What We’re Reading

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur. Sir Thomas Malory’s compilation of the Arthurian legends is an iconic work of storytelling through the code of chivalry and civil war. While dealing with King Arthur, the fabled and mythical King of Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire, its stories of human passion, the supernatural, love, sin, and redemption carry universal human qualities to it. Whether fighting for honor, confronting evil, overcoming temptation, or falling into sin, Malory’s portrait of an older world long ago is not far removed from the realities of the human heart. In teaching Le Morte d’Arthur, we must never lose sight of this fact: The Arthurian legends are human stories and are deeply human in their scope and concerns. That’s why they’re so relatable despite us no longer wearing armor, mounting steeds, and going on galloping adventures into forests.

~ Paul Krause

James Joyce, “The Dead.” This winter has been absolutely brutal, and it seems that many of these winter storms across the Northeast, specifically where I’m from, cannot catch a break. In the last few weeks, I even experienced one winter storm driving cross-country from Vermont to Tennessee with my significant other. This long drive forced me to be blinded by the snow on all sides of my vehicle. It also encouraged me to remember the final lines of James Joyce’s work, which states: “It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Paragraph above has been carefully selected as it signifies snow’s meaning of both life and death. And I thoroughly believe my significant other and I’s drive to start a new beginning revealed the death of our old life and the birth of a new one. The snow, driving from the north to south, slowly melted, signifying a sense of this washing away as mentioned previously. “The Dead” is a positive story depending on how the reader translates its themes. However, in my case, it portrayed a very positive, insightful, and perfectly timed connection to a real life experience.

~ Sarah Tillard

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