Language, a tangled web woven about us

I am reading some interesting non-fiction at the moment. I’ve progressed very slowly through James K.A. Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation. I’m not sure exactly why I am reading this quite so slowly as I am, but the contents of the book interest me. I’m provoked to rabbit-trails of thought, which is a good thing. It does, however, make for slow reading. In Smith this morning, I read some discussion of language in Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine (alternate English title: On Christian Teaching). My transit reading for the day was Northrop Frye’s The Educated Imagination, the Massey Lectures for 1962. I made it through the first two of Frye’s lectures. They are fascinating reading. I imagine they are also fascinating listening.

The interplay of first reading Smith writing about Augustine writing about language, then reading Frye’s words on literature as opposed to other uses of language has set my head spinning. I’m not sure how my brain will land on this. More thought is needed. Here, as food for your own thinking, are some quotes that have me thinking hard on how to teach a class on telling stories in religious education.

From Frye:

This allusiveness in literature is significant, because it shows what we’ve been saying all along, that in literature you don’t just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms a part. This affects the writer as much as it does the reader.

From Smith (on Augustine):

Language is required in order to express that which is interior to the soul by means of something external (verbum); thus language “makes public” the “private” intentions and desires of the self; words are therefore “common property,” belonging to a community. Language must span a gulf between interiorities, precisely because the other has “no means of entering into my soul.” The “space” between souls requires the mediation of signs, which in turn requires interpretation.

Shared stories are essential to community, particularly a community of faith. We need to tell these stories, using language well, in order to share faith with others.

Random Readings

I was lurking in the stacks in the Large Research Library on the university campus where I work. Sometimes, when I’m in Fort Book (unofficial name of the Large Research Library) in the early stages of research on a new project, I lurk in the stacks looking for material. Today I lurked in the bound copies of Very Old Journals area. I pulled down The Monthly Review volume 70, 1813, and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine volume 93, 1863. I browsed the six months of articles and reaped the following excerpts for your interest.

From Blackwood’s, and an article entitled “A Month’s visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” by An English Officer, I took this quote from the first paragraph:

“But the desire of knowledge, or the promptings of curiosity, as the case may be, determined me upon running all risks, and making my way into the forbidden land of Dixey [sic], despite all the blockading, gunboats, and Federal patrols along the Potomac river. There was, however, one great drawback to my happiness in starting upon this expedition—namely, the necessity which existed for my being back in New York by the 20^th of October, and it was already the 11^th of September when I left that city.”

In The Monthly Review, I found a review of Hannah More’s latest work. I have excerpted a small bit of it which thoroughly trashes Mrs. More as one of those writers who has not one unpublished thought:

“We shall not be so rude as to say to Mrs. More that she ought to learn ‘the art to stop:’ but we may venture to observe that the work before us is not in substance so different from her last, as to intitle [sic] it to praise on the score of novelty of sentiment. Whether her professed theme be “Practical Piety” [her previous work] or “Christian Morals” [the work under review], her essays or dissertations have precisely the same substratum and character; her thoughts all flow in the same channel and to the same point; and over the whole a sameness of feature is thrown. A new repast is presented to us: but in substance and essence it is the same with its predecessor; it is served on the old family plate, recast; and, though it assumes a new shape, every ounce of it has been on the table before. With great fluency and occasional eloquence, she prolongs her serious theme; and, whether sick or well, she employs herself in administering religious advice and admonition. With other authors, she has an indisputable right to offer her opinions boldly and without disguise; and though an attempt to mend the world is a very discouraging undertaking, we nevertheless applaud her for not desponding.”

Having satisfied myself that there is nothing really related to my research in these two volumes, I must now go back to work. Ok, the Hannah More review is sort of related to my research in very vague and general terms. But it is not the thing I’m working on right now. Must. Stop. Procrastinating.

