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An Experiment in Criticism: Seven Takeaways

CS Lewis published An Experiment in Criticism in 1961, and its as close to a general statement of interpretive principles as he ever wrote. The book’s basic premise is that evaluative criticism often hinders our reading experience. In matters of taste, Lewis proposes, we should spend more time thinking about HOW we read rather than WHAT we read. An Experiment in Criticism is a provocative (and short) book, and it’s not just polemic. Lewis’s gracious and direct style is one of the book’s main attractions. Here are some things I learned…

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This week we finished up our examination of English medieval literature with a short look at The Canterbury Tales. Not only was the language more modern (as symbolized by the textbook creators assuming you could read it without a translation), but its portrayal of English life was contemporary. Beowulf and Gawain were poems about the pagan and Christian past respectively. The Canterbury Tales was a representation of English life and people in the late 14th Century as it was happening.

With some very small adjustments you could easily write a 21st century adaptation of the pilgrimage Chaucer has his characters go on. Continue reading “”

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What Does Theology Have to Say About Grammar?

Reading a book on Christian Curriculum yesterday, I ran across this sentence:

Grammar and language are indeed relative to a culture, but the fact of a degree of relativity does not make it necessary (nor sensible) to affirm a radical relativism.

I then ran across this meditation on covenantal ethics.

The covenant teaches that man is a conditioned creature. Only God is unconditioned, meaning unbounded by time or place. Man’s response to God must always be conditional. Man is bounded by God’s law, but he is also bounded by history. He must faithfully apply the law to historical circumstances. The covenant (the law as a whole, as well as the historical books of the Bible) provides us with the details of these historical circumstances. These details must be respected.

So here is the false dichotomy that I find both statements attempting to answer:

  1. Human knowledge is absolute and unchanging.
  2. Human knowledge is radically relative.

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The Most Important Work I Did Yesterday

Yesterday, I taught Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my British lit survey and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Shakespeare survey. I worked out a two-sided page outline for each class that included performances, class discussions, writing exercises, and engagement with secondary sources. This was not even close to the most important work I did yesterday. Continue reading “The Most Important Work I Did Yesterday”

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How You Know You’re Learning

The Problem

I’m reading Thomas Hoby’s translation of The Book of the Courtier, the first English translation of Baltasare Castiglione’s Italian Renaissance manual. In his prefatory letter to Lord Henry Hastings, Hoby explains why he’s decided to print his translation.

And he said wel that was asked the question, How much the learned differed from the unlearned. ‘So much’ (quoth he) ‘as the wel broken and ready horses, from the unbroken.’ wherfore I wote not how our learned men in this case can avoide the saying of Isocrates, to one that amonge soundrye learned discourses at Table spake never a woorde: ‘Yf thou bee unlearned, thou dooest wiselye: but yf thou bee learned, unwyselye,’ as who should saye, learnyng is yll bestowed where others bee not profited by it.

In this passage, Hoby articulate the distinction between those who are learned and unlearned. What exactly is it? Continue reading “How You Know You’re Learning”

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How Do You Teach Leadership in a Literature Class?

The Problem

I keep coming back to this challenge in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin.

What They Should Teach in School

Only two things:

1. Solve interesting problems

2. Lead

My university’s motto is “Integrating Faith in Learning, Leading, and Serving.” If it’s my responsibility to lead in a Christ-centered way, it’s certainly well within my purview to teach my students to lead in some significant way. Continue reading “How Do You Teach Leadership in a Literature Class?”

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What Are the Digital Humanities?

In his article “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” from the Debates in the Digital Humanities volume, Matthew Kirschenbaum turns self-reflexive. He notes that the definitional essay is already a DH sub-genre. You can easily track down the genealogy for the term “Digital Humanities,” and a google search will lead to a satisfactory Wikipedia definition. First and foremost, Digital Humanities is a branch of the humanities with a common methodology, namely the intersection of computing and humanities.

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