It's time to undertake some reading projects for 2021. I think the focus might be poetry.
- What I have in mind first is tackling Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. I recall reading at least the first stanza in college – I associate it with Professor Kent Cartwright's course on Medieval and Renaissance literature – but I am quite sure we did not read the whole thing. If I read one canto per day, it should take 74 days. (Six books of 12 cantos each, plus the 2 cantos of mutabilities.)
- I'd like to finish reading "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" in middle English. The poem has 101 stanzas, of which I've read the first 22. So if I read one stanza per day, we're talking 79 days.
That seems entirely doable! After that, who knows. Other targets might include "The Pearl" and "The Dream of the Rood." I also want to go back to some of Tolkien's poetry, esp. "Light as Leaf on Linden-tree." And probably Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."
