it is a crime—a crime!—that I'm this old and I still haven't read any Goethe

So faint of an echo that it's probably nothing, but Austen describes Jane as universally recognized for her beauty, while Darcy doesn't think Elizabeth is beautiful, except for repeated references to her eyes. This parallels the descriptions of Rachel & Leah in Genesis.

Austen is always doing interesting things with the male gaze, but I had forgotten how Jane, as a character, is basically introduced by the male gaze.

I've struggled to teach Jane Austen with high school students, much more than Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Shakespeare.

It has been pointed out to me that I did not name Sir William Lucas according to the proper conventions, signifying that my own levels of cortaysye are quite low

“I do not write for such dull Elves / As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.” —Jane Austen, responding to her critics

Jane Austen died the year before Karl Marx was born. I don't believe in the transmigration of souls but...

"Cortaysye" is in flux in Gawain and the Green Knight. The author seems troubled by its contradictions, its tension with biblical morality, and its future. When Austen says (ironically) that Sir Lucas' knighting "had made him courteous," she's also playing with its ambiguities!

I've got a side quest going to map out possible influences of Shakespeare on Jane Austen. The evidence is growing.

oh no it’s me I’m Mary Bennet

Read something in Keener's Acts commentary today that astonished me: He points out how odd it is that Paul is a Roman citizen, and says one plausible explanation is that his ancestors had been enslaved by Romans and became citizens when they purchased their freedom!?

Regular readers of this feed know that when I am rereading a book of classic literature, I try to pair it with an important primary source and a work of critical scholarship. This time reading Austen, I think I might try to tackle some of Austen-Leigh’s biography of her.

Very disappointed to see that Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist—IMO, one of the best books on political theology written in my lifetime—is out of print?? Am I wrong?

hope you all are ready for a lot of Jane Austen poasting

Well, the votes are in. The next book that the high school students chose to read together is PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. LET'S GO

MAGA: WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND BAD BUNNY also MAGA: Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy Said the boogie, said up drop the boogie

Been having a big “It's all in Aristotle, all in Aristotle: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" moment.

How have I never noticed the incredible irony in Acts 10 that Peter is worried about unclean animals while he's literally on the roof of a tanner's house, which would have been incredibly unclean by ritual purity standards already...!?

I've always assumed that the guy named Aeneas who Peter heals in Acts 9 was a gentile because of his name. But that doesn't make sense narratively, since Luke makes such a huge deal about Peter *beginning* his ministry to gentiles in the next chapter.

Today in the Julius Caesar class, I get to bust out one of my all-time favorite lines from history, from Porfirio Díaz: “Madero ha soltado al tigre; veremos si puede controlarlo.”

We are strongly conditioned to think that an "appeal to our common humanity" is automatically a philanthropic thing to do. What's shocking about Cassius' argument in Julius Caesar is that he tries to use the common humanity between him and Caesar to justify hateful violence.

One of our kids is reading Lord of the Rings for the first time right now, and, overnight, strange runes are appearing scattered throughout our house, which I cannot decipher

I now have ""smart"" machine learning editing suggestions in my gmail, whether I want them or not. It keeps telling me to make my sentences less flowy, less idiosyncratic, more brutally terse. Resistance to our tech overlords may soon take the form of run-on sentences, comrades.

Is there any evidence that Tolkien, who was deeply influenced by the medieval period, based the Nazgûl on the Nine Worthies from medieval lore?

If Trump’s defeat at Minneapolis ends up being the beginning of the end, it will refute the thesis of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, that Midwestern Nice is powerless to defeat Satanic evil

aw man our local theater out here predicting 28 more years of Zootopia and Avatar sequels. Please make it stop

Today after the Julius Caesar reading group, some of the high schoolers stuck around because they wanted to talk with each other about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines from Dante again. I read Dante with them two years ago and I'm frankly shocked that they remember them.

When Esther is done reading Julius Caesar, I can't wait to introduce her to the greatest film adaptation of the play, Mean Girls (2004)

I love how Shakespeare humanizes Caesar instead of keeping him at "final boss" distance. Caesar's lines about Cassius are some of the funniest and truest of the whole play.

I was involved in a class action lawsuit with Criterion Collection and I just got a decent payout from the case. I regret my decision. I don't want their money. Why can't I get tons of money from a class action suit with Netflix!

The contrast in Shakespeare's use of sources between Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream is shockingly different. Scholars parse out at least 6 possible sources for Bottom the Weaver alone. Meanwhile, Shakespeare almost exclusively uses Plutarch for Julius Caesar.

How much is Shakespeare's depiction of Octavius (later Augustus) as mockably young in Julius Caesar at odds with the canonical depictions of Augustus in Elizabethan England? Is Shakespeare openly subverting the Virgilian Augustus, or were other views on Augustus in the air?

Sometimes the exegetical work on a passage does not back up the sermon you wanted to preach on it. Sometimes it even contradicts what you wanted to say. One of the most important tasks of a preacher‚ and one we don't talk about enough, is admitting this.

John Updike. When I was young in the aughts, in my tiny world, it seemed like everyone who read fiction had at least read a little Updike. Now, years later, I can't remember the last time I've seen someone talk about Updike on social media, if ever, honestly. Is he over?

All of the Commedia is full of stuff from Virgil and Ovid, and even still the shift between Purgatorio and Paradiso from a Virgilian to an Ovidian mode is absolutely stunning

I just found out that a new, massive, 3 volume, 1,900+ page commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses was just published. I might have to start a GoFundMe to get it! (kidding)

One of the most painfully relevant parts of Julius Caesar is that when Antony the demagogue stirs up the people with promises of handouts from Caesar's will, it's a scam that he later walks back

Heaven, even Cacciaguida looking down with love at his descendant Dante is hinted at the end of this passage

The entire poetic formula for describing souls in Dante’s Paradiso is encapsulated in embryonic form in this short passage of Ovid!!

In Julius Caesar, Brutus does this weird thing where he says of assassinating Caesar, "Let us be sacrificers, not butchers... Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods." It's a crazy/horrifying line of reasoning, as if Brutus is trying to claim some kind of moral high ground.

After Lincoln's assassination, during an already precarious time in US history, why doesn't the United States descend into violent conflict over succession, as happens many other times in history? Who's the best person to read on this?

Man I gotta read Plutarch!!

That was both incredibly fun and also full of “what in the world did I get myself into” moments

I’m out of town, so I don’t have my copies of John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich on me as I’m scrambling to write this sermon and it’s driving me crazy

How is this possible!? Tomorrow’s OT lectionary passage (Isaiah 49) is also ALL OVER John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle!!

One of my dreams come true is happening! A friend of mine had to back out of preaching last minute and asked if I could preach for them tomorrow morning. So I’m going to preach on the lectionary last minute. I’m so excited

One of the treasures I once had and have now lost was the gift of living in a local literary community. I once lived in a town where there were certain contemporary novels—some of them somewhat obscure—that “everyone” had read and that formed part of the fabric of discourse.

What did the Romans do when they encountered a new god? It’s a substantial theme in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as various characters grapple with the new religion around Bacchus.

The change in tone, going from Antony and Cleopatra to Julius Caesar, is quite jarring.

People out here in this scene from Shakespeare literally telling Brutus to stay woke