Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Astonishing yet obvious discovery

I'm doing a reaserch paper on Chaucer, and I've been reading Chesterton's biography of him , searching for facts to fill notecards. Needless to say, I've learned the hard way what reason must have pointed out, had I thought about it: paraphrasing Chesterton is the most tragic, painful thing I have ever tried to do. Also, full of truth as his books are, mining for just the solid, bland facts is basically impossible in a volume of Chesterton. I've been working a long time, and have only one fact, albeit a good one: Chaucer was Catholic.

1 comment:

Sean P. Dailey said...

The great thing about Chesterton is that he is the most quotable of authors. The trying thing about Chesterton is that he is...the most quotable of authors. You don't know where to stop! ;-)

Here's a tip: when you come to a point in your paper where you need to make a sweeping point about Chaucer, find what Chesterton said about that point and quote two or three sentences together, or better yet a whole paragraph. That way your paper will write itself. :-)