Camilo Peralta is a literature professor and insightful scholar of speculative fiction. His scholarship has included essays on Iron Man (for the book Isn’t It Ironic? Irony in Popular Culture), religion in Star Trek Voyager (for Exploring Star Trek: Voyager: Critical Essays), and Ray Bradbury’s love of philosophy (published in The New Bradbury Review).

He has also made some intriguing contributions to Inklings studies: articles on J.R.R. Tolkien’s use of dragons to Religions and the book Symbolism 21, and a Mythlore article on connections between Charles Williams and Russell Kirk. His first book, The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination, will be released soon from Vernon Press.

He was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Interview Questions

What motivated you to become a scholar and teacher?

I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. In a different life, I taught high school in the kind of idyllic, small town you used to see featured in horror movies from the 1980s. Unfortunately, I grew up in Chicago, where the education system is a train wreck. And so I spent a few years teaching overseas after finishing my BA. After returning to the US, I realized that, if I wanted to teach in this country, I would have to do so at the college level—which meant publishing, too. So I became a scholar out of necessity, more or less, but discovered that I enjoyed researching and writing longer papers, anyway.

What was your first experience with Tolkien’s work?

I was gifted a box set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in my early teens, probably by my parents. For several years, I read through it annually (including the appendices!). This was long before the advent of CGI, and I could not imagine these works ever being adapted to film. I had to imagine what the characters and settings looked like … perhaps it was better that way. Still, I went to see The Fellowship of the Ring opening weekend, and was blown away by how good it was. Still among my favorite film series of all-time.

Your two articles on Tolkien both dealt with an area that fewer scholars have discussed—not how texts like Beowulf inform his dragons, but medieval English sources and biblical sources inform his approach. How did you discover this gap in the scholarship?

I was taking a graduate course on Tolkien in which we read through The Silmarillion and a bunch of other works aside from LOTR. I needed a topic for the final paper, and realized I could do something interesting with potential influences on his dragons … there is a quite a bit about their origins in SIL, of course, and from what I could tell, it wasn’t one of the subjects that had been done to death already. So I wrote the paper, it was well-received, and I thought about sending it out for publication. That was when I discovered that LOTS of people had already written about Tolkien’s dragons … and that most of them were far more knowledgeable about the traditions that had inspired him than I could ever hope to be. I had to rework the paper considerably to contribute something “new” to the discussion.

What are some other aspects of Tolkien’s work that interest you?

I am interested in how his religious belief plays out (or doesn’t) in his fiction. Unlike many, I am not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this issue, and assume that, because he happened to assert in a famous and oft-quoted letter that his work was “fundamentally religious and Catholic,” then it must be true. I think we would look at LOTR very differently if we didn’t have those primary sources.

You’ve also written about Lewis, specifically about his influence as an apologist. Did you discover his nonfiction or fiction first?

For some reason I never got around to reading Lewis growing up. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I read through the entire Narnia series for the first time. I have since re-read it several times, and believe it to be just as good as LOTR—quite better, in fact, in several ways. The Space Trilogy is also brilliant, and then there are the dozens of scholarly and apologetic works he wrote that, in my estimation, make Lewis the most accomplished Inkling.

One thing you touched on in your 2018 article on apologetics was that apologetics isn’t dead, but it is unlikely we’ll see another apologist like Lewis or Chesterton who has their level of respect even from skeptics. Do you think the fact they were also both great storytellers is significant to that?

I think education level, personal prestige, and the prevalence of Christianity in Western society were more important factors, frankly. Part of the challenge is that, whereas Chesterton and Lewis were defending Christianity to people who still believed in it and were eager for rational means by which to justify their belief, apologists today face an audience that is mostly indifferent to religion, if not outright hostile to it. It doesn’t matter how eloquent you are if no one is willing to hear you speak!

You’ve been fairly productive—so far, you’ve published about one scholarly article per year since 2017. What helps you stay active and prolific?

It’s true that, before my daughter was born (in March of 2023), I had a lot more free time to devote to writing. But some of my publications, like my first article on Tolkien, were based on papers I wrote for school. I find it easier to try to write a little each day, rather than get it all out at once. My dissertation was basically written a paragraph at a time. It helps to be enthusiastic about the subject, too, of course.

Your article on Charles Williams and Russell Kirk was especially interesting since I don’t think many people see them as kindred spirits—different political interests, different periods. How did you make the connection?

Many scholars who have written about Kirk’s stories remark upon their resemblance to Williams’s “spiritual thrillers.” While working on my dissertation, I figured I’d better investigate the possible influence of Williams for myself. And I soon realized that there were, indeed, quite a few resemblances between the two authors, though I had already written the bulk of the manuscript, and could not figure out how to fit that discussion into it. This led to that article for Mythlore, in which I traced some of the similarities between Kirk’s last novel, Lord of the Hollow Dark, and Williams’s War in Heaven.

Do you see Inklings-esque ideas in other things that Kirk wrote?

Kirk was certainly a mythopoeic author, but on a less grand scale than the main Inklings. He tends to be more didactic, which I think limits his appeal to non-conservative or Christian readers. But he shared their love of nature and traditional lifestyles, as well as their skepticism towards homogenous, industrialized modernity. Like Williams, in particular, he was interested in how religious belief could be reconciled to our everyday experiences in the world. It is one thing to explore this question allegorically (like Lewis) or mythopoetically (Tolkien), and quite another to wonder (with Williams) what would happen if the Platonic Forms descended to twentieth-century London? Or what immortality in Heaven looks like to one who has not yet attained it?

I get the impression Kirk is better known for his nonfiction than his stories. How did you become interested in Kirk’s fiction?

In truth, I hadn’t heard about Kirk at all until a few years ago. I took a graduate course that focused on his social and political thought. We read The Essential Russell Kirk. I still don’t know why I signed up for the course, but I’m glad that I did, obviously. I realized right away that Kirk’s views aligned closely with my own on a lot of issues. I also liked the way he expressed those views: in a calm, witty, rational, but always warm and humane, manner.

Anyway, I discovered that he wrote some fiction on the side, much of which seemed to have been forgotten in the present. One of his biographers, Bradley J. Birzer, spoke to my class and mentioned how Kirk’s fiction had received practically no attention from scholars. I decided to get my hands on some of his stories and novels and see if there was anything in them I could work with for my term paper in the class. The rest, as they say, is history!

Any future projects?

Forthcoming publications include articles I co-wrote with former students on the Midwestern playwright William Inge. I’m working on an article about Shakespeare’s portrayal of evil, which is due out at the end of the year, maybe.

And, of course, I recently announced the release of my first book, a scholarly monography based on my dissertation. It is called The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination, and should be published in May 2024.

Readers who want to preorder Peralta’s book can find it on Vernon Press’s website. Links to his other scholarship can be found on Academia.edu.