Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Nooo!
This is terrible! I've been scooped! How the hell did I not see this article before??? It came out in April 2011; I started my article in April 2011. It's like it oozed into me via osmosis or transfer through the ether before the citation began to show in the MLA biblio. To repeat: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not even going to look at it right now. I can't. I can't deal with this.
5 comments:
It's happened to all of us at least once. But hey, take a closer look and see if you can find some way to disagree with it!
Breathe deep. After steadying yourself, take a careful look at that article. It seems doubtful to me that someone else made exactly the same points you want to make – all of them, every last one – and that they made those points in precisely the same way you would, with the same evidence and approaches. Pore through it, like Arbitrista said, and see if you can't find some different intervention that you make, if not an outright critique of the earlier article.
Before all this, though, I recommend whisky.
Yes, this does happen, maddeningly, to everyone. And Dr. K is right: you have your own approach. Once I thought I got scooped and it turned out that I just got pushed into a more interesting essay.
But first drink.
They're totally wrong, and you know it. Use it!
(Happens to everyone, but often it's not as bad as it first seems.)
Argh.
But you know what? It's very possible that no one else will read that article but you. There are a lot of other things to read, of course. No one can read it all.
In Shakespeare studies, I figure there's absolutely nothing that I can say that's original, so why worry about it? And I don't have time to read every single thing that's ever been written about X, so I do as much reading as I can and then go on.
I know it's got to be frustrating right now, but you'll put your own spin on the topic. It'll be even better. You can still do it. Go you!
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