Discover a Wise Fairy Tale Guide for Life’s Meaning.

Reviving the English Major: Unlocking the Power of Fairy Tales

For decades, the English major has been dead in the West. But there is hope for those who still seek to understand human and divine natures through literature. Vigen Guroian, a retired professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, offers a master class in his book, “Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination.”

Guroian focuses on fairy tales that seem ancient in heart, illustrating virtue and its opposite. He argues that these stories can teach morals in a way that reaches deep into the heart, not just the intellect. And he does this without overly psychologizing the tales, a welcome relief from today’s story-murdering post-Freudian, post-Jungian, and post-modern crit-lit “analysis.”

Richness Descended from Faith

Guroian nourishes a key quality that many postmodern academics disdain: Orthodox Christianity. It makes him a faithful and awe-inducing unlocker of tales. His analysis transcends denominational ties and bears the commonality of other beloved Christian writers such as C.S. Lewis, whom he cites at several appropriate points.

Throughout the book, Guroian pays close attention to how the stories we listen to shape our habits, into either virtue or vice. He explains why the Disney versions of the old Grimm’s fairy tales subvert the original moral meanings in the stories, and turn them into at best metaphysical pablum and at worst poison. On these grounds, he takes a few swipes at figures such as Charles Perrault.

Small Plot Changes Can Matter a Lot

Guroian examines fairy tales that he argues aim to develop our virtue. He helps explain exactly how such a complicated and delicate thing could be done using plot points such as mirror shards in a little boy’s eyes and a nightingale’s song.

For those who enjoy stories and wonder what makes them work, Guroian’s work is a real treat. It is accessible and delightful, unlike the self-described “experts” whose main trick is lavish incoherence. Stories shape our souls, and Guroian shows us how to unlock their power.

Discovering the Power of Christian Worldview in Fairy Tales

Have you ever wondered why some fairy tales resonate with us more than others? Vigen Guroian, in his book Tending the Heart of Virtue, explores the idea that the worldview of the storyteller plays a significant role in the power of the tale.

Perrault neither hints nor suggests that there is a lasting filial devotion of daughter to mother. In the Grimms’ fairyland, however, as in the Christian world, birth and death are conjoined, even as they also are in counterpoint to each other. It is not foreordained that after her death Cinderella’s mother should drop out of her daughter’s life. In other words, in the Grimm’s fairyland there exists a communion not only among the living but also between the living and the dead. Death, though it is real and final, is not meaningless, and the dead have a role in the lives of the living.

Guroian’s Christian piety has fertilized his understanding of fairy stories, making his explanations richer and more satisfying than those of other scholars. The Bible and Christian traditions are full of archetypes, which Christians would call the original archetypes. Scripture is rich with analogies, word pictures, and metaphors – all forms of embodied word. One who has steeped themselves in its true mythology is well-prepared to understand other forms of truth expressed in word pictures.

Rediscovering the Lost Path to Wisdom

Western literature and arts are now dead because those who call themselves its guardians have detached themselves from the source of all culture: religion. This is why the humanities are dead in most universities. However, great literature lives eternally for all who know where to look. Guroian’s Tending the Heart of Virtue is one guidebook for rediscovering this lost and ancient path to wisdom.