The fine fellows over at SFSignal ask the musical question
If you were creating the syllabus for a high school (junior or senior) English Literature course, what SF/F stories do you think should be included?
I answer the question with more than my usually curmudgeonly charm here:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/mind-meld-sff-stories-for-english-lit-class/
And writers who treat the question with more respect than I do no doubt give wiser answers than yours truly. Enjoy.
(My answer below the cut.)
The question is frankly a very difficult one. Let us analyze it.
The purpose of education is to teach the youth the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and, as they grow, to teach either a trade or to train them in the liberal arts (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy).
Additionally, education must instruct the youth in the Christian faith and classical virtues (fortitude, temperance, justice, prudence), as well as teaching enough Civics and history to allow them to be productive and honest citizens of this Republic, able to serve as jurors, voters, or soldiers, wisely and bravely, as the need demands.
Unfortunately, the Progressives of over a century ago usurped the educational industry, and created an establishment similar to the Established Church of England, in that the schools became the primary conduit not of education, but of indoctrination in progressive dogmas, and, later, various lunatic dogmas of the Politically Correct, communism, feminism, sexual liberation, environmentalism, and most of all the doctrine that all philosophy is meaningless and all ethics relative, and human life not sacred.
Given this, when I am asked what science fiction and fantasy I would recommend to educate and instruct the youth, I take the question as being akin to asking what superhero comic books or fairy princess Disney cartoons I would recommend to educate and instruct the youth. But the purpose of science fiction and fantasy is to entertain, not to instruct. When art becomes didactic and pedagogical, it often loses its savor.
The question, for that purpose, is remarkably frivolous. At a time when children are not reading Euclid’s Elements is not the time to ask if they should be reading E.E. Smith’s Galactic Patrol. Let them first read Plutarch’s Lives, or Jacobus de Voragine’s Lives of the Saints, before they read Doug Adams’ Life, The Universe and Everything.
Ah! But there are three other purposes to education I have not mentioned. In regard to these other purposes of education, the question is not frivolous at all.
The first unmentioned purpose is the training of the passions so as to form and shape the character of the young so that their emotions will tend to fit the stock responses to stock situations.
Young men must learn to love what is loveable and hate what is hateful, to seek honor and flee shame, and above all to be honest; young women must learn femininity, decorum, chastity, and above all to be honest. Both must learn to love their country and their homes, to respect and obey their parents, and to revere God. They should adore the sublime beauties of nature and abhor modern art. In a Republic they must also learn respect for their fellow citizens, to fear the law, and supply Christian charity to the poor and weak.
If dear reader, you read this last paragraph and conclude that I am joking, or mad, or stupid, or deformed with unforgivable evil, I draw your attention to the fact that you yourself have been trained in a certain stock response, but one which is less useful to civilization and civility that the list of stock responses I give. You have been conditioned, with your own willing participation perhaps, to regard emotion as superior to reason, and selfish emotion or self esteem as superior to everything, to regard honor as bluster, honesty as narrow-mindedness, sexual roles as oppression, religion as superstition hiding a dark impulse toward tyranny, obedience as craven and old-fashioned; and as for chastity, you probably have not heard that word spoken in a year, or in a decade, or ever and then only to hear it mocked.
If the concept of decency, the concept of the sexes treating each other virtuously and honestly, is literately unthinkable to you, if you cannot imagine it without giggling, without sneering, or cannot imagine it at all, then the conditioners have conditioned you well.
Dear reader, the idea of using the institution of educational instruction (which is the mechanisms used to pass the legacy of civilization to the next generation) openly and deliberately to pass along the Christian and classical virtues, our history, our way of life, as well as the theory and practice of civics and citizenship, no doubt strikes you as unconstitutional, if not appalling.
This is because you are indoctrinated in the idea that an educational establishment is like an established Church, and can only teach those things the state approves; and that the state, for reasons of public amity and Constitutionally limited government, cannot meddle in affairs of religion or indoctrination of the virtues. I draw your attention to the paradox involved: the theory of limited government places religion and virtue beyond the public sphere. But if education is placed within the public sphere, and made compulsory, tax-supported, then the youth cannot be educated in the fundamental things (things like virtue, wisdom, faith, good character) which education properly so called is meant to plant in the next generation. This means that by definition education cannot educate.
It can only regiment and indoctrinate.
It can only condition the subjects (not students) like Pavlov’s dogs to salivate when their master, Caesar, proffers them a treat, and to growl and bark at everything else, including (ironically) a real education.
This brings us to the second unmentioned purpose to education. It is the duty of every man of good will to rebel against the educational establishment as it currently stands and to subvert the current form of society and government, so as to abolish eventually, by slow increments or sudden revolution, the current Progressive program of compulsory indoctrination, and the cult of the culture of death.
The watchdogs of the establishment, O my revolutionary brothers and sisters, are slow-eyed and stupid, and we may be able to smuggle in the form of literature and entertainment works of art which subvert the paradigm, and rescue the next generation from the present age of darkness.
The third and final unmentioned purpose of education is merely to instruct the young in the culture and the history of their forefathers. Here science fiction and fantasy clearly has a role, for it is useful and necessary to teach the young to read and appreciate older books, including science fiction books, which have influenced the culture, or which have merit in their own right and may otherwise be forgotten.
At this point, it were easy enough to make a list of works of science fiction and fantasy which fill these three pedagogic, subversive, or preservative purposes:
Let us take the preservative purpose first. There are works of SFF which every literate person in the West should read at least once. Fantasy and Science Fiction cannot be understood except against the background of the ancient literature from which they sprang, and of which they alone are heir (for mainstream literature has betrayed the ancient traditions). Therefore, I recommend the high school students be required to read
- The Illiad by Homer
- The Oddesy
- Antigone by Sophocles
- The Orestiea of Aeschylus (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides)
- The Aeneid of Virgil
- Scipio’s Dream by Cicero
- The Divine Comedy of Dante (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio)
- Orlando Furioso by Ariosto
- Faerie Queen by Spencer
- Paradise Lost by Milton
- Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caeser, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, The Tempest by Shakespeare
- Le Morte de Arthur by Mallory
- Idylls of the King by Tennyson
- A Christmas Carol by Dickens
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
- Jungle Book and ‘With the Night Mail’ by Kipling
- 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, From Earth to the Moon, Around the World in 80 Days, Master of the World by Jules Verne
- War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells
- Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
- Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Bradbury
- The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
- A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
For the purposes of subverting the dominant establishment, unfortunately I have far fewer books to recommend, since science fiction writers tend to be almost comically sheepish in their conformity to fashionable correctness, men like Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, John Brunner, and J. G. Ballard.