A New Book about Old Books

The post over at the Baker Academic Blog yesterday was a set of videos of Marion Taylor discussing the Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters. Marion was the editor of the Handbook and I contributed four articles to it. I was heavily involved in some of the initial re-discovery of women research that made the Handbook possible. And, as seen on my books page, I’ve published a little about it.

I shouldn’t find it so hard to read older books when most of my published research is about older books, right? It is a nice theory anyhow.

St. Athanasius on the Psalms

I’ve just finished On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, translated by a sister of the CSMV and introduced by her correspondent and friend C.S. Lewis. I talked about Lewis’s introduction during Christmas, and mentioned how reading his reflections on old books in that introduction influenced my reading resolutions for this year. Added to the end of On the Incarnation is an appendix containing a translation of a letter written by St. Athanasius to someone called Marcellinus on reading and interpreting the Psalms. It is great.

I am interested in the history of interpretation of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, so reading this appendix on the Psalter was almost better than the theological discourse on the incarnation. Both pieces of writing have their own charm and particular appeal. I preach the Psalms whenever I get a chance, so reading about their interpretation always fascinates me. This morning I heard an excellent exposition of Psalm 139 in the middle of a sermon on our identity in Christ. Then this afternoon I read St. Athanasius on interpreting the Psalms. The combination made my day.

I will post again on publishers and textbooks, but that’ll come tomorrow. Watch this space.

For the Beauty of the Church

For the Beauty of the Church is a collection of essays, most from presentations given at a conference in Austin, Texas about casting a vision for arts in the church. The essays are by pastors and artists and people who are both artists and pastors. They are very interesting. I’ve been reading the book on the bus to work over the last two weeks as I am part of an ad hoc committee working on connecting services with the arts better at my current church. I think you should go out and find this book and read it even if you think art and church don’t belong in the same sentence — maybe especially if you think art and church don’t belong in the same sentence.

A couple of days ago I read an essay that listed seven dangers to avoid in integrating art into the church. Number 1 was Bad Art. Of course, what exactly constitutes Bad Art is a debatable issue isn’t it? I find a lot of “Christian” art falls into this category. It is derivative, kitschy, or produced by rank amateurs. But there is little encouragement of growth and maturity in art forms in the church. If there is only one take-away for me from this book, it is the reminder that art takes time, practice, and intentional effort. It isn’t something dashed off without training or development. It is work. And it is also the work of the church to promote beauty, something that good art does well.

Reading with a Medieval Twist

I noticed that my friend the Libertarian has just started reading Midnight’s Children by Salmon Rushdie. Someone suggested to him that the book was brilliant, and that he would enjoy it, but also suggested he might need a brief background in twentieth-century Indian history and politics to properly “get” the book. I’ve read some of Rushdie’s essays about writing MC which mean that I do want to read the book at some point, but I also feel like I need a bit more history before I launch in. I need to know a bit more about where Rushdie is coming from.

This article suggests that a similar issue might arise in reading Bede, a medieval historian. The blog post is actually the abstract for a doctoral dissertation on reading Bede. The dissertation suggests that Bede wrote with a certain method of reading in mind, reading in depth, not just reading the surface. Indirect quotes, phrases, and allusions to other events (often from the Bible) in Bede’s work point to deeper meanings, beyond the superficial recounting of historical events.  Why would Bede write like that? Because that is how Bede expected his text to be read. If he read other texts, primarily the Bible, in this way, then he surely would write so that his texts could be read on many levels.

Interesting. Might the same apply to, say, nineteenth-century writers? How did they read books and so expect their books to be read? Similarly, how do postmodern writers expect their texts to be (mis)read? Do they write so they can be read this way? Does this explain some things about academic writing in the twenty-first century?

Difficult Books revisited

The other day I noted that I’m looking for criteria in determining whether a book is difficult but worth reading or just not very good and not worth the effort.

