Author Archives: Jonathan Sircy

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) is nearly fifty years old, but its espionage yarn and themes of ethics and disillusionment still resonate. PLOT In the middle of the Cold War, the British spy service must find its mole, a Russian infiltrator. George Smiley, an ousted spy, must figure out who the moleContinue reading “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Covenantal Plot and Theme”

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) tells the story of England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief political adviser. This is the first book in a trilogy. PLOT Henry VIII wants to marry Anne Boelyn. There’s just one problem. He’s already married. Thomas Cromwell works for CardinalContinue reading “Wolf Hall: The Covenantal Plot and Theme”

C.S. Lewis would disagree with what I have been doing on this site. My readings, he would argue, turn literature into philosophy and religion. I am using Shakespeare, not receiving him. For that reason, I will continue to mull over Lewis’s argument. I know that he and I disagree. I do not know precisely whatContinue reading “An Experiment in Criticism: Part 2”

This site takes its name from CS Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism. What is Lewis’s experiment? He focuses on readers rather than books. Here are the five important points he makes in the book’s first half. Literary readers receive the books they read, while the unliterary only use what they read. Literary readers restContinue reading “An Experiment in Criticism: Part 1”

Don DeLillo’s novel Libra (1988) offers a fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life and death. What follows is an account of the novel’s plot and theme. PLOT Lee Harvey Oswald is a directionless boy who seeks access to a secret world. Three men connected with American intelligence conspire to nearly assassinate the president soContinue reading “Libra: A Covenantal Outline”

Marxist literary criticism begins with the presupposition that the causes for art are material. Though Marxist criticism is not monolithic, they all deny spiritual realities. When they differ, it is in the different material causes they identify: strictly economic or diffusely political. From this materialist premise comes the following covenant. The content of literature neverContinue reading “The Covenant of Marxist Literary Criticism”

This is the 30th anniversary of Oliver Stone’s scabrous film, JFK. Stone played fast and loose with the facts to hold the military-industrial complex’s feet to the fire. The government had to kill JFK, Stone maintained, because JFK would have quashed Vietnam and other CIA shenanigans. Conspiracies highlight the storytelling at the heart of historyContinue reading “Fiction and History”

An important concept in psychoanalysis is “the unconscious,” the part of us that operates without our direct knowledge. Here is how Peter Barry describes it. The content of the unconscious is, by definition, unknowable, but everything we do is affected by it: we can guess at the nature of this content by observing its effects…Continue reading “Psychoanalysis and Providence”

In Beginning Theory, Peter Barry compares structuralism and post-structuralism in four categories. The two schools of literary criticism deny a transcendent God or truth. That’s a point of similarity. The four differences in Barry’s description correspond to the following four points of the covenant. HIERARCHY: Structuralism and Post-structuralism disagree about which discipline should give literaryContinue reading “Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: A Covenantal Comparison”

In his book Beginning Theory, Peter Barry reveals the creed of contemporary literary criticism. Politics is pervasive. Language is constitutive. Truth is provisional. Meaning is contingent. Human nature is a myth. Barry writes that this list is the “basic frame of mind which theory embodies.” Notice how the creed forms a covenant. Politics is godContinue reading “The Creed of Contemporary Literary Criticism”