Book review by Roch-Josef di Lisio. Service, Alastair. The architects of London and their buildings from 1066 to the present day. London: Architectural Press; New York: Architectural Book Pub., 1979.
Book review by Grace Farrell Lee. Spilka, Mark. Virginia Woolf's Quarrel with Grieving. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1980.
Book review by David Curtis, Professor of English at Sacred Heart University. Isaacs, Neil D. and Rose A. Zimbardo, eds. Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1981.
Book review by Christopher Sharrett of Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. 371 pp.
As educators we must look ahead if we want our students to survive, adapt, and prosper in the fast-changing world of the twenty first century. Educators must demonstrate a responsibility for the future. The proper attitude to develop is a philosophy of "hopeful realism.
The principles of a free society are based upon, that is, logically entail, a definite metaphysics. If an academic institution were permitted to espouse these political principles it would, at least logically, be giving credence to the metaphysics upon which the principles are based. Therefore, to avoid this, the current doctrine of academic freedom as requires neutrality on the...
A conversation between Judith Miller and Richard Wordsworth, an actor and descendant of William Wordsworth who came to Sacred Heart University in April 1988 to give a performance of his dramatic monologue, The Bliss of Solitude, based on the life of his ancestor. He speaks about his ancestors and his life today in the community of Grasmere. Lecture given at the Romanticism Past...
The development and extensive cultivation of program music is one of the most distinctive expressions of Romanticism in nineteenth-century music. Neither song nor opera, program music emerged as a new genre in which composers attempted to express the affective essence of extra-musical ideas through purely instrumental means. Lecture given at the Romanticism Past and Present...
This paper describes some of the most significant episodes in the Iliad and suggests and that the alien world it presents to our contemporary eyes may be relevant to us and our students in unexpected ways. The world of the Iliad can be recognized as one in which a great civilization and city are disintegrating in the face of war and barbarism. Its heroes must choose between law...
Most historians of classical Greece consider the characteristic feature of Greek political life to have been the city-state or polis. Others have cited the fragmentation of the peninsula into a multitude of sovereign states, which tended to vent their tempers at one another rather than to cooperate in the face of a threat to them all, as a significant factor leading to the...
The religion of the Greeks was an integral part of ancient Greek civilization. Nearly all of the activities of Greek life were carried out in the shadow of Mt. Olympus. Yet, despite the many legacies of Greece to later Western culture, Greek religion did not survive beyond the first few centuries of the Common Era(C.E.). Traditional Greek religion was weakened by the Greeks...
What do I want my students to get out of Oedipus? I do not necessarily want them to imitate Oedipus, nor do I wish his suffering on anyone. But an artistic experience can help give shape or expression to and even preparation for life experiences. We lead a life that is significantly richer, fuller, and wiser — notice I did not say happier — if we follow Oedipus and learn some of...
At the dawn of philosophy, Thales marveled or, perhaps, despaired: "All things are full of gods."Today, we are living through the final phase of the centuries-long "changing of the gods": technology has superseded philosophy; men are playing gods in place of gods acting as men. My remarks will fall into three areas: first, ancient philosophy, that is, the bearing of the pagan...
This essay addresses the ideal of the Catholic mind, its history, its pervasive place in the tradition of Catholic education, its possibilities for development, its philosophical and theological foundations, then outlines the serious intellectual difficulties brought against the viability of this ideal today. Finally, the essay assesses the prospects of this ideal passing in our...
Angela DiPace Fritz reviews the book by Michelle Carbone Loris, Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion. American University Studies, Series IV, English Language and Literature, Vol. 74. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. In Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion, Loris succeeds by redirecting the reader to Didion's writing. In rereading Didion, the reader...
A discussion of the "delicate balance
The peril of autobiography is that we may read our own life stories as if they were historically true, conveying to ourselves an image of wholeness and completion that we never had, screening from view what we don't want to see. Conversely, the value of autobiography emerges when we read it instead as a kind of action, taking place at the moment of writing, responding to the...
Critical study of John Updike's four "Rabbit" novels.
This paper was presented on December 2, 1992 at a Sacred Heart University faculty dinner and discussion of the Catholic identity of the University.
In this essay Christopher Walsh points to a Christological and evangelical emphasis in the writings of John Paul II. Thirty years after Vatican II, on the verge of the third millennium, Pope John Paul II is saying in his latest encyclical that all people, by the grace and revelation of God consummated in Jesus Christ — even if they do not explicitly know Christ or God himself...
Opening remarks by Msgr. Gregory Smith at the Special Lecture on Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), a symposium held at Sacred Heart University February 9, 1994.
Discusses the use of various narrative strategies in Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye to show the destruction of the psyche of eleven year old Pecola.