaucer Bibliography
pp. 135-172
(JSTOR)

Appearance and Reality in Shakespeare's Last Plays
Theodore Spencer
pp. 265-274
(JSTOR)

Review
Shakespeare Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays
Brian Vickers
Review by Warren Chernaik
pp. 1030-1031

(JSTOR)

Review
The Weyward Sister: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics
Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, Jystna Singh
Review by Mark Thornton Burnett
pp. 1046-1047

(JSTOR)

Review
Poor Women in Shakespeare
Fiona McNeill
Review by Rebecca Laroche
pp. 94-95

(JSTOR)

'The Staging of Romance in Late Shakespeare: Text and Theatrical Technique'
Thomas J. Cobb

(Google Books)

Moorish Dancing in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
SUJATA IYENGAR
Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 20 (2007), pp. 85-107

(JSTOR)

Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance
Lorraine Helms
Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, Power Plays (May, 1989), pp. 190-200

(JSTOR)

"Comic Myth in Shakespeare" June 1952" (pp. 20-32)
From:Northrop Frye's Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance
Editors: Troni Y. Grande, Garry Sherbert
Volume: 28
University of Toronto Press (2010)

(JSTOR)

Tides of Titles

After speaking with my supervisor, he offered the suggestion that I narrow my title to something less broad and vague. Therefore, here is the (brief) evolution of my titles, and to my current working one.

• Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a Conventional Shakespeare Play?

Which then branched off into:

• Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Tragicomedy?

and:

• ‘Is ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ a conventional Shakespeare play in regards to its narrative, characters, settings, and nature as a Tragicomedy?’

The latter of which is my working title, as it offers a greater versatility and clarity as to what I have to investigate in both the text and the extraneous resources for my essay.

A Detour to the Irrelevant

Looking through my EPQ folder, I discovered that I had three poems that related to my initial artefact that I hadn't divulged here, composed over the summer. Although they have no bearing on my current project, I do feel that they have some semblance to my progress.

Written sometime in early August, here is a Rispetto, Sonnet, and a Nonet from what I probably would've titled 'View From the Window Seat'

'Sunset Over the Farms'

Mottled brown, dappled tawny, finely-spun gold
Stretch unbound on tumbling hills, greedily fed
To the ruddy, roaring beast. Specks dip and fold,
Wafting; the machine's maw devours nature's threads.
The thresher's wake leaves a flourish, rising plume
That with some seeds aloft set the sky abloom.
Those old fallowed fields that do wind and wander,
Leave the passing observer thoughts to ponder.

'Sunset Over the Farms'

There stands the solitary sentinel,
Whose lofty frame is slight and tightly bound
By the wires unhindered by mangonels
Whose battle-bellows no longer resound.
No, no such guardian stood watching then,
But the flighty figure does stand there now,
Louring on towering lands far from fens
Where elderly evergreens slump and bow.
Oh, though their long shadows flicker, falter,
They are but fleeting to the fiery sky!
Tones of marigold and lavender
Mingle, the eye's prismatic lullaby.
The ever-shifting heavens never tell
The vivid colours of their citadel.

'Rural Moon'

Here, she sits upon her midnight throne
To watch her subjects to and fro
Beneath the brilliant beacon;
No mortal light outshines,
Till the dawn rises
And she flees, the
Fearful
Moon.

'Developing Your Research Project' Week Four

I've completed week 4 of the EPQ MOOC, although I feel that the different methodologies are not the best suit for a solitary, critical analysis of a text. However, it gives me enough pause to consider how my peers can contribute to the success of my project. Qualitative data might be helpful in seeing how people perceive my first draft, for instance, or what they feel makes a 'conventional' Shakespeare play - the latter in particular strikes me as useful. In this vein of thought, I could have a sample group watch an edition of the play and gather their thoughts on it (having them as my focus group) to see how a modern audience perceives it.

'Developing Your Research Project' Week Three

Completing the third week of the MOOC in the context of my new title, I feel that I have more confidence in regards to research. Furthermore, it offers a few exercises (narrowing down a broad title, 'exploding' terms for searching and suchlike) that I feel will be useful, as well as offering a few possible online sources for my research beyond JSTOR. It has informed me of having critical eye for my sources, and reinforced my note-making on sources. Overall, I would argue it has been the most useful week thus far for my research.

