The Bible As Literature

Bible.. Photo. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/300_252750/1/300_252750/cite. Accessed 14 Jun 2017.

We can see this on a global scale when we look at the overall format of the Bible. That format is the literary anthology—a collection of varied literary genres written by multiple authors over the span of many centuries. In its details, too, the Bible is a literary book. Most of it is embodied in the genres of narrative, poetry, letters, and visionary writing. Dozens of smaller genres accumulate under those big rubrics. Why should we read the Bible as literature? Because its literary format requires it. C. S. Lewis sounded the keynote when he wrote in Reflections on the Psalms that “there is a sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”
~Leyland Ryken, "The Bible as Literature"

"Bible as literature" is actually a subject heading we stumbled across in the library catalog, but it turns out many schools teach it as a class - from MIT and Yale to BYU and University of Colorado, and even our own UNM! Perhaps unsurprisingly, the literary study of the Bible falls under the English course heading rather than Religion.  Literary forms such as parable, poetry, hero narratives, and proverb are studied, along with typical literary concerns such as setting and character; historicity is examined along with biography; sometimes a particular version of the Bible is the focus, such as the King James. The core of the studies seems to remain the influence of the Bible on the Western literary canon - in the Huffington Post's article about teaching high schoolers about the Bible, it is suggested that "It is one thing to teach the Bible as if it were the word of God, and another to teach about the Bible — its stories, characters, events, and lessons — as a human book, and to discuss the many interpretations that have been advanced over the centuries." A book that could be called "the single most influential piece of literature in the world" (it certainly is a bestseller) deserves to be studied for literary merit as well as religious content - you can find references to Biblical writings in other great works by Shakespeare, Milton, Hemingway, and even in the movie The Matrix. The author Marilynne Robinson writes, "Literatures are self-referential by nature, and even when references to Scripture in contemporary fiction and poetry are no more than ornamental or rhetorical — indeed, even when they are unintentional — they are still a natural consequence of the persistence of a powerful literary tradition."

Interested  in studying the Bible's literary influences? If you don't want to take a class in the Bible as literature, there's a reading group on the Librarything website, or you could just check out a book from the library catalog on the topic.

The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible by A.N. Wilson

The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Bible Passages  edited by Andrew Blauner

Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God by Jack Miles

The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and Christian Old Testament Can Teach us by Douglas A. Knight and Amy-Jill Levine 

How to Read the Bible by Harvey Cox 

The Bible's Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures Missing From Your Bible by Joel M. Hoffman  [eAudio]

The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal 
 

A Guide to Young Adult Fiction Part Three: Retellings

So far in this series, I've talked about contemporary realistic young adult fiction and fantasy fiction. In today's wrap-up of this series, I'm focusing on a genre I adore: retellings.

The two main types of retellings are fairy tale retellings and retellings of other novels.

I love fairy tales, especially when young adult authors reimagine them. Here are some of my favorite fairy tale retellings, as well as some popular retellings. The story being retold is in parenthesis.

Entwined by Heather Dixon (Twelve Dancing Princesses)
Ash by Malinda Lo (Cinderella)
Cinder by Marissa Meyer (Cinderella)
A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan (Sleeping Beauty)

I also love it when authors reimagine classic stories. Here are my top choices for classic story retellings, as well as some other popular titles. The story being retold is in parenthesis.




Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson (Peter Pan)
Great by Sara Benincasa (The Great Gatsby)
The Fall by Bethany Griffin (The Fall of the House of Usher)
The Splintered series (Splintered, Unhinged, Ensnared, and Untamed) by A.G. Howard (Alice in 
Wonderland)
Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay (Romeo and Juliet)
The Madman's Daughter trilogy (The Madman's Daughter, Her Dark Curiosity, and A Cold Legacy) by Megan Shepherd (The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein)
Never Never by Brianna R. Shrum (Peter Pan)

Are there any books you would add to this list? Is there a genre I didn't cover in this series but you wish I had? Let me know in the comments!