But here and there, astonishing rebels rear their ungainly heads crowned with horns that they shake in defiance at the reaches of middle heaven:
- Phantasies by MacDonald
- Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. I would also include his Voyage of the Dawn Treader, except that frightened parents may not be willing to let their softbrained children read such dangerous literature.
- Smith of Wotton Major and the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.
- A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
- The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, as well as The Ballad of the White Horse.
- Past Master by R.A. Lafferty.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller, Jr.
- ‘Scanners Live in Vain’, ‘ The Dead Lady of Clown Town’, ‘ Alpha Ralpha Boulevard’ by Cordwainer Smith
- Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
- ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, ‘ The Garden of Forking Paths’, ‘The Library of Babel’, ‘The Lottery in Babylon’ by Jorge Luis Borges.
- ‘Fifth Head of Cerberus’ by Gene Wolfe as well as his Short Sun trilogy (On Blue’s Waters, In Green’s Jungles. Return to the Whorl).
I will pause to mention one oddity, because it both belongs on this list and not. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess in the American version is conformist to the dominant paradigm. But the original British version, which ends in the beginning of reformation in the young sociopathic hooligan, is subversive; as all tales of redemption and reformation are.
Books which indicate the proper stock responses to things both fair and foul are more likely to be found in boy’s adventure fiction, girl’s romance paperbacks, or ballads and epic than in anything written after 1950. For the purposes of answering the question, the list above will serve for this as well.
Let me explain the including of what seems an oddity, namely, the pulp adventure fiction A Princess of Mars. I include this only because a young man of my acquaintance resolved ever to treat young ladies chivalrously, politely, and in a manly fashion only because of this book, and he rejected the cult of mutual sexual exploitation which the modern society seems to think normal or healthy. His stock response toward honor had been correctly trained.
I would have included Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein, or Farmer in the Sky as an example of decent boy’s adventure fiction, except that the stock responses recorded in the book and passed onto the reader are the opposite of what is right, proper, normal and real. In the climax of Have Space Suit, for example, the hero Kip observes the trial of the vicious man-eating aliens called Wormfaces guilty of attack against Earth, and when the superhuman judges of an even more advanced race ask if any will speak on their behalf, Kip ponders whether he should plead for mercy for those who attacked his world, dismisses the idea with contempt, and hopes for their total obliteration. This is the exact wrong response to teach the young. Pitilessness is not a value for civilized men to teach their young. (Ironically, Kip and all the Earth are placed on trial in the next chapter, and the expected outcome, that the superhuman judges would condemn Earth for being as aggressive, pitiless and warlike as the Wormfaces, and like them obliterated, does not come about. Kip is never punished nor upbraided for his genocidal barbarism.)
Likewise, the final scene in Farmer consists of a discussion of how population growth leads to hunger, famine and war, and how societies rise and fall in a dismal and unalterable cycle of ponderous historical forces no one can control. Fatalism is likewise not a civilized value.
However and finally, certain science fiction books can be used to teach the youths science. To this end, I suggest only those authors who are loyal to John W Campbell Junior’s notions of realistic or ‘hard’ science fiction, who include both informative and entertaining ‘infodumps’ in their works. Let me mention specifically the book just named: Have Space Suit, Will Travel. It has the most crisp and well written description of how a spacesuit of the future (at the time it was written) might be.
But even less scientifically accurate works contain reams of information about astronomy and physics of which the general public is sadly uninformed or underinformed. I have read news articles by writers who did not know the difference between a star and a galaxy, or thought that a light-year was a measure of time. Since I am not the only one here being asked this question, and since I am confident wiser heads than mine will answer along these lines, I will not list the books best suited to teaching the basics of science.
I will close with an observation that some science fiction works teach more science than some so called nonfiction works, such as Cosmos by Carl Sagan, which at times seems more concerned with teaching science-worship rather than true science.
Since science-worship and not true science is part of the dominant paradigm of this present age of darkness, it is exactly this kind of nonsense science fiction is in an unique position to subvert, in order that truth be smuggled in to the hungry young past the watchful dragons of our present political masters.
If science fiction could teach the young true science, that is, true skepticism, rather than the gape-mouthed gullible emotionalism they are currently taught, the world would be changed and much for the better.
And, no surprise, the sneering has already started over at SFSignal. Someone is actually aghast that you think students should be taught virtue.
If that particular person had merely included the part of Christianity (with some, oh, I don’t know… actual argument) that would have at least raised legitimate questions. But the guy is against the teaching of justice. Justice! Scandal! Prudence. Lunatic!
They are already being taught the modern version of such concepts which are the inverse of the classic meanings, they are taught their opposites. They are not against the teaching of their children of “ethics” as long as it is not actual virtue.
Joel I think is merely angry that he was made to read something long and above the popcorn eating drooling level of half consciousness.
The thing that really gets me is the hive mind, the Borg mind of these people. They are all the same. I went to my first science fiction convention in April and the homogeny of the crowds was paranoia inducing. Here is a collection of people who are ardent fans of a genre that is about the future, about the new, about the untried, about the different – and they step as one foot, one voice, and shout down anything that differs from their worldview.
I really couldn’t tell at times whether I was at a science fiction convention or an alternative lifestyle convention for really unattractive people with obesity issues. In short – freak show. I would be willing to bet the party affiliation there was 95% democrat with rest filled in with Green party, Communist party and the rest of that ilk. If there was a Republican there I would have spotted him, I did not.
This was the Norwescon which is for the Seattle area which is libby heaven.
