Welcome, literary scholars
“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.” ~Joyce Carol Oates "Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul -- eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight." ~ Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book |
In her essay "How Reading Makes Us More Human," Karen Swallow Prior addresses two articles that have fueled a debate over the point of reading--a "battle over books."
Hyperbole? Perhaps. Yet to call it a "battle over books" serves as an effective rhetorical device to engage her audience. So let's see what she has to say.
Prior critiques the notion that reading "makes us better" (i.e. "more moral") or "smarter and nicer." Rather, she argues that the real value of reading, "what good literature can do and does do -- far greater than any importation of morality -- is touch the human soul." She cites Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book. "Peterson describes this ancient art of lectio divina, or spirtual reading, as 'reading that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through our blood, and becomes...love and wisdom.' "
Let's take some time to savor the words, those we have already digested, those we are chewing right now, and those that are tantalizing our appetites.
*Prior, "How Reading Makes Us More Human," The Atlantic Monthly, June 21, 2013
See http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-reading-makes-us-more-human/277079/
Hyperbole? Perhaps. Yet to call it a "battle over books" serves as an effective rhetorical device to engage her audience. So let's see what she has to say.
Prior critiques the notion that reading "makes us better" (i.e. "more moral") or "smarter and nicer." Rather, she argues that the real value of reading, "what good literature can do and does do -- far greater than any importation of morality -- is touch the human soul." She cites Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book. "Peterson describes this ancient art of lectio divina, or spirtual reading, as 'reading that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through our blood, and becomes...love and wisdom.' "
Let's take some time to savor the words, those we have already digested, those we are chewing right now, and those that are tantalizing our appetites.
*Prior, "How Reading Makes Us More Human," The Atlantic Monthly, June 21, 2013
See http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-reading-makes-us-more-human/277079/