An entry in a new series that covers these covenantal categories… Today, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) AUTHOR: JK Rowling was born in 1965 in Southwest Britain. She published Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 1997 and the book’s two follow-ups in 1998 and 1999, respectively. HIERARCHY: Rowling was a divorcedContinue reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban”
Tag Archives: Covenantal Literature
Start Here
In the posts that follow over the next couple of months, I’ll post short entries on a host of authors and works. The information and analysis I provide will use the covenant model to cover the following topics. AUTHOR: When was the author alive, and when was the work written? HIERARCHY: Where did the authorContinue reading “Start Here”
An OT Throughline
You can learn a lot by reading how the editors of anthologies decide what to include or leave out. The editors of the Norton World Masterpieces Anthology argue that the Western World is founded on the texts from three peoples: the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans. (Incidentally, they contend that St. Augustine is theContinue reading “An OT Throughline”
Chesterton on Literary Influence
In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton addresses the question of repeated myths in human culture. His metaphor is an interesting one. While the soil might be the same for the oak tree and the chrysanthemum, this does invalidate the unique qualities of each plant. I would undertake to find something like a bunch of flowersContinue reading “Chesterton on Literary Influence”
Art and Humanity
G.K. Chesterton devotes the first section of his treatise The Everlasting Man to what makes people special. He begins with a simple image: cave paintings. Through images like the one below, he asks us to reimagine the caveman. Far from being a savage, the caveman was an artist. Why does this matter? It’s telling thatContinue reading “Art and Humanity”
Reflections on Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989) accounts for the embattled state of Christian missions in the last 50 years. As a longtime missionary to India, Newbigin sees how the gospel’s call has been relativized, and he wants to give an account of the gospel that lets the pluralist culture see itself evenContinue reading “Reflections on Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society”
Augustine vs. Augustine
Any Christian consideration of literature has to reckon with Augustine. Namely, we have to reckon with Augustine’s contradictory stance on pagan literature. On the one hand, Augustine decries it. His Confessions opens with him weeping over how he wept for The Aeneid’s Dido instead of for himself. Virgil’s epic deceived him, and he wishes he’dContinue reading “Augustine vs. Augustine”
Litteratura vs. Scriptura
In his essay “What is Literature?” Rene Wellek provides a historical survey of the term. The most interesting fact, from my perspective? We have to go to Tertullian and Cassian in the second century A.D. to find the term [‘litteratura‘] used for a body of writing. They contrast secular, pagan writing, litteratura, with scriptura, theContinue reading “Litteratura vs. Scriptura”
Religious Poetry
In the editorial introduction to a book called George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (1978), Mario Di Cesare discusses how he put the book together. His talking points are revealing. First, Di Cesare finds the title “metaphysical” for the five poets less convincing than “the school of Herbert.” The book only puts Herbert’s nameContinue reading “Religious Poetry”
“What is Literature?”
As I begin to write lessons for the Covenantal Literature curriculum, I keep returning to the question, “What is literature?” It’s a subject of immense importance for a Christian understanding of literature. Is “literature” merely imaginative or fictional writing? If we say that the Bible is “literature,” what are we saying about its content? InContinue reading ““What is Literature?””
Experiments in Criticism 