Kingdom of Heaven

Saladin as played by Ghassan Massoud in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven

Hi English 1100 and anyone else that may be reading. Welcome to my blog! I must admit, the summer season was lengthy, and I'm not at full literary strength, but I'm happy to be back, and excited to be in an interactive English class with all of you!

After reading the assigned literature for the weekend, I'm definitely feeling a trip to Movie Hits Plus to pick up Kingdom of Heaven and watch it for the umpteenth time.

It took me a while to get used to the different styles of writing used between the Decameron work, as well as the Canterbury Tales section. I tried reading the Canterbury Tales piece in the Middle English language, but I got through about 50 lines and dropped the idea. The point that I picked up from the different readings we had was the varying interpretation of Saladin, depending on the author. Our classmate, John Novak, does a really wonderful job of describing that, and you should definitely reference his blog if you're interested in reading more about that.

As for websites regarding the Middle East prior 1400 A.D., I found a really neat map on the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. You can find the site here:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hm/07/wa/hm07wa.htm

You can click on the different sections of the map to find out more information about the individual countries.

Good luck to everyone with the reading and blogging! See you all Monday!

-Dan

Edit: After taking some to think about our discussion we had last class, I've decided to make an edit to my original post, which can be read from this point forward.

I felt as though I didn't add anything too substantive to our group dialogue in Monday's class, and I want to apologize for that. I don't feel that I completely understood the reading in its entirety, and I'm sorry I could not add more to the conversation.

That being said, I'm excited about the way we run class period, in the very open fashion with which we share our ideas. It allows for good thought processes, as well as a good flow from point to point, with direction from Allen on where we should take our comments and ideas.

I eagerly await the time where we can work on more contemporary literature, because I feel I can get a better understanding of those works, it's just more up my alley, per se.

At any rate, for anyone that's reading this, feel free to read my next post on Othello. Thanks!

-Dan, again.