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What we're reading this semester:Invisible Man, Oedipus Rex, assorted poetry
Essential questions:
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ExtrasEdith Hamilton's Mythology (click here to go to Vision) selection
The Bible as LiteratureWhy read the Bible?Why should we read the Bible as literature? Because its literary format requires it. C. S. Lewis sounded the keynote when he wrote in Reflections on the Psalms that “there is a sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”
A further dimension of the literary importance of the Bible is that it is the primary source and influence for English and American literature. The oldest extant piece of English literature (“Caedmon’s Hymn”) takes the story of creation in Genesis 1-2 as its material and is modeled on the Bible’s psalms of praise. A clear line of continuity exists between this poem and a modern novel like Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. We can’t even get past the first sentence of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick without knowing the Bible; that sentence reads, “Call me Ismael.” Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/11/the-bibles-influence-the-bible-as-literature/#ixzz3dRDyQq5H Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter The Book of Books: What Literature Owes the Bible (click here to read full article, NYT)The Bible is the model for and subject of more art and thought than those of us who live within its influence, consciously or unconsciously, will ever know.
Literatures are self-referential by nature, and even when references to Scripture in contemporary fiction and poetry are no more than ornamental or rhetorical — indeed, even when they are unintentional — they are still a natural consequence of the persistence of a powerful literary tradition. Biblical allusions can suggest a degree of seriousness or significance their context in a modern fiction does not always support. This is no cause for alarm. Every fiction is a leap in the dark, and a failed grasp at seriousness is to be respected for what it attempts. In any case, these references demonstrate that in the culture there is a well of special meaning to be drawn upon that can make an obscure death a martyrdom and a gesture of forgiveness an act of grace. Whatever the state of belief of a writer or reader, such resonances have meaning that is more than ornamental, since they acknowledge complexity of experience of a kind that is the substance of fiction. |