#brontesaurus

TYCO Dino-riders VS FISHER PRICE IMAGINEXT 

A good friend of mine just received great news.  Her department chair said approval was granted and funds were being released.  Her research project for her sabbatical goes forward.

She has been compiling a vast lexicon, meticulously cross-referenced concordance style, of the connotative differences between popular mid-Victorian neologisms and portmanteaus plus all the nautical jargon and patois-birthed “borrowed” words. which were flooding into English literature on waves of Victorians returning home from far flung outposts of a sunsetless empire .

She intends to include analyses not only of the published works of the Bronte sisters three, but also the unpublished mss of failed brother Branwell & the collected sermons of the Right, Reverend Mr. Daddy Bronte.

She’s seen of a groundswell of support and eager anticipation from outside her own department, as historians and cultural anthropologists insist she is the only scholar able to complete this work, which will provide many of them with tangible evidence of the magnitude and speed with which attitudes regarding gender and class politics were being transformed.

The nod from social sciences is also drawing the notice of the administration, a conglomeration of hard-nosed bureaucrats and august emeritii who seldom agree on even the simplest things. However, for our Bronte expert, these natural enemies are acting like lambs and lions with shiny new plough shares.  I guess it is because they can all bask in the glow of my friend’s  “inter-disciplinary” scholarship.  She is affording her higher ups the opportunity to show they’ve been paying attention to the buzz word bingo cards being passed around at the last few core curriculum conferences.