Janet Adelman

I know about old men becoming garalous, but please indulge me ina pre-Oedpial moment, f you will. Janet ishte reason I became an English major. I took her Major BritishAuthors survey (a ten week quarer) and I remember thinking that the focus ona fwew of the Canerbury Tales and Bok III of theFQ rather than a hurried coverage of everything was great. Slow reading as close reading. Stepehn Booth went even further. He just did Twelfth Night, line by line. We ended the quarter somewhere in Act II.

We began the surveyby dividing up to discuss the General Prologue and htenwhen re reassembled, Janet took us through it in a discussion, pointing out for instance,that the word Inspired” meant literally breathing into. The April shores soute, pricking rain.

This was close reading, and I thought sign me up. And I didn’t even know that this was a Freudian rading. O that Freud was Chaucerian. Later, I was intrigued by my dead friend and teacher, Joel Fineman who wished late in his much too short life that he had been a Chaucerian. Ma andPa in the GP.

I didn’t do s well at it, but Janet was very generous and patient. I remember misspelling heaven—as heavan—you know it takes you around after your dead.

And I think I got a B- on my Britomart paper. But I keep at it and, I think like to think, got better at close reading. I was also a reader for Janet’s Shakespeare lecture classes, and again, she proved to an amazingly dedicated teacher, meeting with us to talk about the papers, having taken a batch herself to grade.

Meanhle I had stumbed up on her essay on the Pardoner’s Tale at Cody’s books, and then Her book on Antony and Cleopatra at Univ Press Books. Yeow, I thought. Incredible inight and imatched incredibly pelluicd prose. OK, I’m coming tp theend of my trip down memory lane, a little uncanny, but less about Hoffman’s Sandman, though not exactly backto the womb. Janet is one of my begetters, not the only begetter. She also had us over to her wonderful apartment at the end of the semester on the Northside of Berkeley, ina building tat had turrets. VERY California.

And she talked about herself in relation to what she taught.

I have taken up this personal touch, sing it more as stand up comedic routines at the beginning of classes. I should say failed stand up comedies. Because I’m not very funny. See what I mean.

I was inspired, my mind was pricked. I know that I did say this was a pre-Oedipal moment, but I find that I am trapped in the symbolic after all.

So I come to the end and just wanted to say this as a tribute to Janet and t the power of her readings in both her publications and her pedagogy.

Permission to do whatever I wanted to do. You could close read the text,but you could talk about reading, about yourself along the otheway. You could ringinFreud. It was a great time, inmany ways, evenif it was also the most terrifying of times. Thebar was set incredibly high. So if I failto jup over it today,please understand why