Possible Aspects to Investigate

As my essay has to cover a wide range of sub-topics within the range of Shakespeare's conventions (and how the contemporary society gives reason to these) I feel I should begin drafting ideas for the sections, so I have a (vague) frame of context to begin research and gathering quotes.

• Chivalry, and the relationship between Palamon and Arcite
• The role and consequences of the Jailer's Daughter and her madness
• Which protagonist is the audience supposed to root for?
• Fletcher's influence on the text (and comparing some of his works)
• Noting similarities to other Shakespearean texts
• Its origins as Geoffrey Chaucer's 'A Knight's Tale'
• The effect of it being a late play
• Conventions of Tragicomedy, and how this applies
• The balance of comedy and tragedy in the play
• The relationships between and within genders
• Is Emilia the sole, sane voice of reason?
• The possible influence of race/nationality on character perceptions with the contemporary audience (Palamon and Arcite are from Thebes, and described as 'His completion,/Nearer brown than black' (IV.ii.78-9) and 'Is, as a ripe grape, ruddy' (IV.ii.96) while the other characters are from Caucasian Athens) and whether this influences the comedic or tragic backgrounds
• Connections between the characters, overtly and covertly
• How the play was received by audiences at the time

I could note other possible areas to investigate (and remove some of the more superfluous ones that don't apply) and will try to form a skeleton plan.

Looking at Some British Library Articles

While I was searching for sources to define what exactly was 'conventional' of Shakespeare's work, I found several useful articles listed on the British Library, and have decided to note down the sources for later reference. These are given in no particular order.


https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/an-introduction-to-shakespeares-comedy
'An Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedy'
John Mullan

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/daughters-in-shakespeare-dreams-duty-and-defiance
'Daughters in Shakespeare: Dreams, Duty, and Defiance'
Kim Ballard

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-friendship
'Shakespeare and Friendship'
Will Tosh

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-gender-the-womans-part
'Shakespeare and Gender: 'The Woman's Part''
Clare McManus

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-madness
'Shakespeare and Madness'
Will Tosh

A Gander on Google Books

'Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine: Staging Female Characters in the Late Plays and Early Adaptations

Lori Leigh

'A Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship: A Drama Ascribed to John Fletcher'

William Spalding

'Palamon and Arcite'

John Dryden

'A Concordance to 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' by Shakespeare and Fletcher'

Clarice Crawford

'Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays'

Brian Vickers

'Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture'

Carol Thomas Neely

'The Staging of Romance in Late Shakespeare: Text and Theatrical Technique'

Thomas J. Cobb

'Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613'

Andrew J. Power, Rory Loughnane

A Peruse of JSTOR

I decided to look through JSTOR for possible articles to shape my dissertation, and have found that many of them offer me inspiration, while others may simply give me a broader idea of the time period itself, or critic's interpretation of the issues raised.

"For What We Lack,/We Laugh"; Incompletion and "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Paula S. Berggren
pp. 3-17

Review
Sources of Four Plays Ascribed to Shakespeare:"The Reign of King Edward III", "Sir Thomas Moore", "The History of Cardenio", "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
by G. Harold Metz, reviewed by Donald W. Foster
pp. 237-240

"Shakespeare's Flop: John Waterson and The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Zachary Lesser
pp. 177-196

"Is this winning?": Prince Henry's Death and the Problem of Chivalry in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Peter C. Hermen
pp. 1-31

Shakespeare's Imperiled and Chastening Daughters of Romance
Charles Frey
pp. 125-140

The Jailer's Daughter and the Politics of Madwomen's Language
Douglas Bruster
pp. 227-300

Emilia's Argument: Friendship and 'Human Title' in "The Two Novle Kinsmen"
Laurie J. Shannon
pp. 657-682

"Same-Sax Erotic Friendship in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Richard Mallette
pp. 29-52

"Like a shadow,/ I'll ever dwell": The Jailer's Daughter as Ariandne in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Nichole Dewall
pp. 15-26

"Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion"
Annotated Chaucer Bibliography
pp. 135-172

Recent Studies in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
Charles Frey
pp. 345-402

"Seeking the Medieval in Shakespeare: The Order of the Garter and the Topos of Derisive Chivalry"
James N. Ortego II
pp. 80-104

Rewritting Perfect Friendship in Chaucer's "A Knight's Tale" and Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum"
Robert Stretter
pp. 234-252