We went to a panel on ethics presentation in science fiction. I bet a guy $10 that without our help the name of Ayn Rand would come up at least twice and negatively. I made ten dollars because it came up three times and each with sniggering. They were that predictable – and I am including the authors as well as the fans.
I would argue against the mindbots making those comments at SF Signal but they are not interested in argument; merely in mutual backslapping.
I know that feeling–the mutual backslapping, I mean. I recently made a negative comment about pornography in an on-line thread full of bronies. You should have seen the way they came down on me.
I had naively assumed that pornography was something people did privately and in shame. It never occurred to me that anyone might actually praise it as something virtuous. I guess I had heard before of people praising it, but I’m not sure I believed it before now. I simply did not know moral degeneration could really go that far.
I think sf is suffering from this sameness you mention. If there’s one thing a leftist or “multiculturalist” cannot do, it is imagine that there really exists an opinion or culture differing from his own.
I did not know there was such a person as a brony.
I wouldn’t say naive about the acceptance of porn, just uninformed. It is largely acceptable although I don’t think it is really thought of as virtuous. It is just not looked on, by a large part of the population, particularly the younger, as a vice.
The first instance I can think of where it was presented as something culturally acceptable, at least mainstream, was an episode of Friends from season 4 (1997) where Joey and Chandler discover they are getting a free porn channel and are afraid to turn it lest they lose it, they remain glued to the television for days.
There was an earlier episode from season 2 where it is discovered that Joey had a bit non-sexual part in a porno and the friends watch. I think Joey was embarrassed at first but he was proud of it when they put it in the player.
Sitcoms are the common breaking ground for the acceptance of such things. The explicit female slut was born on Golden Girls. The Big Bang Theory (which I otherwise like for its constant geek references and jokes) takes all the modern mores concerning sex as axiomatic. It has the mandatory slut, the porn watching masturbatory creepy guy that is still “lovable”. The catholic girl claimed in an episode that it was 3 dates before sex could happen (I am not sure if she was supposed to be a version of abstinence or not – it was surely the longest time waited before sex that I can recall).
Given that many women and girls are now reading torture porn as some form of “literature”, I would expect to see more and more women not only find pornography to be acceptable but to actively pursue it as entertainment as many men do. I am referring of course to the abysmal 50 Shades of Grey (not to be confused with Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde – which one of my wife’s book club members had the unfortunate experience of confusing).
The moral degeneration is really those that seek to make vice acceptable.
I can’t express how dismayed I was at my science fiction convention experience. Loved the panels (and the rare, singed, R.A. Lafferty books I found) and meeting authors. But man, the crowd, the fans arf – attack of the clones!
For what it’s worth, it sounds like your experience was partly a Seattle thing (though yes, partly an SF fan thing). I just went to Chicon 7 a few weeks ago, and while the liberals were clearly dominant (and had their usual stance of assumed domination that I experience in most contexts), it wasn’t quite the overwhelming hivemind you describe.
“Joel I think is merely angry that he was made to read something long and above the popcorn eating drooling level of half consciousness. ”
I can’t speak for Joel, but courtesy of Leah Libresco’s blog, a rather depressing article about the inability of children to use complex sentences, for the simple reason that they haven’t been taught grammar. I suspect a lot of children are turned off “long, boring” books simply because they just cannot understand the language; not that they can’t read the individual words or don’t know what they mean, but that they simply are not able to put together a whole sentence that uses clauses.
The only cure, apart from going back to the nuts and bolts of teaching spelling, grammar and writing, is to leave books around for children to read – and books of all kinds, not just the pap that is simplified or deemed ‘award-winning’ because they deal with Issues.
I am all for going back to a classical education just as Mr. Wright often describes. I would reintroduce the McGuffrey readers, the practice of teaching children how to diagram sentences (see the book Rex Barks at amazon) the elimination of the look/say method of reading and the mandatory reintroduction of classic phonics.
Above that the reintroduction of the teaching of Latin as it instructs deeper the English and a great deal of its etymology.
Above all the reversal of the dumbing down of our language and its structure of complexity. The inability to understand complex sentences is also the inability to create them; this in turn is the inability to think in them (see the book Writing and Thinking: A Handbook of Composition and Revision).
As far as reading individual words. Heh, that is going too. As one small example I work with someone who did not know what the word deduce meant, nor any of its derivatives ( a high school graduate). I also work with someone who thought England was a territory of the United States!
I can’t speak about methods of learning to read, since I quite literally do not remember learning (obviously I must have learned, since I wasn’t born able to read, but it seems to me as though I could always read).
I didn’t learn it at school, however; I didn’t start school proper until I was nearly five, and in those days (early 60s) small rural Irish towns didn’t have kindergartens or creches or nursery school or the likes. So my father and my grandmother taught me to read and write, and by the time I started school, as my mother said “You could read, and write your name, and count, and say your prayers, so you didn’t really learn anything that first year”.
So however I learned, it wasn’t by modern methods but those learned by a woman born in the 1860s and a man born in the 1920s. We did learn grammar, in Sixth Class (and I hated every time Sr. Josephine wrote a sentence up on the blackboard for us to parse the parts of speech) but obviously it stood to us in later years. Certainly by the time we were fifteen (the age of that girl in the article), we were well able to write essays for class.
I think I was lucky; I was just old enough to avoid the educational fads that my sister (two years younger) and younger siblings were in line for, e.g. not teaching kids to do “joined-up” writing (i.e. to write in cursive rather than printing). As I said, my grandmother taught me to write, and she would have learned the ‘copperplate’ method so that’s how she taught me to form my letters, and in school in my time they still used the headline copybooks and ‘copy the teacher’s example’ method.
So the way I write and the way my three siblings write is completely different, for one thing. I know rote methods can be dull and stifling, but you need a foundation to build on before you can start building your castle of creativity.
I must say that “joined-up” writing is a charming description of cursive letters.
I also cannot remember ever being unable to read or write, and in consequence
have never had a strong opinion on the phonics vs. look-say controversy.
I could certainly read by the time I began first grade in Caracas.
U unfortunately I lost all the Spanish reading skills I picked up that year.
