Re: OT: time and religion and literature (was Re: Opinions wanted: person of vocatives)

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 05:04, michael poxon wrote:
> >
> > But what normal congregation reads Yeats or Tolkien?
> >
> I don't recall any mention of congregations. To my mind, religion has very
> little to do with congregations and far more to do with Yeats, Tolkien and
> poetry, music and art generally, and would say that religion is not a
> different matter from literature, even though it seems to have become so in
> the West.
Sounds closer to theology in my mind.

> > Religion is a different matter from literature. Unless you're a member
> > of that cult the name of which I forget, you generally get your children
> > involved in a religion at a youngish age.
>
> I wouldn't dream of getting my children involved in 'religion' at a young
> age. They do not have the reasoning power or worldly experience to decide
> whether the wool is being pulled over their eyes or not. Religious
> experience is (and should be) open to all, rather than 'theology for the
> masses' which loses all veracity at the slightest touch of science. That's
> why I took great pains to get our babies to look up at the stars with us.
Sounds quite sensible.

> > No piece of literature can be truly appreciated without living in the
> > same culture as the author. The best that can be done for OE texts,
> > Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austin or Poe is an study of the society they came
> > from>
>
> Surely not; so we can't truly appreciate Blake's poetry because we're not
> 18th century middle-class Londoners?
Nup. That doesn't mean we can't appreciate it, but we can't appreciate
it fully.

--
Tristan.