Dorothy L. Sayers

Review: The Way of Dante

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "The Way of Dante" by Richard Hughes Gibson

The Way of Dante

The Way of Dante (Hansen Lectureship Series), Richard Hughes Gibson, afterword by Nicole Mazzarella. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514013380) 2025.

Summary: Lectures exploring how C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams read Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

This book is not a work of literary criticism of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. At least not directly. Rather, it is a study of how three literary friends interacted over their mutual love for Dante. In this book, Richard Hughes Gibson retraces the conversations, correspondence, and scholarship of C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams about Dante. And that fits the purpose of the Hansen Lectureship Series of the Marion E. Wade Center, at which these lectures were first given. The Center houses a collection of the papers of these three authors as well as those of J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, and Owen Barfield. Each year, the Hansen Lectureship features scholars highlighting some aspect of the thought and work of these writers.

Hughes introduces this study by describing what he found in his study of the papers. What he found was “a cohort of Dante readers whose invocation of Dante–public and private, conspicuous and covert–comprise a network of allusions, quotations, and citations” (p. xxiv, italics in the original). Each picked up on different things–Sayers his narrative and humor, Lewis, his cosmology and the language he used to describe it, and Williams, the portrayal of romantic love and Dante’s use of allegory.

Hughes then gives a prehistory of each author’s encounter with Dante. This is followed by a brief summary of the genesis of how the three came together around their shared love of Dante. It can be summarized in the six subtitles of the chapter:

  1. Williams reads Lewis (or the Allegory of Love affair)
  2. Lewis reads Williams and recommends his book (The Figure of Beatrice)
  3. Sayers reads Williams (and then Dante)
  4. Williams reads Sayers (reading and rendering Dante)
  5. Lewis reads Sayers’ Dante criticism and translation
  6. Sayers reads Lewis (and writes him and Williams into her translation)

Besides the fact that these people did a lot of reading, it was particularly illuminating to learn of the role Williams played in encouraging Sayers to read Dante, and then his (and Lewis’s) warm response to her critical essays and translation of Inferno. He even agreed to write an Introduction to her work. However, Williams died in 1944, unable to fulfill that commitment. Hughes then follows their interactions through the three parts of The Divine Comedy.

Firstly, with Hell, we see the perception of all three that this is more than political commentary. Rather, it is a serious reflection on evil in all its forms. Secondly, Hughes focuses on how all three saw in Purgatory an ascent of increasing love. Finally, in Paradiso, we see the three wrestle with the nature of glory in the encounter with Beatrice. Hughes spends two chapters on this in “The Problem of Glory” and “The Patterns of Glory.” In between the chapters on Hell and Purgatory, Hughes inserts a lengthy chapter on allegory. In this case, the three understood allegory and symbol in different ways and Hughes teases out the nuances of difference between them.

The work left me regretting that I never got beyond Inferno in my reading of Dante. It also underscored what a rich experience might be found in reading (and re-reading) Dante with “a cohort of readers.” However, even if we are unable to do so, we are able to listen in on the discussions of these three Dante readers. Hughes work of mining their papers reveals another facet of our indebtedness to these three beyond the considerable gift of their published works. They also shined a spotlight on one of the greatest works of literature and its abiding significance.

_____________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Wages of Cinema

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "The Wages of Cinema" by Crystal L. Downing

The Wages of Cinema (Studies in Theology and the Arts), Crystal L. Downing. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514008805) 2025.

Summary: A Christian aesthetic of film in conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers’ ideas on creativity and artistic integrity.

Crystal L. Downing considers Dorothy L. Sayers an ideal dialogue partner to discuss a Christian aesthetic of film. Sayers wrote of creativity and artistic integrity in her Mind of the Maker. She wrote for the stage and even made forays into screenwriting. She wrote film criticism and criticized Christian docetism that failed to take the material of film seriously. Sayers felt strongly the necessity of artistic integrity–that what was portrayed and how it was portrayed must go together. She had no place for inferior artistic work for the sake of a Christian “message,” a major theme of this work.

Downing integrates all of this into a survey of film history and explorations of film aesthetics. She begins with theatre both going back to the Greeks and the ties of theatre figures with the birth and growth of cinema. Downing offers a fascinating discussion contrasting the stigmata of theatre with the stigma of film. World War 2 and war films come in for consideration, with Downing juxtaposing a discussion of The Bridge over the River Kwai with The Railway Man. She connects this with Sayers views of the insanity of wars and efforts in “bridge-building.”