In Missouri, in second grade, the teacher told my mother I was already reading at a fifth grade or higher level. I was not told this to avoid swelling my head, but I noticed I was given a lot of free time while the other kids were reading, and pretty much allowed to read what I wanted.
I remember a child’s biography of Ernie Pyle, the reporter killed in WWII.
It pictured little Ernie at age five, doodling letters in the sand and dreaming of first grade, where finally he would learn to read. I was puzzled that a five year old would not already know how.
Never went to kindergarten. I am still shocked that this pernicious German invention is now required in most American states.
I can’t remember learning to read either, but early childhood education has always been an interest so I have read up on it.
The progressives love anything German, particularly Weimar era teaching “methods”.
I do remember learning to read and write, though I remember too few details to know what methods were used on me. I remember copying a lot of individual letters into workbooks in Kindergarten, and I was one of the last generations to be taught cursive, I think.
Oh my, I remember years back seeing a black-and-white old movie, where there were a pair of kids looking at a book – one of them was about seven or eight, or looked to be in that age range, and he was enthusing about when he would learn to read.
I was kind of shocked, that someone of his age couldn’t already read. And it can’t be a new thing (i.e. moderns think children shouldn’t be forced to learn but will pick it up by instinct) since the film dated from the 50s or so.
Myself, I have noted that all these new-fangled kindergartens and nursery schools etc. came along into Irish life just when both parents would have to go out to work, so that they seem to me to primarily act as a place to keep the child while the mother is at work. I don’t know how much learning is done there; then again, in school proper, I don’t know how much learning is done either. Oftentimes, it seems as if schools nowadays have been burdened with keeping children somewhere safe where they can’t get into mischief while the parents – if both are still living together – go to work, and if both parents are not still together or never were together in the first place, to supply the rearing the children should (but are not) getting at home. Learning to read and write slips into the cracks between feeding them breakfast in the morning, teaching them how to dress themselves, and other civilising bare minima.
Well, I anticipated as much, and have already answered:
Their responses are tiresome stock responses, but the difference is that they are the responses of the thought prison called Political Correctness, or conformity. The have been conditioned to be emotional and irrational, so they have no capacity to make any other stock responses, nor to examine the validity of their own.
I do wish at least some men of good will would interrupt their choir of mutual backslapping with a polite dissent, lest they actually believe what they pretend to believe, namely, that they are in the majority, or that they are the vanguard of the future. In truth, their ideas are Victorian, namely, Marxist, but they are so ill informed they do not know whence their ideas originate; and so short-sighted that they think the Culture of Death can reproduce itself.
Reproduce itself? The Culture of Death cannot even defend itself from our current enemies, a pathetic crop of self-destructive Bronze-Age barbarian zealots. Do they think their values (for they have no virtues) of selfishness, self-esteem, self-indulgence and self-destruction will last the ages? I doubt it will last the generation.
Distinguo: The self-destructive barbarian zealots have at least advanced into the earlier part of the Iron Age. They are capable of making quite good swords — the military utility of which was recently assessed and reported by Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anEuw8F8cpE
Yes, a showdown between Dr Jones’s revolver and Damascus steel (undoubtedly forged from wootz iron ore) is a contest of Iron Age weapons.
Whatever the faults of the Mussulmen, it is a canard to call them Bronze Age, since iron was being forged in the Near East 1800 years before the Prophet had his first interview with the Archangel Gabriel. Their Ishmaelite forebears of 1200 B. C. were undoubtedly Bronze Age, but they had moved on.
However, it really is dumb to bring a scimitar to a gunfight.
It was originally going to be a sword-and-whip fight, but Harrison Ford was sick that day.
“The Culture of Death cannot even defend itself from our current enemies, a pathetic crop of self-destructive Bronze-Age barbarian zealots”
Interesting that you call it “our” enemy. That is, you identify yourself with the Culture of Death.
Though the Culture of Death is a far greater and ruthless enemy of Christianity than a pathetic crop of bronze-age zealots.
This is a remarkably stupid thing for you to say. Reread the sentence you quote, and tell me if the words “itself” and “our” refer to the same object or different objects.
Then offer me an apology, please.
Well, does “our” refer to Christendom (assuming it exists at present)?
And then why should the Culture of Death defend Christendom?
Your error is the identification of the nation of USA with Christendom, even if USA is dominated by the party of Death.
You propose to deal with the Culture of Death on the terms proposed by the Culture of Death i.e. honest debate, persuasion but with Islam you propose a Crusade in which the Culture of Death should ally with Christendom, even while claiming that Islam derives its strength from its alliance with the Culture of Death.
So your suggest a crusade, even though there is no Christendom, the Pope has not called for a Crusade (indeed Pope suggests respecting Islam), and on top of it, in alliance with the Culture of Death.
If it it too confusing to you that I both think the struggle is against barbarians outside the gate and barbarians within who are betraying us, then I can say nothing to make the matter more clear.
I do not think what I said is honestly too confusing to you or to any man: I assume you are raising an objection you know to be a mere play on words.
During the American Revolution, many a man was a loyal Tory who did not support the revolutionary cause. If I, writing in those times, had spoken of an American struggle against the English as well as against those of “us” in the colonies who were Tories, only an idiot would interpret this to be a paradox, or say I was identifying with the Tories, or express confusion that the Tories were helping the English, or be confused that I referred to “us” as an English colony.
You seem to be making a pointless joke. Comments like this are not welcome.
My problem is not with a notion of external and internal struggle but with the different strategy you propose to deal with them.
You propose war with the external enemy (though he is weak-you have the nukes and he does not) and persuasion with the internal enemy (though he is far more ruthless and implcable). This is wrong,
In particular, the personhood is not going to be resolved by debate. It was not so in 1861 and it won’t be now.
No, that is not what you said. You said I identified with the culture of death because I spoke of the West as “we.” It was a stupid comment, and you did not retract it, nor apologize for it.
So you propose killing the Democrats and negotiating with the terrorists? Good luck with that. My proposal was to use violence against the violent, and nonviolent means against the nonviolent, which is in keeping with Christian morality, common sense, and Western legal tradition.
