World mythologies and regional folktales have always served as source material for modern fantasy, with some (like Greek or Celtic myths) having well-established influence and others (like African or Asian tales) enjoying their first widespread audience in recent years. Young adult novels have their fair share of fantasies based on the old stories, and also their fair share of both successful and failed retellings. In the last year or two, young adult readers have been …
Category: Literature
[ This post originally appeared on my classical teacher site, Locus Classicus. ] [ Concluded from Part 1 ] For myself, I desire to take the classical Christian tradition with the utmost seriousness, meaning that I do not simply reject something found in it because it is not immediately apparent to me how that thing is sensible and might be true. On the other hand, our tradition itself permits us to imagine that, if we …
[ This post originally appeared on my classical teacher site, Locus Classicus. ] I want to approach this seemingly counter-productive question (at least for those of us involved in CCE, Classical Christian Education), by discussing two pretty provocative classical statements that recently came to my attention regarding politics and theology. These two statements, one from the 4th century B.C. and the other from the 16th century A.D. stake out the position that there is a …
Say what one will about mythology; there are times when it is an incredibly deep store of verifiable human knowledge drawn from experience and made more powerful through allegorization. Take Virgil’s remark in Book IV of the Aeneid that as soon as Aeneas and Dido have, according to Juno, been married, immediately “Rumor flies through Libya’s great cities. Rumor, swiftest of all the evils in the world.” Who is this Rumor? What happens if we pay attention …
by Jeremiah Jensen Jeremiah Jensen is a homeschooling senior from Houston, Texas. This summer, he completed Kepler’s summer course titled, “The Art of the Academic Essay.” The following is his final essay as presented for grade on August 27, 2020. We invite comments and dialogue from readers. Although to an outside observer it might seem that Ivan Ilych lived a normal life, a careful analysis of his thoughts and actions shows otherwise. Many look at …
Studying Latin is important for several reasons. First of all, it is important because some 60% of English words are derived from Latin. So, knowing Latin will help you have a better knowledge and understanding of English. From a practical point of view, it will help you raise your SAT or ACT scores. If we take for example the Latin noun mors, mortis, which means “death”, here are some of the English words derived from it: mortal, …