Reclaiming the Wonder of the Humanities
In this episode of Literary Tales, we explore and analyze the great medieval French poem “The Song of Roland.” In it we tease out the themes of tribal fealty, love, theology, and sacrifice, which culminate in the poet’s synthesis of Frankish tribal fealty and sacrifice with the theology of love and martyrdom in Christianity.
In this episode of Literary Tales, we provide a full summary lecture of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Covering the nature of poetry, love, and theology, we cover Dante’s relationship with Virgil, Statius, and Beatrice and how these relationships guide Dante to Heaven.
In this episode of Literary Tales, we journey through the Inferno together to understand its construction and meanings from the pen of the great Renaissance poet Dante. Over the course of the lecture, we explore and examine every “circle” of Hell and why, in particular, Dante must journey through hell before ascending to Heaven through Purgatory.
In this episode of the Philosophy Hour of Literary Tales we turn to Augustine’s elaboration on original sin and the fall of man in the City of God. Here we examine how the lust to control what is right and wrong for our own happiness is at the root of sin and how the “Fall of Man” is the disordering […]
In this episode of Literary Tales, we conclude the tripartite journey into Heaven in Dante’s Divine Comedy by examining how Beatrice is Dante’s “in persona Christi” in Paradiso. At long last, having learned forgiveness in Hell, the goodness of friendship and poetry in Purgatory, Dante is ready to take his seat in the eternal choir of Heaven.
In this episode of Literary Tales we continue our examination of Augustine’s City of God and explore his juxtaposition of the two cities: The City of Man and the City of God and delve into how the privation of love leads to lust (the city of man) and how love of God and neighbors is the only true reality deserving […]
In this episode of the Philosophy Hour of Literary Tales we explore the magnum opus of Saint Augustine: The City of God. The first half of the City of God is, for a lack of a better word, the first work of systematic cultural critique in the Western World. In it, Augustine deconstructs the “hypnotizing myth of Rome” to “expose […]
In this episode of Literary Tales, we read one of the great classics of the Western world from the man whom Robin Lane Fox called one of the smartest and most insightful men who ever lived: St. Augustine’s Confessions. In exploring the Confessions we concentrate on the so-called mystical visions of Augustine and how they are intimately tied to Augustine’s […]