While traveling I am reading R.W. Southern's Medieval Humanism and Other Studies and listening to Ken Myer's Mars Hill Audio Journal.
Southern underlines the importance of letter writing as a literary form in the 12th century. This is different, Southern says, from the subsequent 13th century, which saw more formalized systems of knowledge, conveyed perhaps by treatises and the like, rather than by letters.
Southern reviews a collection of letters exchanged between the French theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1143) and Heloise, a woman with whom he had a romantic liaison while they were young, only to be recanted by both sides due to their religious convictions. The letters span many of these later years, and paint a picture of the struggles of two people torn between love for each other and love for God -- a conflict which medieval theology was particularly ill-equipped to resolve.
The romantic interest aside, Southern's point is that the letters themselves reveal the learning of the day and, because of this, the gestalt of the times. This was the 12th century.
Fast forward to Ken Myers in the 21st century:
In Volume 90 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, Myers is concerned about the decline of reading as a general practice. In interviews with various luminaries, I was struck by how regularly Myers denigrates blogging as a writing and reading activity. I think he twice invoked blogging with a guffaw, clearly implying it is not something any person serious about learning should be involved with. As I recall:
With Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, blogging is associated with the inability to string several thoughts together.
And with Eugene Peterson, emeritus professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in British Columbia and author of over 30 Christian books, Myers suggests that nasty people Peterson met at a party were probably bloggers -- or something to that effect.
I think Myers may be missing something here.
Future generations may well look back at our day and treat the contents of blogs with a little more respect. It is often the vernacular writing of an era that is most revealing about that era.
It surprises me that Myers, for whom I have general respect, misses this even as he promotes reading and writing.
If he were still around, I think R.W. Southern would be more insightful.
Logos2Go
2 Timothy 4.13 When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments ...
R.W. Southern, "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise" in Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1970), 88-104
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Vol. 90, March/April 2008
note: since I am traveling, it is difficult to cite specifically Myers' comments; I may be slightly off above, but Myers' gist is clear.
Two views about blogs
Posted by
David Wang
Jun 11, 2010
1 comments:
I am sympathetic to Myers' view, at least as you present it. He is "concerned about the decline of reading." The focus is not on the writing (which you are doing), but on the reading (which I have just done).
I notice both in myself and in others a tendency to rush--and never return--when reading electronic communication such as email and blogs. There are many factors that could be explored, but the result is that such communication receives less careful attention; regardless of the character of the writing, it is not read well.
Frankly, I think this may be one of the reasons I have long seasons of not reading your blog. As I have confessed before, my perfectionism and pride burden me to always come up with an apt reply. But I also sense I usually hurry through your writing, to my own loss, just to get to this blank white box!
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