Summer’s end

Tags

double rainbow, education, Joss Whedon, literature, medieval, pop culture, Slayage Conference, students, travel, university, Vancouver, World Literature

Oh, all right–summer actually ended a few days ago, if you think Labor Day marks the end of summer. Or if the start of the school years marks the end of summer, then for me and other professors at my university, summer ended August 16, when we gathered for the annual “faculty orientation.” Students moved in the following weekend and classes began August 21. Summer has well and truly ended.

I’m declaring an end to this blog’s summer vacation, as well.

What did we do on our summer vacation? Taught summer school (British Lit 1); wrote and presented a paper at the 5th Biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses, “Banter, Battles, and ‘Kissy th’ Face’: Sugarshock!‘s Quintessential Whedonverse.” Others have reported on the conference, and a comprehensive report (co-authored by Ian Klein, Ami Comeford, and me) will be published in Slayage later this year.

I enjoyed my first visit to the northwest, even if a week allowed only glimpses of Vancouver, BC, and Washington state. My cousins in Walla Walla took me to see the Pioneer Park Aviary. Just as we arrived, a double rainbow appeared over the park! Perfect.

I slipped in a couple days at the beach, thanks to an invitation from an aunt and uncle. All in all, a very good summer.

It’s near the beach!

Medieval literature, World literature survey, and first-year comp classes are well underway now with first paper assignments coming in soon. Next week, I’ll be traveling again, so expect some photos and color commentary.

World Poetry Day

Tags

literature, poetry, Poetry Foundation, poets, Rilke, spring, World Poetry Day

Somehow I did not hear about World Poetry Day until this year, although evidently it’s been a thing since 1999. Perhaps I was too busy moving from California to North Carolina that year to think much about international poetry.

Anyway, in honor of World Poetry Day, here’s one of my favorite world poems:

A Walk
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

I also recommend, for today and every day, the Poetry Foundation Mobile App.

A Day or so in Edinburgh

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CUSA, Edinburgh, Scotland

June 30-July 2: The students taking English courses and I headed to Scotland on Thursday. As has frequently been the case, we got a slightly later start than hoped for in the morning, spent four and a half hours on the train, and arrived about 1:30pm. (One lesson I’ve learned is that if there’s a desired departure time, it will be best to announce it as half an hour earlier, because students will tend to turn up at the very last minute, stretching the departure time another 10-15 minutes at least. Sometimes this is OK, sometimes, no.) After getting ourselves more or less settled, we just had time to visit the National Gallery of Scotland, which fortunately holds late opening hours on Thursdays. In this photo, the National Gallery is one of the two classical buildings in the foreground. The spire in the background is the (Sir Walter) Scott Monument:

We had a full day Friday, starting with the Writers Museum:

The Museum itself, filling a historic home, is devoted to Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The close has been dedicated as “Makars [poets/writers] Court” with stones set into the pavement memorializing other Scots writers, from medieval Henryson & Dunbar to Muriel Spark and Dorothy Dunnett:

Having met with one of my former students, Fr. Micah Snell, who’s now working on a Ph.D. at St. Andrews, we visited St. Giles Cathedral and had lunch in their very good cafe. Afterwards, Fr. Micah talked with the CU students about his research on Shakespeare and Christianity.

The afternoon was devoted to Edinburgh Castle, where we were joined by Fr. Micah’s family. His wife Jennifer was also a student at Biola when I taught there, an English major, so it was great to see her again.

After dinner at The Elephant House, famed for being the place (or at least one of the places) where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, most of us were ready to collapse, but two of the guys went out and climbed Arthur’s Seat!

Saturday, we split up to see a few sights we were particularly interested in, and to do some shopping, than it was back on the train to London. All agreed we’d like to spend more time and explore beyond Edinburgh next time!

More about V&A and Shakespeare

Tags

art, Chaucer, CUSA, literature, London, medieval, Shakespeare, Tennyson

Image via Wikipedia

Updating previous post with more detail:
Monday 6/26, we spent all day at the Victoria and Albert Museum. You could spend a week there, but we focused on the Medieval & Renaissance galleries and the special Cult of Beauty exhibition. Among the items highlighted in the tour of the medieval/renaissance galleries: an enormous tapestry depicting a boar hunt similar to that in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites’ paintings linked with Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Also on display, a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer.

