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Workshops
Classes and Seminars
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The
Validity of Literary Types
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Led
by Geoff Wood
4 Wednesdays, 7- 8:30 pm
March 15- April 5, 2006
Cost: $60
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We
live in an age where truth must meet the measure of mankind. In
other words, it must submit to the measurements, the tests we
have designed for it to be accepted as valid. We observe, we sense
connections, we test what we see in order to preclude our imagination's
getting in the way and we finally accept as true, as a fact that
the earth rotates around the sun or this medication prevents this
ailment. In other words, the truth of things must venture within
whatever flexible boundaries we can control. We prefer to make
the truth come to us, yield to us - so as not to be deceived by
wishful thinking.
But
what about the truths of Scripture and literature? In all such
material we are presented with real or fictional people and events
which are raised to a typical level and declared to be valid assessments
of human nature and human destiny. Imagined or embellished as
they are, can they be held as valid unveilings of something at
least as true as the truths of science - and even truer than true?
We
shall look at such unveilings or revelations of human nature and
destiny as they occur in Goethe's Faust and Tolkien's Lord of
the Rings and possibly other works to see whether they in particular
say anything about life on this planet that's as valid as the
nature of things you find in a science textbook - and maybe more
so. We shall also discuss how and when it was that the validity
of such literature came to be doubted.
Dr.
Wood has a Ph.D. in Sacred Theology from Catholic University,
Washington, D.C. and a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from Rome's
Pontifical Bible University. He has taught at Catholic University,
Swarthmore and Bucknell University.
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