Review
Jeffery Knapp, Shakespeare Only
Review by Joseph Caimpara
pp. E248-E251

Colloquial Contractions in Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Shakespeare as a Test of Authorship"
Willard Edward Farnham
pp. 326-358

Influence of Court-Masques on the Drama 1608-15
Ashley H. Thorndike

The Language of Madwomen in Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists
Maurice Charney, Hanna Charney
pp. 451-460

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship
John D. Cox
pp. 1-29

Appearance and Reality in Shakespeare's Last Plays
Theodore Spencer
pp. 265-274

Review
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith, Shakespeare and Republicanism by Andrew Hadfield
Review by Catherine M. S. Alexander
pp.282-283

"'The Neutral Term'?: Shakespearean Tragicomedy and the Idea of the 'Late Play'
Gordon McMullan
pp. 115-132

Early Modern Tragicomedy
Subha Mukherji, Raphael Lyne
'Studies in Renaissance Literature'
Volume 22
DS Brwer, Boydell and Brewer (publishers) 2007

Review
The Authorship of Shakespeare's
Johnathan Hope
Reviewed by Eric Rasmussen
pp. 109-113

Review
'Shakespeare's Use of Dance'
Alan Brissenden
Review by Paul Betram

Review
Shakespeare &co: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story"
Stanley Wells
Review by Kate Pogue
pp. 522-524

Review
Shakespeare Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays
Brian Vickers
Review by Warren Chernaik
pp. 1030-1031

How Happy Was Shakespeare with the Printed Versions of His Plays?
E. A. J. Honnigmann
pp. 937-951

The Chronology of Shakespeare's Play: A Statistical Study
B. Brainerd
pp. 2212-230

Theatre Music in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
John Manifold
pp. 366-397

Ben Jonson on Shakespeare's Chaucer
Kathryn Jacobs, D'andra White
pp. 198-215

"Discrepant Emotional Awareness in Shakespeare"
RS White, Ciara Rawnsley
pp. 241-263

Review
The Weyward Sister: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics
Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, Jystna Singh
Review by Mark Thornton Burnett
pp. 1046-1047

Review
Poor Women in Shakespeare
Fiona McNeill
Review by Rebecca Laroche
pp. 94-95

Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies

Karl F. Thompson

pp. 1079-1093

"Shakespeare’s Greek Romances [1]"

(Shakespeare and the Greek Romance)

Carol Gesner

pp. 80-115

Shakespeare’s Greek Romances [1

Pitching

I pitched my two hypotheses (How was Percy Bysshe-Shelley's poetry affected by his Atheism in the time he was writing and Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Play) to smaller groups of friends who are familiar with the EPQ - or are completing it themselves - in the hopes that they would help me finalize which one I would choose to adopt as my new EPQ, providing that my supervisor is approving of it.

So, these are the bullet-points of what was discussed with them.

How was Percy Bysshe-Shelley's poetry affected by his Atheism in the time he was writing?:

• The idea is rather out of the blue, and doesn't have much relevance to anything I've previously studied, bar the literature?
• I've read only a few pieces of his work.
• It may be difficult finding reliable sources on exactly how his religion influenced him.

Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Play?:

• The play is rather obscure; everyone I spoke to hadn't heard of it before, and thought it sounded interesting.
• I've already read and watched the play once through and am quite familiar with a few of Shakespeare's works (but not Fletcher's)
• Due to previous education experiences, I'm far more familiar with the conventions and the contexts of the time period, but still offer me historical context to research.
• I discussed very animatedly about things I could discuss in the essay.
• I can expand my knowledge on Shakespeare.
• It's an unconventional area to study (the play is rather obscure) but it does has some academic journal discussion.

Narrowing Down

As twelve titles would be an extortionate amount to re-pitch to my ACE group, I've decided to follow the second week of MOOC's advice on selecting topic titles, and have narrowed it down to two hypotheses that I will present to them as soon as possible. There is already somewhat of a bias visible, and I know which hypothesis would be within my comfort zone.

Four Paths

I've looked over my spider diagram and considered how they could become essays with longevity and promise. Therefore, I've considered three concepts per subject that I could embark on.

Romanticism 

• To what extent does the landscape and origins of the author affect the piece of Romantic Literature/Poetry?
• The links between Atheism and Romanticism.
• The influence of Lord Byron on the eras poets, playwrights, and authors.

