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Episode 20 – Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pearce – G. K. Chesterton and “The Man Who Was Thursday”
“A powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his single-handed struggle with the universe.”
–C. S. Lewis —
Chesterton’s own response, and riposte, to the Decadence of the 1890s can be found in his novel “The Man Who Was Thursday”. Whereas the Decadents–taking their own perverse inspiration from the dark romanticism of Byron, Shelley and Keats-had stripped the masks off reality” and discovered darkness, Chesterton stripped the masks off reality” (from the “anarchists” in his novel) and discovered light — Joseph Pearce “Ignatius Insight” May 2005
Joseph Pearce is Director of the Center for Faith and Culture and Writer in Residence at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a renowned biographer whose books include his autobiography, Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love (Saint Benedict Press, 2013); Candles in the Dark: The Authorized Biography of Fr. Ho Lung, Missionaries of the Poor (Saint Benedict Press, 2012), Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays (Ignatius Press, 2010); and Tolkien: Man and Myth, a Literary Life (HarperCollins, 1998). He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Higher Education from Thomas More College for the Liberal Arts and also received the Pollock Award for Christian Biography. He is co-editor of the St. Austin Review and has hosted two series on Shakespeare for EWTN, as well as hosting several EWTN productions on J. R. R. Tolkien.
You can find the book here
I read The Man Who Was Thursday last year and loved it. My colleges were all secular and this novel was never assigned in either undergard or grad school. What a shame. This should definitely be part of the canon. This novel is a dissenting voice to skeptism that is repeated in secular universities over and over until it amounts to indoctrination. Joseph Pierce does a great job (as always) here in explicating the themes, and as you do as well Kris. I’ll have to read it again in a year or two. Please invite me to that brandy party. 😉