Interpreting Blood: Saint Margaret & Alypius

Group: Spencer, Jonah, Spencer, Jo Imagine brutal slasher horrors with flesh being ripped from bone and dripping chainsaws. The victims scream and plead for their lives. Blood sprays across the walls, the ceilings, and the camera. Viewers might flinch, or cover their eyes and look away.  There is something so visceral and gruesome about blood. Imagine anything awful; imagine that scene from a horror movie where the victim is torn…

Witnessing Christ’s Passion & its Implication for St. Margaret

Group: Frances, Jonah, Spencer, Jo As St. Margaret undergoes torture at the hand of the Roman Governor, she seemingly negotiates her legacy with God. She implores, “God… hear my prayer that whoever writes out my passion or hears it read from that time have his sins blotted out” (133). A dove descends and grants Margaret her prayers. What theological backstory does this call to the reader have? In his work…

Identity and Looking Upon the Divine in Daniel and The Life of St Margaret

Group: Jonah, Spencer, Frances, and Jo The phenomenon of looking can be thought of as consisting of two composite parts: seeing and interpreting. Seeing, the visual experience of something happening before one’s own eyes, or gazing upon a representation such as a photograph or piece of visual art, forms the principal step of looking. However, it is often subservient to the act of interpreting. Seeing is merely the intake of…

Dualism in Genesis

Jo & Frances In theology, dualism is the theory that there are two supreme forces that govern the universe, good and evil. This is in opposition to monism, which posits that there is only one supreme being. Our group found that the Genesis poems present dualistic thinking throughout the text–– we will inspect some of those manifestations in this post.   Alternate Beginnings   The Genesis poems seem to retell…

Wheel of Fortune

Personhood and Poetry in The Consolation of Philosophy

Intro: In the spirit of collaborative effort, our group has decided to write several pieces that build off one another in the style of a discussion board thread. Each person has their own section in which they compile their thoughts about the readings, as well as offer reflections on the ideas other members have brought up in their own posts.   Spencer: Reading Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy for the first…