April 10th Is Dante's Inferno

  

A Few Thoughts and Questions from Iain For Our Meeting Thursday On The Inferno

Greetings. I  am not sure anything has been written about Dante's influence on Lewis, and I know that as a young student, Lewis admired the latter part of "Purgatoria"   - perhaps used in Perelandra.  I suspect that Paradiso provided backdrop for "The Great Divorce" although the progression is the reverse of the Inferno?

1. Who are Dante's guides? Why?
2. Can you identify Dante's major sources?
3. Identify the circles of  The Inferno?

4. Why the imagery of  _____  ice, fire?
5. Can you identify a Dantean usage (structure, Image, etc) in Lewis' works?

6. Why entitled "Divine Comedy?'
7. What is its purpose for Dante? For us as the readers?
8. Why a guide (Virgil and Beatrice?)
9. What is the significance of the overall structure of the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise)?

10. What is written above the portals of the Inferno?
11. How are individual sins portrayed and also punished?
12. And the worst sin/s is/are?
13. Any themes, images, lessons drawn upon or used by Lewis  in the Science Fiction trilogy, Screwtape Letters, The great Divorce or in his overall conceptions of the world and humanity?

See you at the meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble in Harrisonburg!  Or perhaps a bit earlier at Panera's for a quick dinner.

 

Our Book For April Will Be Dante's Inferno

Iain will be our discussion leader on Thursday April 10th when we will discuss the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Inferno.  It will be fun to see some of the parallels with C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce.  Please join us if you can at the Barnes and Noble in Harrisonburg at 7:30 p.m.

Interested in who these people are in the Inferno?  You can check by clicking HERE a link that will take you to a Wiki-index of the characters in Dante's Inferno.

SCHEDULE

April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader.
July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle Jane will be our Discussion Leader.
August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Elizabeth our Discussion Leader. December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

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March 13th We Discuss Virgil's Aeneid With Stephen Leading

The questions for this Thursday's C.S. Lewis Society of Harrisonburg's meeting are focused on Virgil's Aeneid and the discussion will be led by Stephen. 

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do we still read the Aeneid?
2. How does it reflect the human condition?
3. What values does the Aeneid espouse?
4. What is Virgil’s view of the divine?
5. How does Virgil depict the underworld?
6. Why might the Aeneid have appealed to an educated man born in the Victorian era, such as Lewis?
7. How are the values expressed in the Aeneid complementary to Christian values?
8. How are the values expressed in the Aeneid incompatible with Christian values?
9. Does the Aeneid influence Lewis’ own storytelling?
10. What have the first six books of the Aeneid taught us?
    
    
     
    I: Background:
    P. Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC) was perhaps the most famous of Roman poets in a great age for poetry.¹ He lived during the violent and turbulent period of transition from the Roman Republic (an aristocratic oligarchy) to the Empire (a mostly absolutist monarchy). His family was of middling rank from Mantua in N. Italy. They may have lost lands to confiscation during the civil war of the 40s BC. He published the Eclogues (idealised, bucolic lyric poetry) in 39-38 BC and the Georgics (a poetic farming manual) in 29 BC before spending the rest of his life on his epic poem, the Aeneid. The work was unfinished at his death and tradition records that he desired the work to be destroyed. It was not. 
     
    Virgil became a protégé of Maecenas, the right-hand man and cultural adviser of the emperor, Augustus. As such, he received patronage in return for his part in advancing the regime’s literary and cultural agenda. Augustus, having won the last civil war against M. Antonius and Cleopatra VII at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, sought to cement his hold on the Roman state and to portray his rule as the return of a golden age of peace and prosperity. He affected to have restored the Republic in 27 BC while in fact arrogating considerable unconstitutional powers to himself under traditional sounding names. Augustus sought to legislate to tighten Roman morals and to revive traditional religious cults, some of which had fallen into abeyance during the late Republic.
    
    
    The background to the story of Virgil’s Aeneid was the mythical Trojan War (traditionally dated to the early 12^th century BC) between the Greeks and the Trojans of NW Anatolia (Turkey). After an epic ten year war, Troy was destroyed. King Priam was slain and most of the population enslaved, but some escaped to found new settlements. Among these was Aeneas, the son of the goddess Venus (goddess of love) and founder of the Julian clan whose most famous descendants were Julius Caesar and his nephew, Augustus. Homer, the Greek epic poet who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, was a strong influence on Virgil. Virgil himself had a profound literary influence from his own day through the Middle Ages (he was a sympathetic guide in Dante’s Inferno) and on to modern times. C.S. Lewis admired the work greatly, having been exposed to it early through his classical education.
    