Gothic Literature

• Evolution of Gothic Literature
• Can a modern Gothic text fully emulate the nature of a period-appropriate text?
• The effects of of Walpole's 'Castle of Otranto' and its influence on the genre as a whole?

Medieval Literature

• Does the anonymity of the author effect the impact of the text?
• Different writers' different takes on the tales of King Arthur.
• How influential were the monks who transcribed the traditionally-oral tales?

Shakespearean

• Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' an exception to the rigid tragedy-comedy formula?
• Skirmishes over authorship: Did Shakespeare take credit for plays that weren't his?
• Feminism and Lady Macbeth in 'Macbeth'

Initial Ideas

The spider-diagram below should be a familiar sight from the first initial ideas post, and so thusly the points I made in that previous post apply here. Of course, there is a difference: I make reference to Shakespeare's works, of which are a passion and interest of mine, and are partially inspired by the Higher Education Plus talk 'Reading Shakespeare' given by Professor Adrian Poole. Alongside these other essay possibilities, I can at least have some 'fresh' consideration.

A Confession of My Failings Thus Far

To say that I have become idle in regards to the EPQ is an understatement. Even though I can excuse my laxness (and subsequent failing of my most minimal goals) down to a busy, essay-heavy summer, I cannot excuse my deliberate feigned ignorance when it came to even the slightest thought of the letters E-P-Q strung together. I've documented my uncertainty with my original concepts, and the hope I had in reinvigorating it with doing another artifact with close, tendril'd relations to my original idea, finding that these are incompatible with my current frame of mind. To blame it on a muse and throw my hands up in defeat is not my aim, however.

I want to change from an artifact to an essay.

I would have considerable ground to catch up on, and would have to densely-compact it around my studying (for which takes my top priority), with length sessions to feel I can compete with others in my group. I do feel that I can do this. However, this will need to be discussed with my supervisor, so a final decision may take time.

To finish on a low (though hopefully one self-aware enough to seem slightly sardonic), I will recount the little goals I've missed on the 'An Introduction' post:

• Manage your time - I attempted this, and when I possessed a passion for my artifact this wasn't an issue at all. So, one pass at least.

• Be practical - I'm a dreamer at heart, and dreamers are quite bad at realizing the practicalities of something until it smacks them in the face. While I idly thought of the finished product and my glowing pride, I gave little thought to making decent headway until all energy was sapped from me, and highly-personal circumstances made the idea unattractive to me.

• Be thoroughly organised - again, a sting. When I had this 'muse' of mine, I was intensely organised, especially before college broke up for the summer.

• Know what you're doing and when it's being done - have a definitive action plan - while I may have been organised in the beginning, I had little concept as to where I wanted to take my ideas and how I would record it. What little action plan I had was incredibly vague and unhelpful, and leaves me bitter - if I had a better action plan, would I have been able to persevere with my artifact?

• Keep motivated - my motivation waned like the moon and was dreadful to deal with. While I'm usually so spirited and driven with my academic subjects, I suppose my lax attitude towards my create work hindered my motivation and its potency. 

• Enjoy yourself! - If I had done this, I might be recounting a post of how pleased I was with all the work I did over the summer. Simply put, I lacked any form of enjoyment. It was as if even thinking of the EPQ by the latter weeks summoned a Dementor to whisk away any passion or pleasure I could have for the project. My morbid idea was only appealing when I did not have to deal with the realities of the situation, and the nature poetry idea was pleasing when I thought I would be encountering more nature. 

From these observations, I have to take away a heavy but important message in regards to my work ethic. However, if I find it feasible to continue with the EPQ (and I am able to adjust it to an essay), then I will leave myself these bullet points as reminders and motivators:

• Manage your time; work efficiently and intelligently.

• Be practical, but be critical of your initial assumptions of what 'practical' means. Just because a concept seems 'interesting' or 'unique', it does not make it viable or approachable. The less of a clue you have about gathering resources, the greater the probability that the idea is impractical.

• Be organised to a frightening extent: have as many contingency plans as possible, colour-code everything, and have lists longer than your arms of possible sources - but have them sorted alphabetically, of course. Perhaps make a Gantt chart?

• Know what you're doing and when it's being done - have a definitive action plan that encompasses contingencies and human error. 

• Keep motivated even when things seem particularly bleak, and find ways of bribing yourself to complete a set amount of work regardless of its tediousness.

• Try to enjoy yourself, and remind yourself of why you're doing the EPQ in the first place.