Sin is a perennial reality that we cannot eradicate through political will. Instead, we are called to heal the world. One of the best dramatic considerations of this is Shakespeare’s hilarious, beautiful, and criminally overlooked play, Measure for Measure.
Dante’s La Vita Nuova is indisputably the work of a young man, a man whose passions (and poetic compositions) are still discovering the place they ought to have in the world. Thankfully, though, Dante’s ‘immature’ juvenilia is far greater and more penetrating a work than most poets can ever compose in the entire course of their lives.
Sir Gawain is a dramatic tale of a knight’s bravery and chastity in the face of temptation and, crucially, the distinctive experience of grace and forgiveness that Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection has made possible.
When we find ourselves at an impasse, it can be very helpful to look to great figures from history for guidance. Today, we could learn a thing or two about cultivating political culture from a universally-known but rarely studied figure, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne.
Lewis wants his readers to re-examine our presumptions about everything from modern education and science to ‘the West’ and contraception. Recognizing this can help us understand why the novel has so divided readers.
Whereas much science fiction simply sidesteps the theological questions a Christian would raise on discovering rational life on other planets, C.S. Lewis asks us to wrestle with them.
