A church lit up in a darkened landscape

121 How Did Premodern Readers Understand the World?

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This lesson answers a central question in the Premodern era:

“How did people decide what was true?”

Premodern cultures treated Christian belief as the foundation of knowledge — meaning:

You believe first, and understanding follows.
(“Credo ut intelligam” — I believe so that I may understand.)

This sign system shaped:

  • moral thinking
  • social hierarchy
  • literature
  • allegory
  • ideas about fate & authority

This lesson moves students beyond “religion in the background” and towards understanding belief as a meaning‑making method.

Today we are learning how Premodern literature created meaning through belief. By the end of the lesson, you will understand that:

  • Premodern texts assume Christian belief is the foundation for understanding
  • Stories often teach or reflect religious truths
  • Premodern readers viewed the world through faith, order, and divine authority
  1. Premodern cultures believed that faith leads to understanding. (“I believe so that I may understand.”)
  2. Christian doctrine provided the sign system for interpreting the world.
  3. Literature reflected this worldview through allegory, hierarchy, and divine order.
  4. Belief authorised meaning — not personal experience or independent reasoning.

Student-friendly anchor:

“In the Premodern world, belief came first, explanations came second.”

  • Premodern – before scientific or modern thinking
  • Doctrine – official religious teaching
  • Allegory – a story where characters/events represent spiritual or moral truths
  • Divine authority – power believed to come from God
  • Faith – religious belief or trust
  • “This text reflects the Premodern belief that…”
  • “Understanding is authorised by faith because…”
  • “This moment functions as an allegory for…”

We don’t find Christian meaning behind words now, today, because we are ourselves Christian. We interpret it because that is the encoding being used by authors, handed down to them by Christin writers, in a country whose ideology was governed by the Church.

To Premodern writers, the natural world was dangerous and awe inspiring. The Church offered answers to difficult questions such as where did we come from, and where are we going. Those answers provided peace and assurance.

“Premodern readers were not being controlled — Christian doctrine was a knowledge that helped in understanding the world.”

Board Example

🔒 Where did mankind come from?

Ask:

  • Was mankind designed by a creator?
  • Or has mankind merely the latest in a long sequence of adaptations to life?

Analogy:

  • In Premodernity, origin of the species is explained in scripture and science has to mold around this assertion of origin, or be false.
  • Scripture was taught as beyond question or beyond doubt.

Teacher line:

“Faith wasn’t an opinion — it was the method.”

Inferno is the first part of a three-part epic poem called The Divine Comedy, written in the C14th. It tells the story of a fictionalized Dante who becomes lost in a dark forest and then undertakes a spiritual journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. This journey is both literal and allegorical.

MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

Question: What signs within the story do we feel today are encoded as ‘Christian signs’?

  • Darkness
  • Paths
  • Savagery
  • Death
  • truth

Inferno begins is part of the system which encodes signs like ‘darkness, paths, savagery, death, truth’ as having Christian meaning. Darkness becomes encoded with ideas of ignorance to Christianity, and temptation. Paths are encoded to mean the journey we take toward Christianity. Savagery is encoded as life without Christ. Truth is encoded only as that told by Christianity. It is impossible to use these terms today without them also carrying these literary meanings. The Christianization of signs is part of the substrata of meaning that was established in Premodernity by Dante, sermons and the Bible itself and faith was a way of understanding the world.

Written in 1794 as part of Songs of Experience, William Blake’s The Tyger interrogates divine creation through a lens of awe and dread. Its rhythmic intensity and burning imagery evoke the sublime, asking how a fearsome creature could be forged by the same hand that made innocence and light.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears 
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Question: Can you see the signs that have been encoded with Christian meaning by earlier traditions?

“Immortal hand or eye / the hand (of God) / terror / lamb”

This text is written in Modernity but continues the same encoding of signs with Christian meaning. Signs like ‘immortal’ cannot be used without decoding it now as meaning God. Signs like “hand or eye” are decoded today as containing ideas of God the creator which this poem tells of – the God who create the tiger. Even language like terror is encoded with Christian ideas from earlier texts and tends to carry the terror of ‘losing the way’, or a terror at the power of God. “Lamb” is also a sign that has a literary meaning; it is decoded now as meaning the Christian people who need protecting from evil, guiding and helping to stay on a Christian path. These words can be encoded with new meaning, but they can never fully shed the encoding that has been done in the past.

Task 1: Which explanation reflects Premodern thinking?

A. “This character learns a lesson because the plot demands it.”
B. “This character understands the lesson through Christian teaching.”

Correct answer: B

Why: It uses belief → understanding, not narrative structure.

This reinforces the method, not the content.

Student Task

Choose one moment from our current text where a character faces judgement, morality, or destiny.

  1. Identify how faith or divine order might shape its meaning.
  2. Explain how Premodern thinking helps us interpret the moment.

Provide scaffold:

  • This moment reflects the Premodern belief that __________.
  • A Christian belief has to be encoded first for the narrative to be understood as______.
  • The narrative is acting as an allegory for the scripture of___.

Encourage focus on:

  • sin
  • judgement
  • destiny
  • moral testing
  • divine order

Finish the sentence:

“Premodern literature teaches that belief authorises understanding because __________.”

You are listening for:

  • divine order
  • doctrine
  • faith→meaning
  • allegory

a) Pre-reading of the next lesson – read through the knowledge so you can be ready to discuss in class.

b) Apply the learning of today’s lesson to your own private reading text. Write a paragraph explaining how today’s learning changes how you might conceive your text. Be sure to use the key vocabulary and sentence stems.

c) Write a paragraph about the discipline of Literature, explain how key words from today’s lesson impact the field overall.

d) Add today’s vocabulary and sentence stems to your own glossary. Highlight any that you are unsure about, but you must also research the meanings yourself and develop your glossary to include this differentiated support.

How did you do? Remember, this is the disciplinary knowledge for Literature – it needs combining with the text you are studying now. Can you use this knowledge to write differently about the text you are studying? When you are ready, access the next lesson in this series.