Greetings, Cake! I see you haven't been active at Atheist Nexus since 2009. Shame to waste such a sense of humor. We have a new group where you might feel more at home. Please consider joining  Hang With Friends , where we can share our stories and laugh, and discuss anything on our minds.

Re the 2nd part of your comment: being ordained means that I am credentialed by my denomination but more importnaly, recognized by a particular congregation, to serve as a religious leader. The "calling" to serve others that i recognize stems from myself rather than from a deity. I am bound by a code of conduct & professionakl standards. This has been my full time occupation for nearly 7 years

The ultra orthodox - be they religious or athesist - can at times militatnly insist that their only their definition of religion/being religious is valid, which of course is stuff & nonsense

I'm another who likes your nutritional breakdown. Thanks for joining ORIGINS and welcome to Atheist Nexus too.
Terry Meaden (another academic)

Not a Shakespeare fan! Oh heresy!
My books are in a permanent state of chaos and I haven't been able to force "Gilgamesh" to the suface yet, so I'll have to owe you an answer on that. It's a recent translation as I recall. About 10 years old at the most.
Thanks for saying nice things about the poems. The Brights used "Sisyphus" in their December newsletter last year but that's all as far as publication goes.
Victorians and psychology sounds like a rich field to work in. I remember something about Dickens being annoyed when some editor tried to get him to remove the word "trowsers" from Dombey and Son. To be fair though, I think that what we now see as Victorian repression began as a well-justified attempt to protect women and children from some horrendous exploitation.
I don't know Levy so I'll look her up. I did do some undergrad work on women poets of the 17th century, Aphra Behn, Ann Philips et al. but it wasn't a great success and is best forgotten. An interesting bunch of women though.

I graduated in 1985 (Uni. of Essex) so my formal education is a distant memory. It was at a time when "The Revenger's Tragedy" was still attributed to Tourneur and not Middleton. I still have a love of Shakespeare (there's a group here for that too) and a fondness for the others of that crowd. At the time I studied mostly with left-wing lecturers and, while I considered their approach the best, I couldn't bear the heavy-weight French theory. Eagleton was good enough I thought.
Now I'm what you might call eclectic or perhaps moody. I read anything that feels good at the time, sometimes having great splurges in one direction. Example: I read Gilgamesh a few years ago and then went on to read everything the library had on Summeria and all because Captain Picard had mentioned the epic on a Star Trek episode. The same thing happened after seeing "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?". Off to read Homer, then Herodotus, then.......Get the idea? Newest project is "Finnegan's Wake" but also finding time for Spike Milligan and a poet I didn't know before, Philip Appleman.
And for the past couple of years, writing myself. Plug here for website: link via my page.
What's your M.A. going to be about?

English Unitarians tend to be more "old school" at least by reputation - Darwin, Dickens, Florence Nightengale, Huxley, et al, are classic examples. In the States, the Unitarians & the Universalists merged in the early 1960's,. creating, some say, a hybrid. Modern UUs often do have much in common with "classic" Unitarians. There is no common creed, intuition/conscience is highly prized, as is a skeptical nature -- all these, coupled to a sense of awe towards the universe & a willingness to engage in social justice/societal improvement efforts. In the 19th century, the phrase "salvation by character" gained currency - there was little or no expectation that there would be an afterlife, but the notion persisted that the desired goal for human beings is to strive towards higher states of ethics, compassion & enlightenment

Grey and dreary. It's usually the same as England, just a few days later. How're things there?

Aha! I thought that "good morning" must imply another European. Greetings from an ex Lit. student and welcome to "I Write"