Literature

In this lecture from June 2019, classical educator Louis Markos examines Book II of The Aeneid to argue that Virgil had an eschatological view of history. (68 minutes)

Louis Markos shows how great literature like the Iliad links us to the human story and strengthens us to live fully and well. (65 minutes)

FROM VOL. 69 Daniel Ritchie discusses why great books programs survive mainly in Christian institutions while declining in secular ones. (13 minutes)

FROM VOL. 23 Daniel Ritchie provides a constructive alternative to the ideological captivity of literature and literary studies. (13 minutes)

Vigen Guroian explains how children’s literature has the capacity to birth the moral imagination in our children, affirming for them the permanent things. (53 minutes)

FROM VOL. 147 Biographer and priest Patrick Samway talks about the relationship between fiction writer Flannery O’Connor and the legendary editor Robert Giroux. (21 minutes)

Fr. Damian Ference, author of Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy. (18 minutes)

Fr. Damian Ference explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy, as evidenced by her reading habits, letters, prayer journal, and, of course, essays and fiction. (48 minutes)

FROM VOL. 50Glenn Arbery uses the analogies of sports fandom and ritual to explain how a “long habituation” in learning about form in literature enables one to enter into a greater depth of experience of reality through literature. (26 minutes)

FROM VOL. 111Biographer Ian Ker explains why G. K. Chesterton deserves wider recognition as a significant literary critic. (24 minutes)

Holly Ordway talks about the need for “intellectual hospitality” when we encounter books (or people) whose beliefs are very different from our own. (19 minutes)

Louise Cowan (1916–2015) explains how the classics reach the deep core of our imagination and teach us to order our loves according to the wholeness of reality. (16 minutes)

FEATURED GUESTS: Allan C. Carlson, Matthew Stewart, Steven Knepper, Holly Ordway, Norm Klassen, and Norman Wirzba

Alan Jacobs describes how William Faulkner’s fiction explored the tragedy of living with a legacy of evil acts. (26 minutes)

Jessica Hooten Wilson asserts that reading stories of holiness in the lives of “literary saints” helps to cultivate Christian character in us. (25 minutes)

Thomas Cahill describes how the least likely saviors of Western heritage, the Irish, copied all of classical and Christian literature while barbarians rampaged through the rest of Europe. (16 minutes)

Joseph Nicolello explains the origins and themes of his imaginary dialogue between Jacques Maritain and Flannery O’Connor. (28 minutes)

Glenn C. Arbery on poetry and the intelligibility of the inner life

Novelist Larry Woiwode on the unbreakable bond between specificity and universality

Three guests discuss Flannery O’Connor’s ideas: Henry T. Edmondson, III, on O’Connor’s understanding of political life; Ralph C. Wood, on O’Connor as a “hillbilly Thomist”; and Susan Srigley, on O’Connor’s sacramental and incarnational fiction. (18 minutes)