A Question For You

What do you suppose a heretic like Luther would have been treated like TODAY? I was sitting here getting annoyed with Google because I was looking for our Luther, not MLK Jr., and this question popped into my head. Would someone be able to create their own religion like that today? Would it be taken very seriously as a real threat to the Roman Catholic Church and the center of it all at the Vatican in Rome? Curious. I wonder. 

Incidentally, in case we all wanted to condense Lutero's 95 Theses into one convenient little bundle, here is a "word cloud," as it is called, which I created about the Theses [Brigette is right: it's also called a wordle]. What happens in a word cloud is that you provide a text and from that is generated the following neat little image that gives greater prominence to words that appear the most frequently in your text. 

I just thought this was rather droll so I supposed my fellow Husties might get a kick out of it. "Pardons..." "Pope..." "Indulgences..."

Go here to make your own wordle!

H i l a r i o u s !

What Methinks of Luther

[Everytime I see the name "Luther" I read it to myself as Lutero. Because that's how you say it in Spanish. Martín Lutero. Jajaja.]

Well I sure have been horrible about updating this. I apologize... I have had a lot going on in my life lately and I get really overwhelmed with school (understatement of the century). But better a bit late than never right?

I sense a post filled with such uncertainty coming - which is ironically a big part of this class, a big part of Luther, a big part of theology around the world? WEIRD!

Well, my biggest thing with Luther (that some of you might remember I have raised in class before) is... okay, I lied. TWO things.

1. The fact that he is searching for certainty and wants to rely not on good works but on faith alone. But... isn't faith precisely that? Uncertainty? 

2. The fact that he has the balls to break away from the Church and form his own religion. How is that possible? 

On one hand, sure, why shouldn't he be allowed to question his system of beliefs, because I suppose that many people go through that at some point in their lifetimes. I understand that. And I understand his frustration. Definitely. 

But on the other hand, "here, let me rewrite the Bible for you? The Gospel of Anyone NOT John? Unimportant! *dismissive wave of hand*" How does he assume he has the right to go ahead and do that? I wrote the word "authority" first there, instead of right, but then I refrained because I thought about how he said that we are all supposed to be equal as Christians. So I suppose that's the second issue I wanted to raise about Lutero and where he gets off creating his own religion like that.

Maybe I want to create my own religion. And not some sort of Scientology or Kabbalah bullshit because although money is a handy thing to have I am not out to scam people. No, in Meghanism everyone would treat everyone with respect and be hilarious while doing so. Humor is a wonderful thing and everyone should bubble over with happiness and they should laugh so hard they cry. I do that everyday! Now that makes me wonder how often Lutero laughed... curious.

Zee Poifect Gentlemahn

Hmmm...

Obviously since I have presented on Castiglione and his The Book of the Courtier, I thought I was able to give a lot of valid points in class (hopefully, right, at least I hope it was somewhat coherent). Even though, good lord, I am freaking out because I went way over the time limit. I promise it was not intentional! Believe me, I hate giving presentations and I am surprised I was able to talk for that long. Castiglione sure does have a lot to say about what exactly constitutes the perfect gentleman! One question, though: when one man suggests something and another man shoots it down, does that mean that, by default, Castiglione himself also hates that characteristic that he had his character shoot down? I do not know. Because remember, he is a courtier himself and he is constantly reflected in his work.

I think I went over enough themes in class as far as both the life of Castiglione and some humanism/Renaissance main points (I have posted my PowerPoint on the class wiki), so now I'd like to have some fun.

-cue Also Sprach Zarathustra-

First, there was chivalry.

Then, there was a courtier.

Now, there is a perfect gentleman!*

Castiglione can have his requirements for the ideal man? Well, here are MY thoughts for MY perfect man! [Note: Only some of my thoughts are included. I am an incredibly intricate woman and my brain is a swirling with complexities; so this is what I can think of for now. Teehee! Also, I suppose not all of these have to apply to simply dateable men, but rather any sort of man, friend, whatever. Get your mind out of the gutter.]

• Respect. Enough said.
• Humor. Also enough said.
• Courtesy. Kind of like respect, but a little different.
• Supportive. Duh!
• Sensitive. But not wimpy.
• Goal-oriented.
• Responsible. (I'm almost 21... you'd think this shouldn't be a problem. WRONG.)
• Fun. Entertain me!
• Honest. Don't lie to me. I will find out. And I will hunt you down.

See something I missed, ladies? Comment your little hearts out and add to this list!

These are the major ones I can think of for now. 

