A conversation with Joseph Pearce about Ignatius Critical Editions

There are many problems with the education system in the United States and throughout Western society. These are problems in society as a whole, which have infected the education system. Literature studies are not immune. Countless modern perversions and proclivities are constantly being read into classic works of time-tested literary genius. In an effort to combat this, Ignatius Press continues to produce the Ignatius Critical Editions series, in which the complete text of the original work is published, as well as essays by respectable and tradition-loving (and usually Catholic) scholars and experts.

Joseph Pearce serves as Series Editor for the Ignatius Critical Editions, overseeing the series on the whole, and serving as the editor of many of the individual volumes. Pearce is a prolific author, particularly in the realm of literature and the Catholic faith, having written biographies of William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, G.K. Chesterton, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, J.R.R. Tolkien, and more.

The two most recent volumes published in the series are The Best of Sherlock Holmes, which is edited by Trevor Lipscombe, and Romantic Poets: Volume II, featuring Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and edited by Pearce and Robert Asch.

The next volumes planned are The Great Gatsby, Melville Collection (“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”, “Benito Cereno”, and “Billy Budd, Sailor”), and David Copperfield.

Pearce recently spoke with The Catholic World Report about the new and upcoming volumes in the Ignatius Critical Editions series, and the role that literature and beauty can play in evangelization.

Catholic World Report: Can you give us a little background on the Ignatius Critical Editions series, including the story behind its genesis, and the purpose of the series going forward?

Joseph Pearce: Anyone involved in the teaching or studying of literature is aware of the hijacking of literature by the advocates of secular fundamentalism and radical relativism. It is almost impossible to open a critical edition of the great literary works of Western civilization without being affronted by the pernicious fads and fashions of the modern academy, whether it be in the form of feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, queer theory, critical race theory, deconstructionism or any of the other manifestations of the modern academy’s irrational and anti-Christian agenda.

This sorry state of affairs was brought home to me with particular force as I prepared to teach a course on Romanticism at Ave Maria University. In addition to the works of the Romantic Poets, I had included three novels on the syllabus: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Upon closer perusal of the critical editions of these works that I had selected as set texts for my students, I was horrified to see the array of anti-Christian and immoral nonsense posing as “criticism” that they contained. This “criticism” had manipulated the text so that the meanings inherent in the novels and intended by their authors were inverted and perverted beyond all recognition.

Why, I wondered, was I patronizing these poisonous editions? Why was I putting this poison into the hands of my students? It was then that I came up with the idea of the Ignatius Critical Editions as a means of offering professors, teachers, homeschooling parents, and students a genuine alternative to the nonsense.

CWR: How did these two new volumes—Romantic Posts Volume II and The Best of Sherlock Holmes—get selected for the Ignatius Critical Editions series?

Pearce: The second volume of the Romantic Poets is a natural companion to the first. Whereas the first volume has focused on the three main poets of the first wave of English Romanticism, William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this new volume focuses on the second generation of Romantic Poets: Byron, Shelley and Keats.

The Best of Sherlock Holmes seemed a natural choice to add to the series, considering the enduring popularity of murder mysteries and detective fiction in general, and the works of Conan Doyle in particular.

CWR: Some volumes of the Ignatius Critical Editions series might strike some folks as surprising–Dracula, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, and now Sherlock Holmes.

Pearce: In deciding which titles to include in the series, we make a particular point of selecting titles that are already on the existing curricula of good Catholic schools, colleges, and homeschool providers. This makes it easy for teachers, parents and students to choose the Ignatius Critical Edition of these works as part of their regular program.

Each edition contains the full text of the work, an introduction, and a selection of critical essays by some of the finest literary scholars in the world today. The crucial difference is that the introduction and the critical essays are all written from an avowedly and unashamedly tradition-oriented perspective. There is no nonsense: no feminist criticism, no Marxist criticism, no deconstructionism, no queer theory, no anti-Christianity.

As such, the Ignatius Critical Editions offer a genuine extension of consumer choice, enabling instructors and homeschooling parents to buy out of the secular fundamentalism sweeping through our public schools and universities and to buy into the rich Christian tradition that had given birth to these great books.

