Like the rest of the humanities, the English major has been dead in the West for decades now. It survives in name, of course, but has been turned inside out. Its aim has been reversed, from learning to understand human and divine natures to hating these and seeking their destruction.
One still can pursue the original aim of literature. This quest must, however, be taken today as historically: individually or in small companies.
One of great literature’s living guides includes Vigen Guroian, a now-retired professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. Earlier this year, Oxford University Press released his second edition of “Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination.”
Reading several years ago his first edition, published in 1998 (a year that seems like another universe), inspired me to look up Guroian’s catalog and buy his 2005 “Rallying the Really Human Things,” then after last Christmas to grab the audiobook from Mars Hill of his “Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening.” That’s where I first heard Guroian’s voice. It’s the voice of a grandfather with many stories worth the time to listen.
In the updated “Tending the Heart of Virtue,” Guroian unlocks the stories of others. He focuses on fairy stories that seem ancient in heart even when written in the last century. He often takes issue with prominent scholarship on these stories but focuses more on the stories than their would-be interpreters.
Richness Descended from Faith
Guroian nourishes a key quality that
