Literature, Poetry & Faith. A Conversation with Joseph Pearce

About Joseph Pearce

A native of England, Joseph Pearce is the internationally acclaimed author of many books, which include bestsellers such as The Quest for Shakespeare. The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome (2008), Tolkien: Man and Myth (1998), The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (2000), C. S. Lewis and The Catholic Church (2003), Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief (1999), Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton (1996), Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile (1999) and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc (2002). His books have been published and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Croatian and Polish.

He has hosted two 13-part television series about Shakespeare on EWTN, and has also written and presented documentaries on EWTN on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. His verse drama, Death Comes for the War Poets, was performed off-Broadway to critical acclaim. He has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Europe, Africa and South America.

He is Visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University and a Visiting Fellow of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, New Hampshire). He is editor of the Saint Austin Review (https://staustinreview.org/), series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions (www.ignatiuscriticaleditions.com), senior instructor with Homeschool Connections (www.homeschoolconnectionsonline.com), and senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and Crisis Magazine. His personal website is http://www.jpearce.co.

Robert Lazu Kmita: Dear Joseph Pearce, our first interview appeared twenty years ago - on April 11, 2005. It is unbelievable how many years have passed, isn’t it? Besides the works already published by then, this time interval has marked the impressive growth in the number of books you have published. I am sure each work has its own value, its own place in the “Joseph Pearce galaxy.” And yet, among all the volumes published so far, which ones do you consider your most important achievements? And why?

Joseph Pearce: Since our last conversation, so many years ago, I’d say that the books I’ve published on Shakespeare and my two recent books of history are the works that I believe have most significance with respect to filling a void or correcting error or misunderstandings. My first book on Shakespeare, The Quest for Shakespeare (2008), gathered together the biographical and historical evidence for the Bard’s Catholicism. My second book, Through Shakespeare’s Eyes (2009), looked at the textual evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism that can be seen in his plays. More recently, I’ve been focusing on history. My book, Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England (2022), is a history of Catholic England from the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in the first century to the Catholic revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My latest book, The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions (2023), is a history of Christendom. It has a separate chapter for every century since the time of Christ and each chapter is subdivided into the good, bad and beautiful aspects of each century.

Robert Lazu Kmita: I was almost certain you would mention the two monographs dedicated to Shakespeare. Considering that we’re discussing the author whom numerous historians and critics consider the heart of “the Western Canon” (Harold Bloom), I would like to insist on your research on the bard’s works. What are your personal preferences regarding his plays, sonnets, and epic poems? And concerning the world of scholars specialized in his works, what are the most notable reactions to your monographs?

Joseph Pearce: I can never make up my mind which of Shakespeare’s plays is my favourite between Hamlet and King Lear, both of which are too sublime for any words to encapsulate adequately. I oscillate between the two with respect to which I prefer, sometimes quipping that I prefer Hamlet on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Lear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and over the weekend! My favourite sonnets are “As an unperfect actor on the stage” (Sonnet 23), “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (Sonnet 73), and “Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (Sonnet 129). The first has a wonderfully embedded reference to the Mass as “the perfect ceremony of love’s rite,” as well as a punning reference to St. Thomas More; the second has the famous reference to the “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,” a reference to the dissolution of the monasteries; and the third is one of the most brilliant depictions of the sordid reality of lust ever written. My favourite of his other poems is “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” a beguilingly enigmatic riddle of a poem, which seems to be a eulogy to martyred English Catholics, particularly perhaps to St. Anne Line.

As for the critical response to my research, there’s no doubt that discussion of the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies is now part of mainstream scholarship. There are many who wish to deny it or minimize its importance but these are very much on the defensive. They are in denial without any adequate evidence for their denial. It’s wishful thinking. I would add, however, that I am only one of many scholars researching the biographical, historical and textual evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism. My first book, The Quest for Shakespeare, was really a compendium of the best research already done by earlier scholars. I was standing on the shoulders of those who had blazed the trail before me.

Robert Lazu Kmita: And since I mentioned the Western Canon, I believe that now, considering the fact that you have traversed the works of so many influential authors you’ve discussed in your numerous books, I can ask you to describe the “constellation” that represents your own canon. So, who are those authors that, in your view, always constitute mandatory references for any reader of Western literature? And what role do those writers who do not belong to the Christian world – such as Homer, Pindar, Sophocles and Euripides, Cicero and Virgil – occupy?

