Great Works in Western Literature Archives

GWML#24 – C. S. Lewis “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce

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We discuss “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” by C. S. Lewis.

Four adventurous siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has been captivating readers of all ages for over sixty years. This is a stand-alone read, but if you would like to journey back to Narnia, pick up The Horse and His Boy, the third book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Joseph Pearce is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. He is also Visiting Scholar at Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, New Hampshire. He is also Visiting Scholar at Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, New Hampshire. He is co-editor of the Saint Austin Review (or StAR), an international review of Christian culture, literature, and ideas published in England (Family Publications) and the United States (Sapientia Press). He is also the author of many books, including literary biographies of Solzhenitsyn, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Oscar Wilde.

GWML#23 William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar) – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Discerning Hearts Podcast

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Episode 10 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – William Shakespeare

Though a staple in high school English classes, Julius Caesar is not a simple play. Seemingly irreconcilable forces are at work: fate and free will, the changeableness and stubbornness of ambitious men, the demands of public service and the desire for private gain. Drawn from history as recorded by Plutarch, the major characters-Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony-are complex, as are the twists and turns of their fortunes. What kind of man rises to power? What price does he pay when he becomes a politician? These questions raised by Shakespeare are relevant in every age, whether ancient Rome, Elizabethan England, or even in our own day.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#10 William Shakespeare (Hamlet and Macbeth) – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Discerning Hearts Podcast

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Episode 10 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – William Shakespeare

Arguably Shakespeare’s finest and most important play, Hamlet is also one of the most misunderstood masterpieces of world literature. “To be or not to be”, may be the question, but the answer has eluded many generations of critics. What does it mean “to be”? And is everything as it seems to be?

Probably the darkest of all Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth is also one of the most challenging. Is it a work of nihilistic despair, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, or is it a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of Machiavellianism and relativism? Does it lead to hell and hopelessness, or does it point to a light beyond the darkness?

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#16 Charles Dickens and “A Tale of Two Cities” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Discerning Hearts podcast

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In this exciting novel set during the French Revolution, Charles Dickens expresses sympathy for the downtrodden poor and their outrage at the self-indulgent aristocracy. But Dickens is no friend of the vengeful mob that storms the Bastille and cheers the guillotine. As with all of his stories, his passion is for the unforgettable and unrepeatable individuals he creates.

The sorrows of the suffering masses, their demands for justice, and the indiscriminate fury they unleash take flesh in Madame Defarge, while the self-sacrifice that is the truest means of atonement and rebirth manifests in the unlikely hero Sydney Carton. In A Tale of Two Cities, humanity does not show its best side in the mean streets of Paris or even London, but in the intimate circle of loyal friends that gathers around the honorable Doctor Manette and his lovely daughter, Lucie.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#8 Jane Austen “Pride & Prejuidice” and “Mansfield Park” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce

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Episode 8 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Jane Austen

Jane Austen is arguably the finest female novelist who ever lived and Pride and Prejudice is arguably the finest and is certainly the most popular, of her novels. An undoubted classic of world literature, its profound Christian morality is all too often missed or willfully overlooked by today’s (post)modern critics.

In all things, Jane Austen was a woman of faith. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in Mansfield Park, her most neglected, abused, and misunderstood novel. Like Austen’s other novels, it can be fully appreciated only when illuminated by the virtuous life and Christian beliefs of the author herself.

Jane Austen saw the follies and foibles of human nature, and the frictions and fidelities of family life, with an incisive eye that penetrates to the very heart of the human condition.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#21 T.S. Eliot and “The Waste Land” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Discerning Hearts

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Episode 21 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – T.S. Eliot and “The Waste Land”

(Of special note: excerpts from “The Waste Land” are read by T. S. Eliot)

“Eliot’s place as a poet of the highest stature is assured. The Waste Land is the quintessential debunking of modernity and is also, simultaneously, a potent antidote to the poison of postmodernism.”

–Joseph Pearce -from Nov. 22, 2010, St. Austin Review —

You can find the complete poem here

An excerpt from “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot

If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

GWML#15 St. Augustine and “The Confessions” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce

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Episode 15 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – St. Augustine

The Confessions of Saint Augustine is considered one of the greatest Christian classics of all time. It is an extended poetic, passionate, intimate prayer that Augustine wrote as an autobiography sometime after his conversion, to confess his sins and proclaim God’s goodness. Just as his first hearers were captivated by his powerful conversion story, so also have many millions been over the following sixteen centuries. His experience of God speaks to us across time with little need of transpositions.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature .

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#13 Bram Stoker and “Dracula” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce podcast

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Episode 13 – Bram Stoker and “Dracula” on Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce

When solicitor’s clerk Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania on business to meet a mysterious Romanian count named Dracula, he little expects the horrors this strange meeting will unleash. Thus Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel of blood and passion begins, rapidly accelerating from Harker’s nightmarish experiences in Castle Dracula to a full-fledged vampiric assault on late-Victorian London itself. The story, narrated through a collection of documents-primarily journal entries and letters-chronicles the desperate efforts of a band of gentlemen to protect the virtue of their ladies and lay to rest the ancient threat once and for all.

Often vacillating wildly between the terrible and the comic, Dracula at the same time brings to life a host of compelling themes: tensions between antiquity and modernity; the powers and limitations of technology; the critical importance of feminine virtue; the difference between superstition and religion; the nature of evil; and, perhaps most compellingly, the complex relationship between ancient faith and scientific enlightenment. More vivid than any of its varied film adaptations, and over a century after its first publication, Dracula still retains its sharp bite.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life,the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature .

Joseph Pearce is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. He is also Visiting Scholar at Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, New Hampshire. He is also Visiting Scholar at Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, New Hampshire. , as well as co-editor of the Saint Austin Review (or StAR), an international review of Christian culture, literature, and ideas published in England (Family Publications) and the United States (Sapientia Press). He is also the author of many books, including literary biographies of Solzhenitsyn, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Oscar Wilde.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions

GWML#22 – C. S. Lewis “The Pilgrim’s Regress” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce

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We discuss “The Pilgrim’s Regress:: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism” by C. S. Lewis.

The first book written by C. S. Lewis after his conversion, The Pilgrim’s Regress is, in a sense, the record of Lewis’s own search for meaning and spiritual satisfaction—a search that eventually led him to Christianity.

Here is the story of the pilgrim John and his odyssey to an enchanting island which has created in him an intense longing; a mysterious, sweet desire. John’s pursuit of this desire takes him through adventures with such people as Mr. Enlightenment, Media Halfways, Mr. Mammon, Mother Kirk, Mr. Sensible, and Mr. Humanist and through such cities as Thrill and Eschropolis as well as the Valley of Humiliation.

Though the dragons and giants here are different from those in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Lewis’s allegory performs the same function of enabling the author to say simply and through fantasy what would otherwise have demanded a full-length philosophy of religion.

GWML#9 Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Scarlet Letter” – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Discerning Hearts

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Episode 9 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – Nathaniel Hawthorne

A key figure in the development of American literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne was also profoundly influenced by his ancestors and the Christianity that underscored their Puritan heritage. A literary classic, The Scarlet Letter presents a profound meditation on the nature of sin, repentance, and redemption, and how such Christian concepts may be integrated into American democracy.

Based on the Ignatius Critical Edition, this series examines, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the life, the times, and influence of authors of great works in literature.

To learn more about the authors and titles available in the Ignatius Critical Editions