A Small Tirade: Sloth

[truepenny]

Okay, this is truly the Nit-Pick of Doom. I know that and I apologize in advance. But.

There's a Seven Deadly Sins Quiz starting the rounds. I have no objection to it--think it's kind of clever, tho' not something I myself would ever bother with--except for this one thing that's driving me batshit.

The mortal sin of Sloth (as opposed to common usage of the word "sloth") has nothing to do with laziness, which is how the quiz questions treat it. Sloth is despair. Sloth is being so impressed by your own sinfulness that you think you are beyond God's grace. Sloth is embracing your own damnation. Sloth is giving up. Sloth is defeatism. The modern equivalent of Sloth is probably depression. It has nothing to do with being too lazy to haul your ass out of bed in the morning.

On a theological level, I don't care about this at all. But it riles my Inner Balrog to see words being misused, and the concept behind Sloth is a subtle and important one, which conflation with common usage trivializes. So I'm speaking up for Sloth.

(Also feeling this insane desire to read Piers Plowman again. Or The Faerie Queene. Thank goodness I already have plans for this afternoon. By this evening, I should be okay again.)

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I did the quiz, and I agree with you. Sloth in the medieval sense is not the same as laziness. But hell, greed is not Avarice. Nor is pride Pride.

Accidie is a useful concept, but I think we need to keep the words separate.

I just did a quick search, and it has an interesting web page (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/ashp/purgterrace4a.html), part of Boston College's Virtual Purgatory (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/ashp/virtualpurgatory/new/virtual_purgatory.html).

[pameladean]

I am entirely with you. I hate it when people get that stuff wrong. And other stuff wrong, too. Just try calling the Narnian Chronicles allegory. Better yet, don't.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's just that Sloth is the one, for some reason, that gets my goat. I can't explain it.

And thank you for the link to Virtual Purgatory.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Just try calling the Narnian Chronicles allegory. Better yet, don't.

No. Don't. Although even that is better than calling The Lord of the Rings allegory, and people haven't quit doing that yet.

I think the word "allegory" would get bandied around a good deal less if everyone had to read Book I of The Faerie Queene (I'm not a heartless monster--I could have said all six books) and then talk for an hour with a Spenserian scholar about what Spenser does to allegory in it. Because once you've done that, your brain is a whole different shape, and you're much less likely to call things "allegory" that aren't.

[pameladean]

I'm not sure that I should reveal this in public, but in fact you don't have to read Spenser to get this valuable and useful effect. You can read C.S. Lewis's book about "The Romance of the Rose," the name of which I am utterly blanking on -- no, wait, I have it! The Allegory of Love -- and if you can read the book at all it'll do just fine. I find Lewis's prose hopelessly entrancing even when I want to hit him over the head with a large sausage, so it worked for me.

Pamela

[eternaltimtams.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I've always been ignorant. Yet it does make a lot of sense.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You're quite welcome. I'm just pleased that it was interesting to someone other than me--and if it was helpful, that's all the better. So thank you for letting me know.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I find Lewis's prose hopelessly entrancing even when I want to hit him over the head with a large sausage ...

*loves mental image*

I haven't read The Allegory of Love, but if it works to the purpose as well as a very tough hour trying to explain just how exactly Error and Orgoglio were allegories, and for what, and in that case why things x, y, and z happened in the way they did, with a wicked smart professor playing Devil's Advocate ... then that's super. And probably much more doable. I think allegory is a concept that looks so absurdly simple (and with models like Pilgrim's Progress is so absurdly simple) that it's much much too easy to assume that that's all there is to it, and then try to apply it wholesale--much like Aristotle's theory of tragedy, which even he admitted was really only meant to apply to Oedipus Rex (and then, being Aristotle, went on to assume that if most plays didn't match the model of Oedipus Rex, then that meant there was something wrong with the plays rather than something wrong with the model. Speaking of someone you'd like to hit over the head with a large sausage ...).

Although the hour that taught me what allegory isn't is also the hour that taught me to love Spenser, so part of me thinks it should be compulsory anyway.

But that's just me.