El Blog de Twanda

        What I noticed in Petrarch’s verses was the vivid imagery that contrasts his emotions.  His elation is evident in the stanzas in which he extols Laura, his lady love.   In verse 61, he begins each stanza with, “Blessed be . . .”  He talks of the sweet suffering that he felt as the arrows of love pierced him to the “depths of [his] heart.”   He talks of,  “the sighs, the tears, and the passion.”   In verse 126 he talks of her in terms of, “her beautiful limbs,” her “angelic breast,” her hair like, “gold and pearl.” and her “divine bearing.”  In her presence, he forgets where he is and feels as if he were in heaven.      By contrast, Petrarch’s world has crumbled around him in verse 189.  Here, he uses the image of a ship tossed by the wind and rain to describe his despair.  His ship is “full of oblivion,” sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, with danger on both sides of him.  Sighs, hopes, and desire are the winds that blow the ship around.   Tears and disdain are the rain that drench the sails.  He loses hope of finding a harbor.  Something has happened to cause this hopelesness for Petrarch.  The verses that were included in teh reading do not articulate the cause of his despair, but by inference, he has lost his love somehow.  At my first reading, it seemed to me that Petrarch (as narrator) dies, and his despair is a result of this separation from his love.  After reading a second time, I think that he lost his lady somehow.  His descriptions of her are told as remembrances.  When he talks of his his death, it is not an immanent event, but an, “if it is my destiny.” The sails of his boat in verse 126 are made of “error and ignorance,” perhaps referring to his naive love for his lady.  Because of his despair at losing her, his guiding lights, reason and art, do not serve him, and he feels that he will never find a harbor again.    

        In his essay on the origins of humanism, Nicholas Mann notes that the emergence of humanism  reflected both a continuity with and a sense of renewal of the past, specifically of classical Greek and Roman literature and of incorporation of the ideas that they contain into one’s own time.  Through their search for ancient texts, the humanists “rediscovered” the thoughts and ideas of ancient times and sought to emmulate them.  They did so through such means as imitating the ancient style of writing in the form of eloquent letters and even writing Latin verses of poetry, as well as the application of Roman legal codes to contemporary legal problems. 

        While the humanists were inspired by Roman and Greek literature, it was incumbent on them not merely to copy the ancient writers, but to imitate said writers.  Mann notes that Petrarch made this point clear.  A writer may, “follow in another man’s tracks, but not exactly in his footsteps. ”   From Petrarch’s point of view, the correct analogy between the humanist writers and the ancient writers was not that of the portrait to the model who sits for the artist, but that of the son to a father.  The son is similar to his father, but not identical.  Petrarch himself, in his writings, demonstrated his own individuality.  While incorporating ancient themes into his writings, such as the imagery in song 189 where his boat sails between Scylla and Charybdis (mythical figures in Greek mythology), he also highlighted Christian virtues from Roman history.  After penning verses in his Bucolicum carmen, he realized that they were too close to the verses of Virgil, Ovid, or Horatio, and subsequently, he modified.

       The concept of continuity with the past is not obsolete today.  It touches the realm of writing as well as other venues in life.  From the contestants on American Idol who attempt to take someone else’s song and make it their own to the art student who studies the masters in the search for his own unique style, we are all apprentices who must find our own voices as we seek to further the body of knowledge that we all share.  In his sociocultural theory of learning, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky  proposed that from infancy, our cognitive skills develop as a result of internalizing and assimilating what we hear our parents and others tell us throughout childhood.  Learning is this mediated through our society’s shared knowledge.  In appropriating this knowledge, however, we are not merely parrots of what we hear, but imitators who apply the learning in unique ways.      

        Hello everyone!  I am a student at UTA working on a Masters in Modern Language at UTA.  This blog is part of the course assignment for Dr. Conway’s Currents in European Literature class.

       Just a bit about me:  I have lived in Fort Worth for almost eight years, but I am at heart an Arkansan.  I grew up there and earned my bachelor’s at Arkansas Tech University while spinning flag and playing clarinet in Arkansas’ Band of Distinction.  After graduation, I taught Spanish and U.S. History for four years at Russellville High School.  In 1999 I moved to Texas to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I graduated with a Master of Arts in Theology in 2003.   After moving to Fort Worth, I met my husband at church.  We have been married for four years, and we have a son who is two and a half.          

After I graduated from seminary, I returned to teaching, and I am in my fourth year at my current school where I teach Spanish I at the Jr. High level.  Because I teach full-time, I am taking only one class at a time, although I plan to take some time off from teaching for the next two years to concentrate on my classes at UTA as well as spend more time with my son at home.