20181119.0430

In my post yesterday, I make reference to "legitimate" scholarly topics. The specifics I refer to--and which I know I do not name--are those of my medieval studies work. My dissertation was on Malory and the process through which Le Morte d'Arthur became the canonical piece of Arthurian legend it is recognized as being. My conference papers have tended to address Malory, with a few ranging back into Old English works and a few others going in different directions entirely. My publications, few as they are, do not show up any kind of consistent agenda, except perhaps looking at locations and practices of teaching.
I did enjoy doing the work to make those things happen, to be sure. There is a certain amount of love for the thing that has to go into doing the work of writing theses over months or a dissertation over years. There is a certain amount of joy that inheres in finding places where knowledge is lacking and, through careful investigation and argumentation, correcting that lack. (Among others, and as I tell the students I reach in my expatriation, being the first to know a thing is rewarding.) But, as I noted yesterday and have noted elsewhen, the fields in which I tried to work as I sought to make myself a "real" scholar, one who has the luxury of living a life of the mind as a primary occupation, are not those that got me into scholarly work. They were, as it were, covers for the work I wanted to do--but I stopped doing the work I had hoped to use the "legitimate" work to enable. The cover became the primary thing--as much as research ever did for me. (I know part of why I was unable to get a full-time college or university gig was my too-short publication list.)
No, it was looking at things that many will deem silly that awakened in me the desire to make more knowledge. The roleplaying games that secured my undergraduate honors, the Robin Hobb novels I studied for my master's thesis, always seemed to me to need defending as objects of scholarly inquiry; I still struggle against the idea, just as I struggle with the notion that the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society needs defending. Such work may, but not for the reasons typically advanced, that the objects of such study are not worthy of such study. As much as anything else people do, they are--and I am not the only one of that opinion, else there'd be no other resources than those I've made. (I flatter myself that I've done pretty well with Hobb, though.)
If there is a benefit to the end of my pursuit of full-time scholarship to my scholarly work, it is this: I no longer need to work to hide my interests under "legitimate" work that I am increasingly unequipped to undertake. "Legit" work takes resources I no longer have easy access to--or much of any access. I keep what I can, but there's only so much I can do on that score. But I can do the kind of work I've done with RPGs and other pop-culture stuff still, and it's more of what I wanted to do, anyway...