And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Paradise Lost, Book I, 17-1
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st…
Because I begin my Brit Lit I survey with Beowulf and end it with Paradise Lost, I like to have students think about two different kinds of epic: grand stories of external and internal action. While Beowulf features climactic battles with hellbeasts and dragons, Paradise Lost offers us two human beings deciding whether or not to eat a piece of fruit.
I demonstrate that tension through the three lines above which come from the poem’s invocation. Milton declares the Spirit—the very one he wants as his muse and the one that inspired Moses to write the Pentateuch—prefers hearts to temples. This is very Protestant. Temples are dedicated to worship, but they are ultimately about external show rather than internal fidelity. It’s the upright heart that matters most. Accordingly, this poem will emphasize hearts not temples, moral steadfastness over physical courage. The most important event in the world involves a simple decision to obey or disobey God.
Student Performance
We’re at the stage of the semester where I ask my students to write longer research papers. It takes time to do the kind of work I’ve asked them to do, much less do it well, and I can see that some of my students are not prepared. Given this poem’s preference for internal virtue over external performance, how should I respond?
In class yesterday, I had 8 of my 13 attending students confess that they had not the read the novel they’d been assigned, despite the fact that they have had two and-a-half weeks to read it and their rough draft is due later this week. I didn’t know whether to applaud their honesty or be appalled by their brazenness.
It would have been one thing if the students had tried hard to read the novel and had found it too difficult. It was another to have them pass on even making the effort. The former would have demanded an internal effort with no visible external results. The latter lacks the external results but also lacks the good-faith motives of the former.
I have tried to demonstrate to them why the novel is important: its provocative title, its opening chapter, its complex subjects of art and deception. Perhaps I too have succumbed to the idol of public performance rather than seeing the internal struggle that accompanies any writing project.
Spiritual Takeaway
I am lost at how best to get these students to do their work. I pray for wisdom to understand their external behavior and not to equate it with their hearts. I want them to find something worth meditating on, a passage worth processing internally long enough for it to make a different a difference in their lives.