Starting Points

This year in our homeschool we're learning about forming our worldview.  One of the required reading assignments for this week includes excerpts from How to Read Slowly by James Sire.  Here's what he says about learning to analyse things we read:
"When writers write they do so from the perspective of their own world view.  What they presuppose about themselves, God, the good life and the validity of human knowledge governs both what they say and how they say it.  That is why reading with world views in mind (your own and that of the author) will help you understand not only what is written in the lines but what is written between the lines--that is, what is presupposed before the pen even reaches the page."

And later in chapter 1 he writes:
"It isn't just in prose that we need to be aware of world views.  There is a frequent misconception about poetry.  Poetry, we hear people say, is just for emotion and feeling.  Indeed, poetry does involve emotion and feeling, but at its best it reflects our whole character.  As Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, "No man was ever yet a great poet without at the same time being a profound philosopher.  For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions and language."