Renascence

This essay argues for a more civic interpretation of Dante’s dream of the Siren in Purgatorio 19 by connecting the reprimand and consolation that surround the dream to the reprimand and consolation that surround the Old Testament images of Israel as faithless spouse—and that are typical of other parts of the Divine Comedy. Such a reading fits the liturgical character of the Purgatorio better than the dominant post-Freudian readings can and it lets the passage speak to civic as well as personal questions. If the Siren is more than a psychological image, then the way we see her counterpart, Beatrice, can be broadened as well. In fact, she might be seen as image of a Christian body politic as well as source of Dante’s affection. This puts the Divine Comedy into closer connection with Augustine’s City of God and with Boethius’ Consolation as well as with Israel as God’s spouse.

While many authors have written about the undertone of violence present throughout Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find," little has been said about the specific references in the story to the Civil War. These references, though, serve to highlight questions concerning evil, guilt, and punishment that come to the fore especially in the culminating scene between the grandmother and The Misfit. In the end, the story seems to be suggesting, trying to determine the fittingness of the evils we (as individuals or as a society) encounter may best be seen as a further manifestation of the pride that precipitated our original Fall; these are matters best left to God's judgment, not to ours.

Adopting the premise that Walter de la Mare’s writing cannot be fully understood without attending to its moral, spiritual and religious dimensions, this paper examines in detail his longest and most important novel, Memoirs of a Midget (1921). It draws analogies between his movement from a dogmatic moralism towards a sense of the numinous and compares them with similar tendencies in Arthur Machin and Algernon Blackwood.