How to enjoy classic literature with high intensity

[b***@juno.com]

http://www.wndbookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6983


Here is something I cut and pasted from the above website. This is for
those of you who have been infected with politically correct
"literature" classes in college. Here's what your politically correct
professors probably didn't teach you from each of the following
classics:

Beowulf: Heroes deserve our respect and gratitude. If we don't admire
them, there's something wrong with us

Medieval English literature: The wisdom of the past beats the latest
expert opinion, hands down

Chaucer: Chivalry is one of the great inventions of Western culture,
and it's contributed enormously to women's happiness

Christopher Marlowe: Being "transgressive" will take you only so
far -- in art, and in life

Shakespeare's tragedies: Some choices are inherently destructive
(it's just built into the nature of things)

Shakespeare's comedies: Our human nature -- including even the very
limitations that define it -- is a rich source of happiness

Shakespeare's Sonnets: Love and sex are serious things. If you treat
them lightly, someone's going to get hurt

Milton: Our intellectual freedoms are Christian, not anti-Christian, in
origin

English literature of the Enlightenment: Realism, common sense, and
good humor are more dignified equipment for life than victim politics,
wishful thinking, and liberal guilt

The Romantic poets: Intelligent radicals become conservatives when they
grow up -- make that, if they grow up

Wordsworth and Coleridge: The difference between entertainment that
degrades and entertainment that refreshes and ennobles

Byron and Shelley: The human mind has enormous creative powers --
which, if abused, can be terribly destructive

Jane Austen: Social conventions exist for our (mainly women's)
protection -- and most men would be improved if they were more
patriarchal than they actually are

Dickens: Reformers can do more harm than the injustices they set out to
reform. And charity begins at home

Avant-garde and modernist literature: Christianity trumps the edgy art
world

Evelyn Waugh: Without religion, human beings are disgustingly selfish
and shallow -- and in abandoning Christianity, our culture will shrivel
and die

T. S. Eliot: Tradition is necessary to culture

Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and Twain: Evil isn't "back there" or
"out there"; it's in the human heart

William Faulkner (and Southern literature in general): Civilization is
valuable. A fatally flawed culture beats no culture at all

Flannery O'Connor: Even modern American liberals aren't immune to
original sin

[Matthew Johnson]

Post by b***@juno.com
http://www.wndbookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6983
Here is something I cut and pasted from the above website. This is for
those of you who have been infected with politically correct
"literature" classes in college. Here's what your politically correct
professors probably didn't teach you from each of the following

Well, it could be a good thing that they didn't teach them these, because each
one of them is flawed. And the flaw in each one is only a little less bad than
the flaw of the corresponding "politcally correct" lit crit belief.

Of course, I will have the time to indicate this with only a few items from your
long list.

Post by b***@juno.com
Beowulf: Heroes deserve our respect and gratitude. If we don't admire
them, there's something wrong with us

This is so oversimplistic, it is insulting to the inteligence of every thinking
person. Indeed: I am surprised to hear you endorsing it. Why? Because you and
the source you quote gloss over the all-important prior consideration: which of
the many people whose examples are thrust upon us, and who are called 'heroes',
should we really believe are really 'heroes'? Or are you really unaware that the
same people we are taught to call villains are often called heroes by others?
Are you, for example, unaware of how Dracula is still considered a hero by
modern day Rumanians for the skill and determination with which he resisted the
Turks?

For that matter, an example that should strike closer to home for you, are you
unaware of how Catholics in Ukraine and Lithuania are honoring as 'heroes'
people who collaborated with the Nazis in the mass-murder of Jews during the
war?

Post by b***@juno.com
Medieval English literature: The wisdom of the past beats the latest
expert opinion, hands down

But this isn't even true. It never has been. Nor could it have been, since for
so long, the "latest expert opinion" WAS to repeat the "wisdom of the past".

Post by b***@juno.com
Chaucer: Chivalry is one of the great inventions of Western culture,
and it's contributed enormously to women's happiness

Chivalry is better than the barbarism it replaced, but it should be obvious that
chivalry is NOT what Paul taught in Ephesians. Yet for some reason, it is not
obvious. This is sad, because the true, unadulterated teaching of Christianity
as expressed in Ephesians is really far, far greater than chivalry. But people
who confuse the two will never figure this out. Instead, they will cling to
their armor of bronze when they could have gold in its place.

Post by b***@juno.com
Christopher Marlowe: Being "transgressive" will take you only so
far -- in art, and in life
Shakespeare's tragedies: Some choices are inherently destructive
(it's just built into the nature of things)

Well, yes, that is true, but so what? If that is all you could get out of
Shakespeare's tragedies, then either the tragedies missed the point or you did.

Now if you look at the Ancient Greek Tragedies instead, you can _immediately_
see the point you missed above: that not only are "some choices inherently
destructive", but suffering should be accepted as a gift from God for our own
betterment.

Without knowing this latter principle, it really does you no good to know the
former.

[snip]

Post by b***@juno.com
William Faulkner (and Southern literature in general): Civilization is
valuable. A fatally flawed culture beats no culture at all.

Really? Then why is the invention of cities, and therefore of 'civilization'
(the word originally meant 'living in cities') attributed to Cain in Genesis
(Gen 4:17)? That does NOT sound like an endorsement of civilization/culture.

Post by b***@juno.com
Flannery O'Connor: Even modern American liberals aren't immune to
original sin

I never read O'Connor, and yet I could figure that out;)