Any time I'm obsessed with a particular text, I'm likely to spend a fair amount of effort to hunt down as much of the scholarly literature on it as I can. (I don't think I can ever exhaust my interest in commentary on Yde and Olive!) For one thing, lesbian historical studies have something of a history of jumping to lesbian-friendly interpretations of texts or persons, and it can be essential to examine contrary opinions. Clearly I need to track down Susan Lamb's analysis to see what I think of her arguments on Mademoiselle de Richelieu. (It will, of course, have no effect on my irrational fondness for this highly peculiar text.) Every time I read another study of this work, I get excited about the fiction project that it inspired in my imagination. Not the straightforward novelization that I first conceived, but something of a time-slip story, overlaying the original fiction with a pair of modern characters that include a woman studying the text. So many writing projects, so little time!
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