Unpicking and reassembling your thesis with two of the few people who will ever read it in its entirety is a surprisingly enjoyable process (talking about yourself and your work for two hours is no hardship), making sure the project is fit for wider consumption and then tackling the question of ‘what next’ is a slightly different dilemma.

My doctoral thesis, ‘Edmund Spenser and the Popular Press’, focused on Spenser’s interest in the early modern popular voice. By interrogating his incorporation of popular printed forms into his work, such as the almanac and the beast fable, and analysing his use of popular narrative tropes and conceits, from the hagiography of the Golden Legend to the pleasure principle found in storybook compilations, the project opened out Spenser’s spheres of interest and influence to incorporate the popular. During my DPhil I was able to visit rare books collections at the Bodleian, the British Library, Cambridge University Library and the Huntington Library, California.

Importantly my viva brought attention to the fact that in order for the thesis to work as a published book I would have to think harder about what constitutes a popular text or a popular voice. Dealing with the prickly issues of popularity and readership within my work will doubtless be mirrored by the inevitable questions surrounding audience, marketability and selling points raised by academic publishers. The luxury of having two interested readers in the form of my examiners has already had a huge impact on the way in which I view my thesis and their help and encouragement has allowed me approach the issue of publication with a degree of confidence rather than an inferiority complex. 

In the meantime I am also looking ahead to my next area of research and I am currently working on a research project provisionally titled: ‘Vision in Elizabethan Literature: Actaeon’s Folly and the Embroidered Text’ which will address the role played by sight in the production of Elizabethan literature. Primarily focused on the work of Spenser, Shakespeare and Sidney it will interrogate the influence of contemporary scientific and artistic theories of sight as well as reformist perspectives on iconoclasm and reading practice, upon texts from the 1580’s and 90’s. This will include work on the association of vision with the passions, the concept of ‘ocular proof’ (the bed trick), shame and arousal, idolatry and the art/nature debate. A central part of this project will be an examination of artistic theories of vision in relation to textiles, tapestries, architectural and domestic spaces and the encoding of messages or symbols within visual sources.

It’s invigorating to be thinking about a new project, but I imagine that before too long the question of ‘what next’ will yet again be clamouring for attention.

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