"Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose." Do adults respond as well to dry descriptive prose as they do to great fiction? If so, it is hard to explain how Homer, Dante, et al. achieved such enduring places in our heritage.
"Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose."
Do adults respond as well to dry descriptive prose as they do to great fiction? If so, it is hard to explain how Homer, Dante, et al. achieved such enduring places in our heritage.
It's true that everyone loves stories. What I mean to say is that stories are far more valuable for *teaching* truths (or lies) than *discovering* truths. We teach our children in this way. But as men, we need to be aware that the lessons these stories are trying to teach us might not be true.
I also think that Homer and Dante are studied primarily out of what I called "historical study", and secondarily out of educational inertia and intellectual prestige. This essay of Paul Graham's comes to mind, about how the study of literature has its roots in highly practical historical study of the Greco-Roman past but through inertia devolved into a meaningless scholarly prestige game.
And for all that, I think Dante and Homer are fascinating (I read the Divine Comedy for the first time about a year ago), but they're not exactly highly entertaining stories, nor do they ever read as well in translation as more recent classics of English-language literature or poetry. They're fascinating because history is fascinating and they're a deep dive into the very different perspectives of a very different time and place, which helps to make us aware of the narrowness of our own cultural perspective.
We read fiction because the best fiction gives insight into human nature, not for entertainment nor for historical value.
If you look at the Great Books of the Western World set, they established selection criteria that began with the great questions of life, which are part of the first volume, The Great Conversation. Then they insisted that a work must address some minimum number of those questions in order to be included. Then there was an evaluation of excellence in addressing those questions. the fact that different authors disagreed in their answers to the great questions was irrelevant; the choosers (e.g. Mortimer Adler) repeatedly had to address the point that the set was not a "canon of belief." If it were, then mutually contradictory beliefs would be part of the "canon" which is absurd.
You can see that there are many works of fiction in the set, along with history, science, and philosophy. That is because those works of fiction touch upon multiple great questions, in an excellent way.
Entertainment, intellectual prestige, study of history via literature, educational inertia, etc., have nothing to do with it.
Thanks, that's a thoughtful answer. Though I suppose I'm not really persuaded by it -- I think this is an argument that exists to defend the status quo, which itself was inherited from the High Middle Ages.
And I'm sympathetic to the idea that when it comes to the education of young people, that status quo (at least as it stood in the mid-20th century) is better than any realistic alternative. Better to read Homer and 19th-20th century classic novels than the fashionable novels of 2023.
But it's not persuasive to me to say that the Iliad offers some great insight into human nature that would be difficult to otherwise come upon, if we divorce it from its historical and sentimental value.
If all knowledge of Homer were somehow lost and someone secretly rediscovered the Iliad, translated it into English prose, renamed all the people and places, and presented it as his own original work of fantasy written in 2023, I'm not convinced that anyone would be impressed with it. In fact, I think most of the same people who are inclined to praise Homer would write this new work off dismissively as "genre fiction", "juvenile adventure stories", etc., written in a style that's devoid of charm, elegance, poetry (the curse of translation).
Now, here's one new thought I had: all of the novels Aaron is describing here have something *like* historical value, in that they offer interesting countercultural social commentary from outside the contemporary English-speaking world. Which is something to which we are otherwise seldom exposed. Also fiction can offer ways to offer unpopular, even taboo social criticism without being ostracized ("canceled"). Which probably explains much of Tom Wolfe's career. This again makes more sense to me than the idea that the actions of fictional characters, told in the form of a novel, are some uniquely powerful means of gaining wisdom about the great questions of life.
"Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose."
Do adults respond as well to dry descriptive prose as they do to great fiction? If so, it is hard to explain how Homer, Dante, et al. achieved such enduring places in our heritage.
It's true that everyone loves stories. What I mean to say is that stories are far more valuable for *teaching* truths (or lies) than *discovering* truths. We teach our children in this way. But as men, we need to be aware that the lessons these stories are trying to teach us might not be true.
I also think that Homer and Dante are studied primarily out of what I called "historical study", and secondarily out of educational inertia and intellectual prestige. This essay of Paul Graham's comes to mind, about how the study of literature has its roots in highly practical historical study of the Greco-Roman past but through inertia devolved into a meaningless scholarly prestige game.
http://paulgraham.com/essay.html
And for all that, I think Dante and Homer are fascinating (I read the Divine Comedy for the first time about a year ago), but they're not exactly highly entertaining stories, nor do they ever read as well in translation as more recent classics of English-language literature or poetry. They're fascinating because history is fascinating and they're a deep dive into the very different perspectives of a very different time and place, which helps to make us aware of the narrowness of our own cultural perspective.
We read fiction because the best fiction gives insight into human nature, not for entertainment nor for historical value.
If you look at the Great Books of the Western World set, they established selection criteria that began with the great questions of life, which are part of the first volume, The Great Conversation. Then they insisted that a work must address some minimum number of those questions in order to be included. Then there was an evaluation of excellence in addressing those questions. the fact that different authors disagreed in their answers to the great questions was irrelevant; the choosers (e.g. Mortimer Adler) repeatedly had to address the point that the set was not a "canon of belief." If it were, then mutually contradictory beliefs would be part of the "canon" which is absurd.
You can see that there are many works of fiction in the set, along with history, science, and philosophy. That is because those works of fiction touch upon multiple great questions, in an excellent way.
Entertainment, intellectual prestige, study of history via literature, educational inertia, etc., have nothing to do with it.
Thanks, that's a thoughtful answer. Though I suppose I'm not really persuaded by it -- I think this is an argument that exists to defend the status quo, which itself was inherited from the High Middle Ages.
And I'm sympathetic to the idea that when it comes to the education of young people, that status quo (at least as it stood in the mid-20th century) is better than any realistic alternative. Better to read Homer and 19th-20th century classic novels than the fashionable novels of 2023.
But it's not persuasive to me to say that the Iliad offers some great insight into human nature that would be difficult to otherwise come upon, if we divorce it from its historical and sentimental value.
If all knowledge of Homer were somehow lost and someone secretly rediscovered the Iliad, translated it into English prose, renamed all the people and places, and presented it as his own original work of fantasy written in 2023, I'm not convinced that anyone would be impressed with it. In fact, I think most of the same people who are inclined to praise Homer would write this new work off dismissively as "genre fiction", "juvenile adventure stories", etc., written in a style that's devoid of charm, elegance, poetry (the curse of translation).
Now, here's one new thought I had: all of the novels Aaron is describing here have something *like* historical value, in that they offer interesting countercultural social commentary from outside the contemporary English-speaking world. Which is something to which we are otherwise seldom exposed. Also fiction can offer ways to offer unpopular, even taboo social criticism without being ostracized ("canceled"). Which probably explains much of Tom Wolfe's career. This again makes more sense to me than the idea that the actions of fictional characters, told in the form of a novel, are some uniquely powerful means of gaining wisdom about the great questions of life.