The Record of a Lifelong Learner and Disciple
I continue to deliberate on fascinating problems to present my students with rather than a series of facts with which to stuff them.
My next series of questions come from the first real chapter of Literature Through the Eyes of Faith. I’ve put together question with examples from scripture, everyday life, and literature as possible test case answers. You can find the questions and answers after the jump.
Continue reading “Introduction to Literature: More Fascinating Questions”Being clearly and explicitly aware of gaps in available information. Recognizing when a conclusion is reached or a decision made in absence of complete information and being able to tolerate the ambiguity and uncertainty. Recognizing when one is taking something on faith without having examined the “How do we know . . . ? Why do we believe . . . ?” questions.
From What the Best College Teachers Do
Students tend to assume that the interpretation of literature is subjective: this is what it means to me and you either can’t explain that or there’s no way of disproving it.
Encouraging my students to see what we can and cannot defend in the service of our argument will be an important part of the class.
It’s one of the reasons that I will be focusing on figurative language in daily quiz questions. Metaphors and similes ask to be unpacked, and if students can begin to discern the meanings of this non-literal use of language, they’ll be on their way to saying substantive (and not merely subjective) about what they’ve read.
Texts that focus on Christian topics, or include biblical references or Christ figures, require careful interpretation, not rash conclusions.
From Literature Through the Eyes of Faith
In the quotation above, Susan Gallagher and Roger Lundin insist that like most good interpretation, parsing the relationship between Christianity and a specific piece of literature requires time and care. Below I try to think through how I will demonstrate that time and care in my intro to literature class, specifically in how we read our short story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Continue reading “Christian Texts and Intro to Lit”How do we discover that truth? We discover it by the slow and arduous task of weighing any interpretation against what we already hold to be the truth about the matter in question.
From Literature Through the Eyes of Faith
In the quotation above, Susan Gallagher and Roger Lundin outline a guide for discovering truth when we encounter conflicting interpretations.
The key words in their advice are “slow” and “arduous.”
It takes time to understand a poem, story, or novel before interpreting it. This is where we are first comparing what we’ve read against truth we already know, most likely from scripture or reason or experience or tradition. Then begins the long process of figuring out which interpretations of the work we’ve just read are complementary and which are mutually exclusive.
I can focus on the biographical interpretation of Hamlet (the death of Shakespeare’s child in 1596; the Catholic recusancy of Shakespeare’s father), and this does not necessarily stop me from also interpreting the play’s commentary on education.
As I begin to focus on specific scenes, lines, or characters, however, I will run into mutually exclusive interpretations (is Hamlet’s tragic flaw memory or pride; is the play ultimately Catholic or Protestant in its commitments).
I think it’s worthwhile for my students to see and know the difference between complementary and competing interpretations so I will need to work up examples of these for most of the works we read.
From Literature Through the Eyes of Faith
The understanding we acquire through reading of literature can help us make sense of human actions, just as an understanding of human behavior is essential for a deep appreciation of literature.
In the quotation above, Roger Lundin and Susan Gallagher make the point that interpretation is fundamental to human life. God made a meaningful, significant universe so our lives, not just our experiences with books, are sense-making endeavors.
We call a coherent interpretive framework a PARADIGM or MODEL, and as I teach my intro to literature course this spring, I will be asking the questions below. Each pertains not just to reality but to the fictional worlds we read.
Matthew 16:3 “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”
The Pharisees indicted in the passage above have two interpretive problems: scope and application.
First, their scope is limited. They can interpret things well as far as weather goes, but they get caught up in the clouds and can’t think of anything more than if they will get caught in the rain this afternoon. Ultimately, the weather is less important than their soul.
Second, they fail to apply their interpretations. They think of themselves as pragmatic but in hurrying to apply a small reading they miss the broader application of the interpretive principles they’ve used. If you’ve got a high-powered laser, it seems a shame to use it to engrave your name on a penny.
In this way, their problems of scope and application are connected.
This is convicting. I already spend an inordinate time reading and writing, and it feels like a lot of the time when I’m not reading and writing, I’m thinking about how to get more time to read and write.
So, in this verse I hear Christ tell me:
“You know how to interpret Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, but you cannot interpret the needs of your own wife and child.
“You know how to interpret what the literary analysis paper from your student in a 9am literature class needs, but you cannot interpret the clear command to pray without ceasing.
“You know how to interpret the theme of addiction as worship in post-modern literature, but you cannot interpret your own restless heart.”
God, have mercy on me a sinner.
In the preface to his On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine answers objections to his intention to give rules for interpreting scripture. The objections are.
St. Augustine says that the objectors in Camps 1 and 2 need to pray to God for sight. Their inability to see does not make St. Augustine’s project worthless. The objectors in Camp 3, however, get ST. Augustine’s sternest rebuke, mainly because their objection comes from pride. In answering their objection, St. Augustine makes clear the role that human teaching plays in our relationship to not only scripture, but the world. Here it is… Continue reading “The Power of Teaching”
This week, I finished Alan Jacobs’s provocative A Theology of Reading.
This is a book I’ve needed to read. Last week, I wrote a statement about faith integration for a promotion application, and the book’s refrains of love and generosity were ringing in my ears. Jacobs explores the way our readings can change over time, exemplified by a detailed examination of WH Auden’s relationship to Soren Kierkegaard (probably my favorite part of the book). And most of all the book gave me some follow-up reading; the book convinced me to return to John Milbank and (especially) Mikhail Bakhtin.
The book also left me with a question. At the book’s close, Jacobs examines Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and its satirical take on the “institutionalization of charity,” a dangerous pitfall if one substitutes a bureaucratized love for one a personally vulnerable one. Jacobs turns his eye to the academy at the book’s conclusion, but I was left wondering about another extension of Jacobs’s insight.
As an English professor, I feel conflicted about the fact that I am part of the institutionalization of literature and of a certain kind of reading.
My question then: is this kind of “institutionalization” a potential problem?
Does it contribute to the analogous problems as charity’s institutionalization?
If so, what are some ways we can combat those potential problems?
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…
Continue reading “An Experiment in Criticism: Seven Takeaways”