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American Catholic Literature
American Catholic literature emerged in the early 1900s as its own genre. Catholic literature is not exclusively literature written by Catholic authors or about Catholic things, but rather Catholic literature is "defined ..by a particular Catholic perspective applied to its subject matter."Reichardt, Mary R. Introduction. Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature. Vol. 1. Westport, Conn. u.a.: Greenwood, 2004. Print. Definition "...Catholic imaginative literature—fiction, poetry, drama, and memoir—not theological, scholarly, or devotional writing. Surprisingly little Catholic imaginative literature is explicitly religious; even less is devotional. Most of it touches on religious themes indirectly while addressing other subjects—not sacred topics but profane ones, such as love, war, family, violence, sex, mortality, money, and power. What makes the writing Catholic is that the treatment of these subjects is permeated with a particular worldview." Professor Dana Gioia mentions vari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist. Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Formalism, which advocates the continued writing of poetry in rhyme and meter, and New Narrative, which advocates the telling of non-autobiographical stories. Gioia has also argued in favor of a return to the past tradition of poetry translators replicating the rhythm and verse structure of the original poem. Gioia helped renew the popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the rediscovery of John Allan Wyeth. He also co-founded the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, which has run annually since 1995. At the request of U.S. President George W. Bush, Gioia served between 2003 and 2009 as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In November 2006, ''Business Week'' magazine profiled Gioia as "The Man Who Saved t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Morton Robinson
Henry Morton Robinson (September 7, 1898 – January 13, 1961) was an American novelist, best known for ''A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake'' written with Joseph Campbell and his 1950 novel ''The Cardinal'', which ''Time'' magazine reported was "The year's most popular book, fiction or nonfiction." ''Time'', December 18, 1950 Biography Robinson was born in Boston and graduated from Columbia College in 1923 after serving in the US Navy during the First World War. He was an instructor in English at |
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American novelist, critic and political activist, best known for her novel ''The Group'', her marriage to critic Edmund Wilson, and her storied feud with playwright Lillian Hellman. McCarthy was the winner of the Horizon Prize in 1949 and was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1949 and 1959. She was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome. In 1973, she delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title ''Can There Be a Gothic Literature?'' The same year she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the National Medal for Literature and the Edward MacDowell Medal in 1984. McCarthy held honorary degrees from Bard, Bowdoin, Colby, Smith College, Syracuse University, the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Hull. Literary career and public life Her debut novel, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama. Her writing reflected her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her posthumously compiled ''Complete Stories'' won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise. Early life and education Childhood O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward Francis O'Connor, a real esta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank O'Connor
Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator. He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on aspects of Irish culture and history, criticism, long and short fiction (novels and short stories), biography, and travel books, He is most widely known for his more than 150 short stories and for his memoirs. The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was named in his honour. Early life Raised in Cork, he was the only child of Minnie (née O'Connor) and Michael O'Donovan. He attended Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner's Hill. One teacher, Daniel Corkery, introduced O'Connor's class to the Irish language and poetry and deeply influenced the young pupil. He later attended North Monastery Christian Brothers School. O'Connor's early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. His childhood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walker Percy
