Recent content by Bruce N H

Hi all, In last week's class there was some discussion of what is the sin in cantos 26 and 27. The key line is canto 27, 116. In Mandelbaum "the counsel that he gave was fraudulent". In Longfellow "because he gave the fraudulent advice". In Sayers "he counselled fraud". In Italian that line...

Hey, Notes in the Penguin edition say that the holes the Simoniacs were in were for the priests to stand in, not the actual part with water. Here we see a picture from the baptistery at Pisa - the font was built in 1246 so would be contemporary with Dante (photo credit to Jimmy Pierce, whose...

Hi guys, I fell asleep during last night's discussion, so missed my chance to ask this during the malabolge containing the hypocrites, so I'll ask it here. In this circle we get Caiaphas, Annas, and the rest of the Sanhedrin, eternally trampled for their part in the crucifixion of Jesus. I...

Hi all, I was just listening to class 10 from two weeks ago and had two quick thoughts: In Canto 12, we discussed the river of blood as an inversion of the blood of Christ, and also the relation of the boiling blood to the fiery poisonous blood of Nessus. One thought I had in going through...

Hey, This sounds super fun, BTW. In addition to those very early Mythgard Academy classes from 2012 (or was that even Mythgard Academy yet? IIRC that might have been an earlier iteration) Corey posted recordings of the Tolkien class he taught back when he was at Washington College (an actual...

Hi all, I was listening to session 169 from three weeks ago and we skipped a passage. Now, I'm not going to raise a red flag for any word or comma we miss discussing at length (I do, after all, hope we finish this discussion in my lifetime (only to go on to "Exploring the Silmarillion", which...

Hi all, I'm listening back to session 169 from three weeks ago and I have a theory about an insertion by Findegil, King's Writer. First up, I have a head canon about Findegil. We know he finished his work in FA 172, which is 50 years after the death of Elessar and the departure of Legolas and...

Oh, and I can't believe I didn't put this in my earlier post: What is the source of Gwaihir's rumors about Rohan? Why, Twitter, of course! All the birds were tweeting about it. Thank you! I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress. Bruce / Bricktales

Hi all, I've been listening to the past few episodes because I missed part of them when they were live. A few weeks ago we were discussing Gwaihir when Gandalf described his escape from Orthanc. So I thought I'd remember ahead and gather the textual evidence. I'll quote what I see as the key...

I agree that looking at this through an allegorical lens is important. Looking at this as the journey of Dante's soul from sin and error ultimately through sanctification and to God you could see this as Dante rejecting wrath. Earlier he had pity, e.g. on the lustful, but this could be him...

I love the Modern Scholar series and listened to all the ones my local library had. Do they still exist, or were they killed off by podcasts and youtube and other material that's free online? I know I've listened to a couple of Timothy Shutt courses and really enjoyed them.

Hi all, I wasn't able to attend live last week (December 9) and so just listened to the recording today to get caught up before tonight's class while running a bunch of errands before the snow started falling. So I might have missed something due to distraction, but I was confused about...

Hey, I've said this in other threads, but my number one hope is that we take on The Tolkien Reader, or Tales from the Perilous Realm, to include tons of Tolkien's shorter works that we've never formally done in Mythgard Academy - Niggle, Farmer Giles, On Fairy Stories, and SO. MANY. POEMS...

That's a good point and I was probably speaking too loosely. I was thinking along the lines of what Corey talked about in class 1, about reading Dante on multiple levels. So Virgil could be Virgil on one level, but on other levels you could have different interpretations - for instance, Virgil...

Hi all, I'm no scholar of either Dante or Boethius - I've only read the Comedy and the Consolation a couple of times and the only classes I've taken on either have been the Mythgard Academy ones - so I can't really develop this further. As Corey might do I'll just say "this would make a great...