This week, The Second Laird Miscellany checks in with the English Department’s own Timothy Raylor, our recently returned Milton expert (to name one of many areas of interest)! We talked to him about what he was up to during his time away from Carleton, and he delivers keen insight on the department and life in general. Check out what he has to say below!
Welcome back to Carleton! Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to during your time away? Any major moments of inspiration or headway in your research?
Thanks! It’s great to be back. What have I been up to? Well, I spent my time working on two related projects. One, a book on the seventeenth-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in which I try to offer a fresh angle on his transformation from obscure country-house tutor to notorious political philosopher; the other, an edition of De corpore, in which Hobbes tries to lay the foundations of his moral and political philosophy in a general science of body. (It’s an odd book: it starts with logic, runs through metaphysics, then geometry (no, really), and concludes with physics and meteorology.) Headway? Yes, the book’s done. As for the edition, my collaborator (who’s based in London–so a lot of Skyping, and a fair bit of flying involved) and I have almost wrapped it up. We finally cleared the last of the roadblocks–sorting out the status of a manuscript draft of De corpore that had stumped us for about five years. Hobbes spent a quarter of a century writing his book; we’re hoping to finish our edition of it in slightly shorter order.
Taking a step back from the bustle of Carleton, did you find that you’d gained any new insights or perspective about the time you’ve spent here as a professor?
Not so much a new as a renewed insight: The intensity of students and faculty in Carleton’s English Department, together with their congeniality and intellectual generosity, is extraordinary.
While you were gone, did you miss any particular aspects of life on campus?
Second Laird! I love the atmosphere up here and missed seeing students chatting in the big chairs or lying on the benches reading; missed talking with colleagues in the office and corridor; missed the peals of laughter from 211, the occasional burst of applause from 212. Second Laird’s a wonderful place to work; an impossible place in which to get any work done.
Now that you’ve returned, are there certain areas of your time here that you’re interested in approaching differently? What’s it like returning to classes now that you’ve had such a break from them?
Talk less and ask more questions. (Cumulative Grade: D-)
Are there any changes on campus or in the department that have surprised you since being back?
I’ve noticed that I am no longer chair. And it’s delightful to be back down in the engine room shoveling coal, knowing Nancy’s at the helm. (An excellent chair: she sets a clear course and keeps us all happily steaming along it.)
For those of us who’ve been stuck in the Carleton bubble, do you have any stand-out stories from your time in the “real world” you’d care to share with us?
I’d like to share with you a nugget of wisdom, which has been the source of many of my most interesting experiences in said “real world.” It was given to me by a retired intelligence officer by whom, as a young graduate, I was interviewed for a friend’s security clearance. At the end of the meeting, having decided that my friend wasn’t a blackmail risk (he was right, she wasn’t) the interviewer asked if he could offer me a bit of advice–something he’d learned from many years of travel and work in different parts of the globe. “Wherever you are,” he said, “always go two streets up.”