Spring cleaning

Interview | Author Elizabeth Kantor clears away academic propaganda and looks anew at the great books of English and American literature | Marvin Olasky

The standard image of college spring break weeks coming up this month is ugly: excessive drinking, "girls gone wild," etc. But what's even worse is what occurs in many sedate English department classrooms, where some professors gone wild either ignore great books of the past or see them as putty for propagandistic manipulation.

The losers in all this are students who might otherwise have come to love literature—but here comes Elizabeth Kantor to give them a second chance. Those turned off by malign neglect or propaganda should take a peek at her guidebook, The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature (Regnery, 2006). They should then start reading anew.

WORLD: You point out that John Milton is the great English poet whose faith came closest to what we call evangelical Christianity, and you explain that his writing is relevant to current debates such as those about bioethics. How so?