1) Are Democrats non-violent?
Don’t they advocate the murder of infants and handicapped and sick?
2) Is Non-agression principle sacred?
The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe did not think so.
Non-violent criminals may be justly executed i.e. homosexuals, rapists, even thieves in time of emergency, deserters etc etc.
Under what circumstance is it justified to execute a homosexual? Your sentence is poorly constructed: are homosexuals, rapists and thieves subject to execution in times of emergency? Or only thieves and deserters? Are then homosexuals and rapists to be justly executed during non-emergency situations as well?
If the category of homosexual is included as those justified to execute in times of emergency, the next question is what emergency is solved or tempered by the execution of homosexuals? Hurricane Katrina? The Great Depression? Pearl Harbor? 9/11?
Now you seem to grill Mr. Wright quite frequently on Catholic doctrine. I would like to know how your suggestion of executing homosexuals pairs with the catechism of the Catholic church. Specifically 2358.
How is a rapist non-violent??? Are you proposing that a rape victim really wanted it? Even a 12 year old girl raped by her father? She seduced him! Burn her!
I am afraid I do not understand the relation of these questions to any topic we were discussion. Your thought is too incoherent for me to venture an answer.
I am pleased to see your lists, and am even more pleased to see that I have read much of it, including the classics mentioned in the first list. If I may be so bold, I would recommend adding Ovid to the list. Virtually every writer in English from Chaucer up until the twentieth century was familiar with the Metamorphoses and referred to it frequently.
I actually read the classics more or less by accident during my university years. I kept finding myself enrolling in the less popular classes, as the other ones were already full, as well as developing a taste for ancient Greek and particularly Roman history for my minor. It served me well and did not serve me well, at least as far as university was concerned. In my post graduate studies, where I focused on Renaissance literature, I was generally the only student in the class who had read Plutarch, Ovid, Virgil, Cicero and such, and was thus the only student who could understand many of the references made by Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Donne, Tourneur, Middleton, Beaumont, Fletcher, and the like. However, I lacked the Critical Theory background, and the various post modern cultural materialist slant into which most of my peers had immersed themselves.
The point was driven home to me when one of my more brilliant peers- he published many, many times over and was seen as a rising star in the field- gave a talk about homo-erotics in one of Spenser’s poems. He went through the poem explaining how it fit with his theory, but he came to one stanza where he struggled and made his point badly, which confused me, for, as I recall, Spenser had invoked the myth of Apollo and Aias in that stanza, so the homo-erotics which he sought with such a fine tooth comb was staring him in the face, and he did not catch it. When the time came to ask him questions, I asked him why he simply did not pick up on Spenser’s reference to Ovid. His response was a shrug and a dismissive: “I never read Ovid.” It was clear he had no intention of ever doing so. I lost all respect for him that day. My peers looked down on me, because I did not value their theories. I, however, pitied them, because they did not know what they were talking about, and didn’t even know that they didn’t know.
I would also add this: it was a few years after I gave up and left the program that I read CS Lewis’ Abolition of Man, and I realized he was a prophet.
Alas, you must add me to the list of scholars unworthy of respect, for I also have not read Ovid. Unlike your friend, I hope to amend the defect when I have more free reading time.
I did not put Cicero on the list because I was listing works of fiction or epic whose themes I see as connected to themes in later science fiction.
My well respected host,
I only lost respect for my colleague because he had spent all his time studying a frame of interpretation to force upon Renaissance texts, but never considered studying to see a frame of reference that was already there, and thought me hopelessly backward for doing so.
There’s a version of the “Metamorphoses” from 1997 by the late Ted Hughes: Tales from Ovid.
You can hear the poet reading his account of the Midas tales here and here, to see if you would like them.
Anyone remember the 1978 animation ‘Winds of Change’, based on the Metamorphoses? It was narrated by Peter Ustinov.
The only episode I recall clearly was the tale of Actateon, turned into a deer and killed by his own hounds for spying on the goddess Diana. Pretty chilling.
David Drake (sf author and student of Latin) has been spending the last decade or so translating Ovid on his website, david-drake.com, as a side project. He’s done quite a few of the love poems and has started in on the Metamorphoses. His most recent translation was the Centaurs vs. Lapiths.
Mr. Drake strikes me as a hard guy to get to know, and certainly many of his older books are harsh and sad — though the newer ones are much cheerier. But he’s a good example of how reading the classics can improve your style.
I would also humbly suggest Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. It’s a fantastic book in its own right, and I think it stands a good chance of playing well with today’s youth based on the current popularity the post-apocalypse genre is enjoying.
Yes, either that or “Earth Abides” by George Stewart.
As a post-apocalyptic novel, it’s OK. Earth Abides is a little meatier, with a few more interesting ideas. Alas, Babylon is all tell, no show. It’s about as genre as post-apocalyptic books can get without brushing up against pulp.
On the Beach, though — that’s nearly as good as Canticle, or When the Wind Blows, or Grave of the Fireflies.
A hearty “hear him!” for On the Beach.
“A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”
I think this picks up an unmeritted reknown from its author, and would have passed unknown under a different byline. When I had to read it in high school over the summer, I, and all the other kids, concluded it was a satire on the Yankee. In hindsight, we were alone, without the author’s company, in seeing what a goose he was.
Its crucial failure lay in POV. If you wish to deride chivalry, you need a POV character who is capable of comprehending it. A dunderheaded doofus whose reaction to a Camelot that was all its silliest admirers of Twain’s era thought it was would have been very much like his reaction to the one depicted; he was just too crude and lacking in delicacy to satirize such a matter. (Come to mention it, I’ve never read anyone commenting on the book that thinks it was an effective satire of chivalry.)
Hi, Mary!
I’ve waited and waited, but no one has mentioned the one book which actually did successfully satirize chivalry: DON QUIXOTE, by Miguel de Cervantes. Huge though that work was, I still remember how often DON QUIXOTE made me laugh.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Dear Mr. Wright:
Very interesting essay. Read it both here and at SFSignal. I’ve read most of the works in your first list. But not Ariosto or Spenser’s works. Or Eddison’s book, alas. As for your second list, I regretted omission of any of Poul Anderson’s books. His THE ENEMY STARS and THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS might have been appropriate for an SF literature course.
