Western culture the easy way

Slump back and watch

It’s had mixed reviews – positive in America, cynical in the UK - but if you want an easy way to assimilate the core stories of Western culture, it’s worth recording Channel 5’s mini-series on The Bible for those empty, post-Christmas days when it’s cold and miserable and you want a day on the sofa. In 10 hours (shorter if you can skip through interminable adverts) you will get an understanding of some of the core events and people which literature has referenced over the last thousand years.

Assessment Objective 4

A quarter of the marks given at A Level for English Lit. are based on your understanding of: ‘the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received’. Any student who doesn’t know the great extent to which the Bible and classical myths have infiltrated almost every play, novel, poem and even newspaper article you’ll ever come across is hugely disadvantaged. The stories they include and the views they contain have shaped politics, history, society and culture.

• To take a light-hearted example - why is the duplicitous lover in Tom Jones’ famous song called Delilah? You’ll find out from The Bible.
• Why Is Margaret Attwood’s latest bestseller called Maddaddam? She takes endless references from the Bible.

A reason for the season

In the midst of that general feeling of having been over-faced by food, wrapping paper and winter sale adverts, it’s easy to wonder what the festive season has all been about. The narrative of Episode Three of The Bible might also provide a helpful perspective on why the West celebrates Christmas (the clue is in the name).

Ten hours means that, inevitably, some well-known events have had to be left out, but, from what has been released so far, the account of biblical events at least bears a good resemblance to the contents of the Good Book – unlike the BBC Saturday entertainment series Atlantis, which is great fun but plays fast and loose with classical myths.

Of course, for real detail about how context is reflected in the texts you’ll study for Eng. Lit. there’s nowhere better than Crossref-it.info. But to get a grand sweep, why not sit back and enjoy the mini-series (aired Saturdays at 9pm on Channel 5 if you want to record)?

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to one and all!

Our Inevitable End

Free to talk?

In the UK we have freedom of speech. We are happy talking about anything and everything – except that one day we will be able to speak no more. That subject we avoid, despite the fact that it is an experience we will all face. Right now, I am doing what our culture always does – politely skirting around the unmentionable… We don’t want to be morbid do we!

Start engaging with literature and you’ll find previous generations had no such issues. Everybody dies, authors proclaim, get used to it!

> Every parent expected some of their offspring not to make it

> Wives knew that childbirth might kill them one day

> Men frequently found their 50’s to be their final decade

> Illness rarely had a remedy.

Death wasn’t an avoidable ‘unmentionable’, but in your face.

So literature engages with death. It faces it, does not flinch from examining the impact of dying on the person involved and those left behind. Characters ponder what it will be like and what they might expect on the other side of the grave.

Only connect

Earlier this term Crossref-it.info launched Only connect. The Crossref-it.info team have taken a series of themes and then looked at how each runs through and unites various texts, providing hundreds of helpful links to a variety of onsite sources.

This week sees the release of Attitudes to death. It helps students explore how cultures alter through time in the way they approach the end of life. It enables readers to trace how perspectives from the classical world and the Christian Western worldview have affected attitudes reflected within texts. Currently covering the genres of poetry and drama, after Christmas it will also feature prose.

The inescapable cannot, by definition, be escaped, but at least literature can mediate the experience to us. So instead of running or skirting around, why not try connecting?