Author: inamorningcloud

When I was in high school, one of my English teachers handed out some of the Canterbury Tales in its original Middle English as an introduction to the text.  We took turns going around the class trying to read the text and figure out what it said.  Reading the Middle English aloud made it easier to decipher, but it was still difficult.

I took the time to do a something similar with the original text of the Lais.  I consider French my second language, but I have been speaking it as long as I have been speaking English because my mom is French.  Taking the time to read some of the original text aloud was super interesting, even if I did have to go back and read the English translation after.  It was not as easy as reading Middle English, but it was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

I found the Lais of Marie de France very enjoyable overall.  They had good flow, were interesting, and pretty easy to read.  What I found most interesting about this edition was the original text on the left page. Seeing the way that language evolves is always interesting, but in the past I had only seen examples of Middle English so it was cool to see something that shows of the evolution of French.

 

I always struggle a bit with medieval texts, but after being out of school for a year and a half, I found these texts way more difficult than I thought I would.

The Wife’s Lament was the text I felt I understood the best.  Even though I didn’t completely understand what was going on I love that I can still feel the sadness of the narrator.  I think it’s so interesting that we don’t know who wrote it, academics can’t agree what it’s about, but the emotion can still travel the distance of  over a thousand years.

I had a much more difficult time with Revelations of Divine Love.  I think this is partially because of the religiosity of the text (I was raised Catholic, but very rarely went to church), and just the fact that it is a Medieval text.  I had to read through the chapters multiple times before I felt like I was able to get a grip on what she was saying.

The Book of Margery Kempe was a very interesting text to me.  I liked that unlike the author of The Wife’s Lament we can put a name and a whole backstory to this woman.  We know that it is autobiographical and actually written by a woman.  We get to learn about life as she saw it and that is one of my favourite things about reading.  The fact that we get a peek into the life of a woman who lived so long ago is amazing.

I hope that now that we are past the first few weeks of classes and into the swing of things I will be able to shake off my rust and write some more interesting posts about our future readings.

I really enjoyed reading this essay but I did find it to be a difficult read.  It took me a while before I felt like I got into the “groove” of Woolf’s writing and stopped asking myself “Where is this going?”  She always got to the point and while I didn’t always completely agree with her conclusions I found the journey to them quite enjoyable (once I got more comfortable with the writing).

I found that her talk of a literary tradition is unfortunately still relatable to many people, especially those in marginalized groups.  The gate keeping that continues for those that are not straight white men keeps many perspectives out of the public consciousness, as the lack of access to education kept women out in Woolf’s time.

The main conclusion that I disagree with Woolf on is that the “Androgynous Soul” is the ideal and that she criticized multiple women writers for being too “angry” in their writing.  She seems to be wanting an “unbiased” work, one that is unaffected by the world surrounding the author, but I do not think such a thing exists.  Everything that is written is an amalgamation of the world it comes from, the time, the place, and the experience of the author, in varying degrees.

Overall, I really enjoyed A Room of One’s Own, and found it was a good kick off point to get me in the right frame of mind for the course.

Welcome to my blog!

The name of the blog and the tagline both come from poems by Katherine Philips.  “In a morning cloud” is from Epitaph and “Inspired with a flame divine” is from To Mrs. M. A. at Parting.

I am very excited for this semester and am looking forward to reading the works in the syllabus as well as all of your blogs!

Gabrielle