Walker Percy, OSB (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, ''The Moviegoer'', won the National Book Award for Fiction. Trained as a physician at Columbia University, Percy decided to become a writer after a bout of tuberculosis. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age."Kimball, RogerExistentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea, Review of Conversations with Walker PercyNew York Times, August 4, 1985. Retrieved 2010-06-12. His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian Shelby Foote and spent much of his life in Covington, Louisiana, where he died of prostate cancer in 1990. Early life and education Percy was born on May 28, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama, the first of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decline and Fall'' (1928) and ''A Handful of Dust'' (1934), the novel ''Brideshead Revisited'' (1945), and the Second World War trilogy ''Sword of Honour'' (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford. He worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste for country house society. He travelled extensively in the 1930s, often as a special newspaper correspondent; he reported from Ethiopian Empire, Abyssinia at the time of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935 Italian invasi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. She won a Pulitzer prize in 1961. McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the ''Ladies Home Journal'', as well as in literary periodicals, including ''The New Yorker'', ''The Saturday Review'' and ''The Atlantic''. She also held nearly a dozen honorary degrees – "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)). ''Time'' Magazine featured McGinley on its cover on June 18, 1965. Life Phyllis McGinley was born March 21, 1905, in Ontario, Oregon, the daughter of Daniel and Julia Kiesel McGinley. Her father was a land speculator and her mother a pianist. McGinley's family moved t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caroline Gordon
Caroline Ferguson Gordon (October 6, 1895 – April 11, 1981) was an American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and an O. Henry Award in 1934. Biography Gordon was born and raised in Todd County, Kentucky at her family's plantation home, "Woodstock". She was educated at her father's Clarksville Classical School for Boys in Montgomery County, Tennessee. In 1916, Gordon graduated from Bethany College and became a writer of society news for the ''Chattanooga Reporter'' newspaper in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Powell, Mona"Caroline Gordon", ''KYLIT'' — a site devoted to Kentucky writers. In the summer of 1924, Gordon returned home to Kentucky, when she met the poet Allen Tate. She moved with Tate to New York City, where they first lived together in Greenwich Village. They later shared a house with Hart Crane in Patterson, New York. Tate and Gordon wed in New York City on May 15, 1925, and their daughter Na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin O'Connor
Edwin Greene O'Connor (July 29, 1918 – March 23, 1968) was an American journalist, novelist, and radio commentator. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1962 for his novel '' The Edge of Sadness'' (1961). His ancestry was Irish, and his novels concerned the Irish-American experience and often dealt with the lives of politicians and priests. (24 March 1968)Prize Winning Author Edwin O'Connor Dies ''Oxnard Press-Courier'' (Associated Press story) Early life O'Connor was born to a medical doctor in Providence, Rhode Island, but was raised in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He was an alumnus of La Salle Academy and the University of Notre Dame. After graduation, he served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II. In 1946 he began working as a freelance author, selling his stories and reports to numerous magazines, including ''Atlantic Monthly''. Writing career During the 1950s O'Connor began a career as a television critic for two Boston newspapers, a profession he wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orestes Brownson
Orestes Augustus Brownson (September 16, 1803 – April 17, 1876) was an American intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and noted Catholic convert and writer. Brownson was a publicist, a career which spanned his affiliation with the New England Transcendentalists through his subsequent conversion to Roman Catholicism. Early years and education Brownson was born on September 16, 1803, to Sylvester Augustus Brownson and Relief Metcalf, who were farmers in Stockbridge, Vermont. Sylvester Brownson died when Orestes was young and Relief decided to give her son up to a nearby adoptive family when he was six years old. The adopting family raised Brownson under the strict confines of Calvinist Congregationalism on a small farm in Royalton, Vermont. He did not receive much schooling but enjoyed reading books. Among these were volumes by Homer and Locke and the Bible. In 1817, when he was fourteen, Brownson attended an academy briefly in New York. This was the extent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Horgan
Paul George Vincent O'Shaughnessy Horgan (August 1, 1903 – March 8, 1995) was an American writer of historical fiction and non-fiction who mainly wrote about the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes for History. Historian David McCullough wrote of Horgan in 1989: "With the exception of Wallace Stegner, no living American has so distinguished himself in both fiction and history." Biography Paul Horgan was born in Buffalo, New York on August 1, 1903. After his father contracted tuberculosis, the family moved in 1915 to Albuquerque, New Mexico for health reasons. Horgan attended New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, where he formed a lifelong friendship with classmate and future artist Peter Hurd. In 1922, Horgan befriended physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1922 during a visit to New Mexico. After finishing high school, Horgan spent a year working for a local newspaper. In 1923, Horgan enrolled in the Eastman School of Music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
