Knights, Heroes, and Patriots: Howard Pyle and the Shaping of the American Moral Imagination
About your Instructor:
Dr. David P. Deavel (Ph.D., Fordham) is an associate professor and chairman of the department of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and a Contributing Editor for Gilbert, Deavel has served as a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and was the 2013 winner of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award. He is the co-editor of Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, and his articles have appeared in Chesterton Review, Chicago Studies, New Blackfriars, Nova et Vetera, and other journals and published books.
In addition to his academic work, his public and popular writing on religion, culture, and politics has appeared in many outlets, including Catholic World Report, Claremont Review of Books, Commonweal, First Things, The New Criterion, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife, Cathy, and their children.
Time: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Dates: Jun 20, 2026
Faculty: Dr. David P. Deavel
Location: Russell Kirk Center
General Admission: $100
Course Description:
A thousand words! That’s what the traditional proverb says a picture is worth. If the poets are, as Shelley says, the “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” perhaps those who shape the visual imagination in the modern age of mass publication are the unacknowledged superlegislators. They move the mind and heart by way of eyes that have plenty to see and wish to imitate.
If so, Howard Pyle (1853-1911) must be reckoned as one of America’s great forces. This prodigious formator of hearts created over 3,000 illustrations, wrote nineteen books and 200 stories, and created murals seen in museums and public buildings. In all of this work, Pyle was forming minds and hearts by illuminating stories with words and images from Robin Hood to knights errant to America’s Founding and later moments.
His artistic and philosophical vision was a melding of realism, optimism, and faith. He brought the past alive in glorious splendor by making manners, chivalry, courage, and patriotism come alive for new generations of young Americans at a crucial moment in American history. And, through a series of extraordinary students, the most important being N. C. Wyeth, he truly became, as some called him, “the father of American illustration.”
Dr. David Deavel will examine Pyle’s words and images in two sessions. The first will look at Pyle’s treatment of legendary characters in words and art of mythic characters in armor, in Sherwood green, and the garb of pirates that he, in some ways, created in the minds of modern audiences.
The second will look at his depiction of American history—particularly the Founding Era and the Civil War. What was Howard Pyle’s realistic, optimistic, chivalrous, and romantic vision of life, particularly American life? And what can we imitate in it to shape the moral imagination of Americans today?
Parking:
Please come to the Kirk home (729 W Main Street, Mecosta, MI). There is parking at the house and along the street. There is limited parking at the library and there will be someone at the main house to direct parking.
Learn More:
For more information and to register, visit the following page.