I wrote this paragraph intending to include it in my first post about The Old English Life of St. Margaret and the story of Thecla from The Acts of Paul, but it didn’t seem to fit into what was already a very long post! So, I figured I would post it as a separate follow-up! You might want to glance at the first post to understand why I’m comparing these…
Andreas gives the ocean many names: the whale-road, the formidable waterways, the menace of the water, the salt sea-streams, the cold waters. The ocean roars, jostles, surges, and encroaches. The epithets of the ocean mirror the epithets of God. In fact, one of God’s names is “the Sentinel of the Sea.” Andreas does not treat the ocean as a mere means of transport or geographical feature. The ocean becomes a…
In her article on “Beowulf and Andreas,” Irina Dumitrescu highlights the irony of Andrew’s heroic depiction.[1] His valor as a courageous warrior and leader of men is praised throughout the poem to an extent that seems deliberately exaggerated, and sometimes even down right sarcastic, in light of his actions. For instance, we are introduced to Andrew as “the man of bold free-will,” whom God has decided to task with rescuing…
The modern era has forgotten the genealogy of the view on suffering. It defines suffering as pejorative, something mistaken and ought to be avoided and condemned. The negativity of suffering is falsely taken to be universal. Rather, the negativity of suffering is a social narrative specific to our age. In Regarding the Pain of Others, in Susan Sontag’s discussion of Bataillie’s obsession with contemplating the photograph capturing a prisoner undergoing…
“On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his…
Resurrection Slender neck and sweat-dampened forehead, tasting tongue and the clash of teeth, lungs filled with smoke from the late-burning lamp. The scratch of pen on parchment, lines curving around bodies as they sink into the blood-soaked earth. Inside out we feel it pulsing in our neck, hear it in our cotton-stuffed ears, the things we can no longer remember. The sound of the shutter, the…
The War Photographer reading that was done for Thursday really put the previous Sontag reading into perspective for me. Especially when Sontag mentions the quote, “The photographs are a means of making ‘real’ (or ‘more real’) matters that the privileged and the merely safe might prefer to ignore” (Sontag 7). I believe that the same applies to the Guardian reading we did for this week. So…
There is much to be shocked by in the Old English life of Saint Margaret: gruesome depictions of beheadings, beatings, and sexual threats are interpolated with Margaret’s miraculous exorcism and escape from the stomach of a dragon. Yet the first time I read Margaret’s hagiography, I found myself most surprised not by the tale’s violence or its inclusion of magical creatures, but by Margaret’s ability to turn her immersion…
In Chapter IV of The Confessions, Augustine introduces a story concerning his former student Alypius. After being dragged to the gladiator games, Alypius protests by covering his eyes, as to not bear witness to the violent event. Eventually, Alypius — “yielding to curiosity” — opens his eyes at the cheering noises of the crowd (Augustine, 121). In this passage, Augustine depicts curiosity as a precursor to sin. The condemnation of…
Written in 523 and 1674 AD respectively, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are crucial works of Christian prose and poetry. Despite their clear promotion of the Christian faith, the two works rely on the literary and religious elements of classical Greece and Rome to convey their message. In this post, I aim to highlight two similarities between these works regarding their treatment of classical influences and…