We have also published a separate Study Guide for many of the editions, designed to assist students. Each Study Guide contains everything a student needs to navigate their way through these classic works of literature, and everything a teacher or parent needs to assist them. There is a section giving the historical context for the work; another section giving the “bare bones” of the plot; a summary of the critical essays that are published in the edition and related study questions. There’s a section listing “things to think about while reading the book” and, last but not least, a section of review questions to test the student’s knowledge of the work. These questions include the factual aspects of the text and a separate section of essay questions.

With regard to the latter, each Study Guide contains a selection of ten separate essay questions, pitched at various grades of student aptitude from high school to undergraduate level. This flexible approach will allow the parent or instructor to choose the essay prompt that is most appropriate to the ability of the individual student. Finally, each Study Guide contains a detachable Answer Key for use by instructors or parents. This gives the answers to the general knowledge questions appertaining to the text and short summaries of the types of critical approach needed for the essays.

In supporting this series, students, teachers and parents will be obtaining Christian-friendly editions of the great works of literature and will also be playing an active part in helping this important initiative grow in its positive influence on our culture.

CWR: Does literature have to be explicitly Catholic (or even implicitly Catholic) to have value, or to be good for our souls?

Pearce: Insofar as a work reflects goodness, truth, and beauty, it is implicitly Catholic because the good, true and beautiful are the Triune God made manifest. It’s not so much whether a work is implicitly or explicitly Catholic as whether it is intentionally or unintentionally Catholic. Works by pre-Christian authors, such as Homer, Sophocles or Virgil, are clearly not explicitly Catholic, but their moral focus can reflect a Catholic moral philosophy unintentionally.

On the other hand, works such as Beowulf, Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Lord of the Rings, or Brideshead Revisited can be shown to be intentionally Catholic.

CWR: As mentioned, one of the new volumes is the second Romantic Poets collection. Why look at the Romantic poets, and not (yet, at least) other eras, even other languages, or specifically Catholic poets?

Pearce: Romanticism, especially in its British manifestation, was an important reaction against the empiricism and materialism of the Enlightenment and helped lay the foundation for the neo-medievalism which blossomed into the Catholic literary and cultural revival. St. John Henry Newman laid great emphasis on the importance of poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, on his own thinking and on that of his generation.

A failure to understand the place and importance of Romantic poetry is a failure to understand the history of Catholic culture in the past two hundred years.

CWR: Can literature be a via pulchritudinis that leads us to find God in the true, the good, and the beautiful?

Pearce: Literature leads souls to Christ via beauty, truth and goodness. The three transcendentals are indissoluble; they are triune. They reflect the Godhead. The great lyric poetry is the fruit of wonder in the presence of beauty; it is the discovery of goodness and truth through the kiss of God’s Creation. Great narrative literature shows us who we are as pilgrims on the journey of life, as wayfarers and warriors pursuing goodness by fighting evil, thereby growing in the truth and beauty of sanity and sanctity.

CWR: Must a work of art be pleasantly beautiful in order to lead us down the “way of beauty” or can its beauty be deeper? (I think of Grünewald’s painting of the Crucifixion, the stories of Flannery O’Connor, the music of Gorecki, which might not strike everyone as traditionally “beautiful”, but which absolutely leads down the “way of beauty” toward God.)

Pearce: Your parenthetical thoughts have answered your own question!

Since love is inseparable from self-sacrifice, sanctity is inseparable from the acceptance of suffering. We can only grow in love through the struggle with the ugliness and darkness of sin. The cross is not beautiful in itself, nor is the crucifixion. On the contrary, they are the consequence of the ugliness of sin. But if we see the way of the cross as the road to the Resurrection it becomes beautiful. We have to see the crucifixion in the light of the resurrection. It is then that it attains great beauty.

Great art and literature reflect this mystical reality. It shows us ugliness and evil in the light of beauty and goodness.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from these books, and their accompanying essays?

Pearce: The Great Books are the great voices of the Great Conversation which have animated and enriched Christian civilization. If we wish to join that Great Conversation, we need to be conversant with these great voices, these Great Books. The greatest of literature enlivens the soul and enlightens the mind; it edifies and educates; it helps us to love and understand each other and lifts us closer to God.