Joseph Pearce: The whole edifice of western literature stands on the statuesque shoulders of Homer. If there had not been Homer, we would not have Virgil’s Aeneid, and without Virgil there would be no Divine Comedy. Similarly, the whole edifice of Christian philosophy rests on the shoulders of that triumvirate of Athenian giants, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It can be said that Augustine baptizes the philosophy of Plato and that Aquinas baptizes the philosophy of Aristotle. In the same way, we can say that Shakespeare baptizes the works of the Greek dramatists of whom, me judice, Sophocles is the greatest. Collectively, these axiomatic figures represent the brightest stars in the western civilizational firmament: Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare.

Robert Lazu Kmita: I have initiated this dialogue with a primary intention in mind: to steer the conversation towards contemporary literature. To prepare for what I deem very important, I’ll pose a question that will translate us from the context of classical literature to that of modern literature. So, who are the modern authors that are situated on the main shelf of your library?

Joseph Pearce: My library is extensive, stretching to most rooms in the house. There’s not a main shelf but many shelves! It also depends on what you mean by “modern authors.” Technically, according to conventional historical consensus, Shakespeare is a modern author, i.e. “early modern.” He is certainly a major presence in my library. I have several shelves set aside for Shakespearean literature. He is rivalled in terms of shelf space by Chesterton, Belloc, Baring, Tolkien, Lewis, Eliot, Waugh, Flannery O’Connor and Solzhenitsyn.

Robert Lazu Kmita: Among modern authors, you have particularly focused on those who were Catholics. Additionally, many of your books and articles have referred to the works and personality of J.R.R. Tolkien. What is your opinion about those writers who have tried to continue the fantasy genre? For example, Ursula K. Le Guin with her Earthsea series, or a completely different author like Ishiguro Kazuo (Nobel Prize winner in 2017), who wrote a fantasy novel titled The Buried Giant (2015)? Or Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman? By the way, do you know any notable current Catholic writers who write fantasy?

Joseph Pearce: Those who have followed in Tolkien’s footsteps are unworthy, at best, or are demonic perverters of his vision, at worst. It might be said that they walk in his shadow, at best, or that they are nothing but shadows, at worst. The latter, lacking the divine light that was Tolkien’s guide, are denizens of the dark who not merely live in the dark but are its servants.

Ursula K. Le Guin is better than most but the underlying theology that informs her work is a little quirky. I’ve not read Kazuo Ishiguro so cannot comment. Terry Pratchett’s youthful imagination was athletically vivid and vibrant. Lots of ingenuity in the manner in which he thought outside the box and invited his readers to do likewise. The problem is that the box outside of which he invited us to think was itself a small and insignificant thing. Pratchett seemed incapable of seeing anything but small and largely vacuous boxes. Thinking outside the vacuum is not difficult. Something is always more real and engaging than its absence. Ironically, however, thinking outside the vacuum is a little hypocritical for the atheist who believes in nothing ultimately except the vacuum itself.

I haven’t read Gaiman and am not inclined to do so.

As for contemporary Catholic writers, I’m currently engaged in reading many works of contemporary Catholic fiction which are on my bookshelves because they’ve been sent to me, often by the authors themselves. Most of these are surprisingly good. It’s the literature of the catacombs because these authors are anathema. Their works are unacceptable to those publishers swimming in the toxic mainstream because anything not sufficiently “woke” is considered heretical or “fascist.” It is tyrannical intolerance in the name of “tolerance.” Orwellian doublethink is alive and well!

Works by contemporary Catholic authors are not “woke” because they are awake to reality and not blinded by the latest faddish ideology. I would add that contemporary Catholic authors write in many genres, not just fantasy. Indeed, fantasy appears to be the exception, not the rule.

The master of contemporary fantasy, me judice, is Tim Powers, a devout Catholic whose faith is discernible in his work, albeit through a glass darkly. My favourite is Declare. Its weird in the weirdest sense of the word, in the original etymological sense of the word in Old English. Weird is wyrd. It’s the mystical presence of the divine.

As for your own novel, The Island Without Seasons, I will simply reiterate my endorsement of it. It is a moving testimony to the timeless relevance of Plato in unravelling the mysteries of good and evil that underlie every human life and every civilization.

