Literary analysis

Review: The Way of Dante

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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.

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

Review: Stones and Stories

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stones and stories

Stones and Stories, Judith E. Anderson. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2019.

Summary: A guide for understanding and writing with clarity, whether about literature or in any of four forms of discourse.

Do you remember those high school literature and composition classes? I vaguely remember learning clues about understanding the metaphors, symbols, and themes one might find in a work of fiction, and learning to pay attention to plot, characters, and recurring motifs that helped one recognize what this was “all about.” I also remember writing papers, having to analyze a piece of literature (Silas Marner and The Scarlet Letter come to mind). I discovered how hard it can be to write, and how putting ideas to paper (no computers then) brought and forced a degree of clarity to my thought.

I can’t recall that we had a book to instruct us in how to do all this. I remember reading books and having to write about them, trying to emulate and apply the things our teachers taught and modeled. Reading this work, I think having something like this would have helped. Judith E. Anderson, a retired high school teacher has written a primer that teaches how to analyze a piece of literature, how to understand various figures of speech, how to pay attention to context in interpreting literature, and then how to apply all this in written compositions.

She employs two helpful devices that run through this work. The first is the use of stones and what they mean. She carries the metaphor of stones through the work, including proposing a myriad of composition prompts around stones, and proposing an exercise in biblical interpretation using seven biblical passages on stones that seem to contradict.

The second device is that various exercises or written responses are included throughout. The book uses different approaches from simple questions and responses, to drawing visual images that symbolize certain concepts, to writing compositions, learning how to use, quote, and cite material. She explains plagiarism and how one can mis-cite material.

One of the most helpful parts of the book for me was her distinction of four forms of discourse: the descriptive, the expository, the persuasive, and the narrative. She offers and example of each, inspired by a picture of a partially crumbling stone wall, and explains the significance of each word or phrase.

This book is intended as a primer for high school students. While the author proposes its usefulness in public, private, and home school contexts, my hunch is that it might be used most in the latter two of these contexts, and because of the biblical content, more likely in Christian contexts, despite the centrality of the Bible in English literature. The book does not proselytize, except for learning how to read and understand literature, and how to write with clarity and proper citations. It could be used by teachers, or by tutors and parents working with students struggling to learn literary analysis and composition.

I found the book personally helpful. Many of us were not paying attention in high school or college, or just enough to pass the class. This is a great refresher for the adult who wants to read well. It also is an excellent refresher in the fundamentals of good writing, useful for those who blog, who have to write reports for their work, who want to tell a story, or to make a persuasive case in a letter to the editor. It is brief, practical and clear. Using the exercises and prompts will make you a better reader and writer. It just may be that you are finally in a place where you know why that matters.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.