“Big Wonderful Thing”: A History of Texas

By |2024-03-02T11:25:16-06:00March 5th, 2023|Categories: Books, History, Imagination, Texas, Timeless Essays|

In “Big Wonderful Thing: A Texas History,” Stephen Harrigan explores the “poignantly unguarded self-love” and the “fierce national personality” that oozes from Texans. He is unapologetic in his praise for and fascination with the state. “Big Wonderful Thing,” however, is not a tribute piece; instead, Mr. Harrigan’s history carefully holds in tension the grandeur and [...]

Imagination & Creation in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens

By |2023-02-22T17:46:31-06:00February 22nd, 2023|Categories: History, Imagination, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

Wallace Stevens’ poetry is replete with examples of this effort to understand and articulate the poet as creator of things and meaning. Wallace Stevens wrote in a letter to a friend that “[a]fter all, I like Rhine wine, blue grapes, good cheese… etc., as much as I like supreme fiction,” (Letters, 431) Despite this protest, [...]

Metamorphosis by Love

By |2023-03-24T10:03:38-05:00February 13th, 2023|Categories: Great Books, Imagination, Literature, Love, Myth, Paul Krause, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is many things: several stories, some bleak, some uplifting, ranging from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. Yet in its most fundamental form, his epic love poem of many stories reveals deep truths in its poetic proclamations of the transformative power, and spirit, of love. Ovid was one [...]

“Robinson Crusoe” and Modernity

By |2023-02-01T16:56:50-06:00February 1st, 2023|Categories: Books, Imagination, Literature, Modernity, Religion, Timeless Essays|

“Robinson Crusoe” contains profound messages for us today. It is an enactment of the modern, secular individual making his way alone in the world and overcoming challenges through the power of his own unaided reason. At the same time, in pointing to a religious interpretation of existence that is never quite fully experienced, it highlights [...]

How Edgar Allan Poe Ensured That Gothic Stories Will Never Die

By |2024-01-14T20:11:42-06:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Christine Norvell, Edgar Allan Poe, Fiction, Imagination, Literature, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

At the same time that writers were bringing depth of character to the gothic setting in the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe revitalized the genre in mid-century America. Suddenly Tales of Horror had a distinctly American flair and a surprising psychological depth. This nuance captivated readers then and still does today. Two hundred and fifty [...]

Edmund Burke and the Dignity of the Human Person

By |2023-07-09T01:02:22-05:00January 11th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Edmund Burke, Imagination, Moral Imagination, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Edmund Burke believed that one must see the human being not for what he is, or the worst that is within him, but rather as clothed in the “wardrobe of moral imagination,” a glimpse of what the person could be and is, by God, meant to be. Though we correctly remember Edmund Burke as the [...]

“Imagine”… a Nightmare: Why John Lennon’s Song Is Wrong for the New Year

By |2023-12-31T18:49:09-06:00December 31st, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Imagination, Music, New Year's Day, Timeless Essays|

We ought to come up with a better way to bring in the new year than singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which asks us to imagine what our country would be like if we could jettison the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Once again this New Year’s Eve, if you were tuned in [...]

The Miracle of Imagination

By |2023-07-09T17:23:52-05:00December 25th, 2022|Categories: Christmas, Christopher B. Nelson, Imagination, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

At this celebratory time of year, when sparks of magic dance on the cold night air, let us wonder about the worlds we want to live in, and give thanks for the miracle of imagination. Making choices about life depends critically on the ability to imagine possibilities. Speaking as an advocate for liberal education, I [...]

Creation, Incarnation, and Imagination

By |2023-07-09T09:47:03-05:00December 17th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Imagination, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

The ideas of Creation (God making all things through an act of his will) and Incarnation (God being present to his creation) are the reason for the West’s creativity in the arts and sciences, a creativity instigated by Christian minds building upon the classical past. If you happen to read any part of Daniel J. [...]

STEM is for Grandmothers: Educating for Truth & Freedom

By |2022-12-07T10:03:04-06:00December 7th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Education, Freedom, Imagination, Liberal Learning, Moral Imagination, Truth|

At a time when a child should be exposed to wonder, awe, play, and fairy stories, the STEM brigade tells us we should instead prepare children for careers in engineering and the sciences. My mother-in-law, a wonderful grandmother and award-winning artist to boot, is fond of buying my nine-year-old daughter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) [...]

Shakespeare and the Saints

By |2023-09-23T21:19:12-05:00October 31st, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Imagination, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Sainthood, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

When most of us think of Shakespeare we don’t immediately connect him with the saints. We might think of the play Sir Thomas More, on which he collaborated with other contemporary playwrights and which was banned during his lifetime for its volatile pro-Catholic perspective. We might connect him with the positive portrayal of Edward the [...]

Nicolás Gómez Dávila and the ‘Authentic Reactionary’

By |2022-10-25T14:22:59-05:00October 25th, 2022|Categories: Culture War, History, Imagination, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Politics, Timeless Essays|

It is fitting that one of the most profound thinkers of the 20th century should also have been one of its most obscure. Nicolás Gómez Dávila's critique of democracy may go some way in explaining why he remains a relatively unknown figure in the English-speaking world, for we in the modern West are all children [...]

Russell Kirk: Planting Seeds for Generations to Come

By |2022-10-18T16:50:34-05:00October 18th, 2022|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Conservatism, Moral Imagination, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Russell and Annette Kirk with the author Driving across the snowy landscape of Michigan the day after Christmas in 1973, I was somewhat apprehensive. I had been invited to take part in the first seminar of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in the ancestral home of Dr. Russell Kirk at Piety Hill. We were [...]

On the Originals of Fictive Mental Images

By |2023-05-21T11:28:47-05:00September 27th, 2022|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Imagination, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

There may be intellects capable of pure “contemplation” but most of us must envision just to think. Plotinus describes an eidetic experience, which means that the mental form is not attributionally transcendent but actually so. We are, for that moment, theophorai, “godbearers,” possessed by immortals. I’ll begin by asking your indulgence for speaking to you [...]

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