Zazvonil zvonec…

…a pohádky je konec! The name of today’s post – the last one on this blog – finished by the line above is a Czech phrase used at the end of fairy tales. It translates roughly to “The bell has rung and the fairy tale is over” which is something that I find very fitting…

Fairytales and me

Everything seems to be going by in a crazy fast way right now and that also means that it’s time to start reading the last book for our Honors class. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition is what its name basically suggests – a summary of different versions of fairytales throughout the history. For many people,…

What kind of miller is this?

So, I’ve sort-of-kind-of read through the Miller’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales! I will admit that it was not just about reading the original version which I still find incredibly difficult and frustrating. I’ve helped myself by opening a summary of the story on the internet and trying to understand what’s going on by following…

Talking about talking

After reading (or more accurately – trying to somehow power through) the General prologue of The Canterbury Tales, we had an interesting discussion about language in our Honors class yesterday. The reason was that even though Chaucer is considered one of the greatest English poets of all time, his language includes words and spelling differences…

Canterbury

So the next book we are going to be reading in our Honors class will be The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. There is one thing that I am concerned about here and that is the fact that we are reading the version in Chaucer’s original language and I am really not sure if I…

It’s an honor to be in Honors!

I want to do a something little different today in this blog post. Instead of focusing on a particular interesting idea from the books, I just want to express how grateful I am to be a part of the Honors program overall. I feel like even though we sometimes need to do a little extra…

Paradiso

Last time, I talked about my personal beliefs on the post-mortem life. Today, I want to share my own view of how my heaven would look like. Thanks to Maddy, we now know that even Dante’s Divine Comedy has a section covering the paradise and I would like to tell you how I would write…

Stairway to heaven or Highway to hell?

Time seems to be flying by unbelievably quickly at this point of the semester and that also means that it’s time to say goodbye to Beowulf and start reading a different book! We will be visiting Italy (I’m sure Lisa is happy about that!) and joining Dante on his journey through hell in the Inferno….

Into the battle

So I realized that one motive connecting all the epics we have read so far is battling. Gilgamesh and Enkidu became bros while facing Humbaba, Rama beat his fair share of demon opponents, Odysseus’ journey back from war lead only to more blood being spilled in a fight for his own house, and Beowulf had…