Your passion for these topics really shone in today's post, it brought a genuine smile to my face quite a few times as I read!
I love this interpretation of poetry as a literary diorama - presenting a whole little world with its own rules and lore all on just a few pages. Your exploration of how this poem does an exceptionally good job at exactly that through Heaney's use of vivid descriptions was inspiring.
I learned quite a bit of new information from today's entry as well; I never knew there was an official name for the recording of saints' lives! And interpreting hagiographic literature as less literal and more symbolic gives it a new, more fantastical (but at the same time more realistic) light: once you've accepted that the message isn't that someone actually held his hand out for a blackbird for a quarter of a year until her eggs had hatched and the young had flown the nest, you open yourself up to receive a message that has direct meaning to you personally and has real-world applications.
Literary diorama is such a perfect phrase, wow! Yes - like the way you can get lost in a model village, imagining the life you'd live there if things were all a bit smaller. And so glad you now know about hagiography. I remember reading that phrase for the first time when I was 18, and then quickly googling to see what on earth it meant aha. I'd been sent a list of my course options for my first year of uni, and I'd gone to find my Sixth Form Ancient History teacher to ask his opinion on what I should pick. Little did I know how much time I'd go on to spend thinking about that strange letter-bag of a word...
Your passion for these topics really shone in today's post, it brought a genuine smile to my face quite a few times as I read!
I love this interpretation of poetry as a literary diorama - presenting a whole little world with its own rules and lore all on just a few pages. Your exploration of how this poem does an exceptionally good job at exactly that through Heaney's use of vivid descriptions was inspiring.
I learned quite a bit of new information from today's entry as well; I never knew there was an official name for the recording of saints' lives! And interpreting hagiographic literature as less literal and more symbolic gives it a new, more fantastical (but at the same time more realistic) light: once you've accepted that the message isn't that someone actually held his hand out for a blackbird for a quarter of a year until her eggs had hatched and the young had flown the nest, you open yourself up to receive a message that has direct meaning to you personally and has real-world applications.
Thank you for this week's Friday reading! 😁
- J
Literary diorama is such a perfect phrase, wow! Yes - like the way you can get lost in a model village, imagining the life you'd live there if things were all a bit smaller. And so glad you now know about hagiography. I remember reading that phrase for the first time when I was 18, and then quickly googling to see what on earth it meant aha. I'd been sent a list of my course options for my first year of uni, and I'd gone to find my Sixth Form Ancient History teacher to ask his opinion on what I should pick. Little did I know how much time I'd go on to spend thinking about that strange letter-bag of a word...