Example: Currently I am reading Weaving the New Creation by James W. Fowler. I’ve read Fowler before, and his prose isn’t exactly wonderful, but it isn’t terrible. I got fed up with the first bit of Weaving because of the multiple mixed metaphors used. It wasn’t just mixing metaphors, it felt like metaphor soup. Now I get the idea of using metaphors in writing non-fiction. The metaphor may give your work shape, or it may help your readers get the idea you are putting across. Metaphor soup, on the other hand, felt over done.

But I kept reading Fowler, got through the soup, and am glad I did. He does some nice things later in the book, including some good work on vocation. It was worth it for me to push through the part I found badly put together to get to other parts of the book. Now the things Fowler says about vocation and the church are not easy slogans, they require thought and re-reading, and I’m not sure I agree with all of what he says. The key thing about this section was it made me think. It opened up new possibilities. I put things together in a different way. I think that is what good theological writing should do. I wouldn’t call Weaving the New Creation a difficult book, but I found parts of it hard to push through because of a style issue. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between style issues and profundity.

Speaking of difficult books, here is a proposed list of the most difficult books ever written. I would add Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

 

Planning to read

A couple of years ago I realized that I needed to build time to read theology into my schedule. Here is a blog post about that idea. Armstrong says some good things about planning. Let me add a few things after two years of planning to read.
1. Armstrong talks about time to read anything. I have set up a time to read theology. I read other things at other times during the day.
2. I have a preferred time to do this reading (an hour with coffee in the morning), but I have learned to be flexible. Right now, the Olympics are on. This means I am reading theology on the streetcar where I can’t stream live events. I have learned to bend with circumstances so that the reading gets done even when not at home, or when distractions arise.
3. I have found some books easy to read and others very difficult. So far I’ve just pushed through the hard books. I think I need to stop reading some books, not because they are difficult, but because they are not good enough to spend time and effort on. I haven’t figured this out completely yet. Any suggestions on criteria for quitting a book?
When do you read? What does your plan look like?

Top Science Books

Here is another lovely list for your perusal. This one has an extended title: The Classic, Beautiful and Controversial Books That Changed Science Forever. There are pretty pictures for all the books too. I am pleased by the inclusion of A Treatise on Electricity and MagnetismJames Clerk Maxwell, a person often overlooked in the history of science, but whose work on fields has a lasting influence.
Any thoughts on this list scientists? How about you non-scientists? Does the list convince you that these works are influential?

Blogging from the Patio

This morning I began reading a collection of essays published 25 years ago – back list history for sure! I am not an historian, nor the daughter of historians, but I enjoy reading history. I also write about history professionally, though none of my academic degrees is in history. If you look over at my books page, you’ll see that all the published works with my name on them have to do with the intersection of history and biblical interpretation.
All that to say that I am reading Gertrude Himmelfarb’s book, The New History and the Old with interest. By Himmelfarb’s definition, old history is history from above, and new history is history from below. Canadian examples of old history would be books about confederation, and new history would be the CBC TV series “Canada: A People’s History.” I do new history, history concerned with biblical interpretation by women, not biblical interpretation done by recognized scholars or exegetes. Some of the women gained recognition for their work, but many did not. From Himmelfarb’s classification of old vs new history, it seems that any work which recovers lost ideas might be classified as new history. I could be mis-hearing her on this point, but it seems that history from above would be the history already remembered, and history from below would be more likely to be forgotten.
In the first pages of the first essay in this book, Himmelfarb described a project that a young scholar worked on – a social history of a small town in New England at the end of the eighteenth century. She asked him about the rather large event that occurred in the USA in the late eighteenth century. Apparently from his data, he couldn’t “get to” the American revolution. Himmelfarb thought that this might indicate a deficient methodology. Instead, I think it is legitimate to ask why this data does not allow one to “get to” the Revolutionary War. Does it mean that somehow in this particular town in New England the war had little impact? Does it mean that at the time people had no sense of the import of the events of the moment? Were the town leaders sympathetic to the British? Just because we now see the American revolution as an event of some significance does not mean it was so regarded at the time by everyone.
I am fewer than five pages in and already writing long responses, this book might take a while. Oh well, it is summer.