THE DIDACTIC PERIOD

The Pilgrim’s Progress

John Bunyan

John Bunyan’s novel The Pilgrim’s Progress is a famous didacticism example.

Bunyan makes the allegory and lesson he is trying to impart clear: the main
character’s name is Christian and he travels from the City of Destruction on his way to
Mount Zion. Along the way, Christian comes up against many obstacles, and his
journey through and around these obstacles helps to instruct the reading audience
how to overcome obstacles themselves by leading moral lives. Bunyan makes the
references to Biblical stories obvious so that readers could more easily grasp the moral
lessons he was trying to teach therein.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

How the Anglo-Saxons Read their Poems

Daniel Donoghue

The scribes of early medieval England wrote out their vernacular poems using
a format that looks primitive to our eyes because it lacks the familiar visual cues of
verse lineation, marks of punctuation, and capital letters. The paradox is that scribes
had those tools at their disposal, which they deployed in other kinds of writing, but
when it came to their vernacular poems they turned to a sparser presentation. How
could they afford to be so indifferent? The answer lies in the expertise that Anglo-
Saxon readers brought to the task. From a lifelong immersion in a tradition of oral
poetics they acquired a sophisticated yet intuitive understanding of verse
conventions, such that when their eyes scanned the lines written out margin-to-
margin, they could pinpoint with ease such features as alliteration, metrical units, and
clause boundaries, because those features are interwoven in the poetic text itself.
Such holistic reading practices find a surprising source of support in present-day eye-
movement studies, which track the complex choreography between eye and brain
and show, for example, how the minimal punctuation in manuscripts snaps into focus
when viewed as part of a comprehensive system.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

The Good Knight

Sarah Woodbury

“The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with
an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s
brother tasks his two best detectives—Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of
the court bard—with bringing the killer to justice. Once blame for the murder falls on
Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, ultimately
uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales.”

THE PURITAN PERIOD

The English Puritan Elegy

Jeffrey A. Hammond

Jeffrey Hammond's study of the funeral elegies of early New England reassesses
a body of poems whose importance in their own time has been obscured by almost
total neglect in ours. Hammond reconstructs the historical, theological and cultural
contexts of these poems to demonstrate how they responded to Puritan views on a
specific process of mourning. The elegies emerge, he argues, as performative scripts
that consoled readers by shaping their experience. They shed new light on the
emotional dimension of Puritanism and the important role of ritual in Puritan culture.

THE PHILIPPINES LITERATURE

Mga Ibong Mandaragit

Amado V. Hernandez

Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Prey) was written by Filipino writer and social
activist, Amado V. Hernandez. Being a novel that tackles social-political issues,
particularly Philippine revolution and neocolonialism, it has a connection to Rizal’s
earlier novels – Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo. There was a passage in the novel
where protagonist Mando Plaridel was tested by Tata Matyas on what he knows
about Rizal’s controversial books. As he narrated the living conditions of Filipinos then,
readers will note how Hernandez had high hopes for significant changes that would
uplift the Philippine society.
THE DIDACTIC PERIOD

Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist, about an orphaned boy in poverty, is an

example of a Victorian didactic novel. Dickens wanted to dramatize the difficulties
that poor people had in society, thereby making the reading public more
sympathetic. The point of didacticism in this novel was to change popular opinion
and encourage a more moral viewpoint on the part of citizens of Dickens’s day. In
the above excerpt, Dickens describes the horrible options available to poor people,
which were either to die slowly inside the workhouse or quickly outside of it. Though
poor people had some access to food inside the workhouse, it was meager and
accompanied by such grueling work that they could not survive those conditions.
Dickens wanted to motivate his reading public to more fully consider the issues in his
day surrounding poverty.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature

Stephen J. Harris

What makes English literature English ? This question inspires Stephen Harris's
wide-ranging study of Old English literature. From Bede in the eighth century to
Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth, Harris explores the intersections of race and
literature before the rise of imagined communities. Harris examines possible
configurations of communities, illustrating dominant literary metaphors of race from
Old English to its nineteenth-century critical reception. Literary voices in the England
of Bede understood the limits of community primarily as racial or tribal, in keeping with
the perceived divine division of peoples after their languages, and the extension of
Christianity to Bede's Germanic neighbours was effected in part through metaphors
of family and race. Harris demonstrates how King Alfred adapted Bede in the ninth
century; how both exerted an effect on Archbishop Wulfstan in the eleventh; and how
Old English poetry speaks to images of race.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

