I enjoyed the Thanksgiving reading, especially when thinking about it in comparison to the work we did over the summer. Right now, I’m thinking of the reading without any class discussion, so I’m also trying to think of how I interacted with the summer reading before class started. With the Thanksgiving material, there is much, much more obvious connection between the material than the summer work had. The story of creation can be retold in so many ways, and I really appreciated the opportunity to engage to compare material that I know with version that I don’t. I was raised Christian, so reading definitely gave me a lot of flashbacks to Sunday School. In Ovid, I reflected on the differences between the Martin version and the Dryden version. It was difficult (and, I imagine, will continue to be difficult) to separate my own personal reaction to the translations and the actual differences between the two. Meaning, I found Martin to be much easier to understand than Dryden, but I don’t want that feeling to get wrapped up in analysis of the two ways. At first, I thought that the Martin version was more casual and less reverent, but I wonder if that’s a function of it being easier to comprehend. There are, of course, lots of similarities between the two Ovids where the language is really similar, but I tried to make notes of where there where other similarities between the texts. This is where my previous experience with Genesis became helpful, because I was more familiar with that text. The Titus Lucretius Carus reading was interesting, because I knew it was from a similar context as Ovid but obviously didn’t line up with his version. It seemed more scientific than Ovid, even if (understandably) the science wasn’t always accurate. That was the reading I thought could have the most connections to our living today; translations choices like ‘atoms’ help accentuate those connections. The Genesis reading was really familiar, but I’m glad that I read it after the other readings and before Paradise Lost. It was a good middle ground, and I didn’t think the language was as difficult. Paradise Lost was definitely the most difficult to read; even the Arguments/Summaries took up a lot of time. I really want to know more about Milton and the writing of Paradise Lost; I felt that I knew more about/could guess at the purpose for other readings, but I wasn’t sure where Paradise Lost fell. I would love to know more about Milton’s personal relationship with religion. The reading we’ve done so far makes it seem like he would still be devout, and writing an entire epic poem to rationalize the actions of God is quite an undertaking. But, I think there is definitely more to examine how he turns the Genesis story into entertainment, and this is the area that I’m most excited to hear my classmates offer their opinions on. I am also eager to read more Ovid and hear perspectives from kids who were in the play; I think I liked that reading the best so far because it was a good mix of comprehensible style and new storytelling.
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AuthorRobbie Kane Archives
December 2019
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