When the World Was Young
The invention of writing postdates, invariably, the invention of storytelling. After all, what purpose is there to writing, until you have something to write down?
Excavate these writings, then. Decipher them carefully. Let them, at last, convince you to forget writing until instead they sit across the fire, speaking to you oral traditions, folktales, and of days long, long past When the World Was Young.
In the Light of the Dawn
We invented writing to preserve our stories and to share them with each other. From the mistiest stretches of history we find scraps and pieces of tales we told each other, forming the myths, legends, and dramas that persist to this day.
Hear us, then. Listen to the stories passed down from the earliest foundations of civilizations, to the creation of nations and empires. Hear the stories of the grandest rulers to the humblest peasants. The world is not so young as it was, but walk with us in these tales of antiquity: In the Light of the Dawn.
The Heavens Within Our Grasp
When empires collapse, when plague and invasion threaten, when the knowledge and culture of the old order is slipping away and being forgotten, it is writing that safeguards the future.
Study these tales, then. By candlelight, by lamplight, by the noonday sun. Find in them the strength, and weakness, of feudal monarchs, the piety of monks both literal and figurative, and the fear of forgetting and being forgotten that is the beginning of knowledge: for it is these which may yet put The Heavens Within Our Grasp.
The Wideness of the World
Widespread literacy is perhaps the watershed between what we call the modern era and all that came before. When every merchant, every soldier, and every sailor can record their tales, then stories from one end of the earth may reach, and be told, at the other.
Discover, then, these stories: on the printing press, up the forecastle, on an uninhabited isle across uncharted seas, or just around the corner nailed to the cathedral door. Follow them as they spread from tavern to theatre, from dockside to cloister, from palace to slum and back, until they encompass The Wideness of the World.