On Reading Well , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Karen Swallow Prior

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163 pages

English

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★ Publishers Weekly starred reviewA Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers WeeklyReading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life.Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly."[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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Christianity

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	04 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493415465
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2018 by Karen Swallow Prior
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2018
Ebook corrections 02.05.2020, 08.15.2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1546-5
All illustrations are ©Ned Bustard. Used by permission.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2011
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Published in association with MacGregor Literary, Inc.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedication
To Roy, who loves me so well
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Dedication 5
Foreword by Leland Ryken 9
Introduction: Read Well, Live Well 13
Part One • The Cardinal Virtues 31
1. Prudence: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding 33
2. Temperance: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 51
3. Justice: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 69
4. Courage: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 87
Part Two • The Theological Virtues 103
5. Faith: Silence by Shusaku Endo 105
6. Hope: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 121
7. Love: The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy 139
Part Three • The Heavenly Virtues 157
8. Chastity: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 159
9. Diligence: Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan 177
10. Patience: Persuasion by Jane Austen 191
11. Kindness: “Tenth of December” by George Saunders 205
12. Humility: “Revelation” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor 221
Acknowledgments 237
Discussion Questions 239
Notes 245
Back Cover 268
Foreword
Leland Ryken

In this foreword I have set myself the task of previewing the three things that readers most need to know as they begin to read the book that follows. These three things touch upon the context, the content, and the achievement of the book.
It would be possible for a contemporary reader to revel in this book while being ignorant of the age-old tradition of literary criticism that it represents and also the debate over that tradition in the modern era. The premises that literature makes moral statements, that these statements can strengthen the moral life of a reader, and that literary criticism should explore the moral dimension of literary texts began in classical antiquity and held sway until the twentieth century. For Aristotle, a mark of good literature is that it “satisfies the moral sense.” 1
The Christianized version of this classical tradition reached its climax in the Renaissance author Sir Philip Sidney’s treatise A Defense of Poetry . Sidney claimed that the very purpose of literature is the “winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue” and inflaming a reader with a “desire to be worthy.” 2
With the Enlightenment and modernity came the collapse of a unified sense of moral standards in the West. Consequently, the idea that literature has moral implications and can influence readers to be virtuous became passé. Morality itself became reduced to Ernest Hemingway’s dictum that “what is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” 3 This echoed Oscar Wilde’s earlier statement that “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” 4
Reacting against this rejection of moral criteria for literature, a towering literary scholar named F. R. Leavis wrote a famous book entitled The Great Tradition (1948). What is this “great tradition” championed by Leavis? It is both a literary tradition, represented by great authors and works that portray the moral life, and a type of literary criticism that explores the moral dimension of literature. Karen Swallow Prior’s book is squarely within this great tradition.
I have already hinted at the content of this book. There is a theoretic side in which Prior explains the ethical and literary nature of her enterprise. A pleasant bonus is the primer on ethical theory and moral thinking included in the discussion. Mainly, though, this is a book of literary criticism. It is based on what I call “good old-fashioned example theory,” which was particularly prominent in the English Renaissance. What this means is that it is in the nature of literature to place examples before us—examples of virtue to emulate and vice to repudiate. In our day, this is stigmatized as “surely a very simplistic view of literature,” to which my comeback is, “Tough—this is demonstrably how literature works.” On the self-evident nature of this, I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’s comment in regard to Sir Philip Sidney that “the assumption . . . that the ethical is the aesthetic par excellence is so basic to Sidney that he never argues it. He thought we would know.” 5
In On Reading Well , Prior chooses monuments of Western literature and explores a single virtue embodied in each work. No claim is made that this is all that a reader would wish to do with these works. The result of Prior’s moral analysis is that our understanding of virtue is increased and our desire to practice it enhanced. Today in the secular literary guild and public school classroom there is a sustained assault on Christian morality. On Reading Well offers a revisionist agenda, which is, of course, nothing less than a return to the great tradition.
As for the achievement of On Reading Well , it is of the highest order. The book is a monument to scholarship. Assertions are buttressed with copious research. All of the right sources are incorporated. A particular gift of Prior’s is precision of thought and expression. The goal of the book—to enhance both literary appreciation and the moral life of the reader—is a noble one, meeting Sir Philip Sidney’s goal of leading a reader to desire to be worthy.
I will confess that as a literary scholar I have always been somewhat resistant to moral criticism of literature because I fear that it will be moralistic. But right from the start, Karen Swallow Prior puts these fears to rest. The moral dimension of literature is only one dimension of literature, she assures us, and it does not exist separate from the aesthetic form of a work. The moral viewpoint of a work is not stated abstractly but embodied in the particulars of the text, especially the characters. And so forth.
It is the nature of scholars to be critical when reading books in their discipline, and it is relatively rare that they end a book feeling that the subject could not have been handled better than it was. I did end On Reading Well feeling that nothing was lacking in Prior’s treatment of the subject of virtue in literature and that everything essential had been beautifully stated.
Introduction
M y first book, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me , is a love story, the story of how my deep love of reading slowly meandered into a deep love of God. I retell in the pages of Booked how, by reading widely, voraciously, and indiscriminately, I learned spiritual lessons I never learned in church or Sunday school, as well as emotional and intellectual lessons that I would never have encountered within the realm of my lived experience. Most importantly, by reading about all kinds of characters created by all kinds of authors, I learned how to be the person God created me to be.
A central theme of Booked is reading promiscuously. This phrase is drawn from one of the books that proved most formative for me, John Milton’s Areopagitica . In this treatise, published in 1644, the Puritan poet most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost makes an argument that would become a building block for the modern notions of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In the tract, Milton inveighs against parliamentary licensing orders requiring all publications to be approved by the government before being printed (a legal concept that would later be called prior restraint). Significantly, it was Milton’s own political faction that was in power at the time, his own people whom he thought to be in error and hoped to persuade to reject censorship.
Areopagitica makes a deeply theological argument, one that Christians today, particularly those nervously prone to a censoring spirit, would do well to consider. Grounded in Protestant doctrine (as well as the polarized political situation surrounding the English Civil War), Milton associates censorship with the Roman Catholic Church (the political as well as doctrinal enemy of the English Puritans) and finds in his Reformation heritage a deep interdependence of intellectual, religious, political, and personal liberty—all of which depend, he argues, on virtue. Because the world since the fall contains both good and evil, Milton says, virtue consists of choosing good over evil. Milton distinguishes between the innocent, who know no evil, and the virtuous, who know what evil is and elect to do good. What better way to learn the difference betwe