And I was interested by how Edgar Rice Burroughs had a very POSITIVE effect on one young man you knew. And I agree that much of Heinlein’s work would not have such a beneficical influence. Esp. the bit about Kip approving so easily of genocide in HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL. Poul Anderson was never guilty of giving such facile approval to genocide in his works!
Needless to say, Kipling, Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien’s works subvert the PC pieties of our worthless age. Which explains why the Politically Correct masters of our time so detest them!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
The thing that make the task of listing such a syllabus is, of course, that books are complex, and an author perfectly good at teaching one virtue is horrible at teaching another. Robert Heinlein, for example, always portrayed patriotism, courage, manliness and courage in a good light; but he could not restrain himself from portraying sexual promiscuity and religious infidelity in a good light. A boy of good character could no doubt read his books and glean the first lesson and not the second.
Poul Anderson likewise allow certain creepy ideas to enter his books — I am thinking of the amoral ‘realpolitik’ of his Co-Dominium stories — which otherwise have many pleasing examples and models of virtue. I would happily include him on the list of books to teach science painlessly to the little tykes.
But why not have them read the classics instead? There is nothing in Homer or Dickens a normal child (I mean one not ruined by modern education) cannot read with edification and pleasure.
Dear Mr. Wright:
Many thanks for your quick response. I agree that Homer and Virgil’s poems can be read with both pleasure and edification by young people not ruined by PCness. I really should reread Homer in particular. I’ve only read Rieu’s prose translation.
I have to admit Dickens did not appeal that much to me. But I have read his A CHRISTMAS CAROL, BLEAK HOUSE, THE PICKWICK PAPERS, and BARNABY RUDGE. I esp. liked the last named book.
I have to disagree with you saying “Poul Anderson likewise allow certain creepy ideas to enter his books–I am thinking of the amoral ‘realpolitik’ of his Co-Dominium stories–which otherwise have many pleasing examples and models of virtue.” Poul Anderson was NOT the author of the Co-Dominium stories, Jerry Pournelle (with later Larry Niven and S.M. Stirling also contributing) wrote those works. I think you may be confusing Poul Anderson’s very different Polesotechnic League/Terran Empire stories with the Co-Dominium series.
And to do justice to Pournelle and Company, the impression I got from reading the Co-Dominium series was that in a fallen universe, we mortals can’t always avoid doing evil even as we sometimes try to do good. But I would need a more detailed explanation of the “amoral ‘realpolitik’ of his Co-Dominium stories” you found so distasteful to comment further.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
You are right to disagree, since I foolishly confused Anderson and Pournelle. An outrageous mistake on my part!
I recommend the Richmond Lattimore translation of the ILIAD.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I am glad you admitted making a mistake confusing Poul Anderson’s work with that of Jerry Pournelle. As you and regular readers must know, I’m a bore when it comes to Poul Anderson! (Smiles)
And Homer’s ILIAD and ODYSSEY has been in the back of my mind for rereading. Which means I’ll be taking seriously your recommendation of Richard Lattimore’s translation. Many thanks!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
I am absolutely delighted to see among the recommendations Manly Wade Wellman’s “John the Balladeer” (or “Silver John”) stories, particularly as they include elements of folk religion and Christianity without sneering at the one (i.e., the Christian) and elevating the other as truly true wisdom, and “Till We Have Faces” by C.S. Lewis.
However, I would say that to get the most out of any books, don’t for the love of St. Joseph of Cupertino (patron of students and most fervently invoked come exam time) make them set texts to be taught, particularly above all if there are more teachers out there along the lines of “You’ll love The Crucible! It’s got witches and adultery!”
The best service you can do is buy all these books and set them up in the school library (and from working in a school office for a disadvantaged school, I can tell you this – the most vital resource you can have is not a spiffy new gym or even canteen but a library; if you can cajole funding out of the education department for a properly trained school librarian, it is even better) and leave them there for the kids to find of their own accord.
Because if you turn them into classroom texts, they will have the same effect as classroom texts – can anyone here stand up and swear they remember a line from their school history textbook or school science book? I can never re-read “Pride and Prejudice” or “Persuasion”, not because I dislike Jane Austine, but because the aura of the classroom hangs over those books since they were set texts on the English curriculum. But I remember scraps of the novel “Shirley” by Charlotte Brontë which I read when I was nine, purely because I found it mouldering in a cupboard in a neighbour’s house, and I am thankful to God I read “Hamlet” first not in the school classroom context but because I was fifteen, I was curious about this author of whom I had heard nothing except that he was Great, and there it was on the school bookshelf.
In my youth, the only science fiction book I did not enjoy reading was a book assigned to me to read in school, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which I did not enjoy because and only because it was assigned. To me, in that day, to be commanded to read science fiction was as disorienting and crazy as having one’s own spouse hire one as a prostitute, or, to use a less disgusting metaphor, as having the White Witch of Narnia promise to make a boy a king who is already by rights king there.
I think that is the first SFF book I ever picked up which I did not finish. (Fans of Bradbury need not be offended — in later years, when I was older, I went back an read the book.)
I did not include this anecdote in my essay because, first, that was not the question asked, and, second the essay was already long enough as it is.
You might want to retry Austen. I’ve found that a few years often takes the taste off when you go and plunge in.
“Young men must learn to love what is loveable and hate what is hateful, to seek honor and flee shame, and above all to be honest; young women must learn femininity, decorum, chastity, and above all to be honest. Both must learn to love their country and their homes, to respect and obey their parents, and to revere God. They should adore the sublime beauties of nature and abhor modern art. In a Republic they must also learn respect for their fellow citizens, to fear the law, and supply Christian charity to the poor and weak.”
Ah, but this (my bolded emphasis) is the problem. For virtually nothing else in the list of classical requirements is understood, by the Progressivist, to square with “being honest”.