Through an exploration of the transition from silent film to sound work, Downing considers Sayers’ ideas about compromising integrity for money and doing something “for the love of the work.” Then she incorporates Sayers works for the stage into the discussion. Following this, Downing brings Sayers’ Mind of the Maker into dialogue with film makers. But skilled makers can also produce evil works, as in D. W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation, where cinematic excellence is coupled with a racist message. Then Downing moves on to perhaps the most challenging chapter, a deep dive into film theory. In dialogue with philosopher C.S. Pierce, she recurs to this statement by Sayers: “Art that is the true image of experience is true art, even though the experience is ugly or immoral (as the image of God is still the image of God, even in a wicked man).”

However, the most striking chapter is a discussion of feminism in film, exploring how the male gaze at women both shapes and overlooks the expression of women’s creative gifts. Not only do we consider the capable Harriet Vane in front of cameras during her trial but also the trials and travails of Barbie. Finally, in a coda, Downing recaps how Dorothy L. Sayers life intersects with the emergence of cinema, including what, for Sayers, was the magical year of 1908.

I am more of a Dorothy L. Sayers buff than a cinema buff, so I found myself struggling with the cinema parts of the book. However, I don’t think a cinema buff would face the same disadvantage in the discussion of Sayers. Anyone interested in the aesthetics of film making would find this fascinating and illuminating. In addition, Downing’s access to the Sayers archives at the Wade Center adds substance beyond Sayers’ published works. Finally, Downing’s work represents a step forward in Christian engagement with film, moving beyond spiritual content to the art, great or inferior, of making films.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Hangman’s Holiday

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image "Hangman's Holiday" by Dorothy L. Sayers

Hangman’s Holiday (Lord Peter Wimsey, 9), Dorothy L. Sayers. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781453262535) 2012 (first published in 1933).

Summary: Mysteries in short story form featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and wine merchant Montague Egg plus two other tales.

Sometimes there is something uniquely satisfying about reading a mystery in one sitting. If this is you, Hangman’s Holiday is just the thing. In this collection, Dorothy L. Sayers includes four stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, another six with the peripatetic wine merchant, Montague Egg, and two other stories.

The Lord Peter stories open the collection with a man troubled by a doppelganger and a condition in which all his organs are in reverse position. The next story takes place in Basque Spain in which Wimsey becomes involved in saving a woman thought to be bewitched. The third story occurs at a masquerade ball where quests dress as one of the face cards in a deck of playing cards. One of the guests is found strangled and Wimsey finds the killer by noticing a trick of the light. The last story involves a missing string of pearls and their similarity to the berries of mistletoe.

Montague Egg is a traveling wine purveyor. The first mystery is on its face an account of a customer poisoned by one of his wines. He solves the mystery and identifies the killer by a count of empties and a change of manners. In the second, Egg happens to be at a shabby pub when news comes of a murder in the vicinity. Egg’s familiarity with the practices of a profession come in handy in identifying the murderer among them. The in the third story, one of Egg’s sales calls turns into a murder investigation when he finds his prospective customer dead with his head bashed in. Clocks and automotive garages figure in this one.

“One Too Many” turns on Egg’s knowledge of train tickets, helping catch an absconding banker. Then Egg helps track down who killed an Oxford Master. In this case the man who cried ‘Wolf” too many times was the real murderer. Finally, Egg helps an impoverished child sell her pet only to have it return. When he tracks down the new owner, he discovers murder.

The first of the other stories concerns a man who believes a serial killer is trying to kill him. The last story focuses on a character who kills his blackmailer, only to discover he has a new one.

My favorites were Wimsey in Basque country and Egg solving the case of the poisoned wine. It’s been several years since I’ve read any Sayers and these stories reminded me how much I enjoyed her. And I loved the character of Montague Egg!

Review: The Man Born to be King

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

The Man Born to be King (Wade Annotated Edition), Dorothy L. Sayers, edited by Kathryn Wehr. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A new annotated edition of Sayers’ cycle of twelve plays on the life of Christ.

Between December 1941 and October 1942, during the depths of Second World War, the BBC broadcast twelve radio dramas written by Dorothy L. Sayers. Through the efforts of Kathryn Wehr these works have been brought to life for a new generation, accompanied by Wehr’s annotations and introduction to the work, offering important background, explanations and discussions of textual emendations during the process of writing for broadcast. This work was supported by a grant from Marion E. Wade Center, the location of a significant archive of material on Dorothy L. Sayers,

The plays center around the idea of Jesus as king, and the contrast between the kingdom he inaugurated in his coming and the kingdoms of the day, those of Herod and the Roman Caesars, a contrast resulting in the peril of death over Jesus from his birth to his crucifixion. The first in the cycle is “Kings in Judea” where Herod is visited by the traditional Three Kings (from Europe, Asia, and Africa) seeking the one that the heavens said was born king in Judea.

