Making a Case for the Classics: An Educator's Compelling New Book, A Comic Vision of Great Constancy

    ROCHESTER, NY, March 20, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Ask the average American teenager for his or her favorite comedy and it's unlikely a work by Shakespeare or Chaucer will make the list. But for at least two generations of young adults in a small upstate New York town, a reading of the classics through the imaginative and insightful eyes of Alan Griesinger has had a lasting impact on their sense of how to govern their lives. Griesinger now brings his immensely enjoyable perspective beyond the classroom in A Comic Vision of Great Constancy (Mascot Books, hardcover, $29.95) based on a wildly popular Advanced Placement English Course that turned the town of Naples, New York into a laboratory on the value of the classics in education.

"These are stories about unlocking the wisdom of Everyman," says Griesinger of The Knight's Tale, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the two stories that serve as a literary framework for Griesinger's fascinating side trips into politics, religion, psychology and the general art of being human. "A Comic Vision of Great Constancy is basically about the challenges we have with governing ourselves. It's a relatable issue for 17- and 18-year-olds especially, which is one of the reasons this class became so popular. "

"My friends and I were 16- and 17-year-olds clumsily stumbling toward relationships with girls," remembers Tom Manella, a former AP student. "The dilemmas and conflicts in The Knight's Tale and the way characters are manipulated by unseen powers in A Midsummer Night's Dream were very real to us. Like the characters in these works, we tried to remain honorable and on good terms with one another." Griesinger's reach is even more visible in the fact that Manella now teaches English himself at Naples High, three doors down from the room where Griesinger spun his magic.

The New Criterion lauds A Comic Vision of Great Constancy for taking the reader on "an enchanting voyage of literary rediscovery . . . [that] elegantly shows that comedy is no laughing matter but, on the contrary, that it challenges us to give . . . a name to life's most engaging mysteries."

Author Brooke Allen calls the book "a lyrical and profound exploration of the nature and vision of comedy, a pleasure to read."

The book's reception by a wider audience pleases Griesinger who, in some ways, was an early warrior in the battle to defend the relevance of the classics. "It was the 70s when I started teaching this," remembers Griesinger. "The relevance issue has only grown larger in the face of current trends in academia." Griesinger's students know where they come down on the issue.

"After years of watching 'old-fashioned practices' phased out," Rebecca Rauscher-Bethlendy believes we would be "remiss as a society if we discard the old for the fancier and newer." A teacher now herself (another of the many Griesinger inspired), Rauscher-Bethlendy still recalls, 30 years later, her teacher's ability to reveal the humor, lightness, and life lessons in some otherwise "heavy" pieces of literature for an adult, no less an 18-year old. "It gave me a perspective that opened my eyes and mind to a different way of seeing things."

For twenty-eight years in Naples, New York you didn't go to college without passing through Alan Griesinger's AP English class. Ostensibly about literature, it was really a training ground for character development, good citizenship, and rigorous thinking.

"There's a trend in today's culture to move toward what's popular," says Jacob Hall, an engineer and former military officer who credits Griesinger's course for helping him develop a "functioning mature mind." Hall, who now has three school-age children of his own, isn't about to cater to the tendency to phase the classics out of modern curricula. "I'm on the Naples Board of education now." Which means that serious literature that challenges the mind and spirit is safe--at least in Naples--for a while.

Alan Griesinger graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and received his MA in English from the University of Oregon. He taught English at Naples Central School in Naples, New York for twenty-eight years. A Comic Vision of Great Constancy derives from the work of those years.

For more information, visit www.acomicvision.com.

Media contact: Victor Gulotta
Gulotta Communications, Inc.
617-630-9286
http://www.booktours.com
victor(at)booktours(dot)com

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