“Two of the most cogent essays are ‘The Lost Tools of Learning’ and ‘The Teaching of Latin’, and it would be too much to hope that they will influence educational practice.”
— C. S. Lewis, review of Dorothy Sayers’ The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement
“I am no enemy of the classics. I have read the Aeneid through more often than I have read any long poem; I have just finished re-reading the Iliad; to lose what I owe to Plato and Aristotle would be like the amputation of a limb. Hardly any lawful price would seem to me too high for what I have gained by being made to learn Latin and Greek. If any question of the value of classical studies were before us, you would find me on the extreme right.”
— C. S. Lewis, The Idea of an ‘English School’
These lessons include books seven through ten of the Aeneid. We are now into the second half of this epic, which is as much like the Iliad as the first half was like the Odyssey: famous warriors boasting and battling until they fall, their armor ringing around them, while the gods watch and interfere, seeking their own advantage. The parallels between the books that I noted myself or that Wes Callihan reveals help make these lessons truly intriguing. Let me note a few. Continue reading Great Books Challenge Lessons 7-8
I have worked through the Old and New Testament, trying to identify every speech in the Bible by reference, speaker, audience, and brief description. By my criteria, I found 235 speeches in the Old Testament and 278 in the New Testament, for a total of 513 speeches. This will be a useful tool as I work on writing a Rhetoric text. Some interesting notes:
I am now working on the best way to make it available for others to use.
I am currently working on identifying every speech in the Bible.
“And how do you define a speech, exactly?” Good question. Here is my criteria:
I will let you know when I am done.
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Books four through six of the Aeneid are some of the most fascinating and memorable of this epic tale! In these chapters we read of the tragedy of Dido, the funeral games of Achises, and the journey of Aeneas into the underworld. Wes Callihan once again brings to light many practical lessons and interesting insights from these stories, and I look forward to each new lesson from Old Western Culture, wondering what I will learn next.