Wednesday, April 6, 2022

O Light Exalted

Robert Royal at First Things.

"The Commedia is a journey from confusion to order, and it draws deeply from the philosophy and theology that give an account of this order. Along with the traditions of courtly and mystical love, Dante’s ­poem shows the influence of the High Medieval flowering of scholastic thought. I had a friend, long dead now, a Shakespeare scholar who thought that ­Dante was merely rhymed Aquinas. Certainly, no other poet could have introduced the Aristotelian vocabulary of ­Thomism—substance, accidents, and so on—into his verse without awkwardness, even at the heights of mystical ex­perience."

See Dante, "On World Government" from De Monarchia in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 7, and The Divine Comedy in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 21, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 19.

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