Too many thoughts running through my head at once . . .

I find it amazing how every day literature hits me in some new way, or how I just fall more in love with it. A few days ago, I checked some books out of our campus library, Vanity Fair and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, hoping to get some extra time to read them. Fat chance! I try though . . . I may not have time to read them thoroughly, but I need to be able to read something without trying to be critical of it, like I have to in all my other classes. I started with Vanity Fair, which, on the seventh page, has a situation where the main character throws a dictionary onto the ground. Shocking (for an English major)! The subtitle is, after all, "A Novel without a Hero," so I shouldn't expect more from Becky Sharp.

Today I was also trying to register for classes for spring semester, and was frustrated when I was waitlisted for Classical Mythology and Medieval Lit. I don't want to end up taking a course on Ezra Pound or Modern Poetry . . . well, there's always prayer. If it's God's will . . .
It's funny, I told my roommate that choosing which English classes to take is like being a kid in a candy store. They're all good, so why am I complaining? Especially my Romantic Movement class - no, not romantic movement, The Romantic movement. Those nature-loving, convention-breaking, hierarchical genre-wrecking, revolutionary Romantic poets, like Blake (he sends shivers down my spine - "Energy is Eternal Delight . . . One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression . . . every thing that lives is Holy"), Burns ("The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men"), Wordsworth ("Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity"), Coleridge, Byron and the rest. They're really not as bad as you'd think they are. In class today we discussed how poetry can really convey Truth about Man, and not just pleasure. Through the beauty and pleasure we can get out of reading beautiful words, and from the words themselves, we can grasp the truth that comes through. Coleridge says that in his Biographia Literaria - truth is the ultimate end of literature. Some unmentionable person (heretic!) said in class today that the sonnets don't teach us anything, and do you know what Dr. Braun said to that? "You've never been in love, have you?"

I also randomly today - well, maybe not randomly; it was divine providence - picked up a book about Chesterton while I was killing time in the library before Media class. It's called The Apostle of Common Sense, and it's by Dale Ahlquist, the guy who knows Chesterton. He begins his preface of the book by saying that he first read Chesterton on his honeymoon, when he started The Everlasting Man, while his newly-wed bride was reading Les Mis, believe it or not. My kinda guy! I really should read more of Chesterton, though.

Finally, I went to a lecture tonight called "Classics and Theology," given by a theology professor here who happens also to teach Latin and Greek. He said that neglecting to study the classics is like leaving out the Old Testament when we study Scripture. Boy, am I learning more and more of that. Reading all these ancient Greek epics, histories, comedies, and tragedies, which many people see as dry and antiquated, I really see a lot of common themes that we've lost today. Moderation, for one. And, of course, ahem, arete.

I meant actually tonight to write a whole vent on why I love Pride and Prejudice . . . think of it as a coming attraction. For now, though, here's a fun quiz I found that proves whether you know your stuff, meaning, the books, not just the movie adaptations. Good luck! - http://www.janeausten.co.uk/quiz/index.ihtml