Tariq Ali

“Beginning with the bonfire of over one hundred thousand books taken from
all of the Muslim libraries in Cordoba, a seat of great learning in Moorish Spain, the
story focuses on one family who have lived in a small village near Cordoba for
hundreds of years. As rumors begin to circulate of humiliations, banishments of Muslims
by the conquering Christians, and even forced conversions to Christianity, the villagers
can only wait in anguish for the approaching disaster.”

THE PURITAN PERIOD

Puritan Rhetoric : The Story of Emotion in Religion

Eugene E. White

In the first or introductory part of the book, Professor White discusses in

considerable detail the broader implications of the confrontation between rationalists
and revivalists in New England, represented by the following orations, during this most
important upheaval in the Colonies prior to the Revolution. The orations themselves
are arranged to represent the force and counterforce of reason versus emotionalism
and the precarious balance maintained momentarily and, eventually, lost. And in the
third part of the book Professor White provides critical analysis and suggested
appraisal for further interpretation and inquiry.

THE PHILIPPINES LITERATURE

Florante at Laura
Francisco Balagtas

A famous masterpiece in Philippine literature, Francisco Balagtas’ Florante at

Laura is written in the form of ‘awit’ where there are four lines per stanza and 12
syllables per line. Set in the fictional kingdom of Albania, it tackles the story between
Duke Florante and Princess Laura, who’s also being pursued by Florante’s enemy
Count Adolfo. As a literary classic, this book has become a favorite play not only
among Filipino high school students, but has been showcased in grand theaters such
as Gantimpala Theater and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
THE DIDACTIC PERIOD

Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse

Of course, not all moral lessons in didactic literature align with Christian values.
In his 20th century novel Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse explores the philosophy and
moral teachings of Buddhism. In the above excerpt, the main character Siddhartha
reflects on the different ways he has tried to achieve Enlightenment and lose the
burdensome Self. However, there is more to it than just the things he lists as having
tried, and the rest of the novel will bring him through different lessons that the reader
can experience concurrently.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

Representation of the Natural World in Old English Poetry

Jennifer Neville

This book examines descriptions of the natural world in a wide range of Old
English poetry. Jennifer Neville describes the physical conditions experienced by the
Anglo-Saxons and argues that the poetic descriptions were not a reflection of these
conditions but a literary device used by Anglo-Saxons to define more important issues,
such as the state of humanity, the creation and maintenance of society, the power
of individuals, the relationship between God and creation, and the power of writing
to control information.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

The Good Knight

Sarah Woodbury

“The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with
an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s
brother tasks his two best detectives—Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of
the court bard—with bringing the killer to justice. Once blame for the murder falls on
Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, ultimately
uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales.”
THE PURITAN PERIOD

Puritan Rhetoric : The Story of Emotion in Religion

Eugene E. White

In the first or introductory part of the book, Professor White discusses in

considerable detail the broader implications of the confrontation between rationalists
and revivalists in New England, represented by the following orations, during this most
important upheaval in the Colonies prior to the Revolution. The orations themselves
are arranged to represent the force and counterforce of reason versus emotionalism
and the precarious balance maintained momentarily and, eventually, lost. And in the
third part of the book Professor White provides critical analysis and suggested
appraisal for further interpretation and inquiry.

THE PHILIPPINES LITERATURE

Noli Me Tangere
Dr. Jose Rizal

Among the great novels in Philippine literature, Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not)
is the most controversial and widely-known – it’s included in the current education
curriculum of Filipino high school students. Written by the country’s national hero, Dr.
José Rizal, this novel sparked the social awakening of Filipinos during the Spanish
colonial era. As Rizal cannot fathom the unfairness of the Spanish priests and the ruling
government at the time, his purpose of writing the book was to expose the ills of
Philippine society at the time. In this revolutionary book, you’ll learn about the story of
Crisostomo Ibarra, how he dealt with Spanish authorities, and how he prepared for his
revenge, as told in Rizal’s 2nd book, El Filibusterismo.