Over the past four years, I have been learning about the literary tradition from Angelina Stanford, the same tradition that came through ancient and medieval times, the one that CS Lewis and Tolkien fought so hard to preserve and pass down to us. On the Literary Life Podcast she freely shares hundreds of hours worth of knowledge, equivalent to taking several university level courses. I’ve also taken many webinars, mini-classes, and year-long classes from her at the House of Humane Letters. My favorite has been her How to Read Fairy Tales class, which was absolutely mind-blowing and so life-giving! Words aren’t adequate for how all this learning has enlivened my soul and made my world seem bigger and brighter!

What follows is an essay I wrote answering the question, why read literature? It is a narration of some of what I have learned from Angelina, especially the ideas shared in the episode on the Building Blocks of Story:

Our modern world has lost and rejected imaginative stories since the Enlightenment, and we are starving spiritually and emotionally. We hunger for truth and meaning, for order and harmony.  We are blind to the beauty surrounding us; we feel disconnected and unmoored. Modernity tries to tell us that this material world is all there is and that the only truth or reality that matters is what can be proven with logical facts.  Literature can help us see that something beautiful exists beyond our sight and understanding, something mysterious and wondrous that is “truer than true.” 

Classic stories, written in the literary tradition, point to the divine pattern of reality that God has imprinted on our souls.  These stories contain images and patterns that speak directly to our hearts through the imagination.  Reading literature gives us eyes to see what is truly real in a way that our five senses never could.  Malcolm Guite said, “All the time, God’s been reading the divine poem to us… The imagination is there to help us perceive the great poem of our existence, in its height and depth.”

When I was a little girl, my parents read me The Chronicles of Narnia.  Those stories made a deep impression on me and shaped my soul.  I was so devastated for the Pevensie children when they fell back through the wardrobe, back into this world!  They had been kings and queens in a magical land; they walked and talked with Aslan, yet they had to go back to a dreary, modern, war-torn world!  I yearned for them to return to Narnia, and it nurtured my longing for our true home with God.  Though I was unaware of it at the time and could not have articulated what was happening, I experienced the power of literature to help my soul remember that another world exists beyond our sight, a world that is more real and true than this one, a world where I belonged.  As I was swept up in the story, I was shown the reality of One who loved us enough to give His life, a being who is powerful and terrifying, yet kind and gentle.  No one had to spell it out for me; it wasn’t explicitly taught.  More effective than a sermon, the story did its work; truth sank right into my heart and nestled there to stay.  

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a scene near the end illustrates this and shows us the vital importance of literature.  After the children have completed their mission, Aslan tells Edmund and Lucy they won’t be returning to Narnia, and they are understandably devastated.

“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”

“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.

“Are -are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.

“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

The “right kind of stories,” as C.S. Lewis would call them, are like vessels holding living water.  One reason “stories will save the world” is that they are the concrete thing we can lay hold of, here and now, to help open our imaginations and hearts to transcendent, divine truth. These classic stories are not the end in themselves, they are pointing to Truth beyond and above them.  They help us see that our Story is one of redemption, and they help nurture our longing for home with God.  This reminds me of what C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory (one of my very favorite quotes):

 “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

This is the power of story.  When we surrender to it, we enter an imaginative world of images and metaphor, where we can have a transcendent experience.  The grand Story of redemption is open to our view and impressed upon our souls.  We can find meaning and hope as we glimpse the Light that shines in darkness.  When immersed in story, we can become more fully alive, more fully human, and closer to our God, the source of all goodness and truth. We can be awakened from the “evil enchantment” of modernity and remember that this material world is not our only reality nor our ultimate destiny.