"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing" (opening lines). Anyone who has ever gone fly fishing knows it to be a complex art -almost spiritual in nature. Fly fishing forces a man to slow down, find rhythm, and discover patience and harmony with nature. In Norman Maclean's A River … Continue reading The Haunting Waters of A River Runs Through It
Tag: great
Anglo-Saxon England, Part II
With the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, a panoply of changes took effect across Britain. Old English replaced Latin as the lingua franca, the island of Brittania was renamed Aengla Land after the Angles, and perhaps most significantly, there was a political shift. The Saxons brought with them the idea of kingship by consent. That is, … Continue reading Anglo-Saxon England, Part II
Anglo-Saxon England, Part I
After the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, first spurred by the Visigothic sack of Rome in AD 410 followed by the collapse of the western Empire in AD 476, a cloud of darkness overcame the island of Britain. Very little writing or culture emerged as the world of the Britons became immersed in … Continue reading Anglo-Saxon England, Part I
What Is A Eulogy? Ethos, Pathos, and Logos In Pericles’s Funeral Oration Speech
Thucydides offers one-hundred and forty-one speeches in his monumental history of the Peloponnesian War, yet the early eulogy offered by Pericles (in Book II) is surely the most famous. The word "eulogy" comes down to us from the Greek word eulogia meaning to offer praise, or even high praise. "Pericles's Funeral Oration" by Philipp Foltz … Continue reading What Is A Eulogy? Ethos, Pathos, and Logos In Pericles’s Funeral Oration Speech
The Principle of Exchange in The Shipman’s Tale
The Shipman is a western man, perhaps hailing from Dartmouth (as Chaucer suggests in the "General Prologue"). He is a modest man, riding a cart horse, and wearing a wool cloth with a dagger around his neck. He is a "good felawe." On his way to the pilgrimage had stolen a good deal of wine … Continue reading The Principle of Exchange in The Shipman’s Tale
Modernism in My Ántonia
A novel is just a glimpse, a framed and sometimes fragmented exploration into the depths of memory, psychology, time and place. Graves of Travellers, Fort Kearny, Nebraska by Worthington Whittredge (1866 Willa Cather's My Ántonia (pronounced "an-ton-ee-yuh" as in the name Anthony) is one of the seminal works of the great American pastoral tradition, similar … Continue reading Modernism in My Ántonia