Episode 241: Why Read Dante with Jason Baxter

On this week’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to bring you a new conversation with hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks and their guest Dr. Jason Baxter. They open the discussion with some thoughts on why Dante has had renewed popularity in recent days. Jason talks about the big questions that poets seek to answer, and what some of the obstacles modern readers might have when approaching Dante for the first time. Thomas asks whether Dante had a precedent for making himself a character in his own epic. Angelina brings up the question of what it means that The Divine Comedy is poetry rather than some other genre. Other topics they discuss are Dante’s cosmology, his psychological precision, how to approach The Divine Comedy for the first time, and Jason’s own translation work.

You can find Dr. Baxter’s previous webinars and mini-classes at the HouseofHumaneLetters.com, and sign up to be notified when his new book, Why Literature Matters, launches at Cassiodorus Press. Finally, you can check out Dr. Baxter’s year-long class on Dante here.

Episode 145: The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis with Jason Baxter

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Commonplace Quotes:

Often, for pastime, mariners will ensnare
The albatross, that vast sea-bird who sweeps
On high companionable pinion where
Their vessel glides upon the bitter deeps.

Torn from his native space, this captive king
Flounders upon the deck in stricken pride,
And pitiably lets his great white wing
Drag like a heavy paddle at his side.

This rider of winds, how awkward he is, and weak!
How droll he seems, who late was all grace!
A sailor pokes a pipestem into his beak;
Another, hobbling, mocks his trammeled pace.

The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds
Familiar of storms, of stars, and of all high things;
Exiled on earth amidst its hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, borne down by his giant wings.

Charles Baudelaire, “The Albatross” trans. by Richard Wilbur

Understanding a distant society requires an effort of the imagination, exercised as far as possible without nostalgia, sentimentality, or contempt.

George Holmes, from The Later Middle Ages

Now it is a great obstacle in the way of appreciating the poetry of another age or “mental climate” if we approach it with our minds full of pre-suppositions about what we think it ought to be like. This assumption that our own habits of thinking and speaking are the only right and satisfactory ones is responsible for a great deal of the foolish and “debunking” criticism of great writers from which we have been suffering of late years.

I cannot say too often or too strongly how necessary it is to find out what a poet actually said, if we are to enjoy his work and understand it: and we can never find out what he said if our minds are cluttered up with ideas about what we think we should have put into the poem if we had written it ourselves. We shall be looking for things that are not there; and, failing to find them, we shall conclude that the poem is empty. The things that are there, we shall never see at all, because the mental eye has a sad tendency to see only what it is looking for.

Dorothy L. Sayers, from Introductory Papers on Dante

Divina Commedia

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
      A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
      Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
      Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
      Far off the noises of the world retreat;
      The loud vociferations of the street
      Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
      And leave my burden at this minster gate,
      Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
      To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
      While the eternal ages watch and wait.

Book List:

(Amazon Affiliate Links are included in this post.)

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis by Jason Baxter

A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Jason Baxter

An Introduction to Christian Mysticism by Jason Baxter

“Can Poetry Still Matter?” by Dana Gioia

The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius

Confessions by St. Augustine

The Aeneid by Virgil

“Learning in Wartime” by C. S. Lewis

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

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