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How to Read Great Literature as Scripture (My Seven-Stage Approach) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-02 18:31:59
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

We've spoken a lot about the value of reading literature scripturally, but what does that look like?

Today I'm passing my process for deep-reading the great books as wisdom literature on to you. There are seven stages, and a bonus stage, that cover text selection, setting intentions, reading aloud, close appreciation, and much more.

We also have specific recommendations for literature that works well with this technique, and what your reading practice might look like. 

Video Timestamps:

  • 0:00 scripture and great literature
  • 1:48 why read literature like this?
  • 3:15 reflection is connection
  • 3:59 introducing my approach
  • 4:35 stage 1: text selection
  • 5:50 if you're reading, it's for you
  • 6:30 my recommendations
  • 8:54 stage 2: scheduling time
  • 10:00 ritual examples 
  • 11:57 stage 3: set your intention
  • 12:22 my return to the bible 
  • 13:00 bible reading challenges
  • 14:00 the power of intention
  • 16:00 St. Augustine's threefold present
  • 17:14 stage 4: read swiftly 
  • 17:42 stage 5: rereading aloud
  • 18:40 two methods of chanting
  • 20:00 visualisation examples
  • 21:00 stage 6: close appreciation
  • 23:00 stage 7: textual interpretation
  • 24:35 bonus stage: think on paper
  • 26:13 who will you read scripturally?

Let us know:

1) What literature are you reading scripturally? 

2) What does your deep-reading practice look like?

3) Could you recommend any works that you feel are perfect for this approach? 

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

How to Read Great Literature as Scripture (My 7-Stage Approach)

📚 Read the Great Books with Hardcore Literature: https://www.patreon.com/hardcoreliterature/about ———————————— 🎙️ https://open.spotify.com/show/70IZA24... (Subscribe to the Hardcore Literature Podcast on iTunes & Spotify) 🏫 https://hardcore-university.teachable... (Hardcore University, Exam Preparation Courses) ✍🏼 https://benjaminmcevoy.com My Personal Website ———————————— Hardcore Literature Lecture Series ———————————— 📔Contents Page: https://cutt.ly/CmNhRY3 🎖️ War and Peace: https://cutt.ly/U3nzGma 🎭 Shakespeare Project: https://cutt.ly/B3nxHH7 🐳 Moby Dick: https://cutt.ly/K3nzVKf ☄️ Blood Meridian: https://cutt.ly/P3nz6Qp 🍂 Wuthering Heights: https://cutt.ly/N3nxxYt 🇮🇪 Ulysses: https://cutt.ly/x3nxQmN 🚂 Anna Karenina: https://cutt.ly/vmNhAWv 💀 Crime and Punishment: https://cutt.ly/rmNhFt5 ⚓ Persuasion: https://cutt.ly/amNhX7b ☕ In Search of Lost Time: https://cutt.ly/5mNh8oD ⚔️ The Hero’s Journey: https://cutt.ly/UmNjrE3 🌸 Siddharta: https://cutt.ly/YmNjuzi 🎠 Don Quixote: https://cutt.ly/cmNjoK4 ❤️Shakespeare’s Sonnets: https://cutt.ly/nmNlW7V 🇫🇷 Les Misérables: https://cutt.ly/J3YixoA 🕯️ The Turn of the Screw: https://cutt.ly/nToAQQ3 🖋️ Dickens Seasonal Read: https://cutt.ly/9ToAybt 📖 Middlemarch Serial Reading: https://tinyurl.com/45rv965c ———————————— 0:00 scripture and great literature 1:48 why read literature like this? 3:15 reflection is connection 3:59 introducing my approach 4:35 stage 1: text selection 5:50 if you're reading, it's for you 6:30 my recommendations 8:54 stage 2: scheduling time 10:00 ritual examples 11:57 stage 3: set your intention 12:22 my return to the bible 13:00 bible reading challenges 14:00 the power of intention 16:00 St. Augustine's threefold present 17:14 stage 4: read swiftly 17:42 stage 5: rereading aloud 18:40 two methods of chanting 20:00 visualisation examples 21:00 stage 6: close appreciation 23:00 stage 7: textual interpretation 24:35 bonus stage: think on paper 26:13 who will you read scripturally?

