“Thoughts That Wound From Behind”: Great Books & the Power of Allusion

By |2023-07-05T00:03:56-05:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Alfred Tennyson, Dante, Great Books, Literature, Morality, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

One value of reading truly great works of literature, works that have stood the test of time for decades or even centuries, is the opportunity such reading affords for exploring the tradition that has since built up around them. Any such truly great work—the Iliad, the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Hamlet—will have accrued innumerable allusions [...]