MacLeish's Early Childhood Education

Creation

Here are some notes on Archibald MacLeish's early childhood education, as described by Edward Arthur Morin in "An Interpretive Study of Archibald MacLeish's Plays" (1967, Dissertations, Paper 854):

MacLeish's early schooling was conducted at home, and he and his brothers loved learning about the various creation stories. Of the Hebrew, Greek, and Norse stories, they thought the Hebrew version was best (page 25). The children had had Bible stories reserved for Sundays from the beginning of the reading program, when Archibald was three years old. At first Martha read isolated stories and then, when the children asked her to begin at the beginning and read the whole Bible, she began with Genesis (page 27). Occurring as it did between Archibald's fifth and ninth years and in an informal but supervised way on into his adolescence, with the Bible readings beginning when Archibald was three, the program reached a climax when the young mind was most impressionable for the formation of life long habits (pages 30-31).

This should turn out to be useful when the time comes for explaining some of MacLeish's 'cosmic' obsessions.

Update: Kevin Kim informs me that I've already posted this blogpost. He's right. My apologies. For myself, however, this remains a useful reminder to deal more with Milton soon.