Brit Lit Vol. 1: Old English

by Rebekah Merkle, Douglas Wilson

This British Literature series covering classic English authors from Beowulf to P. G. Wodehouse is unique: Each volume of Logos Press's Brit Lit gives you both the unabridged primary sources and the complete reference tools that teachers and students would need during a year-long British Literature class. No more flipping back and forth between reference books and dog-eared thrift editions: For the first time, the classroom helps and the classics themselves are interwoven for classical & Christian schools. Selected and edited by Rebekah Merkle, a veteran teacher at Logos School in Moscow, ID.
Each volume includes daily reading schedules; engaging comprehension questions for every day's reading with detailed answers; introductory essays highlighting themes and offering a Christian perspective; page-by-page, on-the-spot marginalia offering explanations, context, and important notes; memorization for 200 lines of poetry over the year; 90 integrative assignments and supplementary poems in the Poetry Workbook; comprehensive end-of-volume tests over readings and the Poetry Workbook.

This volume includes Beowulf, paired with complementary assigned readings from The Hobbit, Caedmon's Hymn, The Battle of Maldon, and The Wanderer.

Genres: Fiction

219 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2013

About the author

Rebekah Merkle has dabbled in a number of occupations ranging from running her own clothing label to designing fabrics to becoming a full-time high school humanities teacher. Her designs have been featured in a number of magazines and she has edited a Brit Lit curriculum for Canon Press, but by far her proudest accomplishment is her crew of five outrageous, hilarious, high-speed teenage children, and her favorite role is that of wife to her similarly outrageous, hilarious, and high-speed husband Ben Merkle.

Rebekah is the daughter of Douglas Wilson and is the sister of Rachel Jankovic & N.D. Wilson

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the life of me, can’t figure out why this volume has rated so low. Maybe other readers were forced to endure the intellectual equivalent of a root canal when they studied Beowulf a la public education standards.

Come on, people. This was a PHENOMENAL study.

Public education has done a spot-on job of making the majority of adults in western society despise reading after they’ve done their time in juvenile education. Those who DO show interest in picking up books post-secondary are then given an enthusiastic arm to usher them down a side path. “Oh, good! You want to keep reading! Here, let’s show you all the modern biographies, self-help volumes, socially-conscientious fiction, and progressive propaganda you’re LUCKY to have graduated to...leave all that unpleasant ‘enduring and instructional’ hogwash behind.”

There’s a reason stuff like Beowulf has endured. There’s a reason you were presented it in such a way as to make it distasteful. And now, thanks to Rebekah Merkle, Doug Wilson, and Logos Press...there’s a cure for your indoctrinated distaste for relevant, instructional, enduring literature. Looking forward to DEVOURING this series.

Always surprises me when I discover that, despite being the A-Plus honors literature teacher’s pet...there are a TON of literature devices, standards, forms, and genres that I’m still not aware of. This volume was my introduction to the chiasm (which my Apple device keeps insisting is a misspelling of ‘chasm’, foolish little statist tablet). And it was a GREAT introduction to boot. The recommended study alongside Tolkien’s The Hobbit made the endeavor even more engaging, and there were just enough study questions to entice to reflection without making the process seem mind-numbingly scholastic.

And don’t skip the supplementals at the end. Read someone else’s analysis and train yourself to recognize WHY consuming classic literature in your adult years is relevant and a necessary tool in dominioneering.