This is the point in the "Book of Job and the Arts" class in which students discover that the canonical book has always been in a slow dance with an oral tradition (what Lawrence Besserman called the "legend of Job"), and I suggest to them that Job is best seen as a multi-voiced tradition whose polyphony allows the special challenges of suffering, meaning, faith and friendship to be dynamically engaged. But midterms are
approaching and I could tell few students had found the time to do the readings - The Testament of Job and Robert Frost's Job: A Masque of Reason, which helped me make this very point at Renmin seven months ago. More's the pity, as polyphony must be heard to be believed: polyphony's more than just multiplicity. The lecture went ok, but I really felt the difference from past weeks when I was getting as well as giving.
