Jane Austen’s heroines live, choose, and marry according to the highest wisdom about love that is ruled by principle, not convention—by the prudent mind, pure heart, and informed conscience rather than by the false prudence of the world preoccupied by money, image, lust, or self-interest… Readers of Jane Austen’s novels recognize the plot that informs [...]
The apocalyptic vision in science fiction is akin to the memento mori in mediaeval art. It reminds us of the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. And these last things remind us of the first things—most importantly the primary reality that we are made in the image of God to love and serve [...]
Where are the Flannery O’Connors and Evelyn Waughs of our day, who can be witty about wickedness and plant their theology in the thicket of character, the turns of a plot, and the twist of a knife? Where are the writers who can be both entertaining and enlightening? A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson [...]
W.H. Auden realized that J.R.R. Tolkien’s greatness was not simply the result of a capacity for the fantastic, but rather that it relied just as much on his scholarly acumen as on his imagination… W.H. Auden was a great admirer of the fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien. Having heard Tolkien’s lectures while an undergraduate at Oxford [...]
Here’s the scenario: As the culture of death destroys itself in its auto-cannibalistic self-consumption, millions begin to flock to the Faith. In the very death throes of decadence, Christ and His Church rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes… I have a deep admiration for successful novelists. I don’t mean “successful” in the worldly sense but in [...]
Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among [...]
It is through Ivan’s representation of Soloviev in The Brothers Karamazov that Dostoevsky unearths the grave implications and outcomes of totalitarian politics… Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has rightly earned its place among the greatest books of all time. It warrants this stature in no small part because it addresses questions and problems [...]
C.S. Lewis once observed that we don’t need more Christian books, we need more Christian writers. In other words, people of faith who have the gift should write not just worthy books on prayer. They should write novels and children’s stories and cookbooks and travel books, fantasy, fiction, poetry, and drama. His point was that [...]
“Since that night, I have a fire within me, which I cannot quench. I tried knowing God through reason. But now I must share the truth and the certainty that God has confirmed in my heart. I never thought a sense of peace and the passion of fire could reside in one’s heart simultaneously.” Editor’s [...]
The majority not only have no language to express anything save generalized man; they are for the most part unaware of themselves as anything but generalized men... I Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had [...]
Flannery O’Connor made it her task to show her readers that the world is surrounded by mystery and that the physical creation is itself an icon and a window into that mystery. “What the word says, the image shows silently; what we have heard, we have seen.” That is how the Seventh Great Ecumenical Council [...]
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House revolves around three intrepid explorers who accept Professor Montague’s invitation to spend a summer living there, getting to know one another and getting to know—intimately—the workings of the house… Though she never made it past the young age of forty-eight, Shirley Jackson was known for two important things [...]
Thomas Jefferson was one of the architects of the American political system. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, helped to shape Constitutional interpretation, and was a virtual wellspring of the ideas on which the foundation of the United States was laid. While his knowledge of history and government was profound, the [...]
Man, it is often said, cannot jump over his own shadow. The poet—and by “poet” I mean a writer of imaginative works in verse or prose—leaps over the universe. Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. I We not only read a novel, we enter into its created world. We [...]