One thing that I've taken from High School (which now is almost a decade back in hindsight) is the role of Mrs. Hutchinson in 12th Grade Advanced English. She imparted upon me all the things I hoped and dreamed for in the realm of English literature within that year. Culminating in the early part of the semester with Beowulf and then later Chaucer. And later still Samuel Taylor Cooridge and all those other Romantic era poets. At the time, I was all about the Sublime and anything that had anything to do at all with things medieval or remotely medieval.
Of course, you all know that I'm a giant D&D nerd, so this shouldn't be a far stretch of the imagination. But,
The year before, in American Literature, I hated it, (with the exception of Poe). I spent the entire year trying to draw parallels to the early American authors and the English authors--saying that Twain stole the adventure story from the British, and etc and etc. It was a bad year for me and Literature, and truthfully, I've never been able to get into early American lit. But,
Anyway, 12th Grade English lit with Mrs. Hutchinson was the best. And I mean the best. With each unit, Hutch had us do some sort of big project, and the Medieval unit convieniently encompassed the beginning of English Literature up through Chaucer. Our project options included things like: doing a report on medieval times and life, reading additional works and reporting on them, creating/drawing/painting/sculpting something medieval and bring in a presentation based upon that creation, make an antic filled odd-ball highschool movie, etc.
I did all of that save the movie (which I ended up assisting with the following year for my one-grade-below-me friends). I read as much of the Knight's Tale in Middle English as I could (hoping there'd be dragons and fights and other cool things--too bad Chaucer's knight did all his fighting before the pilgrimage.) And then I wrote up this crazy story, in calligraphy on tea-dyed parchment paper. I drew a picture of the story's main character (I was also an art nerd in high school), and when I presented the whole mess, I did so in my best early-impression of an English accent. It was ballsy. I didn't prepare enough ahead of time, nor did I know much about the "proof read your fiction aloud before actually reading it aloud" bit, but I did it all anyways, and it was like a 20 minute read.
The result: A for the year. But I didn't stop there. I painted paintings after Wadsworth poems and after high school, I went out and bought $500 worth of pre 19th Century English Literature from Cooridge to Byron to Spenser. And honestly, I haven't really gone back and read much of it. But,
What I did do was go to college and drop the Chemistry major my mom wanted me to have, and applied myself full time in the English department, fully expecting at that time, to study Medieval literature. Well I did in a way--I took a wonderful Chaucer Class and leared to read and speak Middle English, but at about the same time, I learned about Postmodernism and experimental fiction.... Well that hooked me but good. So,
Coming up this Friday, I'm about to pay homage to my Roots. I'm going back to Harbor Creek and I'm going to do a bunch of readings in Middle English from The Canterbury Tales. It'll be my first time back to Harbor Creek since probably 1999, when I made a couple appearances to visit Hutch and Humes (the art teacher). And I'm very excited (especially since I'll be taking the day off of work to do it).
No comments:
Post a Comment