Throughout his short life, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote occasional poems. Some were late apologies for missing a sister’s birthday. Others were designed to be presented to his Jesuit community, such as a playful description of a superior. And many were written to commemorate the liturgical season. During the Lent of 1866, he wrote the poem, … More Beginning Lent with Father Gerard’s “Nondum”
We’ve have quite a busy year! Our daughter, Eleanor, was born in March. I taught a class on fairy tales, and came away from it thinking Where the Wild Things Are is more genius than I ever realized (more on that in a later post). And I finished my comprehensive exams, preparing to teach in classes on … More Year in Review
What do we do with old books? I mean really old books. How do we understand them when they seem so alien to us? Time can seem to be the enemy of understanding. Past texts can seem cryptic. We wonder if Chaucer is as ironic as we may like to see him or if we … More How Temporal Distance Helps Us Read
How religious were the Victorians? If we focus only on the canonical poets, then maybe not so much. Alfred Tennyson finds himself staring at the paradox of a divinely-created nature that is “red in tooth and claw” and a faith that suggests we believe what “we cannot prove” (In Memoriam 56.15, Prologue line 4). Thomas Hardy … More Some Victorian Advent Reading
There is so much overlap between literature and liturgy. Sometimes a liturgy will take central place in a novel, such as the baptism in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles or the wedding at the end of any marriage plot. Many liturgies themselves are a collection of literary genres, ranging from myth to poetry to exhortation, … More Through the Poetic Year: C. S. Lewis
Nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as writing, but also nothing is so dependent on the understanding mind. In deciphering and interpreting a miracle takes place: the transformation of something strange and dead into a total simultaneity and familiarity. This is like nothing else that has come down to us from the … More The Miracle of Reading
The holiest attribute of a temple is that it is a place where men weep in common. A Miserere sung in common by a multitude flailed by destiny is worth a whole philosophy. To cure the plague is not enough, it must also be lamented with bitter tears. Yes, we must learn to weep! Perhaps … More A Miserere Sung in Common
Today’s a special day for the dead. It begins a time when monks shield their faces with their cowls on processions to cemeteries. A time when we surround ourselves with the memento mori of skulls and ghouls and graves. But why hold such a day when we are alive and part of a culture that … More Why Bury the Dead?
Today, in the tradition of Pavia, is the feast day of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. That’s the Boethius. Living from around 480 to his execution in 524, he was a statesman during the rule of Theodoric and a contemporary with Benedict of Nursia (480-547). He is a liminal figure like these others described by Lorenzo Valla, … More Hail Last of Romans and First of Scholastics
Do you remember your freshman year in college? What about your writing class? Were you annoyed that you had to even take a writing class? I mean, you already knew the 5-paragraph essay, so you were set, right? Or were you tired of talking about writing when you had come to practice medicine or start … More Teaching with Storium: What is a Writing Class?
The Golden Echo 