Comments

Angalee Nadesalingam

Thanks so much for this lecture Ben! I’m a year late but still found this incredibly helpful 😊 I will be reading The Book of Disquiet by Pessoa like scripture this year.

Len Larsson

Thank you Ben .. I have just had an epiphany .. in my reading I am oftentimes struck by meaning, and my thoughts tend to wander off (relevant to the text) and so it takes ages to get through the reading I have assigned myself. I then get frustrated, and think I am "not a good reader". My solution has been to use recorded texts, which certainly helped with Shakespeare (which had intervening/interleafed "translation"). It now occurs to me that this is OK, and probably a good sign that the text is throwing up issues for me to think about. My meanderings are usually around, what would I do in that situation, that reminds me of XYZ, I also (confession time) imagine myself in a classroom explaining the meaning/value of the text to a group of young adults. Thanks to this video, I realise that it is OK, and worthwhile, and I shouldn't be placing such high expectations on myself. It is supposed to be hard going, I have decided to resist the idea that the soft-core pap we have become accustomed to in the modern era is not worth the time, and the "lack of effort" involved is dumbing us down. I am reminded of Harold Blooms assertion that all poetry is a meditation on a poem previously written by someone else - I think of my favourite movie "Moonstruck" with its recurring them of the music and the story of La Bohème, it has GREAT writing, funny, illuminating and relevant. .. I think of these lines ... "Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and *get* in my bed!"... How many epics, novels & poems have been written along these lines? Many Opera's certainly. What I am getting at in a bumbling way, is that great works should inspire us to rethink, to reapply, to re-work to a form we can use in our lives. You've just given us the blueprint to do this. I am going to structure my approach as recommended. Thank you Ben - Outstanding as always.

Pierre Bolkonsky

Every time I start a new book I read extremely slowly. Especially if it's a novel, everything is new in the beginning and every reader needs time to get his bearings. I need A LOT of time. This was the cause for many reading slumps in the past, and I usually don't read for a few days after I finish a (long) book. After watching this video, I realize I've been doing it wrong. I will try to follow Ben's advice about stage 4 and 5: read every chapter quickly the first time, then go back and re-read more deeply / out loud, which I usually do anyway. This might be a simple advice that makes a big change in my comfort as a reader, so thanks Ben!

Ellen M
>>79028300

Len Moonstruck is one of my favorite’s too! (And La Boheme is my favorite opera) A movie about how love in real life is not the love of movies and books, or operas. Set to the theme of an opera that is about an all consuming love at first sight where the heroine loves, gets her heart broken and dies. Sigh. So is Ronnie right, are the storybooks bullshit? The books are life as life is the opera, so I agree with you- the grest works are here to inspire us.

Vicky

I am already doing a read of a Sonnet a day then listening to Patrick Stewart read it then reading it out loud to my kids 😅 am on the Procreation ones and so far not finding much to live by 😂 but will keep going! I am also reading/listening to three chapters of Moby Dick each morning in bed with coffee - todays tenet can be ‚Oh man! Admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being off it.“

hardcoreliterature
>>79039666

This was something that I actually discovered when I first started reading Shakespeare, Pierre. I was very young, and understood practically nothing - except for the fact that I liked whatever it was I was reading. Then over the years, I would stick so close to annotations, notes, explanations that I would lose the sense of plot (literally). Forcing myself to go through rapidly actually increased how much meaning I was deriving, as we absorb so much from immersion. And then, of course, once we’ve done that swift reading, we go and linger, appreciate, unpick difficulty :)

hardcoreliterature
>>79058440

Very nice, Vicky. I love Patrick Stewart's readings. He's so delightfully twee :) I used to look forward to his sonnet readings as they came out live. Lovely man, with such a great sense of humour too. And it's great to hear you've scaffolded your Moby Dick onto your morning coffee - I do the exact same thing!

