Beauteous truth : faith, reason, literature and culture / By Joseph Pearce ; Foreword by Cardinal Raymond Burke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pearce, Joseph, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion and literature.

Religion and culture.

Civilization, Western.

Faith and reason.

Truth in literature.

Literature.

Truth.

Physical Description:

xix, 343 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

South Bend, Indiana : St. Augustine's Press, [2014]

Summary:

For those, like myself, who have enjoyed and greatly benefitted from reading the essays of Joseph Pearce, published in a variety of venues, especially as editorials in the Saint Austin Review, but who have not practically been able to save them in an effective way for future consultation and reflection, the present volume is indeed a great gift. For those who are not familiar with the essays of Joseph Pearce, the volume represents a treasure of the most solid Catholic thought on important aspects of culture, both historical and contemporary, especially as it expresses itself through literature. Joseph Pearce has a remarkable gift of writing about history, literature, and culture in general. His writing is objective and accessible, that is, it shows his steadfast attention to the truth and to language which manifests the same truth in its inherent beauty or natural attractiveness. The fifth essay in this collection, "History Revisited," for instance, is a sterling example of his gift for such writing. The essays of Joseph Pearce reveal his profound understanding of reason and faith, of classical realist philosophy and Catholic doctrine, which permits him to write about history, literature, and culture in general with an unfailing attention to the objective reality of God and of His earthly creation, that is, of man and of the world. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Defining Our Terms 1

1 Beauty is Truth: Faith and Aesthetics 3

2 Towards a Definition of Culture 6

3 Faith and Popular Culture 10

4 Fides et Ratio: Faith and Philosophy 13

5 History Revisited 16

6 Science versus Scientism 20

7 Sex and Culture 24

8 Satan and the Art of Darkness 28

9 Ethno-Masochism and the Culture of Death 31

10 What is England? 35

11 Who are the Celts? 38

12 American Faith and Culture 41

13 Unless You Become Like Little Children 43

Part 2 Celebrating Our Heritage 47

14 The Classical Muse 49

15 Myth and Thought Among the Greeks 52

16 The Middle Ages 55

17 The Healthy Wyrdness of the Anglo-Saxons 59

18 The Faith of Merrie England 63

19 The Priest's Hole 66

20 The Counter-Reformation 68

21 After Shakespeare: English Literature from 1616 to 1800 71

22 Truth in Fiction: The Art of the Novel 75

23 The Romantic Reaction 78

24 Rome and Romanticism 85

25 The Victorian Age 88

26 The Twentieth Century Revisited 91

27 Light amid the Ruins: Literature in the Twentieth Century 95

Part 3 Literary Landscapes 99

28 Catholic Social Thought and Literature 101

29 English Roads to Rome 111

30 Literary Priests 114

31 In Persona Christi: The Priest in Modern Literature 117

32 Children's Literature: Wisdom in Wonderland 128

33 How We Rediscover Reality through Fantasy 131

34 Apocalyptic Visions: Faith and Science Fiction 134

35 Whatever Happened to the Catholic Literary Revival? 137

Part 4 Literary Portraits 141

36 Shakespeare's Challenge to Contemporary Culture 143

37 Major or Minor Poets? Examining the Literary Stature of Southwell and Crashaw 149

38 Newman, Manning and Their Age 162

39 Newman's Beatification 166

40 Turning Wine into Marsh-Water: A Sordid Life of Oscar Wilde 170

41 Wilfrid Ward: A Man for All Seasons 173

42 Come Rack! Come Rope!: A Minor Classic 178

43 Past Present: Hilaire Belloc and the Evangelizing Power of History 181

44 Belloc's The Four Men 188

45 The Resurrection of G. K. Chesterton 192

46 G. K. Chesterton: Fidei Defensor 199

47 The Best of Chesterton 202

48 The Novels of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis 204

49 Eliot and His Age 210

50 Roy Campbell Remembered 212

51 Tolkien and Lewis: Masters of Myth, Tellers of Truth 216

52 Narnia and Middle-Earth: When Two Worlds Collude 219

53 The Catholic Genius of J. R. R. Tolkien 228

54 Tolkien in Heaven 231

55 Morgoth: The Satanic Presence in Middle-Earth 233

56 Darkness in Middle-Earth 236

57 Redemption in Middle-Earth 238

58 The Chronicles of Narnia: Deep Magic from Before the Dawn of Time 241

59 Man and Everyman: C. S. Lewis's Ascent from Faithless Rationalism to Fides et Ratio 244

60 Cyber-Space: Hell's Final Frontier 251

61 The Joy of Being Surprised by C. S. Lewis 254

62 The Legacy of Ronald Knox 256

63 The Legacy of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward 258

64 E. F. Schumacher: True Economist 263

65 Christopher Dawson: True Historian 267

66 The Great I Am: Ontological Objectivity in Causley's "I Am the Great Sun" 269

67 Flannery O'Connor: Misfit and Mystic 276

68 Solzhenitsyn: The Triumph of Winston Smith 282

69 The Essential Solzhenitsyn 285

70 Graham Greene and George W. Bush: Old World Cynicism Meets New World Naïveté 290

71 The Da Vinci Con 297

72 Homage to a Civilized Man 299

73 New Saints We Should Know 305

Part 5 Self-Portraits 307

74 Home Thoughts from Abroad 309

75 Race with the Devil: A Journey from the Hell of Hatred to the Well of Mercy 312

76 Hope Is the Sweetness of Our Life 318.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781587310676

1587310678

OCLC:

794711820