1. Introduction–Why We Read, Nancy Swihart

Our Reasons for Reading

Why do we read? We read for entertainment, relaxation, and to escape; television is the most popular form of oral literature today. However, the written work has a power that goes beyond what we hear with our ears. As we read a book, we can take our time to pour over the ideas, the action. As Richard Foster suggests in his introduction to Devotional Classics, we can

“read at a measured pace, pausing often to reread, rethink, and re-experience the words until we not only understand the meaning but are shaped by the truth of them.”

We read to make sense of human actions. We read books from the past to understand how to act in our present scene: “In life we are always under certain constraints. We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not our making” (MacIntyre, inGallagher 10). For example, reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn may teach us ultimately that we must reassess out deep-seated assumptions.

A Christian Approach to Reading

1. We must recognize that no author has written in a vacuum; his or her writing has been impacted by the society in which he or she writes and the way she or he views truth.

2. We come to the reading with our own basic assumptions. There is no such thing as an “innocent” reading of a book, for every reading is shaped by the biases of the reader (Gallagher 81). As Christians we read with the “bias” of Truth as seen through the revealed Word of God and hisinteractions in our daily lives through the work of the Holy Spirit.

3. We are subcreators, not Creators. According to Lewis,

“An author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom .”

Thus, as readers, we recognize the worth of a classic with humility, including the author’s intention and accomplishment (Cowan 14, 15).

4. We must see ourselves as “custodians” and not “cannibals” of theclassics. We approach literature with an attitude of learning, appreciation, and discovery. We are heirs and stewards (Cowan 16).

5. We read to explore the mysteries and interpret the meaning of the world in which God has placed us. We can enter into conversation with the great characters and interpreters of the human drama (Gallagher 14).

Why Classical Literature Matters

Words matter. They have a supreme value and an inescapable importance for the life of the mind and the human spirit. Ideas and experiences, dreams and potential are communicated through the written and spoken word.

Literature makes those words available down through the ages so that we become the heirs of thought and life that existed long before we were placed upon this earth.

Classical literature has the capacity to remind an existing culture of the wisdom, creativity, sensitivity, and search for meaning of former cultures and to call a young culture to greater depths. The ideas that were formulated by previous cultures have been preserved and treasured over the years and can be goldmines for the fast moving, sometimes shallow lifestyles of our present culture. The classics provide an opportunity to join in discussion of the primary themes of life and death, right and wrong, triumph and tragedy.

Part of being created in the image of God means being creative and also appreciating creativity and beauty. Having been created in the image of a creative and personal God, human beings have been given gifts of perception, of clarity of speech, of creative thought and of diverse experiences. Out of this gifting we all can write and/or appreciate creative expression in the form of literature.

And finally, studying great literature increases our ability to communicate. As we accumulate new ideas and understand ourselves and our world in a new way we are also becoming equipped to communicate those ideas that we have read. Not only has our vocabulary been increased, but so has our ability to express ideas more clearly and to exhibit a deeper understanding of life has been increased also.

What is an Epic?

The primary or folk epic has no single author. The epic itself has been passed down through oral tradition. Each generation has storytellers who recite the story from memory. Eventually, after years of oral transmission, the epic was written down.

Epics were written to be sung or recited with music. At times they were accompanied by a string instrument or percussion that would provide a background rhythm or accent to the singer’s tale.

The Hero

Epics make use of gods and of heroes who are larger-than-life demigods descended from deities or of superior strength and stature. These heroes are involved usually in single combat which reveals their special strength (character and physique).

Heroes represent characteristics that the culture holds as ideals such as endurance, cunning, virtue, fair play, selflessness, etc. His most outstanding virtue is emphasized by the stock epithet that is given him such as “resourceful Odysseus,” “swift footed Achilles,” “pious Aeneas.” The hero not only displays these ideals and values, but at times challenges and transforms them.

He is also an accomplished speaker who can address his elders and leaders with confidence and eloquence.

The hero must undertake a long, perilous journey which often leads him to the dark underworld. His adversary is often a “god despiser” who has more respect for his own prowess than for the power of the gods.

Elements of the Epic Style

1. Repetition: directions and reports are repeated, later incidents seem to echo earlier incidents; stock epithets are constantly applied to certain proper nouns such as “rosy-fingered Dawn” and “horse-taming Hector.” Names are symbolic: e. g., Odysseus = “Man of Woe,” for he both gives and receives suffering.

2. The Epic or Homeric Simile is a protracted comparison beginning with “like” or “as”; the figure, loaded with description, often holds up the action at a crucial point to produce suspense. There is a general absence of this device in Beowulf, but later English writers such as Milton and Arnold have deliberately incorporated such protracted comparisons into their works to give them weight and dignity.

3. Long, formal speeches such as challenges, inset narratives, flashbacks, and points of debate occur within the midst of the action; characters are commonly revealed in dialogue.

4. Speeches are often followed by such phrases as “thus he spoke” to emphasize that the words are those of a character and not of the narrator.

5. Elevated, literary language is the norm-even servants speak in dignified verse.

6. The manner of address between characters is circumlocutious and courtly; characters often address one another in patronymics such as “Son of Peleus” (Achilles).

7. The pace is stately, the rhythm ceremonious. Catalogues (lengthy lists, particularly of leaders and their military contingents) create a sense of grandeur.

8. Epic machinery includes bardic recapitulations (e. g., the Phaeacian poet Demodocus in the Odyssey recounts the story of the Trojan Horse), a chief god’s balancing the scales of fate, a long and arduous journey for the hero, weapons of supernatural origin (such as Achilles’ shield, fashioned by Hephaestus, smith of the gods), a descent into the Underworld, and nephelistic rescues (from “nephele” [Greek, "mist"] in Greek).

9. The opening of the epic will involve an invocation and an epic question. The poet opens in the midst of the action (“in medias res“) rather than at the beginning.

10. Epic conventions include the simile, the in-medias-res opening, theinvocation, the epic question, the epithet, the climactic confrontation between mighty adversaries, and hand-to-hand combat; these were established by Homer and emulated by Virgil.

11. Since epics were composed to honor the deeds of heroic ancestors, such poems often have an aristocratic bias: peasants and servants (unless of aristocratic birth) are insignificant. For example, the churl who discovers the Firedrake’s cave in Beowulf is unnamed and is given no dialogue.

12. The action occurs in an heroic past, generations earlier, when deities freely interacted with humans. The events of the poem permeate the national consciousness–everyone in the audience already knows most of the details of the story.

13. In the time of Homer, emotions and great natural forces are personified as deities. (Allingham)

Works Cited

Allingham, Philip V. Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University (Canada).

Cowan, Louise, and Os Guinness. Invitation to the Classics. Baker Books, 1998.

Foster, Richard and James Bryan Smith. Devotional Classics. Harper: SanFrancisco, 1989.

Gallegher, Susan, and Roger Lundin. Literature Through the Eyes of Faith. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1989.