Thoughts on Carney and Thomlinson

Thus far, we have been graced with the presences of two English professors of Cameron University: Composition Director William Carney and newly christened Honors Director Vivian Thomlinson. The lovely thing about the English Department (well, really all departments, I gather) is how different people working in the same field can be.

Lord Carney is clearly somewhat conservative, but filled with unabashed confidence in what he says and how he presents it. He provided us with an etymology of the word love (that is, lufen), tucked within a mini history of the English language. His main lecture focus was on courtly love and the religious slant of romantic ideas. He was a decent speaker and certainly had some very interesting things to say. A bit light-hearted too; but I gather a few whiffs of rogue drifting from his personage. Best of all was probably Ms. McGrath proceeding to refute everything he said when he left. Just kidding. She did fundamentally disagree on a few of his points, but that's academia for you. You're only as right as your piece of paper says you can be. :-P

I think he does hit a few nails right on the head. Certainly, Christianity was a much more vital piece of western culture in the middle ages, and the concept of casting a bed sheet (so to speak) of piety over all forms of love, even erotic, may not be too far off base. Then again, it could very well have been the other way around...

Lady Thomlinson was altogether different. What was so very refreshing about her is this: I have never seen anyone express such a zest for their field. She practically danced about the room sharing her love of medieval literature with the class. I think we were all left with quite a lot of food for thought. We were given many suggestions as far as works to read and movies to watch; we could practically base the rest of the semester off of her chalkboard notes. She described the story of the Ramayana to us in a way that kind of reminded me of a Sunday school teacher; she made the story sound altogether sweet and charmingly folkloric (not in the hokey way, mind you). The love of Rama and Sita sounds like one of equal partnership, but not without woe. One thing I really enjoyed was how she described some of the more intimate details of matters such as expecting bed clothes without any sort of prudishness, but then referred to herself as such in an anecdote! Why, Ms. Thomlinson, you flatter yourself.


Her description of the Ramayana made me want to write about it, but I think it might be a bit too long to start on it now and finish. Maybe not, but I'm definitely putting it on my list.