Great Works Of Literature Every Catholic Should Know

Joseph Pearce has come out with a new book - though given how prolific he is he may have come out with two since early spring, with another at the printer's!

Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, is a survey of great works from The Iliad to Lancelot by Walker Percy. It is organized in a mix of thematic and chronological order.

At the back of the book he includes a list of 100 "Great Works of Literature Every Catholic Should Know." The list includes individual works, and some collections.

I looked at the list. I've read completely or substantially 53 of them. I say substantially because with some of the poets I haven't read all of their collected poems, though I have read the bulk of the major poems by them - T.S. Eliot or Gerard Manley Hopkins, to name two. Or with The Canterbury Tales,  I've read most of the tales, but not all of them.

Strictly speaking, if I count only the works I've read in their entirety, the count comes to 47. And some of those I read decades ago, so I don't remember parts of them.

Still, as an "educated" Catholic, and with a graduate degree in literature, realizing I've only read 53 - or 47 - of them is humbling.

In some cases, I've read some of the works listed for a particular writer, but not all the listed ones. I've read Antigone by Sophocles, but not Oedipus Rex. I've read a number of the Shakespeare plays listed, but not The Merry Wives of Windsor or The Winter's Tale.

There are some writers on the list whose works I haven't read at all - Walker Percy, for example.

So ... I now have a list of works to read. As soon as I finish the books I'm working on now - including Pearce's.

Maybe if I stay off Twitter and Facebook I can get a few of them read before school starts!

Pax et bonum