Robert Lazu Kmita: Both from your books and from everything you said in the first part of your previous answer, it is clear that you always pay attention to the theological-moral dimension of literary works. What would you say to those critics who, invoking texts such as Oscar Wilde’s famous preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, emphasize the aesthetic value of literature and argue that moral judgments and theological perspectives have no place in it?

Joseph Pearce: Such reasoning is awry for two reasons. The first reason is that none of us exists in a moral, philosophical of theological vacuum. We all have a view of the cosmos, of ourselves and of each other which impact the way that we perceive reality. This perception will inform what we do and say, including what we read and write, how we read and write, and how we understand how we read and write. Those who claim that there’s no place for moral judgments or for theological perspectives are actually making a moral judgment and expressing a theological perspective! They are merely wishing that the sort of moral judgments with which they disagree, or with which they feel uncomfortable, should not be made, and that theological perspectives that disagree with their own with respect to the existence and nature of God should be anathema.

As for aesthetics, it is simply an unconscious error, or else a conscious lie, to claim that the beautiful can ever be severed from the good and the true. These three transcendentals are triune, a manifestation of the transcendental and immanent presence of Triune Reality. An artfully constructed lie might have the accidental appearance of beauty, in its rhetorical sophistry or its employment of literary tropes but its “beauty” is superficial. As soon as the lie is detected, the true ugliness becomes apparent. Similarly, the morally sordid can be presented seductively in terms of its promise of self-empowerment or self-expression, but those seduced by it soon discover that all such manifestations of pride result in the gollumization of the psyche, which is the cankered fruit of addiction, a slavery to self-destructive habits, which prevents authentic empowerment and any expression of the self beyond the merely selfish. Ironically, this was the very point, the very moral, of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray which, as a novel, is a delightful contradiction of the claim in its preface that there’s no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, a contradiction which was confessed, professed and proclaimed by Wilde himself.

Robert Lazu Kmita: You have mentioned the fact that many contemporary Catholic authors are anathema for major publishing houses because their works are not aligned with the prevailing ideologies of the moment. If Tolkien were looking for a publisher for The Lord of the Rings today, do you think he would be in the same situation as the writers you mentioned? On the other hand, would his work have the same impact today as it did in the 60s and 70s? Or would his work be completely marginalized because he is not “woke” at all?

Joseph Pearce: These are intriguing questions but they’re too rooted in hypothetical scenarios and supposals. Tolkien changed history. He might not have invented the fantasy genre but he did more than anyone to popularize it and to make it a publishing phenomenon. The twenty-first century is blessed with Tolkien’s presence, whether those who wallow in its dark underbelly like it or not. There’s no writing him out of history. Fantasy in general is easier to get published because of the trail he blazed. His work still speaks powerfully to anyone who reads it. It is timeless. Like Shakespeare or any other great writer, his work is abused and perverted by orcish adaptations and is gollumized by ideology-driven critics. So be it. The work itself is perennially beautiful. It will not only survive but will prevail, not necessarily in this vale of tears and land of exile, this long defeat with only occasional glimpses of final victory, this city of man which is no abiding city, but in the halls of eternity where all that is good, true and beautiful is without blemish and is enshrined beyond the reach of the world.

Robert Lazu Kmita: It is impossible to talk about G.K. Chesterton, A. C. Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis without discussing the adaptations based on their works. Both Father Brown and Sherlock Holmes, as well as the heroes of Middle-Earth and Narnia, are represented in numerous films. What are your thoughts on these creations? Do you have any favorite movies from the series dedicated to them? Or perhaps actors who have masterfully interpreted these beloved characters?

