The Rules
1. Leave me a comment.
2. I respond by asking you five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You then update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Questions, courtesy of
misslucyjane:
1) Thwap me if I've asked you this before, but what's the story behind your username?
Rymenhild (also spelled Rimenhild, Rimenild, Reymyld and Rigmel), princess of Westernesse, is the love interest in the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Middle English verse romance King Horn. She courts her young man, rather than vice versa, but then she makes up for the initial awesomeness by staying at home for fourteen years while Horn goes off to fight Saracens. I'm not all that fond of the character, but I do like her name. I also like the fact that I can shorten the name to Rym, which is a Middle English word for verse or poem. (Its cognate in modern English is "rhyme".)
2) I am full of admiration and wonderment at medievalists. Why did you decide to focus on this period?
I never really decided to become a medievalist -- it just happened. I suppose I started out as a ten-year-old fangirl reading Susan Cooper, JRR Tolkien and everything I could find that mentioned King Arthur. I wanted to know what inspired these writers, so I started looking for the source texts. After eight or ten years of enthusiastic reading, when it came time for me to choose my specialty within English literature, I really didn't have to think very hard.
3) One of my favorite lines in Possession is something along the lines of "We love what survives our education." Is there any work you feel you love despite having studied it for years?
Oh, that's a good question. After sixteen years, two undergraduate seminars (one as a student, one as the instructor) and a senior thesis, I'm still passionately in love with Arthurian literature. (I tried listing the individual Arthurian works I love, but it's really too long of a list for me to post here. Ask me later!) King Horn and several other deeply odd Middle English romances have also survived my obsessions well.
4) What is "bibliosexuality"? (And does it involve stroking bookbindings? Library porn?)
I believe I first discovered the word in
gramarye1971's userinfo and traced it back to
foreverdirt's tongue not-that-far-in-cheek coming-out post. In any case, I adore books as things. I especially adore old books. Nothing makes me happier than sitting in an archival library with a seven-hundred-year-old codex smelling of vellum and leather, and, um, petting the corners of pages very gently when the librarians aren't looking. Not that I do that.. Anyway, I suppose I could just describe myself as a bibliophiliac, but the word "bibliosexual" is more fun.
5) Define yourself in five words or less.
Far too good at procrastinating. :D?
1. Leave me a comment.
2. I respond by asking you five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You then update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Questions, courtesy of
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
1) Thwap me if I've asked you this before, but what's the story behind your username?
Rymenhild (also spelled Rimenhild, Rimenild, Reymyld and Rigmel), princess of Westernesse, is the love interest in the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Middle English verse romance King Horn. She courts her young man, rather than vice versa, but then she makes up for the initial awesomeness by staying at home for fourteen years while Horn goes off to fight Saracens. I'm not all that fond of the character, but I do like her name. I also like the fact that I can shorten the name to Rym, which is a Middle English word for verse or poem. (Its cognate in modern English is "rhyme".)
2) I am full of admiration and wonderment at medievalists. Why did you decide to focus on this period?
I never really decided to become a medievalist -- it just happened. I suppose I started out as a ten-year-old fangirl reading Susan Cooper, JRR Tolkien and everything I could find that mentioned King Arthur. I wanted to know what inspired these writers, so I started looking for the source texts. After eight or ten years of enthusiastic reading, when it came time for me to choose my specialty within English literature, I really didn't have to think very hard.
3) One of my favorite lines in Possession is something along the lines of "We love what survives our education." Is there any work you feel you love despite having studied it for years?
Oh, that's a good question. After sixteen years, two undergraduate seminars (one as a student, one as the instructor) and a senior thesis, I'm still passionately in love with Arthurian literature. (I tried listing the individual Arthurian works I love, but it's really too long of a list for me to post here. Ask me later!) King Horn and several other deeply odd Middle English romances have also survived my obsessions well.
4) What is "bibliosexuality"? (And does it involve stroking bookbindings? Library porn?)
I believe I first discovered the word in
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
5) Define yourself in five words or less.
Far too good at procrastinating. :D?