SATURDAY WADE AUTHORS GROUP: SYLLABUS
LOCATION: Saturday mornings, 10:00 - 11:00, The Lecture Room at the Wade Center, corner of Washington and Lincoln Streets, Wheaton, Il.
TEXTS: C. S. Lewis. On Stories and Other Essays. A Harvest Book
George MacDonald. What’s Mine’s Mine. Johannesen.
Dorothy Sayers. Four Sacred Plays. The Camelot Press Ltd, London
Note: texts are available at the Wheaton College Bookstore at 20% discount with a certificate from the Wade Center.
DESCRIPTION: Among the many issues that C. S. Lewis discusses in his essays is: What really is the attraction of stories? Why do people avidly read them? In this collection he shares his own reasons for liking science fiction and fantasy, and for his favorite authors. Let us read critically, comparing our own reactions to his upon the issues he raises.
In What’s Mine’s Mine George MacDonald takes us into northern Scotland, where the invasion of English money and privileged attitudes works agonizing hardship upon native Highlanders. Thematically, the story focuses upon the deleterious effects of love of money, and of a doctrinally askewed Christianity, upon the human spirit.
In The Devil to Pay, Dorothy Sayers retells the Faust legend to make it a relevant exploration of the modern spirit. Her Faust is the “impulsive reformer, oversensitive to suffering,” a man possessed by an urgent determination to rework reality “regardless of the ineluctable nature of things.” As always, her thinking is astute and theologically provocative.
READINGS:
January 11: On Stories; The Novels of Charles Williams
18: Class cancelled
25: On Three Ways of Writing for Children; Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said
February 1: Class cancelled.
8: On Science Fiction; A Reply to Professor Haldane
15: The Hobbit; Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; A Panegyric for Dorothy Sayers
22: Sayers: The Devil to Pay, Preface; Scene I
March 1: Scenes II, III, and IV
8: What’s Mine’s Mine, Chapters 1 - 9
22: Chapters 17 - 24
29: Chapters 25 - 32
12: Chapters 43 - end
WEDNESDAY CLASSICS GROUP: SYLLABUS
LOCATION: Wednesday afternoons, 2:00 - 3:00, The Lecture Room at the Wade Center, corner of Washington and Lincoln Streets, Wheaton, Il.
TEXTS: Flannery O’Connor: A Prayer Journal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“ ” : Collected Works. The Library of America.
John Bunyan. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Oxford World’s Classics.
25 Books Every Christian Should Read. HarperOne.
Note: texts are available at the Wheaton College Bookstore at 20% discount with a certificate from the Wade Center.
DESCRIPTION: “Please let Christian principles permeate my writing and please let there be enough of my writing (published) for Christian principles to permeate,” Flannery O’Connor wrote in her prayer journal. We will be considering her understanding of those principles from her prayers, selected essays and letters, and how they are embodied in her novella, The Violent Bear It Away.
John Bunyan is also concerned with Christian principles, in terms of how they are to be expressed in a Christian’s daily life and thought. Deeply grounded in Scriptural precepts, perhaps no text outside the Bible is a more comprehensive, vivid, and helpful companion for the complete journey of life than this one, widely proclaimed as the first novel of English literature.
25 Books is an introductory anthology of classical Christian writings.
READINGS:
Jan. 8: Thomas a’Kempis, Imitation of Christ, 25 Books
15: Calvin: Institutes, 25 Books
22: Class cancelled.
29: Prayer Journal, Introduction; pp. 3 - 9
“The Fiction Writer and His Country” pp. 801 - 806.
Letters To A, pp. 942 - 944; To Dr. Spivey, 1102 - 1105.
Feb. 5: Class cancelled
12: Journal, pp. 10 - 21
“The Church and the Fiction Writer” pp. 807ff.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Letters to J. Hawkes, p. 1125; To Mr.___, pp 1148 - 1149
19: Journal, pp. 22 - 29
The Violent Bear It Away, Chapter I
Letters: To C. Dawkins and to A., pp 1100 - 1102; to Sister Gable, 1182.
26 : Journal, pp. 30 - 40
The Violent Bear It Away, Chapters II, III
Letters: To J Hawkes, pp 1106 - 1110
Mar. 5: The Violent Bear It Away, Chapters IV - VII
Letter: To Alfred Corn, p. 1170; To J. McKane, pp 1190 - 1191
12: The Violent Bear It Away, Chapters VIII - end
Letters: To John Hawkes, pp 1118 - 1119
19: Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, 25 Books
26: Pilgrim’s Progress, to Christian at the cross
Apr 2: Read to Christian's meeting Faithful
9: pp. Read to Christian's joining Hopeful
16: Read to Christian's meeting with Flatterer
23: Read to end of Part I
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