    
    1 The Golden Age of Latin literature extended from the early first century BC to the early first century AD, essentially the late Republic and the reign of the first emperor, Augustus (30 BC – AD 14). Its leading poets were Lucretius, Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace and Virgil. The leading prose writers were Cicero, Caesar and the historian, Livy.

    
    SCHEDULE
    
    April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
    May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
    June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader
    July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle NEED Discussion Leader
    August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
    September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
    October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
    November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold NEED Discussion Leader
    December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

February Meeting Cancelled Due To Snow

Schedule Moving Forward
The snow covers the land from Lantern Waste near SpareOom to the distant realms of Woodstock and Harrisonburg and so at Cair Paravel the kings and queens of Narnia from of old have decreed that there will be no meeting lest the White Witch imagine she can return.  Spring is coming, Aslan assures us.

March 13th Virgil The Aeneid (Books 1 to 12) Stephen our Discussion Leader
April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader
July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle NEED Discussion Leader
August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold NEED Discussion Leader
December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

 

February 13th We'll Do The First Half Of The Aeneid

February 13th Virgil The Aeneid (Books 1 to 6) 
This important epic was a significant influence on C.S. Lewis and Lewis himself undertook a translation which while incomplete was recently published (see http://tinyurl.com/mfkcypl ). Stephen will be our discussion leader and recommended the Fitzgerald translation. There are many translations out there and often they are available for free from ebooks or Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

A Reflection On C.S. Lewis By Fr. Barron

Worth a watch! C.S. Lewis will be remembered when many contemporaries have been forgotten.

January 9th Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions For Murder Must Advertise

1. In “Murder Must Advertise” Sayers makes some very insightful comments that seem to apply even more now than when they were written.  On page 80, she writes about the message of advertising:

Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different! Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up!  Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied, all our wheels will run down.  Keep going – and if you can’t, try Nutrax for Nerves.

Is this attitude the result of sin, human nature, or affluence? (If your society is not affluent, advertise is irrelevant)

2. Modern advertising began in the 1920’s with tobacco ads.  Large towns in the middle ages would have more than one blacksmith or more than one cobbler.  How did they compete and “advertise”? How is that different from modern advertising?

3. This book is filled with less than perfect characters.  They did not say at the age of 15 or 20 “I want to grow up to be a murderer " or “I want to grow up to be a drug runner or addict”.  How did these characters end up going down that slippery slope and how does this remind you of the Screwtape Letters.

“The Murderer” (I am not using his name in case you haven’t finished the book yet)

Major Mulligan, Dian de Momerie, ...

4. I, personally, found the chapters dealing with “The Great Nutrax Row” and it consequences very humorous.  Sayers does an excellent job of pointing out what fanned the flames of the Row.  What traits do you see there that we have seen in The Screwtape Letters.

5. The question of whether or not one is a “gentleman” or went to  public school matters to members of the firm and  Dian and others use the same set of standards to measure others.  What does make someone a “gentleman” and is this the same as “the inner group” that Lewis touched on in many of his books?  What of the snobbery of Tallboy who did not attend a real public school himself but says of another, “I am not going to have him playing in the cricket match,  anyhow.” pursued Mr. Tallboy, viciously.  “Last year he wore white suede shoes with crocodile vamps, and an incredible blazer….” P 149

6. Does the murder accept any real responsibility for what he has done?  Does he feel any remorse and do you agree with the “When I knew I’d succeeded, I didn’t care, I was glad.  And I tell you this, if I hadn’t been found out, I shouldn’t care now”.  How does this attitude fit into the murder’s moral view, and do you agree with the sentiment?

7.In many Agatha Christie stories and in several of Sayers, the detective allows the murders to commit suicide as a way out instead of making sure the person could  be arrested.  Do you agree with this?  Why or why not?  Is it truly “moral” to allow a person  to not face the consequences of their actions?  Is this type of solution, the “gentlemanly one” peculiar to that era?  Is it a choice in our mysteries today?  If not, why do you think things have changed?

8. Is this a murder mystery, or a novel about money and class; money and consumption; or money and truth?

9. Wimsey does not seem to grasp how important the public school experience really is.  He says to “If only you people could get it out of your heads that these things matter a damn, you ‘d be a darn sight happier.”  Do you think that by the end of the novel he has gained any real understanding of “how the other half lives”.

10. Do you think the experience of “working for a living” changed Wimsey at all?