The so-called Respect for Marriage Act has pushed the issue of gay marriage back into the spotlight and, with it, the slogan "The right side of history."

As a literary critic, writer, and professor, I have the great privilege of working with literature every day, and helping others to encounter the beauty of great stories as well.

The literary critic and biographer Mona Wilson once began an introduction to a selection of Samuel Johnson's prose and poetry with a memorable disclaimer. "I shall say nothing of Johnson's life."

After seven months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?

When twenty-three year old Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in Rome to complete his very first public commission, he was provided with a single block of marble, a one-year timeframe, and a sacred theme: the Pietà.

The great biographer of Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, always inspired fondness in those who reveled in his wit, his bonhomie, his learning, and his very real, if inconspicuous pietas.

Until quite modern times—I think, until the time of the Romantics—nobody ever suggested that literature and the arts were an end in themselves.

Last week, Frank La Rocca's Mass of the Americas debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart for traditional classical music, knocking John Williams down to No. 2.

Let's start with a simple irony. Much of today's chatter about "defending democracy," the sanctity of personal rights, and the sacred quality of human dignity comes from people who, consciously or otherwise, jeopardize all three by their actions.

Recently, I was amused to see that Philip Larkin—by any chalk a fairly decided critic—in making his selections for The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse (1973) chose to rely rather heavily on the taste and judgement of his well-read friend Monica Jones, which confirms my now well-earned sense that compiling an anthology of poetry is no cakewalk.