Adopting for a moment the voice of a Progressivist, I (in character) declare:
- That having to learn to love or hate something is dishonest, because if love or hate is honest it arises naturally out of your most innate, personal and unique response; training in alterations of these responses is mere brainwashing, and the trumping of your values with someone else’s;
- That “honor”, “shame”, “femininity”, “decorum” and “chastity” are all inherently dishonest disguises of society’s attempt to train your values to their convenience and control your behaviour to your disadvantage; when someone talks of “honor” start counting your spoons, when someone talks of “shame” hold a mirror in their face first, when someone talks of “femininity” they mean only “servitude”, when someone talks of “decorum” start asking what they want you not to say, and when someone talks of chastity, say “You first”.
- That loving a country whose government commits evil acts is dishonest; that loving a home which has done nothing to earn that love, or parents who have lost all right to respect by their errors, failures or abuses, is dishonest (g00d homes and good parents speak only to good luck, not to an inherently good institution); that revering a God of Whom one can see no evidence and from Whom one has never derived any proveable benefit is dishonest.
- Adoring the sublime beauties of nature? Of course! Here at last is a point of agreement. In fact we should so adore those beauties that the distinctly un-natural, un-sublime, un-beauteous creatures called man should be protected from spoiling them or taking advantage of them; the fewer humans the better!
- But to abhor modern art is (once more) dishonest, because art’s function is to show humanity to itself, and to pretend humanity is other than raw and ugly is dishonest; to do something reproducible and sensible is dishonest, because it is mere technique, mere craft, not art.
- That to fear the law is dishonest, because if a law is just is need not be feared, and if a law is unjust (as most laws are) it should be resisted;
- That to respect “fellow citizens” who decry my way of life and will not help support it is dishonest, as they show no respect for my fellowship; and that to try to teach charity as a virtue rather than require it as a law is dishonest, for the only reason one could think not being made to share is wrong is because one does not wish to share, and hopes that if enough others can be brainwashed into doing it you can get away with not having to yourself.
Whew. Man, suddenly I realize why C.S. Lewis gave up writing Screwtape’s voice; it’s exhausting, even if it’s amusing at first. But this is the fundamental “I do not think that word means what you think it means” gap: for a progressivist honesty means, simply, that there is no discord between desire and behaviour, and that neither desire nor behaviour is restricted against my will by another for others’ benefit. Anything that attempts to impose such a discord or a restriction is, by definition, dishonest, and anyone who claims a higher or benevolent motive in so doing is dishonest because the only real motivation is the imposers’ convenience.
Which in its own way is a sincere, if primitive, attempt to resolve the Problem of Pain: unable to grasp how both sin and virtue can simultaneously be real, and unable to explain sin in terms of virtue, they decide only to explain virtue in terms of sin and thus conclude that “sin” is the only reality, and that “honesty” comprises simply admitting this and nothing else.
Do have a special 2 x 4 for whacking people upside the head, or do you just grab whatever lumber is handy? I’m thinking that, to the crowd at SF Signal, you are a far more exotic and unexpected alien than anything encountered in mere SF – and frighteningly real. If you believe in this whole far-fetched ‘John C Wright’ myth, that is.
Only one quibble: perhaps the single greatest triumph of progressive thought is the substitution of modern schooling for education, but it goes back not 100 years, but 200, and, not surprisingly, has a strong anti-Catholic component to it. State-run schools were beloved by Plato – and Luther. Independent universities are a creature of the Catholic Church, which has always taught (as far as I’ve been able to ascertain) that parents are the first and best teachers of their own children.
The progressive mythology has it that something went wrong – but not too wrong – with public schooling an indeterminate while back, but the main problem now is that public schools lack sufficient money, power and time to do their jobs ‘right’. If only we had even better paid teachers following even more progressive curriculum for the entire year around from dawn to dusk plus homework, why, then our children would be right as rain!
The recent remake of True Grit featured one bit of 19th century verisimilitude: the young heroine spoke with the cadence and vocabulary of the King James Bible. The classic frontier way to learn to read was from the KJB on your grandmother’s knee. Or take the early English labor movement – one of the stated reasons workers struck for shorter hours was so that they might have time to educate themselves and their children. The response of the employers was to create mandatory schools – hmmm.
It took 100 years for the idea that the state rather than the parents should control education to take over, and, as usual, it was another agenda entirely shrouded in lies: state-run education would be more modern and scientific, and produce better citizens. Of course, what this meant to the Horace Manns and Woodrow Wilsons of the world was obedient, passive people incapable of forming a coherent thought.
The last 100 years is just the time it took to kill off the last traces of the poor fools that thought education meant, you know, knowing stuff and being able to think, the kind of people the one-room rural schools outside state control produced by the millions. Those schools are gone, and have been gone for 60 years now. One room schools were the enemy. Now, home schoolers are the enemy. (Note that Catholic schools are painted as merely elitist versions of public schools. They follow the public school paradigm anyway – but that’s another story.)
The stated goal of ll this: that no one can think anything the state does not want them to think. Which brings us back around to most of the discussions on these pages. You, Mr. Wright, are trying to get people to think what the state would not have them think. There’s a reeducation camp (at least) in your future. Hope to see you there!
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Mr Wright,
Since Mr Brooks has mentioned Cervantes, it is appropriate to recall that:
Today, October 7, is the 441st anniversary of the battle of Lepanto, and the feast of The Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From the missal:
‘The decisive victory of the Christians at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 prompted Pius V to institute this Feast and to decree that the Blessed Virgin Mary be invoked as “Help of Christians.” ‘
Cervantes fought gallantly at Lepanto and was wounded. He was later captured by Algerian corsairs and spent five years in slavery, being ransomed at last by the Trinitarian order.
Hi, joetexx!
Very true, what you said about the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto also being the feast of the Holy Rosary and Mary, Help of Christians. Some have dismissed that battle as not being all that important to history. I disagree because one article I read argued that the Turks, balked on land, were trying to break out of the Balkans by invading Italy. Which means Lepanto was important, since it fortunately frustrated a Turkish invasion of Italy (which would have given Turkey a base for attacks north and west).
