The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Literature

  • Planet Narnia Author Michael Ward to Speak at Biola

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    Paul Spears
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    The Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University is honored to have Cambridge’s own Dr. Michael Ward speaking for us this Monday evening on his new piece of C.S. Lewis scholarship. Through medieval cosmology, Planet Narnia claims to provide the imaginative key to understanding the Chronicles of Narnia. This work is already launching Dr. Ward to…

  • Five Sacred Crossings: I Wrote a Novel, What Was I Thinking?

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    Guest Contributor
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    Craig Hazen, 2008. Notice the question mark in the blog title. If I had ended with an exclamation point, this little essay would most likely be a warning for all of you never to try this. I did go through the “what was I thinking!” stage. But I am not there anymore. Indeed, I think…

  • Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, But Not Both

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    Fred Sanders
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    George Steiner published a book back in 1959 called Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. Like all of Steiner’s books, this first publication of his ranges over a lot of territory and sheds light all around. As with most of Steiner’s books, I had to read only the parts I could understand,…

  • Nothing to Praise

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    Melissa Schubert
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    If you’ve never encountered the poetry of Richard Wilbur, one of the most distinguished living Christian poets in the U. S., you might consider picking up his recently published Collected Poems 1943-2004. While much of twentieth century poetry contemplates the anxieties of our age or confesses the tumult of the individual psyche, Wilbur’s lyrics are…

  • An Olympian Standard of Bible Study

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    Fred Sanders
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    In the preface to Bernard Knox’s book Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time, he tells this story: As an undergraduate at Cambridge I had been awestruck by a statement of Walter Headlam, a brilliant Cambridge scholar whose career was cut short by his early death at the age of forty-eight in 1908.…

  • Adam and Eve, “Outside” by Mark Jarman

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    Fred Sanders
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    I don’t read very much contemporary poetry; I admit that I like my poets dead and classic. But one poet I do try to keep up with is Mark Jarman, who teaches at Vanderbilt and is somehow associated with a movement called the New Formalism. I don’t know what’s New or Formal about it, or…

  • Conference on Lewis, the Inklings, and Christian Community

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    Fred Sanders
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    On February 7-9, Azusa Pacific University is hosting a conference on the Inklings and Christian Community. Three plenary speakers are scheduled, and a selection of shorter papers will also be presented there, probably in parallel sessions. The website says it’s free, so if you’re near Azusa, come on by. Two members of the Scriptorium team…

  • Seriously, Homer?

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    Melissa Schubert
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    Every year our freshmen begin their college education reading Homer’s Iliad. And every year our freshmen stumble upon the same sophisticated “insights” about the ancient poem. They posit that Homer, or some poet before him, able neither to explain nor to master the wine-dark sea, deified the visible phenomena as Poseidon, Ocean, nymphs, and so…

  • Annie Dillard on a Total Eclipse

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    Fred Sanders
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    Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse,” from the book Teaching a Stone to Talk, is a bit of a stunt. The February 26, 1979 solar eclipse lasted less than two minutes, and Dillard turns her Pulitzer-prize-winning prose loose on it for about 20 pages. If you’re in it for sheer descriptive power, there’s plenty of it…

  • Anybody out there interested?

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Does any publisher out there want a book? Does anyone want to read the rest of this story? Chapter One: Messages Wind. Blowing, tearing wind was the main memory he had of the Dream. He called it the Dream, because it came so often and was almost always the same. It…

  • Heaven In Her Eye

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Milton famously describes Eve as having “heaven in her eye.” As a young adult, I loved that line, because it seemed such a perfect description of the beloved when I found her. She would have heaven in her eye. Her gaze would promise paradise in the raptures of two folk in love.…

  • Book Review: “The Complete Stories,” Flannery O’Connor

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Amazon.com: Books: The Complete Stories O’Connor is difficult for me. She challenges every notion I hold about race, women, and the culture. She is such a clear writer and her work is dark without being morbid. O’Connor is the rare writer who is willing to parody the intellectual class without glorifying…