Lori Miller

I don’t read scripturally, but I’m excited to try it. I’m going to try this approach with a volume of Emily Brontë poems I purchased while we were reading Wuthering Heights and with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, purchased after the last Patreon Q & A Show.

Florian Pesantes

Thank you Ben for this video. I find your instruction extremely inspiring and helpful. Some elements I had applied prior but not in such a structured, complete and consistent order. Your lecture electrified me, I had to make the first attempt at once. 1. Select wisely : I thought of John Milton’s paradise lost, as from several sides this work has come up recently, fate’s cue? But the other was Tennyson’s “In Memoriam AHH” a mighty long and delicious eulogy. I had time ago commissioned a reading of some of the cantos. They are now available on YouTube (up to canto 83) and although I’d loved them dearly I hadn’t really taken the time to read them properly in that scriptural way. Rather enjoyed the delightful rhyme and meter, the emotions expressed like a music one follows half dreamlike without properly understanding the finesse of the work. So I felt a bit guilty, careless but also the burning wish to make more of it for me. 2. Allocated time. 10 minutes, will have to be either right in the morning at expense of other activities dear to me, or in the evening prior to bedtime with the danger of not really being appreciated by my puréed brain and soul after a hard day’s work. What could be mastered in such a short time? Not a whole canto. Just one stanza of four lines in one session I’m aware after having tested your method on the preface, 11 stanzas, 44 lines. 3. Intention: To understand the poem fully. To honour Tennyson’s and Hallam’s love. To learn to express my own feelings freely and fearlessly. 4. Swift reading with the eyes:the easy bit, as I’d listened to it umpteen times previously 5. The reading aloud, twice I did, firstly trying to follow the words with my mouth and empty mind. A second go chanting like a Gregorian lecture at the lunch table of the Benedictine Abbey Barroux on Mount Ventoux. Not sure if it unlocked anything immediately but it helped to alienate the text from preformed interpretation. I forgot the very promising technique of awakening my senses to let the words shine stronger in me. I’ll do that with tomorrow’s exercise on stanza one of canto one. 6. Etymology of words unknown. None were unknown to me, so I picked two that made me curious by their sound: “skull” and “dwell” 7. Explaining to myself: I saw this as a ménage à trois, he, Arthur and God. He was angry at God for taking away the beloved friend, jealous even, but fear and reverence did not allow him to express his rage clearly. He tried to reconcile his faith with his devastating feeling of loss in a yet unconvincing way, a premature conclusion, not feeling right to him and to me. As long as he declares his submission to godly wisdom he uses the personal pronoun for God only , thou, thee, thy. He doesn’t say I. Instead he generalised “we”, “us”, “man”. Only from line 33 when he starts to speak of his personal loss, his feelings, not towards God but towards Arthur, there he changes to “I”, “me” and “my”. Strange, I thought that English language capitalises the “I” but starts the “you” and “thou” with lower cases. And that German language would have agreed to the opposite. I’d like to know, why so, it doesn’t seem to fit into the good English manners, where modesty at least should be pretended. 8. Bonus : journaling and reflection on my own life. I couldn’t decide on just one line/word/expression, so picked the two: “Our little systems have their day” and “Confusions of a wasted youth”. They seemed best to apply to my own life and flaws and matched with Marc Aurel’s precious teachings. - I filled over all 3 pages in my diary and had spent well over an hour, a well spent time though! Impossible to fit so much extra time into my morning routine. So I shall wisely stick to the one stanza rule. As raw and unrefined my first attempt may be, it feels deeply satisfying and I’m sure I’m onto something good: Quality over quantity. So let me close with another deeply felt expression of thanks to you, Benjamin!

