Literary Analysis Archives

Dawes, Art, and Good Criticism

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Ian Andrews

So, I’ve been listening to an album recently, and it has me thinking about the purpose of “art.” The album is perkily titled, We’re All Gonna Die, and I’m thoroughly obsessed with it. I’ve spent hours unpacking the lush orchestration, focusing this time on the perfectly liquid bass parts, next on the engrossing and sensitive drum tracks, and then on Taylor Goldsmith’s quietly pitch perfect voice. I just can’t seem to get enough. But, being a reader by nature, I also can’t help but be confronted with the sadness written into each track…

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Of Possible Impossibilities

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Guest Author

I feel a little bit like cheating writing this after reading Ian’s recent post on The Bronze Bow, but I, too, had an interesting discussion in my literature classes recently while trying to decide on where to place the climax of a story. I’ve been slowly teaching my students the elements of fiction, and chose The Quiltmaker’s Gift by Jeff Brumbeau in order to talk about characters. The Quiltmaker’s Gift is a picture book about two people. The first is a powerful, greedy, unhappy king who fills his castle with gifts that he constantly demands from his subjects. The second is a wise, old, magical quiltmaker who lives in a house on a mountain in the clouds and gives away her quilts to the poor and needy. She won’t sell them, not for any amount of money…

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Literary Education and the Reformation

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Adam Andrews

As the Western world observes the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation – just kidding; I know most people are trick-or-treating instead – I am struck by its lasting effect on all things literary. It is amazing how, no matter what we believe theologically, we read and teach in a world informed by Martin Luther and those crazy 16th century theologians…

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Foreshadowing and the Judgment of Christ in “The Bronze Bow”

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Ian Andrews

The climactic moment of the children’s classic, The Bronze Bow, is a simple smile. As I was preparing to teach this work to a room full of eager Junior High students, I was refreshed by Elizabeth George Speare’s elegant style and careful attention to detail. Master that she was, she brought her novel to a perfect crescendo, using all her considerable literary tools to highlight one shining moment of turning: the climax…

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back of graduating student in cap and gown

What is a Literary Education?

Leave a Comment / Education, Homeschooling, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Adam Andrews

The capacity for self-knowledge is the thing that makes us human. Since education is the cultivation of mature humanity in students, we conclude that education happens when a student catches a glimpse of himself as a thinking creature. In the best case scenario, this glimmer of self-knowledge leads him further, to understand himself as an imperfect creature – a sinful creature, desperately in need of Grace…

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What Mathematics Can Teach Us About Literature

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Adam Andrews

Missy and I spend a lot of time showing parents how to teach short stories with pictures by means of simple questions like “does the main character succeed?” This approach has helped thousands of teachers get young students started in literary reading with children’s classics like Mem Fox’s Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, Patricia MacLachlan’s All the Places to Love, or Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon. But what, we are often asked, should older students do? Are there other methods necessary to develop students at the high school level?…

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The Lost Transcendental: What About the Moral Imagination?

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Emily Andrews

Ian and I did a lot of driving last year. Having recently moved to the middle of the country, equidistant between our two families with almost mathematical precision, we decided to forego flying home for the holidays in favor of seeing America by car. It was a great idea, and we saw a lot of cool landscapes, but let me tell you there are some areas of this beautiful country that are the very reason the Wright brothers desperately turned to flight. Sorry eastern Colorado, but you are one of them. To pass the time we turned into podcast junkies. If you haven’t checked out Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast yet and you have any interest at all in history, you should go subscribe right now. His history of the French Revolution, in particular, is a fascinating study…

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“God forgive us:” The Cloud of Broken Witnesses

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Ian Andrews

In his thrilling novella, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson paints the inescapable tension between good and evil in the human spirit. Frankly, that by itself is a pretty good summary of his theme. But, there is more to be said about what he implies concerning human desires and the remedies we can find for them. He doesn’t leave us entirely in the dark when it comes to where salvation lies…

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“The Wind in the Willows” and the Wonder of the Everyday

Leave a Comment / Criticism, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Ian Andrews

A dear friend and former teacher of mine recently said of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, “If ever there was a children’s book written for adults, it is this one.” I whole heartedly agree, and not only because of the stunning beauty of Grahame’s prose. By way of explanation, I’d like to share a passage from Grahame’s story that, I think, aims right at the heart of his project…

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The Humility of Socratic Discussion

Leave a Comment / Education, Literary Analysis, The Hovel / By Guest Author

We spent the June session of the Pelican Society’s Office Hours pondering teaching with Socratic discussion. Socratic discussion and teaching is relatively new to me, I’m embarrassed to admit. This probably isn’t as true as I believe, for at its most basic level, Socratic teaching is asking questions, and doesn’t everyone ask questions all the time? Anyone who’s been around a preschooler (or been a preschooler, for that matter) knows this is true. Anyone who’s wondered something, or had a curiosity about something, is asking questions…

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