Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia The Heavenly Thesis Defense Dante’s ascent through Heaven’s catechism culminates, as do so many of our educational experiences, with an oral examination. There’s never any sense that Dante’s[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Unexpected Company There’s a certain mindset among progressive-minded folks that one or two significant points of difference, especially on moral questions, means that a text or a writer[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Analogy and Allegory More than in the first two Canticles, Dante spends a great share of his lines in Paradiso telling us, the readers, that he has no[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia When Knowledge Passes Away Virgil’s long explanation of the genesis of souls and bodies poses a particular sort of intellectual challenge: this version of how human bodies develop[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia The Speech of the Saved I’ve taught Dante’s Purgatorio to three cohorts of upper-division literature students, and each time, the students do alright among the prideful. Carrying a[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Worthy of the Kingdom Dante couldn’t care less about my evangelical sensibility and sensitivities, and I love him for that. Even beyond the fact that a third of[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia Hypocrites and Church-Thieves Living seven hundred years after Dante’s poetic career makes the final stretch of Inferno a particular philosophical challenge, largely because our temptation is to view[…]
Series Index John Ciardi’s Translation of the Commedia The Democratization of American Sins One popular topic for invention among youth-group kids in the mid-nineties (and I was one for a spell) was the democracy of sinners. […]
Series Index It’s been a few years since I wrote reflections on my summer reading on Dante, and back then I used to do three posts each summer, one on Inferno, one on Purgatorio, and[…]
This week’s theme music is “Judas Skin” from the Vigilantes of Love record Slow Dark Train. General Introduction – What’s on the blog? – An historical moment for the Christian Humanist Podcast – Detective fiction[…]