Scott W

I am going to try this with Macbeth, starting with the Lady's 'Out, damned spot' soliloquy. I watched the Michael Fassbender movie last night and it's my new favourite Shakespeare adaptation. I kept forgetting to breathe. I cried three times. I read the play for the first time the night before the movie and as usual with my first reads of his plays, I got a cursory understanding of what was happening, but little of the power. The movie unlocked that, and I wonder if reading Shakespeare aloud more might help me feel the power of what is happening. What am I saying? I KNOW it will help! A couple of examples: when Macduff's family are murdered, I read it in the play, noted it happened, and moved on. When it happened in the movie, I really felt it and was so shocked I had to pause the movie and cry. How can I have unlocked that response from just the text of the play? The same events were 'happening' after all, but I was not unlocking them by my reading approach. Also, seeing Lady Macbeth recite her 'Out, damned spot' while sat on the floor of the church, drifting in and out of the present and the past, in and out of awareness. Stunning. But again, I read the same words in the play and did not feel what the movie made me feel. I will try this scriptural reading approach with Macbeth first.

Doug

This is a nice reminder to me of how not only to read great literature as Scripture, but how to read Scripture as Scripture. Thanks, Ben.

Rebekah Sunday

I hope it’s not impertinent to ask, Ben, but how old are you? I always get a little curious!

Caroline P

thank you once again Ben, this was very interesting. I have been trying to read an Emily Dickinson poem a day but I have struggled. I think it is because I always need a long time with any poetry. Even those very slim Faber and Faber books take me weeks. It isn’t that I don’t have time, i do have lots of reading time. I think I have come to the conclusion with Emily Dickinson that I was rushing it. Also I think it wasn’t working doing a start to finish thing with her complete works. I think I might need to dip in at random and let a poem find my eye. So I guess your approach works equally well if you take a poem a week and re read it in the same way as if you were taking it with ongoing few lines per day? I think it does, even tho the poems are often short. I had an absolutely wonderful PhD supervisor who was one of those rare polymaths and, tho he kept it hidden, had a huge heart. I miss him very much, he died some time ago. It is still a sad surprise to me at times that I can’t just call him up and say hello or pop round for a coffee in his house that was floor to ceiling of interesting things that he would light upon and tell me stories about. Anyway, he said to me, right at the start of my studies, that he wished his students would spend more time in the bath, thinking about their experiments and the questions they sought answers to, than spending hours and hours in the lab working on experiments. He said the thinking was the thing, not the doing. Although I don’t spend hours in the bath, I have found his sentiments valid in all sorts of ways since. I think his ethos fits well with this book club.

hardcoreliterature
>>79095140

Emily Brontë's poems and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are both excellent choices for this approach, Lori. Whilst I was putting the Wuthering Heights lecture series together, I used to take my volume out into nature with me and learn them by heart. And every year I return to Aurelius again, and wear out my copy with notes!

hardcoreliterature
>>79095358

This is all brilliant, Florian. I would agree that fate is bringing Paradise Lost to you. I have a strong feeling that you will enjoy it greatly. And wonderful choice of Tennyson’s requiem. I recently acquired an old biography of the poet from a secondhand bookstore, and it really impressed upon me just how thoroughly every great work from Tennyson was in memory of his dearly departed friend. Heartbreaking. Your writing about your process is beautiful - it inspires me to launch with great fervour into my practice for the day! By the way, Canto 7 always got me: Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more— Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

hardcoreliterature
>>79097947

Macbeth is so perfect for this. Funnily enough, I noticed that after putting the lecture together for this tragedy (forthcoming in the next few days) I simply could not read anything else without imposing Macbeth all over it. This must be what it feels like to be haunted. And I’m so happy that you enjoyed the Michael Fassbender adaptation. I adore this adaptation, and I would go so far as to say it’s best Shakespeare adaptation I’ve ever seen in English, vying for top spot with Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’. Perfect example with the murder of Macduff’s family - reading it is quite the lesser experience. There is so much between the lines, so much that gets left on the page. Whilst I love the “theatre of the mind”, Shakespeare certainly demands to be performed. Now when I read Macbeth, I see Michael Fassbender through and through. All of the actors did a tremendous job. Great directing, great cinematography, great music - masterpiece!

Gianna L White

Hi - I'm new to the book club and enjoying all of the content and commentary; I would like to read the bible with a friend who is Korean and struggles with the King James version (too many austere words) - can anyone recommend a bible that she can use to delve deeper into the literary aspects of the books of the bible yet retain the essence of the meaning?

D R

Enlightening ! Thank you.