And, for all Cervantes satirizing of “chivalric” literature, it’s plain he had only affection and respect for Don Quixote himself, and the virtues of gentleness, courtesy, loyalty, and valor the knight of La Mancha cultivated.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Hello, Mr Brooks!
The results of Lepanto certainly had great military significance, in that it ended the direct naval expansion of the Ottomans into the Western Mediterranean. Lepanto has even been represented as a Pyhrric victory
for the Christians in that Venice ended up yielding Cyprus. But this is nonsense; after 1571 the only Mohammedan sea presence in the West was the Turk’s Barbary dependencies. These continued to kidnap thousands of Christians into slavery till the early XIX century, but they were never a serious military threat to the Western powers. Eventually the US Navy in tandem with King Louis Philipe, put an end to that. Simply keeping the Turks away from the Atlantic made Lepanto worth it.
I of course agree with you about Cervantes and Quixote. Among others, C. S. Lewis and Dwight Macdonald have made the point that one cannot effectively satirize or parody a genre of literature without some considerable affection for it. Certvantes admired the tue virtues of Western chivalry which is why he was able to gently mock its absurdities so well.
Hi, joetexx!
Thanks for responding. I of course agree Lepanto was an important battle, since it broke the naval power of the Mohammedan Ottomans, at least in the Western Mediterranean. And Venice losing Cyprus was no surprise, considering how Turkey was still dominant in the eastern Mediterranean.
Yes, the Barbary pirates of North Africa remained a danger till the early 1800s. Until the US built a navy of her own, her merchant shipping was preyed on by these pirates. But, it was Charles X of France, not Louis Philippe, who conquered Algiers.
I agree with what you said about Cervantes and the chivalric literature he satirized. I’m reminded of the famous Chapter VI of DON QUIXOTE, where the parish priest and barber of La Mancha tried to bring their friend back to his senses by burning his library of chivalric books. Only six volumes were spared, one being AMADIS OF GAUL, which Cervantes, speaking thru the priest or barber, highly praised.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
To which the only possible response is to quote the last verse of “Lepanto” by G.K. Chesterton (a poem I have loved ever since I read it as an impressionable fourteen year old in my English textbook):
“Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.) “
You might be interested in reading the beautiful article by David Warren on Lepanto on his brand-new blog: http://davidwarrenonline.com/?p=128
Thank you, Miss Rousseau.
Mr Warren’s brief piece is an excellent introduction to Lepanto. I see I will have to look over his other entries as well. The information about Queen Elizabeth is new to me.
Mr. Wright
Given your stated position on the purposes of education and the interference of progressives and PC language, I think it would have been amusing had you facetiously offered “Tyranny of Words” by Stuart Chase as SF/F suitable for high school students. Then again, I understand you are a notable published author who perhaps cannot afford to mislead potential readers, such as those posting in the comments section of sfsignal. Indeed, some have already mistaken your post for satire. Their shock when informed by the educated on that site of the deed would surely prevent the purchase of many of your books.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2343374.Tyranny_Of_Words
Top review quote (Jason, July 30, 2011)
“It clears the smoke of spellbinders and mystics, philosophers and economists where words hang in the abstract, with different meanings & interpretations to each person, and thus no referent to the natural world. And here communication fails us because the more abstract our speech, the less we understand what one really means.”
I wonder at Beowulf not being included.
That epic is crammed full of stirring examples of true manliness as well as respect for proper authority, etc.
Merely an oversight on the part of the author. I would have included it had I remembered to do so.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I also wondered if you would have included THE SONG OF ROLAND in your list, along with BEOWULF, if you had thought of them both. Altho the savage punishment of the traitor Ganelon and his kin makes me hesitate. But, I enjoyed both of these poems!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
But I am not compiling a list of the Great Books of Western Literature, nor even Great Adventure stories: I was specifically listing those works which, because of a fantastical element, gods or monsters, made them a prime inspiration for those science fiction stories which are their modern heirs. SONG OF ROLAND is not one where I see any direct inspiration influencing SF.
Dante’s INFERNO, oddly enough, is such an inspiration, because the basic formula of a tourguide showing the narrator the wonders and horrors of the new world is a form used frequently in the earliest strata of science fiction, particularly utopia stories.
If we’re going to recommend tales with gods and monsters or fantastical elements, then Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. First read a version in a Puffin Books (Penguins’ children’s imprint) anthology of folktales and abridged versions of legends, which is where I also first encountered Koschkei the Deathless, Norse mythology, the Ramayana and many more.
I just read the Tolkien translation of it, and was intrigued by his particular take on the material.
Dear Mr. Wright:
I ‘ve also read, with great pleasure, Tolkien’s translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” And Burton Raffel’s translation as well.
I think it’s reasonable to assume you read Tolkien’s version in SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL, AND SIR ORFEO (edited by Christopher Tolkien). Any thoughts about the other two translations, esp. “Pearl”? That poem can be said to include “fantastical” elements.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
I have not read any other translations of THE PEARL so can offer no comment there. I was sufficiently impressed with the poem that it inspired at least part of my latest and somewhat lighthearted manuscript, called SOMEWHITHER — specifically I mean to have my protagonist visit an alternate timeline where the New Jerusalem has descended from heaven, a giant golden cube.
Dear Mr. Wright:
You made a very good argument as to why the SONG OF ROLAND, given the reasons and purposes you outlined, does not belong in your list of works containing fantastical elements making them inspirations for SF as a genre. So I have to take back my suggestion about ROLAND.
Btw, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a novel called INFERNO, based on Dante’s INFERNO using that tourguide formula. The interesting thing was the POV character being an unbelieving SCIENCE FICTION author who kcpt trying, for most of the book, to interpret hell as a constuct of aliens with a super advanced technology. And Niven/Pournelle pub. a sequel, ESCAPE FROM HELL, a few years ago.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
What? Ovid’s Metamorphoses? I seem to recall some stories in there that are distinctly NOT appropriate to a young audience. Myrrha? Hermaphroditus & Salmacis? Good Heavens, save us. What next? Bocaccio’s Decameron? Give me Sir Gawain every time as a model of chastity.
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