Reading Around Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick - we've heard it referred to as "The Great Unread American Novel". People tend to shy away from the size, the subject matter (though many people have a working knowledge of the book's themes), the ponderous writing style (although some base this opinion mostly on the book's opening line, "Call me Ishmael", having not progressed much further).  Okay, full disclosure: we haven't read it.

But Melville has been in the news recently - there's a new movie coming out about the whaling voyage on which Melville based the book, and an 1841 crew list for a whaling ship has been found that numbers Melville amongst its band.  (Apparently, he deserted after 4 months, but the voyage inspired his maritime novels.) We thought, maybe it's time to give Melville's whale of a story a look-see!

How did this Moby-Dick come about, anyway? Melville was born in New York City in 1819 and lived there until 1850, except for 5 years at sea. His first book, Typee, was published in 1845, and based on his South Seas experiences. In 1850, already working on Moby-Dick, he moved to Massachusetts and met Nathaniel Hawthorne, an intense friendship which proved pivotal to his novel. During this time, he had also married and started a family. In 1857, Melville gave up writing prose for poetry, though he was not successful in this endeavor. In his later years, Melville worked as a customs inspector for the City of New York. He died in 1891.

But back to Moby-Dick. On November 14, 1851, the American edition of Moby-Dick was published. (The English edition, titled The Whale - there had been a last-minute title change - had already been published the month before.) Melville had spent a year and a half writing the book, now considered a classic, and it was dedicated to Hawthorne, though the friendship did not last. Even in the 1870s, one reader called it "the strangest, wildest, and saddest story I have ever read". However, only 3,200 copies were sold in Melville's lifetime and it was out of print when he died. Melville already had been acclaimed for earlier works and considered Moby-Dick to be his magnum opus, so he was wounded by its reception.

Though the novel was re-published shortly after Melville's death, it was not until the 1920s that it reached its current standing in the canon of American literature, with  Carl Van Doren calling it "the pinnacle of American Romanticism". Moby-Dick's first cinematic adaptation also came in the 1920s - the dramatically retitled The Sea Beast, but the most famous adaptation was John Huston's in 1956 (with a screenplay by Ray Bradbury!).

Answer us truthfully - have you ever read Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale?  And if so, did you read it because you had to, or for pleasure?  Did you finish it?  What did you think? Did you read Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the shipwreck that inspired Melville?And finally, are you more likely to read Melville (or Philbrick) now that there's a major motion picture based on In The Heart of the Sea coming out next year?

If this new attention give to the novel and a little backstory hasn't inspired you to pick up all 420 pages of it, there are other options! Whether you love Moby-Dick and want more, or are looking for a a way to work your way into it, here are some reading suggestions from the library catalog:


Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing For Every Page by Matt Kish

Moby Dick by Herman Melville; adapted by Will Eisner [YA]

Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

Moby-Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville, presented by Jan Needle [YA; an abridgement with illustrations]

Railsea by China Miéville [Children's]

Ahab's Wife, or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

The Graphic Canon: Volume 2 - From "Kubla Khan" to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray edited by Russ Kick

Leviathan [DVD]
Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast-the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick, the film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail. 


You can also find Melville's novel in Audiobook and eAudio formats.
  

Links

Moby Dick Big Read
The Moby-Dick Big Read: an online version of Melville’s magisterial tome - each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, to be broadcast online in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible.

Moby-Dick Marathon 
Annual 25-hour, non-stop reading of the novel.

"The Picnic That Turned Moby-Dick Into a Masterpiece" [WGBH]

How to Read a Hard Book [Oprah.com]

Classic Literature Turned Into Comic Books [Short List]

"Whaling Ship Crew List Shows Melville Embarking on a Journey That Inspired Moby-Dick" [Slate]

"The Harrowing True Story that Inspired Moby-Dick Gets the Ron Howard Treatment" [Slate]

Hemingway & Gellhorn

In honor of Ernest Hemingway's 115th birthday (July 21st), the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (July 17, 1936 - Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, were both journalists in Spain during the war) and the 2012 movie Hemingway & Gellhorn (now available in the library catalog), we offer you this list of titles that we hope will pique your interest.

Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill

The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles by Stephen Koch

Hemingway: The 1930s by Michael Reynolds

The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn edited by Caroline Moorehead

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