My learning journey at Stanford continued over the summer with an extremely intense course on “the archive”, an artifact of great fetishization in the humanities. Here is a quick overview.
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The second year of my MLA program ended with a bang in the form of a course on poems. Here I thought it’d be interesting to lay out an abridged version of my response to Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov.
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I’ve been thinking and writing about Iain M. Banks recently, in the context of a learning journey I am on at Stanford. Reflecting on his work in an academic setting was a different experience and got me thinking — thinking about how we think about the future.
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Here I write briefly about language, and specifically the language of English in India. I have some counterintuitive ideas…
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Last week, I finished my first year of a learning journey in the form of a part-time degree program designed for working professionals with an interest in the humanities. Feels like a good time to take stock and make some observations.
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I often feel the English language — or pretty much any other human language — is singularly unequipped to deal with metaphysical concepts. This is one reason why philosophical writing is so opaque and convoluted.
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I recently read Don Quixote in full for the first time, in the wonderful Edith Grossman translation. It can be read — as I did as a child, reading an abridged version — as a rollicking pasquinade. But beneath the hilarity lie perceptive critiques of prevailing social norms and institutions.
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I read sections of the Decameron recently along with the story of The Little Hunchback from the 1001 Nights, as part of an ongoing learning journey. I’d never read the Decameron before; I’ve read the 1001 Nights, but that is mainly because I wanted to read the unexpurgated Richard Burton version (which is an absolute hoot). A couple of thoughts follow.
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It is said that the pagan ethos of Beowulf is still present in modern civilization — buried under classical values, Christian theology, secular humanism, and anything else. Of course it is. And yet we have had a legitimate transition of power between opposing camps. Some thoughts.
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