 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praised their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Authority. I'm Joseph Pierce. Thanks as always for joining me. And this week, we are looking at one of the most famous authors in any language of any time. And that's Charles Dickens. Certainly within the English speaking world, I think it's probably fairly safe to say that he's the most popular author after William Shakespeare. So we're dealing with not just a literary giant in this episode, but a literary colossus, shall we say. I know that a few years back, and of course, these things may change, but a few years back, it was generally agreed that the biggest selling, highest selling works of literature of all time, was probably Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, the classic Spanish literature, of course, and then A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. And what's interesting about that, of course, is that Dickens has written more than one novel, the fact that even one of them could be up there that high. So that's the best selling, but probably the most influential, not even that, even though that's the best selling, the most influential is probably A Christmas Carol, the story of Scrooge and his conversion, which we'll be talking about in this episode somewhat. And then there's something between what's the best selling and the best, is it necessarily the same thing? So for instance, in the 1990s, there's an organization in England called the Bibliophile Society. And as the title of the name of the group would suggest, it's a society of bibliophiles, in other words, a society of those who love books, a book loving society. So these are bookworms. So they were asked what was the greatest work of literature of all time. And first was I'm pleased to say the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Second was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I'm also very happy for that. But third, they actually voted David Copperfield. So again, a third novel, best selling, best, most influential, they get different names coming up. And we haven't mentioned Oliver Twist and numerous others that we could mention that all have really impacted the culture. So there's something really phenomenal and phenomenally successful about Charles Dickens. Well, what is the secret of his success? I would claim that the key thing about it is the dignity of the human person that Charles Dickens clearly loves people, not humanity, and not some abstract concept. He's not a philanthropist, a lover of humanity. He is a lover of men, a lover of people. And this the dignity and he sees the dignity of the human person, which is really to see that the Imago dei, the image of God, the person of Christ in every human face and every human person that we interact with. I think we see that in Charles Dickens, this great love and reverence and deference for the dignity of the human person. And specifically, he has a great love of the poor. Obviously something very fundamentally Christian about that. When you just read the gospel, the love of the poor and a really deep love of children. And again, something very Christ like about that, unless you become like your children cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So in some sense, although Dickens was something of a, what's the word I'm looking for here, a quirky Christian, certainly was a Christian, but on his own terms. So he doesn't fit into any denomination very neatly. But there's no doubt that he had a love of Christ and a love of neighbor. And these are the two great commandments, of course, rooted, as I've said, in the dignity of a person and a special love for the poor and for children. Throughout the authority, we have quoted the great GK Chesterton, who seems to have so much to say in just about everything. And he certainly has a great deal to say on Charles Dickens. He wrote a book called Charles Dickens, a sort of biography, certainly an appraisal and an appreciation of of Charles Dickens. And he also introduced, wrote an introduction, I think, for all of Dickens's work, which we'll also assemble together in in a book. So if you want to know what Chesterton thinks about Dickens, there are two whole books you can read on the topic, but I'm going to select just one passage here. Chesterton emphasized that Dickens, Dickens wanted what the people wanted, because he was at one with the common mind. And let's read what Chesterton says here. This is all a quote from Chesterton. But with this mere phrase, the common mind, we collide with a current error. Commonness and the common mind are now generally spoken of as meaning in some manner, inferiority and the inferior mind. The mind of the mere mob. But the common mind means the mind of all the artists and heroes or else it would not be common. Plato had the common mind. Dante had the common mind or that mind was not common. Commonness means the quality common to the saint and the sinner, to the philosopher and the fool. And it was this that Dickens grasped and developed. In everybody, there was a certain thing that loves babies that fears death that likes sunlight. That thing enjoys Dickens. And when I say that everybody understands Dickens, I do not mean that he is suited to the untaught intelligence. I mean that he is so plain that even scholars can understand him. Nice barbed piece of humor at the end there. Even the critics can understand Dickens. So we have my appraisal in a nutshell so to speak of the secrets of Dickens success and we have probably somewhat more gravitas Chesterton's own view on it. Let's now look at a couple of his novels. We don't have a lot of time. But great expectations. And you know, in order to make sure before I talk about it in my own garbled, faltering way, I thought I would just the opening paragraph of I edit a series of critical editions of great works