To a certain extent, Twain’s novel about the young, fifteenth-century French girl and Saint remains a puzzling act of devotion from a complicated man. […]
Reading Flannery O’Connor requires a stout heart and a strong stomach. In her short life before she died of terminal lupus, she wrote two novels and roughly two dozen short stories that continue to shock […]
With its natural imagery suggesting a spiritual coming-to-life, Eliot’s 1935 poem moves symbolically from the barrenness of winter into the verdant fertility of Christ’s arrival. […]
The world is falling apart. Gunmen kill civilians in office buildings and schools; babies die in wars and in abortion clinics. People suffer poverty, sexual violence, hunger. Our planet is rife with racism and tyranny […]
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if I want to learn a thing, I have to teach it. As a literature professor at Hillsdale College, I’m trying to help my students develop their intellects. […]
When I was in graduate school, my best friend gave me a plain brown book called The Intellectual Life, by a French Dominican priest named Fr. Sertillanges. I started it a few times, but never […]
What do we love about mythology? The Greek word mythoi just means “stories,” and every culture has them, from the Mayans to the Mesopotamians. But these ancient stories continue to captivate us today, finding modern […]
It’s time to admit we’re addicted to outrage. Other people are just so darn wicked. Or liberal. Or racist. Or tacky. Our political leaders know how to channel this outrage into power for themselves. Our […]
When Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, he gave us a genre that—quite rightly—refuses to die. While earlier writers had dabbled in the vampire theme, Stoker’s novel codified it, and the bloodsucking Count Dracula has […]
“I am perfectly aware,” apologized Fr. Robert Hugh Benson in the preface to Lord of the World, “that this is a terribly sensational book.” But for fans of dystopian apocalyptic novels, no apology is necessary: […]
© Catholic World Report