[Serious] The Humanities

[Belacqua]

The thing to do is to compare literature by Christians in Romance languages that isn't explicitly religious to pre-Christian literature.

I'm not even sure what that means ? rephrase perhaps ?

Sorry... Not good sentence structure.

Christian people in the Middle Ages wrote novels (aka "romances") that weren't specifically about religion. Nonetheless, these stories reflected their world view, which was thoroughly Christian. If we compare the values expressed in these stories with stories from other times and places, we can see how their values differ from non-Christian values.

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Greek tragedy exists because they felt that there are times when no resolution to problems of justice are possible. Christians think there always is an answer with God.

Then you mean romance with the specifics of Christian belief thrown in, not romance persay.  Also that would be true of any religion that believes in an afterlife, and especially justice in an afterlife they are not as rare as Christians would have us believe.

I thought I said earlier: I'm speaking of novels written in the Romance languages in the Middle Ages. ("A romance" originally meant a book written in the vernacular language, because scholarly books were written in Latin.) The values are not "thrown in." They are the values of the writers.

It might be interesting to do a study on whether Buddhist ideas of the afterlife allow situations in this life which have no moral solution. I don't think there are any stories from Buddhist countries which specifically focus on insoluble problems, as Greek tragedy does. It's possible though. But the goal of Buddhists is personal annihilation through Nirvana, not a subsumation into the Good, as it is for Christians. 

As an obvious example, you remember that Achilles spends the first half of the book pouting in his tent. He refuses to fight for the Argives because on the way to the war when they raped and pillaged a small town Achilles kills a girl's parents, rapes and kidnaps her and takes her into sexual slavery. He feels he's got her fair and square, but Agamemnon likes her too and takes her. Achilles' wounded pride and feeling of sexual rights overcomes his sense of duty to his country. This is presented in the story as understandable. He is finally motivated to fight when Hector kills his male lover Patroclus. A sense of personal outrage incites him to revenge, not on behalf of his country or king. He kills Hector but dies pretty soon himself. 

I think everybody would agree that it's hard to imagine a Christian epic with such a hero.

And yet Christians also use examples like the one above (King David for example) as hero's of God's love and redemption all the time. 
Maybe it was even made up from a Greek play, who knows. ? 

David is a good example here. He is depicted as a great man with obvious flaws. Throughout his story people (e.g. the prophet Nathan) scold him for these flaws. 

The point is that the values expressed in the David story are wildly different from those expressed in Greek epic. There is no love and redemption in Achilles' story, and Homer would never have imagined there should be. 

It seems to be true that we respond better to characters than to abstractions. Kids understand The Little Engine that Could more than a general admonition that it's good to keep trying. Just in general we listen to stories of events more than lists of moral laws.

But if you have counter-examples I'd be happy to hear them.

I'm not even sure what you mean by this, can you elaborate ?

As far as I can tell, people tend to understand things through concrete example and demonstration. An Aesop's Fable with the moral at the end is more effective than just the moral on its own -- it's the story that brings home to us its meaning.

Reading the narrative of the life of Julien Sorel, for example, is a prolonged meditation on a certain kind of person. Throughout your reading you are able to compare his situation with your own, and imagine yourself in his place. His successes and failures contrast and illuminate your own. If someone were to abstract from the story some sort of slogan or motto, it would be far less effective than the effect of living through the experience of reading. 

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