* I tried so very hard to think of something clever that could be alliterative and match the c-sound at the beginning of both chivalry and courtier but alas, the only thing that even remotely made sense was companion. But that wasn't exactly the right word I was looking for... I also briefly entertained the idea of "classic" or "classical" companion, or something, but that didn't really make as much sense as I had hoped. Sad.

Cereta, ugh

Here is a supposed image of Cereta, even though no portraits of her apparently survive.

WELP. When I ordered Cereta over Christmas Break, I remember thinking, "The Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist. Awesome." Now I hope you don't think I am being ridiculous or close-minded, because I did assume that the concept of feminism is a bit different now from what it was in the late 15th century or early 16th century. I just was somewhat wary about reading a book from that sort of topic. I did not know what to expect (like I said I assumed that the voice of feminism would be different then), because other than Christine de Pisan and some other female writers we encountered last semester, I have never really encountered or studied feminism. So, maybe like I have seen some of the other girls suggest, I do not understand that much about it. But just because I do not happen to agree with all feminist ideas does not mean I cannot have an open mind and a discussion about it. 

To be honest with you, I had trouble getting through the readings. There were some interesting parts, yes, but (and this might sound immature) but it was really long and quite dull to me, at least most of the time. A lot of times I was getting annoyed with the book ("I'm will not go into detail about blank but blah blah blah here it is anyway"). I also wasn't sure if, when indicating her anger with women "for their complicity in their own oppression," she was inadvertently lumping all women into that oppressed category or perhaps only some of the women that she observed in her day. I figure she is supposed to represent women as a whole? Much of the time it was hard to distinguish between whether or not she was talking about herself, and in what light I wanted to categorize those thoughts in: Humanism? Renaissance? Christian? I do not know. I guess it just really frustrated me, especially with the whole tension thing: there are some things that Cereta seems to be innately drawn to but that she also tries to shy away from because she thinks they are wrong. AUGH! How do I distinguish? 

There were some good and valid (and interesting!) points too. I really enjoyed the idea of Time (notice the capital T) as being a commodity, or a necklace. How fascinating, I had never considered it like that before. In that sense she also critiques fashion sometimes, so it is like... wait, where are you coming from again? Another thing I loved (because I totally enjoy weird metaphors) was the pen-needle/masculine-feminine thing. That was really interesting! Of course we also had to see the Fortune idea come up again, like we seem to see in so many readings... she is apparently obsessed with death and the afterlife. Of course I felt bad for her when her husband died, though...

I guess that is enough of my ramblings for now!

The Picture I Referenced In My Paper

Just a quick post to upload the picture I found about the two lovers from Canto V who are caught in the middle of their affair-founded kiss by the husband of the woman... My paper discusses the differences between the translations of the Inferno by

-Pinsky
-worldofdante.org e-text

and so when I was clicking around on the world of Dante website and other sites, it was such a coincidence to find an artist's representation of the exact scene I had been writing about. That's what I had just been talking about!

Enjoy. [:

Geoff Baby

I apologize profusely for not having blogged about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales before now. This has been a MOST stressful week and literally I get 3-4 hours of sleep every night. So you might get to see an interesting (albeit short) post! I wanted to briefly mention the point of pilgrimages (I know, beating a dead horse, but this is a central theme to many of the works we have been concentrating on in HUST). I question: does a pilgrimage need to be arduous in some way? What is the sole point of a pilgrimage (if there is one)? Does it involve religious fervor or can someone like myself go to Mecca out of pure interest, as for recreational travel? Furthermore... and this is the big idea... is it the process that counts? Or the final destination? An important part of Christian life is the ideal of the destination, so are we really just here to achieve a higher eventual place? In that sense, maybe our whole lives are "pilgrimages," like some stories seem to suggest (depending on what you believe and who you talk to). 

Well, these are my questions because I have never participated in a pilgrimage, so naturally I am interested and full of questions. Technically perhaps this blog does not offer me or you any information we did not already know, but it certainly helped me to get my peregrino ideas out into the open. 

[:

How Everything in My Life Somehow Ties Together

So I'm just sitting here reading for RLST and it's ALL about pilgrimages and where we may find the sacred (or the profane?). Which is what we have talked about Colloquium. And then I go to SOC and we discuss social psychology and how we perceive ourselves. Which is what my last blog was about. And then I go to BIO and we discuss genetics and evolution and some of the patterns of travel of human beings. Which Mandeville soooort of alluded to with all those animal and human (and monster) observations. And then of course he wrote about China and Spain and the Camino. Which I am totally interested in. Not sure the point of this post, but it is 8am and I am suddenly struck by the strange ways things can fall into place these days.