The Philosophical Optimist

 Here is another essay on poetry.  As the date shows, it's been a while since I wrote it.  It can serve as an example for my students, but all are free to read and enjoy.           Charles Brent Oliver Dr. Borges ENGL 1020 SA1 5 March 2015 A Close Reading of Tennyson’s “the Eagle”             Tennyson’s poem, “the Eagle,” is a mainstay of introductory poetry courses and textbooks.   The reason for this is obvious: it is very brief, and far simpler than many more complex poems (anything by Milton comes to mind).   However, although simple, it is also elegant and beautiful, and the product of much more conscious effort than might appear at first glance.   Some sense of this effort can be gleaned through an examination of the poem’s use of certain musical devices, specifically alliteration, consonance, and rhyme.         ...

              He who reads this log—if any man doth—reads my heart; or at least ever so much of it as I shall for the moment willingly show.   And this day, the last of May, my heart is full of words.             Words.             Words.             And who shall help us find our words in this, our beloved English tongue, better than Shakespeare?   No other man so well showed us how words could be used to dig out the deepest regions of our hearts and pour them forth in a paroxysm of poetry.   I have of late—and wherefore I know, but shall not say—been immersing myself in the works and words of this man, and my verdict is this: I highly recommend it, on a regular basis.             Imagine...

              Here is another essay I wrote as an example for my students some time ago.   It included for reference the lyrics to the song being considered in an appendix, but I’m sure anyone accessing this blog can also find the lyrics online with ease.   My goal here, as always, was to show that, popular culture, or classic literature, it matters not: the type of close reading of a text you learn in a literature class can enhance your enjoyment of just about whatever you find out there to read, see, or sing.             With the passing of Joe Diffie last year in the course of the Pandemic, this essay and the song it examines take on a new poignancy of meaning.   We Orthodox say of those who have passed on, “May his memory be eternal.”   Given the imagery of this song, let us envision a memorial flame, and let us say with the song, “Just let it burn...

  [Note: I started this essay last year, shortly after the movie Brightburn came out on DVD.   However, the movie so inflamed my opposition that I found it impossible to complete this review at the time without being un-Christianly cruel.   Now, after several months, I have been able to finish a more moderate and appropriate version of this essay.]                 The 2019 film Brightburn is, quite simply, the worst movie I have ever seen, and the world needs to know.   Now, when I say this, I do not mean that it is a product of poor craftsmanship; I mean that this film is—not to put too fine a point on it—morally evil.   It is the sort of work that shows just how far our civilization (Western, Anglophonic, American, what-have-you) has fallen.             The list of possible accusations against this film is long, but first, a brief summa...

I pray you let me lay my beard over the block, lest you should cut it. Sir Thomas More   Lord!   Open the king of England’s eyes. William Tyndale         The two quotations given above are the reported final words of two great men of the sixteenth century: Sir (now St.) Thomas More and William Tyndale.   Each man sought to serve God with his whole heart, and each died a martyr to conscience.   Their final words reflect their differing temperaments: Tyndale always deadly earnest; More ever jesting, even on the gallows with the axman about to cleave his neck.   However, it was not their differences in temperament, but a much deeper theological divide that, in 1528, less than ten years before the death of both men in 1535-36, would lead them to collide head-on in a vicious war of words, ostensibly over Tyndale’s attempt to put the entire Bible into clear idiomatic English for the first time.    ...