The king theme is elaborated in Sayers portrayal of Judas Iscariot, who is portrayed as probably the most intelligent of all the disciples, perhaps more far-seeing and idealistic, but also proud in the particular way some of the brightest are, and thus vulnerable to the insinuations of Baruch, a recurring figure who is conspiring with the Zealots to lead an insurgency. Baruch raises questions of Jesus’s intentions and Judas comes to believe Jesus in the end was going to betray his own ideals. He determines to stop him by betraying him first–one of the most probing portrayals of Judas I’ve seen.

The plays are in the vernacular British English of the day, a controversial decision which Wehr discusses in her Introduction (as well as the miraculous consensus that came about on the religious board vetting her material). Despite protests from some religious bodies, the plays enjoyed widespread support from the public. The one thing I notice is that Sayers will sometimes quote verbatim from scripture and then at other times render accounts in the vernacular. Also, some expressions may be anachronistic today, such as Proclus, the centurion’s servant being his “batman.”

Another device Sayers uses is what she calls “tie-rod” characters. Balthazar, one of the Three Kings, reappears at the crucifixion. With him before Herod is Proclus, the Centurion, whose servant is later healed by Jesus, and who also is at the foot of the cross, testifying to Jesus as the Son of God. Baruch also serves in this role, particularly in the development of the Judas plot. Mary the mother of Jesus (Mary Virgin in the plays to distinguish from other Marys) and Mary Magdalene (who she identifies with Mary of Bethany) also recur and critically tie the narrative together.

Sayers weaves the Synoptic accounts and John’s Gospel into a seamless narrative over the twelve plays, contrary to much of the scholarship of her day. Yet she works carefully with biblical texts, other source materials and commentaries. She is also theologically acute, as is evident in this monologue of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she watches Jesus struggle under the weight of the cross up to Golgotha:

“I know now what he is, and what I am. . . . I, Mary, am the fact; God is the truth; but Jesus is fact and truth–he is reality. You cannot see the immortal truth till it is born in the flesh of the fact. And because all birth is a sundering of the flesh, fact and reality seem to go separate ways, But it is not really so; the feet that must walk this road were made of me. Only one Jesus is to die today–one person whom you know–the truth of God and the fact of Mary. This is reality. From the beginning of time until now, this is the only thing that has ever really happened. When you understand this you will understand all prophecies, and all history. . . .”

In a few sentences, Sayers powerfully summarizes the doctrine of the incarnation and the hypostatic union of the two natures.

Some comments are in order on what is included in this edition. It begins with Kathryn Wehr’s introduction to the plays, describing their inception, Sayers’ conditions, and how the plays illustrate her creative trinity, developed in The Mind of the Maker. Also reproduced are James Welch’s introduction as director of religious broadcasting for the BBC and Sayers own introduction, in which she details her own process in writing the plays.

Each play in the cycle begins with an editor’s introduction offering not only a plot synopsis scene by scene but also background information and discussion of theological issues in each play. This is followed by the cast listing for the original radio broadcast and Sayers notes to actors on the play and the particular characters and how she would have them played–fascinating for her insights particularly into the lives of the disciples, and several other key players, including Caiaphas and Pilate. Also, Wehr provides annotations alongside the text, some explanatory, some providing alternate readings from draft materials, some citing correspondence with James Welch discussing elements of the play. Underlining in the text (as well as introductions and notes) point the reader to annotated material.

This edition was published after Advent and Christmas this past year. The plays are wonderful reading at any time of year but would seem ideal in the time between Advent and Easter. Of course, anyone who follows the works of Dorothy L. Sayers will want this edition of the plays for all the scholarly material included. Above all, the plays help us ask afresh a question that recurs in the gospels and that each of us must resolve for ourselves–who is this Jesus?

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Choosing Community

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

choosing community

Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L Sayers, Christine A. Colón. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Summary: A compilation of three lectures and responses on the theme of community running through the works of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Dorothy L. Sayers experienced real pain in her relationship with the community of the church. Yet, as Walter Hansen, in the introduction to this book notes, this was not reflected in the love of community reflected both in Sayers’ life and work. This work, drawn from the Ken and Jean Hansen Lectures at Wheaton College, examines the embrace of community reflected in Sayers work in the form of action, faith, and joy. One lecture addresses each of these followed by a brief response.

The first lecture looks at the idea of communities of action. Colón traces the development of her detective fiction, as she moves from solving a crime perpetrated by an individual and solved by a detective, a classic crime fiction trope, to a much more complex vision of community, deeply impacted by crime, and restored by the communal action of people of good will (Lord Peter, Harriet Vane, Bunter, and Inspector Parker, for example), each pursuing with diligence and collegiality their particular roles, serving the wider community.

Communities of faith are the focus of the second lecture. Colón turns to the plays of Sayers for this lecture, showing how these portray the disintegration of community, the formation of communities of faith in The Emperor Constantine and the necessity of atonement in her play The Just Vengeance. Even as Colón considers the plays, she also reflects on Sayers’ love of the players, of how the theater was a kind of community of faith for Sayers–particularly the quality of unflinching devotion to “the show must go on” no matter the personal circumstances of the players–a kind of devotion to one another and a greater purpose she longed for in the body of Christ.

