Wordsworth on Daffodils

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We are only formed when we come into contact with another. And so literature forms us through words, without necessarily giving us any information. You know, i'm not learning much new about daffodils when i read wordsworth on daffodil,. But i'm being formed and looking at them in a different way that then spills over into the rest of my life and how i look at things. So reading literature is formative, not so much informative. I really like that.

This week David and Curtis are joined by Karen Swallow Prior, writer, thinker, and research professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Karen talks to us about the current state of affairs in social media, particularly Twitter, and compares its impact on culture and the church to another critical technology, the printing press. She discusses how these modern technologies are impacting our brains, and how we can push back against this through the simple act of reading, especially the (necessarily slow and contemplative) reading of literature.

Show Notes:

-National Endowment of the Arts - “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America”

-Caleb Crain (The New Yorker) - “Why We Don’t Read, Revisited”

-Sign up for David’s French Press newsletter

-Follow Curtis’ work at RedeemingBabel.org