of literature called Ignatius critical editions with 27 titles in that series and counting, including some Dickens novels a tale of two cities and great expectations. Are there others can't think at the moment. But in many of those editions, we also have a study guide. And in the study guide, we have a section called bare bones skeleton plot. And I looked at this very succinct paragraph. And I thought, well, I can't possibly encapsulate the skeleton plot, the bare bones of great expectations better than this. So I'm going to just read this brief paragraph and then I'll elaborate about the novel beyond that. Great expectations is a tale of one boy's journey from innocence to experience from overzealous ambition to overwhelming repentance from obsession with the external and temporal to devotion to the internal and eternal to be loosed from the Victorian aspiration to become a gentleman and the accompanying bondage of his earthly chains. Pip must become to value goodness and truth over status and show. As pips buildings Roman unfolds, we witness his guilt, remorse, confession, reparation and absolution. Great expectations is indeed a tale of a soul's Christian formation. Wish I knew who'd written that. I've got a few ideas. But anyway, it's a perfect encapsulation before we before we go further into it. So the key thing about this is the story of Pip begins when he's a boy ends when he's a man and the various mistakes he makes and looking at the reasons he makes them. But at the beginning of the novel, he's living with his brother in law, Joe Gargery or Gargery, the blacksmith who's married to Mrs. Joe, where she's called who's Pip's older sister. Whereas Mrs. Joe is has no real love lost for her younger brother, Joe Gargery really accepts Pip as a younger brother or even as a sort of son, he's obviously somewhat older. And he's simple. He's uneducated, but he's kind. He has a genuine love, not MIDI for Pip, but for his neighbor. In other words, he's a good man, a man of virtue, a man of principle, a man of integrity, a man of honesty, but he's simple and poor, uneducated, unwealthy. There's another character who plays a role in the novel, we should probably should overlook and that's biddy. And she's a simple girl who teaches Pip to read. So she's not as simple as Pip is at the beginning. But nonetheless, she again is someone who is poor, simple, unrefined, uneducated beyond the ability to read, and not a high flyer in society, not ambitious. So these are good positive role models at the beginning of Pip's life that he rejects and his love for them, his affection for them is poisoned. And it's poisoned by his association with the two people who live at Sartis House. And I can't help but thinking that that's a great sense of Dickensian humor here, Sartis, the Latin word S-A-T-I-S. It means enough where we get satisfaction. And the thing about Sartis House is that the occupants there, Miss Havisham and her niece Estella, have enough materially. They can be satisfied as regards material prosperity. They are comfortable in this sense, but they are morally destitute. Whereas of course, Joe and Biddy are the opposite, right? They do not have enough materially, they are struggling financially. And yet they are not morally destitute, they're morally rich. And so it's this what what sort of wealth and what sort of health, what sort of wealth is healthy, should we say, is what is what Pip has to discover largely through making mistakes. So he falls in love, if that's the right word, becomes infatuated with Estella. I mean, she's pretty, similar age, but she's a snob. And she looks down her supercilious nose at Pip because of his poor background. And she sees herself as being superior to him because of her wealth. And Pip falls for this. In other words, that he thinks somehow he'll be a better person if he's a wealthier person. And therefore he becomes poisoned to the simple loves and simple pleasures of the poor, and starts to seek worldly rewards, worldly wealth through worldly ambition. And this is the path he begins to take. So he he becomes corrupt. And again, without other subplots, important subplots, Magwitch for instance, these are lots of good things going on in this novel, which we can't possibly encapsulate in the very amount of time we have. But as with most Dickens novels, there's a wonderful point of what Tolkien called you catastrophe. So this is the word that Tolkien invented. So the opposite to catastrophe, the sudden disastrous downturn, bad turn in the story, a catastrophe, something that's catastrophic. Tolkien invented the word you catastrophe, which is the sudden joyous turn in the story. And Dickens is a master at the sudden joyous turn at the you catastrophic turn, leading to the happy ending. In that sense, you know, that Dickens has a lot in common with fairy stories and in the best sense of the word. So it ends with Pip's conversion to, to the viewpoint of of the simple and the holy, such as the blacksmith Joe, and his reconciliation with Joe at the end, he comes to his senses. All right, now let's look at the tale of two cities. And I don't think that I can probably do better than than the few things I've written about it to encapsulate it. So that's what I'm going to do here. Again, the most popular in terms of sales, published in 1858, and set in the two cities of London and Paris, hence the title, the novel covers the years from 1757 to 1794, against the backdrop of the revolutionary fervor in France. Dickens's principle historical source was the French Revolutionary History by Thomas Carlisle, the revised edition of which was published in 1857 around the time that Dickens is writing the novel. Much of the action is centred on some of the most horrific moments of the French Revolution, such as the storming of the Bastille in July 1789, the September massacres of 1792, and the reign of terror in 1793 and 1794. At the