Well, there's no time like the present to start updating this blog again. It's a Sunday, and the chaos of the past few months have settled down now.
Long story short, my applications are all sent in and I am now waiting for emails back from the various institutions I sent them in to. I didn't get into the residency I applied to back in September, but that's alright. The two zine pieces I worked on are now complete, with one already published (check it out if you like the game Pentiment, or medieval and early modern art!), and the other awaiting publication in early January. The work with RISM has proven fruitful- out of the 327-or-so pieces in Ox213, I've logged 313 of them as of today and I should be able to get the whole collection done by the end of the year.
And, excitingly, I've managed to get some short biographies published online for various singers in Philip the Bold's court! There were two that were particularly interesting to put together, which is that of Toussains Prieur and Jean Grosseteste. The latter got my attention as he is the illegitimate father of Pierre Grosseteste, who befriended Du Fay (also born illegitimately). The project supervisor made a note of how similar Pierre and Du Fay's circumstances were regarding their births, and perhaps he's right in thinking the similarities could lead somewhere in regards to Du Fay's parentage as well. But I have my reservations, because firstly, we don't even have a name for Du Fay's father as opposed to Pierre Grosseteste (perhaps in the Grossetestes' case there's a document attesting to Jean's parentage of Pierre?), and secondly, it isn't necessary for Du Fay to be born of a professional singer to become one himself (and I would say the same of Pierre if we didn't know his father's identity!). Regardless, it would be nice to investigate the issue further.