My reading  assignments change nearly weekly, so I’ll be posting them from time to time to elicit comments.  So here goes:

• Lady Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania: I’ll be reading this one all semester in my introduction to literary studies course.  Urania was chosen for its obscurity (out of print from 1621 to 1995) and its historical value (the first published, long prose work by an English woman).  It’s a terribly frustrating book so far, with twists and turns within sentences and within narratives.  And the characters!  There are so many characters–over 300!–that the editor felt it necessary to include a character index.  I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from it, but it’s not fun right now.
• Homer, The Odyssey (Robert Fagles, trans.): I’ve read one and a half translations by Fagles–the half was the Illiad and the one was Sophocles’s Oedipus cycle.  The Illiad was difficult to finish, primarily because I got tired of Achilles whining about his concubine (that was a terribly non-literary approach, and I apologize).  Fagles’s Oedipus cycle, though, is one of the most enjoyable works I’ve read.  I don’t know a word of non-liturgical Greek,* but I know that Fagles brought out the full power of Sophocles’s words in a way I had never seen.  Most translations of the cycle are dry, but Fagles’s translation is immediate and urgent.  The Illiad is similary immediate–it begins with the single, isolated word, "Rage"–but I was inhibited by the weight of the narrative itself.  I’m hoping the Odyssey, which I’ve never read in verse, will be better.
• Robert Mannyng of Brunne, Handlyng Synne (selections); John Gower, The Tale of Florent: They’re about sin, so I guess they’ll be interesting.  We’ll see tomorrow when I burrow through them.
• Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island: Merton has been extremely influential on my spirituality through his autobiography, The Seven-Storey Mountain and some short works I’ve read by him.  I appreciate Merton’s sense of reasonable faith that is at once theological and down to earth.  No Man is an Island is of the same vein, though it is necessarily more theological than his autobiography.

*Funny language play within Catholicism: The Latin term crucifer is used for the person who brings in the cross during the mass procession and recession.  The Greek term acolyte is used for the candle-bearer.  Why the difference in language?  Because if the terms were consistently Latin, the candle-bearer would be called the lucifer.