In more than two dozen novels, memoirs, travelogues and other writings, the Massachusetts writer Roland Merullo has proved to be an astute observer of the human condition.
Though a small state in terms of geographic size and population, Mississippi occupies an outsized place in the world of American letters. Why? How has “a little state that rests alongside the banks of a great and mighty river” made so many significant contributions to American literature?
This week on Jesuitical, Jeremy Tate, argues that not only are the classics worth studying for their own sake but that abandoning the Western canon will have disastrous effects for our (already toxic) public discourse.
Classical education provides students with exactly the analytical tools that they need—logic, philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, history—to both grasp and critique the great books, taking both their original context and their modern significance into account.