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Now that my summer classes are done, I'll have more time for my fun reading and also for blogging.

I enjoyed the reading for my coursework immensely. Chaucer is always a favorite, and, believe it or not, religious writings of the Renaissance and Reformation have always been favorites of mine, too, so I was revisiting writers and concepts that I enjoy this past month.

I'm currently working on writing my papers for my independent study. My text for one is Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. We read an excerpt for our class, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Browne was possibly one of the earliest theologians to preach tolerance, though he does it in a way that could seem to be offering intolerant tolerance.

One concept that I receive from his writing, however, is that it doesn't matter what the religion is dressed it, but what the body of knowledge underneath the trappings of ritual is actually teaching. I smile when I think of this, because it has been my own personal feeling for quite some time that religions are all basically the same, just dressed in different clothes.

Of course Browne does not go so far as to say that. He instead says that Christians would do better to direct their energy toward proper worship, rather than toward the ridicule and persecution of those that are mistaken in worship.

I enjoy the text and find my paper to be leaning in the direction of analyzing the relationship between the individual and the group. In the American ideology, it is standard for the individual to break away from the group, to flout tradition and convention and stand out as some type of hero for doing so. The English ideology, however, is highly concerned with maintaining the group. The standard tends towards the individual breaking away, and then finding some sort of compromise with the group in order to be accepted back into the fold.

Browne, it seems, is advocating tolerance for the sake of maintaining the group. His discussion of heresy leans towards this, as he says it is only a heresy if you persist in believing an erroneous philosophy, and if you try to convince others or your erring thoughts. So, if people in possession of religious beliefs that differ from that of the True religion (in Browne's view, Anglicanism) would just keep it to themselves, there would be no issue.

That is what I'll be exploring as I write my paper. Dr. Rice is only asking for 3-4 pages, so I'll have to reign myself in. My problem tends to be biting off a rather large thesis. I could write 20 pages on most topics, but bite off too much for the shorter papers.

Mean while, I've also been reading The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris. It's a sequel to Chocolat and so far is very different from its predecessor, a little darker, a little bit more like a mystery, but still Harris so I'm enjoying it.

More later.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds   

Admit impediments. Love is not love  

Which alters when it alteration finds,   

Or bends with the remover to remove:  

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark   

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  

It is the star to every wandering bark,  

 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks   

Within his bending sickle's compass come:  

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  

 But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

 If this be error and upon me proved,  

 I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

If Shakespeare was right, and this is love, does it exist? Or is it yet another 

ideal that literature has created for us, and that we will never find?

I love Middle English

Today was my first day of Chaucer. The largest complaint I hear about that class is that reading Middle English is a pain. Dr. Rice assigns a text that contains the Middle English. There are great footnotes, but it does take a little longer than reading in Modern English.

I have to say, though, that I love Middle English! As soon as I start trying to pronounce it, I know I get it wrong, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it's not that difficult to follow. Of course, I have had some prior experience reading it, so that give me an advantage.

Reading Middle English has reawakened my desire to learn Old English as well. It's so much fun!