Hi KC,

Hope your meeting went well,

CG

Hi Cake Girl,

It went really well thanks! My supervisor is an absolute star. He said he was pleased I'd taken the time to try and identify the problem and to work out ways of resolving it (that's all thanks to the advice I was given here). He then suggested a new structure for the chapter that actually works! This might not be of use to anyone but I'm going to set it out in case it is:
- start off with your 'straw man' which you will later tear down. In my case, for example, this made up of the presumed differences between medieval and early modern literature.
- part of my problem was that there are lots of presumptions and I couldn't figure out the link between them yet. He said not to worry about that, and to just separate them out into sections with no link. I.e: presumption A, presumption B, presumption C and so on. Say at the beginning that I'll be dealing with a number of disparate issues.
- Say how the texts I've studied might seem to confirm those presumptions.
- Go on to pull apart the straw man, which should be about 3/4 of the total length of the chapter. Do this section by section.
- Use the same bits of text which I used to confirm the straw man to pull apart the straw man. I.e: say 'if we look at this section of text in a different way we can see that...'

It's a very simple structure and probably seems obvious to some, but it's allowed me to not get confused trying to work out explanations for things all the time. For now it's enough to say 'this section of text can be seen in different ways'. That alone is enough to start dismantling presumptions. The explanations for why it differs from those presumptions can come later.

Sorry if I've rambled on but taking this kind of pragmatic approach has really helped me get back on my feet. (up)

Great news - what a positive outcome! :-)