No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice. Leland Ryken Read Quote
Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer’s work. Leland Ryken Read Quote
Readers should aspire to what is excellent. They should refuse to read a substitute Bible. They should want a Bible that calls them to their higher selves – or to something higher than their current level of attainment. Leland Ryken Read Quote
For the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life. Leland Ryken Read Quote
When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term ‘Puritanism’ as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism. Leland Ryken Read Quote
The Puritans removed organs and paintings from churches, but bought them for private use in their homes. Leland Ryken Read Quote
The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. Leland Ryken Read Quote
Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience. Leland Ryken Read Quote
The Puritans’ sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme. Leland Ryken Read Quote
A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith. Leland Ryken Read Quote