Relational Evangelism & the Great Texts

What works of literature are on your “I really should read” list? Something by Austen, Dickens, or Dostoevsky? Or maybe Augustine, Shakespeare, or Faulkner?

I stare at my copy of Dante’s Vita Nuova and say to myself,” Maybe this summer I’ll finally finish it.”

Ellesmere Chaucer, Huntington Library

What keeps us from reading the great works of literature? Professors in the humanities continue to lament that today’s college students are not only not reading the great books in classes, but they’re seldom taking humanities classes period. Elizabeth Corey in a recent article in First Things attempts to address this major problem of the so-called crisis in the humanities by proposing the partial solution of mentoring and relational “evangelism.”*  

As Corey points out, the great texts are there “ready to be picked up.” In fact, “anyone can read them at any time and, if one is ready, harvest what they have to offer.” Never has this been more true than now, when electronic versions (PDF scans, e-texts, Kindle books) are available to readers 24/7.

Yet, we likely all agree with Corey that “these books are far from easy, and they often quickly end up back on the shelf. I cannot count the number of eager freshmen,” she says, “who have told me they wanted to get a head start on Plato’s Republic before reading it in class. I do not think a single one has ever successfully made it past Book 1. Nor do I blame them” (43).

I suspect that this anecdotal statistic extends to sophomores, juniors, seniors, and even grad students. I dare say it occasionally extends to professors. How many times have I picked up (true confessions) a Great Text for summer reading, whether Homer’s Iliad or William Langland’s Piers Plowman or Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and not finished it? Would I have finished that work had it been required reading for a course or a group? Yes. Would I have finished it had I been sitting under a professor or even been part of a reading group of my peers? Yes, but what’s more, experience suggests that with the guidance of an instructor and/or peers I would have come away with more insight into and appreciation for the work.

This is the point that Corey comes to in her article: “[A]lmost all of us,” she states, “. . . require more than bureaucratic exhortation or the abstract knowledge that the study of humanities is important. More is required even than strong personal desire and a sense of incompleteness.”

“We need a particular person to tell us about a particular book or author or field of study, to demonstrate its significance in practice, to act as a master to whom we can apprentice ourselves,” says Corey. “We must, in quasi-religious terms, be evangelized so that we come to desire what we see and to understand it as beautiful, compelling, worthy of pursuit. We must see why it is worth loving” (43).

I think this is so true, even if there’s not quite the master/apprentice relationship. In my classroom of anywhere from 5 to 30, I am trying to help my students see why the great works are worthy of pursuit and worth loving. How many of them would have picked up Chaucer in Middle English on their own? Answer: maybe 1-2 per large class. And yet so many will come to appreciate and even enjoy reading Chaucer after grappling with the text with guidance, instruction, and discussion.

Milton’s Paradise Lost would not be one of my favorite texts today had I not first read it under the direction and instruction of a good professor. Neither would Laurence Sterne’s 18^th-century novella A Sentimental Journey (a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek work which I now greatly enjoy inflicting on my own students). My hope is that my students will come not only to see why that particular text is worthy of pursuit, but come to desire such qualities in the other things they read.

And according to Corey, this takes a personal connection.

* Elizabeth Corey, “Learning in Love,” First Things (April 2014): 41-46.