Today was the day of wowser blogs. I am very impressed by the lengths others in the class are going to; I actually am almost envious and in thrall to the anxiety of influence. Many of them centered upon Walter Pater, and his followers, who also include Gerard Manley Hopkins and Oscar Wilde, both of whom were students of his at Oxford.

Jennie Lynn blogged about Marcus Aurelius, whom she admires, in what was a wonderfully instructive digression from Walter Pater, who was also a fan of Marcus Aurelius( so it wasn't a 'distraction' after all).

Lisa little Legs wrote about her adoration for John Keats, which goes back to his notion of the Veil of Soul-making from Literary Criticism. And it also turns out that the Aesthetic Hero(discussed so eloquently by Pat in his blog) is engaged in the Veil of Soul-Making! Pater attempted to construct a novel with the Aesthetic Hero, Marius the Epicurean.

And Taylor's great blog about having her 101 writing students write about epiphanies, which theoretically would go completely over their heads. But we find amazing unexpected things when we are confronted with things that we don't "understand" or "get", as Taylor says she was when reading Pater. But she has come through in a rather resounding way.

In short, it has become evident that there are many figures of capable imagination(borrowing from Harold Bloom, who was borrowing from Wallace Stevens)in the class.

*I must correct a previous blog. The Henry James short story was called A Jolly Corner not as I originally thougth, The Wrong Corner. Huge difference. Or is there?