Resurrecting the Country Priest: Approaching the Parish in Film and Literature
The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns The horror and the havoc and the glory Of it…. —G. M. Hopkins, ‘The Shepherd’s Brow,’ 1918….
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The Gritty Realism of Thomas Hardy
It is a commonly held opinion that Thomas Hardy, the prolific Victorian poet and novelist, is a pessimist. This perspective is documented well in a…
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Facing the Darkness III: Monstrous Ontology, Part I
The previous two pieces in this series have attempted to use the figure of the monster to draw out some of the flaws and…
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Facing the Darkness II: The Gaps in the System
In my previous post, I introduced the epistemic shifts occurring across the theological, political and philosophical landscape of the early 1800s which gave rise…
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Review: “Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away”
“Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away,” Edited by Susan Srigley, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012, 232 pps…..
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Surviving the Sahara: On Being Bored
In his 1989 address to the graduating class of Dartmouth College the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky decided to forego the platitudes that comprise such…
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Creativity as a Call to Virtue?
Sooner or later, the writer of creative fiction seems bound to ask just how free are my characters? Good writers strive to make their…
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The Joy of Being Blindfolded: Or Why You Should Read Thomas Pynchon
Everyone has at least one piece of literature they are congenitally afraid of picking up. Be it the fear and trembling of page count,…
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Summer Reading Recommendation: Gilead and Home
Marilynne Robinson’s popular and critically acclaimed novels, Gilead and Home are masterpieces that deftly explore deep metaphysical questions with characters who search for meaning…
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