Joseph Pearce: I have a high sensitivity to “author abuse,” the term I use for adaptations of author’s works which violate their meaning and spirit. I find it very difficult to attend productions of Shakespeare’s plays because of the horrible things that director’s do with them. To take but one egregious example of many that could be given, I once saw a production of The Merchant of Venice in which all the Christian characters were depicted as skinheads. That being said, there are exceptions. The Olivier and Branagh versions of Henry V come to mind. I really enjoyed the old film version of Father Brown in which Sir Alec Guinness played Chesterton’s priest detective. On the other hand, most of the Father Brown productions adapted for television have been very hit and miss – and mostly miss. As I’m not a great afficionado of Sherlock Holmes, I’m not as sensitive to the abuse of Conan Doyle’s stories. The same for Agatha Christie. My wife and I recently enjoyed a film based on one of her novels which was clearly something of a parody. I’m as sensitive about Tolkien abuse as I am about Shakespeare abuse. Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was much better than I expected and I’ve enjoyed watching them, though I agree with your own criticisms of the eroticizing of the relationship of Aragorn and Arwen. Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit was appalling and ludicrous in equal measure. I find Hollywood’s disneyfied adaptations of Narnia in poor taste and driven by ideological agendas which would be anathema to Lewis. I did enjoy the low budget BBC production of The Chronicles of Narnia from many years ago. For all its lack of high-tech gimmickry, it has a charm in keeping with the spirit of the books that the glitzy crassness and brashness of Disney forsakes and subverts.

Robert Lazu Kmita: Since we are nearing the end of our interview, for which I thank you very much, I will ask you a broad question, but its essence is the same. What is the present and, especially, the future of the Christian (i.e., Catholic) presence in the world of literature and poetry? What would you recommend to creators – novelists and poets – as being the essential points of their mission? What would you convey to editors – whether Catholic or not – regarding their mission?

Joseph Pearce: This needs to be seen on both the macroscopic and the microscopic level. Macroscopically, the relativist West is in the process of advanced decay. It is breaking down and breaking up. We need to remember always that decadence is not merely deadly but suicidal. It destroys or damages good things in its viciousness but destroys itself in the process. It is killing itself in its own too much. It is not necessary to destroy that which is inherently self-destructive. What needs to concern us is what we are doing in the midst of the suicide of the secularist west. And this brings us to the microcosmic. Each of us needs to be living courageously in goodness, truth and beauty, remembering at all times that sanity and sanctity are ultimately synonymous. With respect to literature, we need to preserve and promote the legacy of Christendom, of Christian Civilization, by promoting the reading and teaching of the Great Books. Secondly, we need a living culture of contemporary literature. In an age of hostility this might mean a literature of the catacombs, a literature of suffering and persecution expressed in terms of faith and fortitude. Shakespeare wrote in such an age, so did Solzhenitsyn. This is fertile cultural soil. But we don’t just need writers of contemporary literature, we need readers of contemporary literature. We all need to be seeking out and reading the literature of the catacombs. This is the way to nurture and nourish a Catholic literary revival, which already exists underground, at the grassroots. It needs to be watered with grace but also by gracing it with our active engagement.

Robert Lazu Kmita: As for you, I am sure we will see more and more works in the coming years. What are your main projects? What are you currently working on? And, from the perspective of the experience accumulated over so many years of writing and publishing, what do you think are the most important priorities?

Joseph Pearce: I sometimes say that, when I die, the list of books I hoped to write will be almost as long as the list of books I hoped to read. I have so much aspiration. It really depends on how much time God gives me for perspiration! I’m currently working on a book that I’ve tentatively titled Winning the War of Words: Defending the Definite, a definition of terms for the culture wars. I’d like to write on all of Shakespeare’s works. I’ve written on almost half the plays but would like to write on the rest, as well as on the sonnets and longer poems. I’d like to write a contemplative meditation on Hopkins’ masterful poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland"; I’d like to write a book on Chesterton’s novels and another on the adult fiction of C. S. Lewis, especially the Space Trilogy. I’d like to write a full-length book on Brideshead Revisited, with the unimaginative title, Revisiting Brideshead. I’d like to write another book on Eliot’s Waste Land and perhaps a book (or two) On Homer’s epics. Most ambitiously, I’d like to write a panoramic history looking at pride as the source of all societal ills, a sort of “critical pride theory” to counter critical race theory and other anthropologically defective readings of history. Ultimately, however, the best way of finishing my answer to the final question is with reference to the finishing line itself. As I get older, I am focused much more on the finishing line, on the moment of death, which could come at any time. The memento mori is an integral motif of good literature because it should be an integral motif of a good life. My hope, for the time still left to me, by the grace of God, is to be a good and faithful servant of Christ and a good and faithful soldier of Christ in the Church Militant. This means being a culture warrior, taking up the pen to wield it as a sword, in both clarity and charity. This is only possible with God’s grace. By His grace, may I spend every one of my remaining days in His service giving back to the Giver of the gifts that He’s given me the fruits of the gifts given. Amen!