broken heart of the novel is the pathetic presence of Sydney Carton, drunk and dejected, moody and melancholy, who falls hopelessly in love with Lucy Manette. His love is literally hopeless and doomed to be unrequited because Lucy loves and marries the mysterious Frenchman Charles Darnay. The two men bear a remarkable physical likeness to each other, so that Carton is almost his rival's doppelganger. Carton confesses his love for Lucy, simultaneously confessing his own disilluselessness and unworthiness. He promises to love her, leave her in peace, thanking her for the joy she has given him, and then makes a prophetic promise which introduces the Christian theme of self-sacrificial love as the antidote to the world's arrogance, hatred and spirit of vengeance. He says, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. So, and that's of course how the novel plays itself out, the difference between the self-sacrificial love and the arrogance and ignorance of self-empowerment, the selfishness at the heart and the pride at the heart of the French Revolution, secular fundamentalism, which leads to the guillotine in that case and later to the goulag and to the gas chamber. The novel of course has one of the most memorable lines in all of literature. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but it also has at the end one of the most famous and most beautiful quotes from literature in the in the words that Sydney Carton uses as he faces the guillotine. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It's far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known. I ironically, but also divinely symmetrically, the book ends as it had begun with the imagery of resurrection from the dead. The first part of the book is entitled record to life, an allusion to the fact that Lucy's father, who was thought to be dead, had been discovered to be alive. At the novel's conclusion, the dissolution, the dissilent carton, the miserable good for nothing is also recalled to life. This time, however, does not merely a resurrection from death to life like Lazarus, but a resurrection from death to everlasting life like Christ. Seldom has a novel had a happier ending. And we'll move now to the discussion of the third of the of the three works of Dickens that we can look at in this episode of The Authority. So we've had great expectations. We've had a tale of two cities. We're now going to go to the one which is probably the most influential and that's a Christmas cowl. And this really does have something of the mark of of a fairy story about it. It's a novella as opposed to a novel. It's short. It's certainly very sweet. And for me, one of my favorite works of literature of all time, I love it for its simplicity and the profundity within its simplicity. So it's my favorite of all the Dickens's work. I'm not saying it's the greatest. I mean, it's slim. It's brilliant. Obviously, obviously, it's not as complex, convoluted, multi layered and structured as some Dickens's other works. I think at root, one thing we love about it, it is a type of one of the best known of Christ's parables, the story of the prodigal son. It's a conversion story. It's that we learned throughout the story of Scrooge's wandering away from the goodness of his youth. There was absolutely suffering in amidst that. But there was also love. The love of his sister, the love of his fiance, the love of his employers, some of his employers. But he turns his back on that in pursuit of gold, golden greed, avarice. And then, of course, it's the story of his return to Christ, his return to the father. So that's we see Scrooge as a type of prodigal son. And that certainly part of its timelessness is the fact that it taps into these timeless lessons that are so powerful. And let's just say something very, very, very, I think that we need to bear in mind here, if you want to understand why a Christmas coward is so powerful and why the parables of Christ are so powerful. And it also shows us why literature, great literature is so powerful. Because I hope I'm not being too controversial when I state that the prodigal son is a work of fiction, that the prodigal son has a real life historical character never lived, nor did his father, nor did his brother, nor did the servants, nor did the pigs. It's a figment of our Lord's imagination. It's a work of fiction. It's a work of literature, when it's written down. And yet, it's so true that whenever any of us, from the time that that story was first told in the Gospel by Christ himself, to every time we've heard or read it every generation since then, we see the prodigal son and we see ourselves. And we don't say the prodigal son is like us. We say we are like the prodigal son. In other words, that that somehow this fictional character is more real than we are because he's the type of which we are the archetypes. Sorry, the he's the archetype of which we are types. So he's the original and we are copies. So what what Christ does first of all in choosing to teach some of his most powerful lessons through the art of storytelling, he's sanctifying and endorsing through that sanctification of the of the art of telling stories. He's also showing how stories are the most powerful way of conveying truth. Of course, the true story, the story of his own life, death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, that is itself a story, it's a story that happens as a fact in history, but other stories that can reflect that story. All right, so back to to Christmas Carol, I want to go to the beginning of it. The story begins with the cold hard fact that the Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley, is as dead as a doornail. Quote, this is a quote from the story, there's no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I'm going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable when he's taking a stroll at night in the easterly