Dorothy Sayers is portrayed by Colón as a joyful woman, delighting in her work, her comrades, sometimes in plain silliness, revealed in facsimiles of correspondence reproduced in the third chapter. She delighted in her associations with theater companies and the Detective Club, communities that combined serious work and celebration. She then turns back to the detective stories, Sayers development of Harriet Vane, and her finding of joy in return to her academic community in Gaudy Night, and in her marriage to Peter and return to the community of her youth in Busman’s Holiday.

Colón introduces us to a vision of community that is not sentimental but one that confronts evil, that gathers around serious work, that involves responsible action on the part of each person, that is formed around faith and devotion, and that is grounded in an undercurrent of deep joy. The responses are marked for brevity, grace, and brief expansions on each of the idea Colón introduces, reflecting the community of which Colón writes.

This is a valuable work for anyone who has enjoyed the writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. If you’ve only sampled the dramas, or the essays, or the detective stories, it takes you into the breadth of Sayers work (apart from her translations of The Divine Comedy and The Song of Roland). I came away wanting to read more of her dramatic works, having mostly read the detective stories and her theological works. It also probes our understanding of community, inviting us into both the responsibilities and possibilities open to communities of faith.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Gospel in Dorothy Sayers

/ rtrube54 / 8 Comments

Sayers

The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy L. Sayers with an Appreciation by C. S. Lewis, edited by Carole Vanderhoof. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2018.

Summary: An anthology of Sayers’ work organized by theological topics, drawing on her detective fiction, plays, and essays.

This work is the latest installment in Plough Publishing’s The Gospel in Great Writers series, and it is a gem. Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford. Her experience in an ad agency became a resource for a series of Lord Peter Wimsey (and Harriet Vane) detective mysteries. As a committed Christian, and friend of the Inklings, she was called upon by the BBC to speak and write about the Christian faith. She published several plays that brought the gospel accounts to life. She was an essayist, and her extended essay on The Mind of the Maker, simultaneously served as a work of Christian aesthetics, and a reflection on the Trinity. Many consider her translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy (Paradiso completed posthumously by Barbara Reynolds) to be one of the best.

In this anthology, we have material from many of her works, that introduces the reader both to the different facets of her writing and the deep theological insight to be found. The material is organized into twenty chapters, each on a particular them, and combining either her fiction or plays with essay material on the same themes. Themes range from Conscience to Covetousness to Despair and Hope to Work and finally Time and Eternity.

What struck me afresh in reading this collection was how delightfully frank and able to cut through pretense Dorothy could be–the counterpart of Harriet Vane in her detective stories.

In writing about Judgement, she notes:

“It is the inevitable consequence of man’s attempt to regulate life and society on a system that runs counter to the facts of his own nature.”

In her essay, The Dogma is the Drama, she concludes:

“Let us, in Heaven’s name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slip-shod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much the worse for the pious–others will pass into the Kingdom of Heaven before them.”

In her play The Man Who Would Be King, she uses informal language to describe the crucifixion of Jesus. The Bishop of Winchester protested this. Here is Dorothy’s reply:

“I’ve made all the alterations required so far, but now I’m entering a formal protest, which I have tried to make a mild one, without threatenings and slaughters. But if the contemporary world is not much moved by the execution of God it is partly because pious phrases and reverent language have made it a more dignified crime than it was. It was a dirty piece of work, tell the Bishop.”

In her essay Why Work?, she makes this trenchant observation:

“How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?”

This work is rich in such observations and often the essay excerpts are a good reflection of the key ideas in those essays. If there is any flaw, the excerpts from the detective fiction do not sufficiently reflect these works as a whole, even if they are connected thematically to the other pieces in the chapter. Hopefully, something of the character of Lord Peter Wimsey shows through, which develops over the course of Sayers fiction. The only remedy for this is that you need to read the works in their entirety, often available in inexpensive print or electronic editions.

A bonus to this volume comes in the form of “A Panegyric for Dorothy L. Sayers” by C.S. Lewis, written following her death. I think she would have most appreciated this comment:

“There is in reality no cleavage between the detective stories and her other works. In them, as in it, she is first and foremost the craftsman, the professional. She always saw herself as one who had learned a trade, and respects it, and demands respect for it from others.”

For those who only have heard of Dorothy L. Sayers, this volume is a wonderful introduction to her broad range of writings, and her acute thinking about theology and art. For those who have read her works, it is a wonderful review that serves to connect the dots between her different genres of work. For all of us, this work gives us a chance to think along with one of the great theological minds of the twentieth century.

___________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.