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I seem to be unable to shake the habit of writing here when I have imminent term paper deadlines. Going to keep justifying the practice as a "warm-up writing exercise." That sounds good. Anyways, in the past few months, I've had all kinds of profound thoughts on such topics as feminist literary theory, privilege, and the
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The particular paper I'm avoiding at the moment (as much as I love it) is on Chaucer's Knight's Tale and what appears to be its semi-allegorical narrative of love and salvation. Basically, I was desperate for a topic, so I fell back on my old standby, of rereading the story and hoping for some thread of an idea to jump out at me. Bingo, I wasn't disappointed. There's this interesting moment where Chaucer hints that the conflict between the two knights ultimately comes down to love: they both love the same woman, but for different reasons. It reminded me of a popular idea in Medieval theology, originating in St. Augustine, where all of morality comes down to love: it's a good thing in itself, but it becomes bad when you either love the wrong object, or fail to recognize how a good object ultimately points you back to God. This is huge in Dante's Divine Comedy, especially in Purgatorio, which is about loving earthly things more than God. So my paper will talk about how these ideas show up in Chaucer, and how he seems to advocate a view of salvation as a phenomenon that reorients your love back to God Himself.
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In other research-related news, I had an exciting epiphany late the other night regarding potential PhDs. I've long been contemplating taking the plunge (and I'm still very undecided), but I think I've moved a step forward in finding a potential subject. Both of my college senior thesis projects explored facets of early Baptist literature. In spring, I discovered Benjamin Keach, aka the "it guy" of early Baptist culture. I hadn't been able to do much research on him since, but in procrastinating my current project this past week, I delved a little deeper into some of his collected works. I was shocked to find out he was a bit of a prolific poet.
Being a non-conformist Puritan, Keach would have taken a strongly conservative stance on theological and cultural issues. However, he produced a treasure trove of poetry, especially of the epic genre. This is slightly huge, because the epic was considered the highest form of art in pre-modern culture; in other words, it was the most cosmopolitan, sophisticated, elite type of poetry. With its conventions of florid language, prominent Greek mythology, and humanist themes, it would seem to be the ultimate form of the "worldliness" the Puritans vehemently rejected. But here Keach, one of the leading Baptist theologians, is using it to talk about his faith. Fascinating. He also produced a lot of lyric poetry (much of which was hymn material) that connects him to another of my 17th Century heroes, George Herbert.
A lot of the church scholarship on the early Baptists focuses on their doctrinal treatises, which is understandable, given the fact that today's form of our denomination is still new (50 years or so); we're still in the process of rediscovering the theology of our forefathers. At the same time, I think that it would be a mistake to overlook Keach's penchant for literary experiments; being a representative figure of his contemporary Baptists, his interest in literary theology has a lot to say about early Baptist culture in general.
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That got really long, but writing always helps me sort out my thoughts. Sometimes I think I'm in too deep now - as if, having discovered this gap in scholarship, I have a moral responsibility to address it. I've had professors describe it as a type of calling: you can run from it as much as you want, but it always manages to find you. Maybe I'm not that far yet. But maybe I am.
And now this post has come full circle.
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