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I very much enjoyed ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ when I read it, but in looking back while it was tremendous for middle school me, it doesn’t hold up. The whole “
by JackFr 4y ago
I very much enjoyed ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ when I read it, but in looking back while it was tremendous for middle school me, it doesn’t hold up. The whole “Fall of Rome/Dark Ages/Western Monasticism preserves civilization” narrative just isn’t true and is a misreading of Western history. That’s a post-hoc framing created in the late Renaissance/early modern era.
- bslorence 4y agoInteresting take, I would have thought that the early moderns were not too interested in vindicating monasticism. Do you have particular thinkers in mind here?
- JackFr 4y agoWell it was a kind of hand wavy pronouncement on my part. With respect to the ‘Fall of Rome/Dark Ages’ narrative I had Pico della Mirandola and Edward Gibbon in mind. Considering their takes on monasticism, I suppose monasticism as the savior of civilization was actually a much later add on.
- bslorence 4y ago> a much later add on. Yeah that's what I was thinking too. I'm going to re-read Canticle soon-ish but I wonder to what extent Miller endorses even the latter. I feel like his concerns were much more immediately spiritual than cultural. I'm thinking particularly of the scene where the main character of whichever volume meets the Pope up-close and is taken aback to see that his garments are moth-eaten and threadbare.