Spirituality as Quest, Pt. 17 -- Augustine's "Confessions"; Reading a Story, Pt. 21 -- Point of View

Our passage from the Word of God today is Revelation 1:3 which reads: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand."

 

Our quote today is from Gustave Flaubert. He said: "An author in his book must be like God in His universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

 

Our first topic for today is "Spirituality as Quest, Part 17" from the book, "Literature and Spirituality" by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi and Mark Ray Schmidt.

 

Today, we're taking a brief look at Augustine.

 

Augustine (354-430) lived during the decline of the Roman Empire. His pagan father ensured that Augustine received an excellent education. Beyond this fact, his father's influence on Augustine seems to have been marginal. However, his mother's influence was very powerful. She was a Christian who over the years, became very strong in her faith. Perhaps her spiritual growth can be linked to her prayerful struggles with God over the destiny of her rebellious and confused son. Born and educated in northern Africa, Augustine eventually taught rhetoric (effective speaking and critical thinking) in Rome and Milan, Italy. After his conversion to Christianity, he returned to North Africa and served as an influential bishop and a defender of orthodox Christian doctrines.

 

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Our second topic for today is "Reading a Story, Part 21" from the book, "Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing" by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

 

Today, we're taking a look at Point of View.

 

In the opening lines of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain takes care to separate himself from the leading character, who is to tell his own story. It begins: "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly."

 

Twain wrote the novel, but the narrator or speaker is Huck Finn, a fictional character who supposedly tells the story. Obviously, in Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of the story is not the same person as the "real-life" author. In employing Huck as his narrator, Twain selects a special angle of vision: not his own, exactly, but that of a resourceful boy moving through the thick of events, with a mind at times shrewd, at other times innocent. Through Huck's eyes, Twain takes in certain scenes, actions, and characters and - as only Huck's angle of vision could have enabled Twain to do so well - records them memorably.

 

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