Mitchell Kalpakgian

Dr. Mitchell A. Kalpakgian (1941-2018) was a native of New England, the son of Armenian immigrants. He was Professor of English at Simpson College (Iowa) for 31 years. During his academic career, Dr. Kalpakgian received many academic honors, among them the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship (Brown University, 1981); the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (University of Kansas, 1985); and an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Children's Literature.

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George Herbert’s “The Pulley”

In the style of the “wit” of metaphysical poetry—the ability to see striking, original analogies and to use fresh metaphors—Herbert writes of man’s relationship to God by comparing the communication of God to man and man to God to the movements of a pulley. In the language of seventeenth century poetry, Herbert uses a “conceit,” … Read more

The Human Condition in Cather’s My Antonia

Dr. Johnson remarked that a noble purpose of great literature “is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” Willa Cather’s My Antonia, a novel about immigrants travelling to the Midwest to farm the land as pioneers, provides great wisdom on the art of enduring life better. Portraying the universality … Read more

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

As the novel shows, the corruption of sense in the form of prudent self-interest leads to marriages based solely on money, and the corruption of sensibility in the form of license leads to elopement, seduction, and children out of wedlock. Both attitudes destroy the ideal of marriage that forms the basis of civilization in Austen’s … Read more

Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: The Usefulness of Useless Things

“The Child is father of the Man,” wrote William Wordsworth, marveling at the enchantment of the child’s early experience and delight in play. The formative period of childhood cultivates in the young a love of life, a sense of adventure, and an imaginative world filled with wonder. As the child in Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden … Read more

Unmanly Men in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Stories

Many of O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political agendas … Read more

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad out its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same; Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself … Read more

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden

Even before the age of consumerism, overspending, and credit card debt, an American writer of the nineteenth century identified an economic problem that has proliferated and reached a point of crisis in the twenty-first century. Thoreau observes that the typical New England farmers of his day perform burdensome toil more onerous than the labors of … Read more

Being Nice and Being Good in Tom Sawyer

As the saying goes, children can be “naughty or nice,” but naughty does not always mean bad and nice does not always mean good. One can also be “nice” but not good, and one can be good while sometimes naughty. A world of difference separates the merely nice from the truly good. No one explains … Read more

Robert Frost’s “Birches”

Thinking back upon a winter’s day in New England, a man in the middle of life beholds the bent limbs of a birch tree that recalls the fondest of childhood memories, the delight of climbing up the tree and sliding down the bent branches again and again. He knows the real reason for the bending … Read more

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales

In The Tanglewood Tales Hawthorne retells famous classical myths with imaginative charm that captures the universality and moral wisdom of the stories. Hawthorne’s lively, fresh retelling of six famous myths—“The Minotaur,” “The Pygmies,” “The Dragon’s Teeth,” “Circe’s Palace,” “The Pomegranate Seeds,” and “The Golden Fleece”—captures the essence of great stories that always possess, in Chesterton’s … Read more

C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce

One can be a ghost or a spirit. One can dwell in a Grey City and restlessly move constantly to new neighborhoods or abide in the Bright World and enjoy everlasting peace. One can confine pleasure to cinemas and fish and chips or delight in abounding spiritual joy. One can live in the shadowy grayness … Read more

Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes

The sequel to Tom Brown’s School Days that culminates in Tom’s graduation from Rugby and his formation as an honorable Christian gentleman who embodies Dr. Arnold’s ideal of “muscular Christianity”—moral courage in the battleground of good versus evil that corresponds to the “pluck” that Tom displays on the rugby field and in the cricket match—this … Read more

Owen Wister’s The Virginian

A famous character in American literature, the Wyoming cowboy who originally hailed from Virginia embodies the ideal of manly virtue and honor identified with the culture of the Wild West. The Virginian is an American hero who epitomizes integrity, responsibility loyalty, justice, chivalry, and magnanimity. Honorable in work, in love, in words, in deeds, in … Read more

On Shakespeare’s Hamlet

In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Shakespeare presents the relentless conflict between two philosophies that shape the human condition. The philosophy of Claudius, the usurping tyrant who secretly poisoned his brother King Hamlet and married his wife Queen Gertrude, assumes that might is right, man is a god, and the end justifies the … Read more

Fatherhood in Virgil’s Aeneid

“All the evidence suggests a responsible male, ready and able to make significant and social commitment, is a rarity in any society.”  —Fr. Lawrence Porter, A Guide to the Church The Roman hero of Virgil’s epic, known originally in the Latin as pius Aeneas (“pious Aeneas”), earns many similar epithets throughout the story. He is … Read more

Homer’s Odyssey: A Reflection of Womanhood

Homer’s great epic about the family as the center of civilization portrays two different types of woman: women who are pro-marriage and pro-family and women who are anti-marriage and anti-family. Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus who waited twenty years for her husband’s return from war and exile, defends her home from the suitors who … Read more

Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop

“Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers”—the telltale signs of civilized life. In Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop two French Jesuit missionaries arrive in the American Southwest to revive the Catholic faith and evangelize the Mexicans and Indians, Catholics who were once … Read more

Jane Austen’s Persuasion

Austen’s novel illuminates this proverbial saying: “If something is truly meant and intended for you, it will come your way another time.” Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth were in love and engaged, but her aristocratic father, Sir Walter Elliot, and a respected family friend, Lady Russell, disapproved the match and persuaded Anne to terminate the … Read more

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Windhover”

As liturgical time draws to an end, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King.  At this moment it is worth remembering one of the finest English efforts at honoring the glory, majesty, sovereignty, authority, liberality, and magnanimity of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—“The Windhover: to Christ our Lord” by … Read more

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