Tuesday 6/27, the entire group toured Westminster Abbey in the morning, then went to a matinee of Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe. Even those who were skeptical ended up enjoying themselves. Especially impressive: just after we took our seats in an upper gallery, the skies opened, and first light, then quite heavy rain came down. The groundlings acquired plastic ponchos, but the actors carried on, occasionally acknowledging the weather when a fortuitous thunderclap emphasized a line. About 3/4 of the stage is covered, but the show went on. Shakespeare FTW!

Travels in the Southwest 2: Bath & Winchester

Tags

Bath, CUSA, Jane Austen, Winchester, Winchester Cathedral

Thursday June 23: By train to Bath (AKA Bath Spa). We’re reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, which is largely set in Bath, so had hoped to see something of the late-18th/early19th century city represented in her books. Due to an oversight on my part, we discovered after arriving that the free Austen-themed walking tours of the city are only offered on weekends. The (not free) Jane Austen center is informative, but a bit on the fannish side with an emphasis on film & TV series costumes (the one authentic Regency-era dress was displayed in full-filtered sunlight and had faded shockingly, if the photograph of its original state was anything to go by), and elevation of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Everyone found the Roman baths fascinating, however. The archaeology and displays for these have been substantially expanded since the last time I visited, which I think may have been in 1976! The link goes to an online “walkthrough.”

Friday June 24: We wanted to see the spurious Round Table at Winchester, probably created in the 12th c., rehabbed and painted by Henry VIII, all part of recurring efforts to use the legend of Arthur to bolster contemporary political ambitions:

Outside the Great Hall the houses the Table, we found a representation of it in pavement, so the students formed their own chivalric order:

Winchester Cathedral holds Jane Austen’s grave–more impressive than the gaudy memorial to her authorship, in my opinion:

The cathedral & its library were also hosting a special exhibition celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible, including the remarkable Winchester Bible. Images can’t do it justice.

Travels in the Southwest 1

Tags

Cotswolds, CUSA, Oxford

…the southwest of England, of course. Wednesday-Friday of last week had originally been planned as a continuous excursion through Wiltshire & Somerset, but in the end we decided that if we had BritRail passes it would be simpler to do it in a series of day-trips. This was more or less the case. It was handy to be able to check on rail schedules daily from Vandon House, and if anyone felt unwell, he or she could stay behind without incurring unexpected charges. At the same time, the extra train trip at the end of the day could be tiring.

The original plan had been to visit Salisbury, which has, of course, a magnificent cathedral, and is a very ancient city with connections to George Herbert. Since we ended up not actually reading any Herbert, and will see several other cathedrals (not that each one isn’t uniquely wonderful), we took a guided tour of Oxford & the Cotswolds. Both aesthetically entertaining and instructive, as the guide told us all about the British university system (among other things, of course). Cannot recommend London Walks highly enough for this kind of thing, or for short afternoon & evening tours of London itself.

Wednesday 6/22: Village of Minster Lovell
Ruined manor:

Random swan:

Burford village church of St John the Baptist, tower & pulpit:

Oxford University, New College cloisters:

Fun fact: New College, we learned, is actually one of the oldest colleges, founded in the Middle Ages.

London, Week Two

Tags

CUSA, Hampton Court, London, Museum of London

The second week began with church, at least for the two professors. The students were worn out and slept in. We went to St. James the Less in Pimlico, an evangelical Anglican congregation I first visited when I was here on behalf of Biola England back in 1997 or 1998. Their all-ages service was a fascinating contrast with the high church Westminster Abbey service, and though I usually prefer traditional hymns, they had some contemporary worship music that was both catchy and substantial.

Monday, 6/20: the Museum of London pretty much gives you what it says on the tin, objects and displays that represent the history and development of the city. Notable presentation on the Great Fire of the 17th century. Helpful, we hoped, for contextualizing the literature students are reading.

