Readings and Ideas for the week of July 7, 2024

Water running under the footpath bridge at Matthew's Cove

In reading through Luke 24, I thought about how Jesus  seemed to be trolling to the two travelers when he asked, "What things?"
When I mentioned this to Shane, he said that  Jesus was asking Socratic (!) questions because Jesus knew all things including the thoughts and conversations of people when he interacted with them he needed to follow normal speech patterns in dialogue to make the conversation flow naturally. 
If you look at other dialogues Jesus has, you can see how he accomplished this and depending on who he is talking to, how gentle or admonishing he is.

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In researching a term used by Tolkien, I read this article which alluded to authors 'borrowing plot structures from classical dramas". 

https://lithub.com/jrr-tolkien-invented-the-term-eucatastrophe-what-does-it-mean/

Curious about what the writer meant about classical plot structures, I found this paper simply called The Classical Plot. And on the very second page, I found a reference using a quote from Aristotle to explain his definition of a plot. And the citation listed Aristotle's Poetics which having never read Aristotle, I was surprised to see it wasn't poetry discussions which I had wrongly assumed all this time.
So now I have Poetics on my list to read to help me understand plot structure better.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/71764/sample/9780521771764wsc00.pdf

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I found this book in the Free bin by the exit doors of our local Habitat for Humanity store where I sometimes go to look for used books. I gave it a quick look through and thought it maybe had some interesting church history in a different format which the Reader's Digest editorial team had done justice to. I'm only two pages in and I have found the retelling of the founding of Christianity compelling in it's presentation.

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This week, I listened to an episode of The Literary Life Podcast with Dr. Vigen Guroian on Fairy Tales and Children's Literature. I was already familiar with his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination and had perused it several years ago, but hearing him discuss it in person was a great refresher on this topic.
The show notes linked to an article in Touchstone magazine, The Fairy Tale Wars which goes into more detail on some of the topics he touched on. And it references an article by Dickens that I also read entitled Frauds on the Fairies from October 1, 1853 and which the first paragraph honors the fairy tales passed down in various retellings.

It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force--many such good things have been first nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us, in some sense, ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing their delights.

Dickens goes on to lament how illustrator Mr. George Cruikshank has altered versions of fairy tales so that he can incorporate moral lessons on "Total Abstinence, Prohibition of the sale of spirituous liquors, Free Trade, and Popular Education" to which Dickens protests that Cruikshank has "no greater moral justification in altering the harmless little books than we should have in altering his best etchings". 
One of my favorite lines in the essay was his recalling this bit of lore: " like the famous definition of a weed; a thing growing up in a wrong place". The opinions Cruikshank interpolates into the esteemed fairy tales may be good, but they are in the wrong place, Dickens argues. That use of the word interpolates carries the same meaning that Charlotte Mason warned about teachers and parents placing themselves and their thoughts in between the text and the student so that a disruption between the mind of the writer and the mind of the student occurs.
From School Education, p.177

Again, as I have already said, ideas must reach us directly from the mind of the thinker, and it is chiefly by means of the books they have written that we get in touch with the best minds.

Earlier on the same page, she remarks that the right books have their power of giving impulse and stirring emotion. Dickens considered that fairy tales are the slight channels in which inestimable amounts of gentleness and mercy have reached us. 
I'm not aware of Dicken's theology of how these good traits come to readers of fairy tales, but I do know that Charlotte Mason attributed this to the work of the Holy Spirit.

(Parents and Children, p. 270-271)

...but the great recognition, that God the Holy Spirit is Himself, personally, the Imparter of knowledge, the Instructor of youth, the Inspirer of genius, is a conception so far lost to us...

By trying to force our opinions, ideas and concerns of coaxing the child's character towards the good by the stories and books they are exposed to, we usurp the role of the Holy Spirit who knows exactly when and how to bring to mind the ideas necessary to instruct the conscience in the best and most meaningful way. By limiting our own flow of explaining and talk, we can instead share what Mason calls, an appreciate look or word and thus, we ensure that we leave a generous avenue for even the slightest nudge of the Holy Spirit to do His work when the child can benefit from it the most.
So much more could be said, but I will leave these unoriginal ideas here for now.