Fairy Tales and Holy Week

By |2024-03-28T09:04:08-05:00March 28th, 2024|Categories: Christianity, Daniel McInerny, Dante, Easter, J.R.R. Tolkien, Timeless Essays|

During this Holy Week, perhaps we can pray that the uncanny pull so many feel toward the ever-after will lead to a deeper reflection on the paradises, earthly and heavenly, from which the fairy stories we enjoy get their point and purpose. One of my favorites passages in Dante’s Purgatorio is when Dante finally reaches [...]

The Inferno: A Novel

By |2024-02-11T19:14:25-06:00February 11th, 2024|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Dante|

In taking his autobiographical protagonist through hell, Winston Brady does many things that would, I believe, have pleased Dante Alighieri. Like Dante’s "Inferno," Brady’s "Inferno" tests the will and courage of its hero, forcing him to wrestle with his American identity and legacy, to understand the grave nature of sin, and to seek repentance from [...]

Dante’s Transformed Love: Musings on the Poet’s Love for Beatrice

By |2024-02-10T20:18:07-06:00February 10th, 2024|Categories: Art, Books, Christianity, Dante, Love, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

If the "Vita Nuova" had been the only major work Dante had made, this work alone would have earned him the reputation as a great poet of Western Civilization. It is well-known that Dante is one of the greatest poets in Western Civilization. His magnum opus, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the crowning [...]

“God’s Own Descent”: Dante, the Incarnation, & Frost’s “The Trial by Existence”

By |2024-02-06T19:56:27-06:00February 6th, 2024|Categories: Dante, Literature, Poetry, Robert Frost|

“The Trial by Existence” is an example of Robert Frost’s strong and brilliant reworking of Dante’s poetic tradition in his own work. He incorporates many of Dante’s images, but he also pushes past the ending silence of "Paradiso" by making the incarnate Christ the sight at the top of the mountain. But God's own descent [...]

Russell Kirk’s “Saviourgate”: Timeless Moments & the Paradisical Journey

By |2024-01-04T13:45:35-06:00January 4th, 2024|Categories: Dante, Ghost Stories, Literature, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

Set in Yorkshire, England on Christmas Eve, Russell Kirk’s short story “Saviourgate” is a story about the soul’s journey through the afterlife. Whereas many ghost stories explore only the diabolical imagination, “Saviourgate” opens up creative possibilities for thinking about life’s timeless moments and how they may be glimpses of paradise. Ghost stories were standard Christmas [...]

Dante and the Beatific Vision

By |2023-12-21T10:37:44-06:00December 20th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Dante, Literature, Transhumanism|

In light of the beatific vision, "The Divine Comedy" should be read as an avenue for personal formation because it is a deeply interactive work. As Dante learns to reorder his affections, readers are challenged to reorder theirs along with him. Readers are meant to learn by doing, by going on the journey with Dante. [...]

The Last Witness: Dante

By |2023-11-18T19:13:46-06:00November 18th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Dante, History|

As medieval Christendom plunged into the abyss, a cry went up, stronger, perhaps, and more moving than any that had yet been heard. This voice gave utterance in immortal language to the sublimity of the Christian ideal and to the age-long Christian message. He whose cry was to echo down the centuries and bear witness, [...]

Poetry & Politics?

By |2023-10-25T05:58:29-05:00October 24th, 2023|Categories: Dante, Featured, Glenn Arbery, Humanities, Liberal Arts, Poetry, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare, Wyoming Catholic College|

Great poetry can come from deep engagement with the problems of politics, but it is especially moving to see how exile—often the consequence of that engagement—subtly becomes the symbol of the condition of fallen man. Students at Wyoming Catholic College memorize many poems in the four years of the humanities curriculum, but few of the [...]

Dante on Virtuous Pagans

By |2023-10-04T17:33:44-05:00October 4th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Dante, Great Books, Letters From Dante Series, Louis Markos, Reason, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virgil, Virtue|

It was there, in the first circle of Hell, that I first understood what it meant to be a virtuous pagan. It meant to be led by the dim but true light of reason, to seek continually after the higher things, to pursue with courage and devotion a life of virtue. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if [...]

“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 [...]

Identity and Its Discontents

By |2023-04-28T12:50:06-05:00April 28th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Dante, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, William Shakespeare, Wyoming Catholic College|

Who, in this climate, when identity politics rule the publishing world, would have dared to publish Dante or Shakespeare, both of whom imagined characters who were different from themselves? The realm of Paradise in Dante’s great Commedia is an acquired taste, as my sophomores in Humanities might tell you. Most readers of Dante enjoy the [...]

Guided by Pleasure

By |2023-04-21T13:54:39-05:00April 21st, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Dante, Glenn Arbery, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

As another school year draws toward its close, it is a good occasion to consider what the whole of an education or “leading out” really entails. Who better than Dante to remind us? In Canto 27 of Purgatorio, Dante gives us one of the most liberating passages in literature. After his long journey down through [...]

Dante’s Holy Women

By |2022-11-18T17:15:17-06:00November 18th, 2022|Categories: Dante, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Whereas Shakespeare’s virtuously iconic heroines are saints in the making, fighting the good fight for the Church Militant in the hope of heaven, Dante’s holy women have already won the fight and are in the eternal Presence of God in the Church Triumphant. They are not saints in the making but saints who have been [...]

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