Tuesday 6/21: The entire group went to Hampton Court Palace, where we received fascinating presentations of Tudor-era grandeur and the later Christopher Wren-era/William-and-Mary grandeur.

Hampton Court gates:

The astrological clock:

Spotted a camel in this tapestry:

Wrapping up week one

Tags

British Library, Canterbury, Chaucer, Cotswolds, CUSA, London

I’d like to catch up to what we’re doing this week, so this post will more or less wrap up last week. Also, I have fewer photographs from most of these days.

June 16: Canterbury. The train we took more or less follows the pilgrims’ route to the city, an unplanned plus, as there’s a faster train to the other station now (added since the last time I visited) that goes another way. We had the cheesy/spooky, yet still instructive “Canterbury Tales” tableaux to ourselves, then went through the cathedral, which I won’t try to describe.

June 17: Books and manuscripts day. Morning at the British Library in the “Treasures” collection, which includes manuscripts of many great medieval literary, religious, and political texts; a whole room is devoted to one of the surviving MS of the Magna Carta. While we were there, we also wandered through the current special exhibition on science fiction–which was relevant if you consider that early examples of scifi were written in the ancient world and the Renaissance (Thomas More’s Utopia, e.g.). Found this in the “time travel” section:

If you can’t read the note hanging on the door, it says, “Be back in a minute.”

After lunch, we found our way to the University of London’s Senate House Library, which currently has a selection of Chaucer manuscripts and editions on display, including a facsimile of the Ellesmere MS.

ETA: I meant to wrap this post up with a photo or two from my Saturday in the Cotswolds, courtesy of my esteemed colleague in Dorothy Dunnett & Joss Whedon appreciation, Simon Hedges. Village street:

Snowshill Manor garden:

The manor itself & it’s contents are the real curiosity, however–literally crammed with collections that define “eclectic”–from farm implements and prams to samurai armor & everything between.

Medieval things to think about

Tags

British literature, Early modern period, education, England, history, Middle Ages, teaching

As my students and I make last-minute preparations to depart for our study-abroad in England, two recent posts remind me of the purpose of these courses and why it’s so fabulous to be studying medieval-early modern British literature in Great Britain.

First, the beginning of a series “debunking” popular misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Stay tuned for more from this blog.

Second, the story of a new medieval archaeological find in Gloucester. There’ve been quite a few of these in recent years, including the Staffordshire Hoard, which we probably will not get to see.

Poem in my pocket today

Tags

Geoffrey Chaucer, literature, National Poetry Month, poetry, teaching

Image via Wikipedia

April is National Poetry Month, and April 14 is “Poem in Your Pocket” day. Today, I’ll be carrying a poem by the Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry:

TRUTH (Balade de Bon Conseyl)
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2008 All Rights Reserved

Flee from the crowd, and dwell with truthfulness,
Let your thing suffice, though it be small;
Hoarding brings hatred, climbing fickleness,
Praise brings envy, and wealth blinds overall;
Savour no more than ‘tis good that you recall;
Rule well yourself, who others advise here;
And truth shall deliver you, have no fear.

Trouble you not the crooked to redress,
Trusting in her who wobbles like a ball.
Well-being rests on scorning busyness;
Beware therefore of kicking at an awl;
Strive not like the crockery with the wall.
Control yourself, who would control your peer;
And truth shall deliver you, have no fear.

That which is sent, receive in humbleness,
Wrestling for this world asks but a fall.
Here’s not your home, here is but wilderness.
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beast, out of your stall!
Know your country: look up, thank God for all;
Hold the high way, and let your spirit steer,
And truth shall deliver you, have no fear.

Envoy

Therefore, La Vache, cease your old wretchedness;
To the world cease now to be in thrall;
Cry Him mercy, that out of his high goodness
Made thee from naught, on Him especially call,
Draw unto Him, and pray in general
For yourself, and others, for heavenly cheer;
And truth shall deliver you, have no fear.

(Truth: I’ll be carrying a whole book of poems by Chaucer in Middle English, because today I’m teaching a Chaucer class. No fear!)