Spirituality as Quest, Pt. 21 -- Augustine's "Confessions"; Reading a Story, Pt. 25 -- How Much Does a Narrator Know?

Our passage from the Word of God today is Luke 1:63 which reads: "And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all."

Our quote today is from Ezra Pound. He said: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."

In this podcast, we are using as our texts: "Literature and Spirituality" by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi and Mark Ray Schmidt, and "Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing" by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

Our first topic for today is "Spirituality as Quest, Part 21" from the book, "Literature and Spirituality" by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi and Mark Ray Schmidt.

Today, we will continue reading a selection from Augustine's "Confessions."

This selection is from Book I - Childhood / Chapter 6 - The Infant Augustine

Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before thy mercy. Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy that I speak and not to a man who scorns me. Yet perhaps even thou mightest scorn me; but when thou dost turn and attend to me, thou wilt have mercy upon me. For what do I wish to say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life-in-death. Or should I call it death-in-life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and in whom thou didst form me in time - for I cannot myself remember. Thus even though they sustained me by the consolation of woman’s milk, neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts but thou, through them, didst give me the food of infancy according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all things...

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Our second topic for today is "Reading a Story, Part 25" from the book, "Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing" by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

Today, we will continue taking a look at How Much Does a Narrator Know?

In the objective point of view, the narrator does not enter the mind of any character but describes events from the outside. Telling us what people say and how their faces look, he or she leaves us to infer their thoughts and feelings. So inconspicuous is the narrator that this point of view has been called "the fly on the wall." This metaphor assumes the existence of a fly with a highly discriminating gaze, who knows which details to look for to communicate the deepest meaning. Some critics would say that in the objective point of view, the narrator disappears altogether. Consider this passage by a writer famous for remaining objective, Dashiell Hammett, in his mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, describing his private detective Sam Spade.

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