Blog Entries:

Blog Agenda for 2024-26:

 

PRIMARY TASKS:

  • Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars [Tracking Sections on Language, Signs, and the Literary, etc. and placing within wider context of Aquinas' Work and Thought on Foundational Theology and Biblical Commentary.]

 

  • Denis the Carthusian's Commentaries on the Psalms [Attention paid to the Divine Office, w/ Gueranger, Liguori, & Other Authorities, alongside the Four Modes of Interpretation]

 

  • Gracian's "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" (read against Liguori's "Moral Theology")

 

  • Vico's The New Science [Tracking Sections on Rhetoric and Its Historico-Metaphysical Significance in relation to Jurisprudence and Natural Law]

 

LESSER TASKS:

 

  • Review of 20th-C. Classics in Literary Criticism (prior to the "Postmodern" turn, ca. 1968)

    • A Selection: 

      • Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.

      • Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination.

      • Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations.

      • Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry.

      • Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity

      • Abrams, M.H. The Mirror and the Lamp.

      • Ricks, Christopher.  The Force of Poetry.

      • Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy [N.B.: Technically, a 19th century work, but authoritative well into the 20th-c!]

      • Babbit, Irving. Democracy and Leadership [N.B.: Technically, a work of "cultural criticism", but composed by a literary scholar].

      • Bennett, Arnold. Literary Taste: How to Form it

 

  • Plato's Republic vs. Laws [Contemplation on Rationalism vs. Traditionalism] alongside Jose Manuel Peramas' A Treatise on the Guaraní System of Government in Comparison with Plato’s Republic (1793)

 

  • What does it mean to be a "man of letters"?: The Life of Johnson (Unabridged)

 

  • Virgil's Aeneid and the Thematic Virtue of Pietas

 

  • Occasional Musings on Gueranger's "Liturgical Year" alongside the Daily Missal and Monastic Breviary, etc.

 

  • Lectio Divina engagements with Holy Writ in alignment with the liturgical calendar, w/ reference to Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen's "Divine Intimacy" (!)