Tomasi di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” provides invaluable insight into 19th-century Italian history while creating a compelling story, allowing readers to relive an unfamiliar age of revolution and a fading nobility. Time under quarantine has been an excuse to revisit a personal favorite book and to explore its history, controversy, and literary value. I can think [...]
Pope St. John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth. As we discussed the work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I [...]
The fairytale cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Were I asked, “What is a fairytale?” I should [...]
The first spark of genuine engagement with great writers most often comes from a teacher, and the ever-fresh immortality of the great work has its ironic contrast in the aging and death of those who made the introduction. So it is for me with Shakespeare, who was first truly impressed upon my imagination during my [...]
The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future. It is hope. I went for a long walk in Oxford the other night. The city, of course, is always enchanting, but in early summer and at night, it is so the most. When summer [...]
As to the principal stages in education, let us note that there are three great periods in education. I should like to designate them as the rudiments (or elementary education), the humanities (comprising both secondary and college education), and advanced studies (comprising graduate schools and higher specialized learning). And these periods correspond not only to [...]
Though the approach to the mountain Weathertop is only one scene in “The Lord of the Rings,” it is a telling one. Through romance, imagery of light and color, the voluptuousness of his landscapes, and the holiness of song and poetry, J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly reveals himself as a master of the English language and, especially, [...]
Daniel McInerny’s "Beauty & Imitation" is a superb reactivation not only of Aristotle’s understanding of mimesis but also with an Aquinas enhancement. From the first page forward, in fine prose, McInerny surveys with sincerity and depth the Catholic understanding of the arts, beauty, and sublimity. Despite, or perhaps in part because of its importance and [...]
If you’re feeling depressed about the culture around you, Dr. Elliott has a prescription for you: one full dose of Whit Stillman’s 2011 film, Damsels in Distress, followed by tap dancing. I am perfectly serious. This charming story unfolds with a group of quirky college girls on the campus of Seven Oaks, a fictitious Ivy [...]
T.S. Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday” helps us to consider our earthly transience, just as Ash Wednesday reminds us of this same fact that our time on earth is passing. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita . . . There is something telling about man’s tendency to view his life as a journey, for journeys convey the [...]
Please enjoy Barbara Elliott's presentation on "Catholic Imagination and Contemporary Culture," delivered at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. DSPT Fellow - Barbara Elliott's Presentation on Catholic Imagination and Contemporary Culture from DSPT on Vimeo. This lecture was first published here in March 2012. Dr. Barbara Elliott's presentation at the Third Annual Convocation of [...]
The positive secular reviews that have come in for my off-Broadway verse drama, "Death Comes for the War Poets," show the power of art to touch hearts even in enemy territory, in the secular art community of New York City, that most “woke” of communities in that most “woke” of cities. This shows the evangelizing [...]
T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” is as sincere a conversion poem as one can have it: No fancy light shining down from the heavens or a thunderous call to holiness; just one small event that left a Magus perplexed by a new worldview that was unsettling and strange, for it put into question [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien connected me to a world beyond anything I had yet experienced in rather idyllic Kansas. I so desperately wanted to escape into his mountain scene, explore every nook and cranny of that invented world, and meet a God who sang the universe into existence. Though I have read The Hobbit, The Lord of [...]