wind upon his own ramparts, then there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out off the dark in a breezy spot, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. I think the connection here, the Dickens draws with Hamlet, Hamlet, the supernatural dimension Hamlet is significant. Shakespeare in Hamlet and in Macbeth, and Macbeth is really an anti-Hamlet, it's what Macbeth goes in the opposite direction to Hamlet, Hamlet starts in a place of despondency and desolation and ends up embracing the gospel and laying down his life for his friends and his country in an act of self-sacrificial love. Macbeth begins being lauded as a hero, and then through succumbing to worldly ambition, becomes a mass murderer and philosophical nihilist and suicidal. But what they have in common is the supernatural engagement in the story, which is crucial, which tells us that the story itself is about supernatural realities, not merely natural realities. Hamlet's father has been murdered. Nobody would know that Hamlet's father had been murdered, unless Hamlet's father had told Hamlet, his son, that this was the case. Hamlet's not going to believe that, because he fully, he knows that the, that the ghost could be a liar, a demon who's not really his father at all. So he tests it, test it empirically, and proves that the ghost was telling the truth. So what Dickens does is exactly the same thing. He sets up at the beginning a supernatural reality at the outset and at the heart of the story, that the story cannot be understood except supernaturally. And Mali, I would, I would suggest, is not a soul from hell, but a soul from purgatory. Now, why do I say that? He's clearly suffering. He's clearly suffering for his sins. But he's a penitential spirit. He's sorry for his sins. He's repentant. He wishes that he had done otherwise. He says that mankind was my business. So the love of neighbor was his business. The, the doomed in hell have no sense of, of repentance, of seeking the good of another. Aristotle says that the definition of love is seeking the good of another. Mali appears because he's seeking the good of Scrooge. He wants to save his business partner from the same fate that he is suffering. That's an act of love. The souls in hell do not act in love. So I would argue that Mali like the ghost of Hamlet's father and the fact that when he's introduced, Dickens introduces Hamlet's father who states explicitly he's in purgatory would suggest that Dickens had this in mind, but I can't prove that. But certainly theologically, that would seem to be inescapable. But if, if Mali's a deceased, a deceased mortal suffering purgatorily for his sins, the, the, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come are angels. They're not mortals. They're not mortal men who have died, but they are supernatural beings who are sent as messengers and Angelos, Angelos, Angelos, Angel from the Greek means messenger. So the three ghosts are three angels and they're not angels in a general sense. We could, we could even say that they are guardian angels because they're not showing for the most part at least. They're not showing Scrooge the, the ghosts of Christmas part. So they're not, they're not, they're not showing the ghost of Christmas past doesn't show Scrooge Christmas past. He shows Scrooge the ghost, he shows Scrooge, Scrooge is Christmas's past, right? It's the ghost of Scrooge's is Christmas. And again, ghost of Christmas present. The, the, for the most part, although he does show them other people, these are people that Scrooge knows and of course the ghost of Christmas yet to come shows Scrooge ultimately his own destiny if he doesn't repent. So I'm going to conclude with a conclusion about a Christmas carol and again I'm going to just read what I've written about it, this paragraph to conclude our discussion of Charles Dickens. The final aspect of a Christmas carol which warrants mention, especially in light of its poignant pertinence to our own meretricious times, is its celebration of life in general and the lives of large families in particular. The burgeoning family of Bob Cratchit in spite of its poverty, or dare we say because of it, is the very hearth and home from which the warmth of life and love glows through the pages of Dickens' story. At the very heart of that hearth and home is the blessed life of the disabled child Tiny Tim, which shines forth in Tiny Tim's love for others and in the love that his family has for him. His very presence is the light of Caritas that serves catalytically to bring Scrooge to his senses. After his conversion, Scrooge no longer sees the poor and disabled as being surplus to the needs of the population who should be allowed to die, as in our own day they are routinely killed or cold in the womb, but as a blessing to be cherished and praised. For this love of life, even of the life of the disabled, especially of the life of the disabled, is at the heart of everyone who knows the true spirit of Christmas as exemplified in the helplessness of the babe of Bethlehem. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone. And God bless you. Thanks for joining me in this episode of The Authority. Please do join me next time and until next time, goodbye. God bless and good reading. This has been an episode of The Authority with Joseph Pierce, brought to you by Tan. For updates on new episodes and to support The Authority and other great free content, visit the authoritypodcast.com to subscribe and use coupon code authority25 to get 25% off your next order, including books, audiobooks, and video courses by Joseph Pierce, on literary giants such as Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis, Shakespeare, and Bellach, as well as Tan's extensive catalog of content from The Saints and Great Spiritual Masters to strengthen your faith and interior life. 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