Looking Back ... and Forward
Greetings, for the last time this semester! It’s been crazy, awesome, and a little overwhelming, but I’m so glad to be a junior, working on my major and minor, and looking ever more toward the future even as I learn about the past. I could go on for pages summarizing all the things I learned this semester, but I think in the end the most important things to remember are the big-picture things, the whole vista made up of all those details, because that’s what stays with you beyond the tests and papers and into the rest of your life.
In Tudor-Stuart England, we learned about kings and queens, court factions, rebellions, taxes, and marital alliances, but I was most amazed by how the actions of just one person could dramatically shift the history of a whole nation. Henry VIII needed a male heir and wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, and from the actions he took to make that happen grew over a century of civil wars, rebellions, laws, and policies that, in many ways, shaped what it means to be English even up to today. Through England, they also shaped what it means to be American in many ways, so even we, even Christendom College, is somehow affected by that one man hundreds of years ago. After all, the U.S. was a set of British colonies just entering the picture toward the end of the Stuart dynasty’s reign, and many of the first colonists came here because they disagreed with the Church of England and wanted something radically simpler. Christendom College, nestled in the hills of Virginia, one of the first areas to be colonized by the English, exists in large part because there are people now who disagree with the secular character of American education, and want to immerse themselves in something radically richer. We need to do it because America has never been officially Catholic, and we can do it because America is based on the principles of freedom of religion and of speech. All of this, in many ways, is either a result of or a reaction toward something that happened in the time of the Tudors and Stuarts.
In philosophy too, we have learned about the past, but the more recent past. From Descartes all the way to Nietzsche, we learned the basics of what modern philosophers thought about existence and the universe. Some thought that everything was completely determinate, others that everything was inexplicable and chaotic. Some thought that the things we see and touch, the material world, was real, and others thought that only the appearance of things to our minds was. In the end, the trend over the course of modernism was away from the idea of stability, nature, and purpose and toward the idea that free will is what creates reality. This shift was radical, but it has taken such a firm hold in our culture that we now see people insisting that we can all define the meaning of life and our own existence for ourselves. Instead of religion or nature guiding us by giving us goals and laws about how to achieve those goals, we are left to drift in our own absolute freedom, colliding with other absolutely free beings, and disagreeing forever about what we ought to do.
That is, unless we rediscover morality and the true freedom that comes with following just laws. In Moral Theology, we discussed Kant’s view of freedom, which we also studied in philosophy, and how it affected Christian ethics adversely. Kant believed in an absolute freedom, prior to anything else, while the great philosophers and theologians of the past had always started their reasoning with an understanding of human nature and our natural inclinations. The Church and her saints have always held that it is part of human nature to desire the good, the true, and the beautiful, and that we should seek things like health, life, and happiness. Morality, therefore, is not a set of arbitrary laws imposed on our freedom, or merely obligations to fulfill; instead, it is part of the complete realm of belief, and shows us how best to live so that we can achieve the truest happiness, union with God. We do have free will, but there is also stability in the world, in recognizing reality, and both together lead us to our final end.
Literary Criticism, being a class basically on the philosophy of literature, also ties into this issue of freedom versus reality. We studied numerous critics, from Plato and Aristotle all the way to the Marxists, feminists, and deconstructionists of the twentieth century. They each have their own idea of what a work of literature is and how one should assess it, and some seem reasonable while others wreak havoc. Some (the New Critics) believe that the text itself is the only thing necessary, and that just by reading the text you can find the one objective meaning of the text, but they tend to come up with interpretations that disagree with each other; others (the New Historicists) painstakingly look at historical records and background to find the meaning of a text, but to the point that they sometimes forget to read the work itself very much, and think that every bit of it must be a reference to some historical situation. This makes art completely a product of its time and ideology, and almost neglects the free will of the artist. Still others (the Reader Response critics) think that each reader or each interpretive community creates its own meaning for the text, so that the work has no stable meaning whatsoever. Obviously, taking any of these ideas too far makes the study of literature meaningless, but taking the good parts of each school of criticism and striking a balance can be an excellent way to find the meaning of a work.
In Renaissance English Literature and The English Novel, we’ve been doing just that--reading poems, plays, or novels and finding the meanings of them. We tend toward a New Critic-style way of finding the meanings, using the actual words on the page as our main base, but we also learn something about the author of each work and the historical context, what school of poets he belonged to or what other works may have influenced his. Dr Marciano always mentions the social rank and religion of each author and then points out what other famous authors he had as friends or influences, since these are probably the most important factors in understanding the literature of Renaissance England--they were the most pressing issues of the day, as I learned in my Tudor-Stuart England class. Dr Keats brings up the religion and friends of each author as well, but also notes what movie versions have been made of each book and how they differ from the novel, since film is a common art form and interpretive format for novels today. These classes are where I’ve really gotten to study literature directly, but without the other classes, especially Literary Criticism and Tudor-Stuart England, I would never have gotten as deep of a perspective on the literature we studied. As usual, having a well-rounded, liberal-arts background and taking classes outside my major, really helps with the major itself, as well as with my whole outlook on life.
In summary, this semester has been an intense, challenging, and exhilarating experience. My idea of what it means to study literature is deeper than before, my knowledge of various philosophies and schools of ethics has broadened, and my love of language and history and the stories they can tell has been strengthened. My writing and interpreting skills have been further solidified, and in the end I love the major and minor I’ve chosen more than ever. The papers and tests have been a challenge and I’m definitely ready for a break, but I’ve also learned more about how to manage my time and how well I can perform under pressure, and I’m sure that within a few weeks, I’ll be ready to come back for more. Next semester I’ll be in Rome, exploring the Eternal City and learning all about its history, art, and language, overcoming even more challenges and thriving intellectually in new ways. Because of this opportunity, because of this past semester, because of the core curriculum, and because of countless other things about my Christendom experience, I could’t be more grateful to be a part of this tiny Catholic college in the Shenandoah valley.
Thanks for reading this semester! If you like what you’ve read and what to know more about the history, literature, philosophy, politics, and languages of Western culture while deepening your knowledge and love of the Catholic Faith, I hope you’ll consider coming to Christendom. We’d love to see you here!
