Links: just . . . lots and lots of links

Inspirational Romance Ratings - Naomi Rawling's new review blog - looks like a great place to find new books!

"How J.K. Rowling was exposed as Robert Galbraith": fascinating!

"Time heals all wounds . . . or something": really good advice for helping a grieving friend.

"Blessing Your Blessings":

Happily, as Christians, we know we're not just turning them out into the void. When they leave us, we can turn them over to Someone. And in a way, it's actually a relief for us to remember that our children's spiritual success and strength doesn't depend completely on us. We do the best we can, but after a certain point, our kids make the decision whether they are going to be open to God's grace or not. We should pray for them every day, we should pray with them as much as possible, and it's a great idea to also pray over them.

"Elisabeth Leseur's 'A Little Essay on the Christian Life' for her nephew: III, the active adult life":

Approach our Savior without anxiety as the friend he is, able to understand and share everything, with whom you can talk about your joys and sorrows, your temptations, and even the doubts that he can remove, your human plans and spiritual desires.

The nine circles of Hell from Dante's Inferno recreated in Lego - wow!

"Quick Takes for Married People": Good stuff.

"Enlighten Me Not":

The problem with the Enlightenment was that it was over-simple. Human beings just aren’t that neat (neither is the universe, as we’ve learned since). Human beings, and the universe, are like Doctor Who’s Tardis, bigger inside than outside. As you go deeper in, you discover new levels of complexity.

What interesting things are you finding 'round the Web?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."

I went over to Goodreads yesterday, hoping I could trim down my "currently reading" shelf, but after getting it down to 9 books, I took thought again, realized I'd left some out, and now my currently-reading count is back up to twelve.

Sigh.

In related news, I've been (very, very slowly) working on an article I'm tentatively titling "In Defense of Romance", and today I went and dug out an old lecture I gave once called "Why Dante Didn't Sleep with Beatrice". I cleverly included sex in the title, you see, because the lecture was for college students and I wanted a big audience.

It worked.

Anyway, that really is what the lecture was about. It was about the courtly love tradition that developed in France in the tenth century, and how Dante took that tradition and Christianized it, and how you can see it all happen in the Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy - and how that all explains why there's no adultery in Dante's magnum opus. (Not between the principal characters, anyway.)

And, upon rereading my lecture, I realized that if I really want to do justice to the article I'm writing, I also need to go back and reread (at least parts of) the Vita and the Comedy, and probably also bits of The Romance of the Rose, and Tristan and Isolde, and some of C. S. Lewis' more academic works. Oh, and Books III & IV of the Faerie Queen. Because it's been awhile and I want to know whereof I speak.

I guess what I'm saying is: there is no hope at all for my "currently reading" shelf over at Goodreads.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

*The title of this blog is a quotation of the phrase Dante says is over the gate to Hell: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Bujold's "Borders of Infinity" and Dante's "Inferno"

It's pet literary theory time!

Here is my theory - and if anyone besides me has noticed this, I haven't read about it, so it's just begging for a English term paper to be written on it - I think that Lois McMaster Bujold's novella The Borders of Infinity is (among other things) a riff on Dante's Inferno.

Why? (Here there be spoilers. For both works.)

1. The Borders of Infinity opens with Miles Vorkosigan thinking, "How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?" Hell. Yes. That one word is part of my evidence.  But, folks, it's the paragraph, and it sets the tone for the rest of the story. Miles is in Hell.

2. The prison camp is circular. So is Dante's Hell.

3. There are circles within the circles (see the women's section of the camp).

4. Miles has a literary (okay, at least literature-obsessed) guide. Yes, I am saying that Suegar=Virgil.

4a. You could argue that Oliver=Suegar. Okay, go ahead: convince me.

5. There is even someone running in circles. Yes, I know that sounds more like the Purgatorio than the Inferno, but, you know, it's still Dante.

6. BEATRICE LEADS HIM UP.   Yes, I'm shouting. Yes, that's my biggest piece of evidence. (Term paper folks still with me? Okay, here's your paper topic: why does the Virgil figure go up in Bujold's version, while the Beatrice figure falls?  Aaaa. Yes. Hmm.)

6a. If Beatrice is Beatrice, does that make Cordelia the Virgin Mary? C'mon, you can't argue that that's pretty much Cordelia's place in the Vorkosigan cosmology.

7. Just try to count the references to damnation (all the things the prisoners have done with and to each other), redemption, and sin. Just try.

8. What's the theme? The harrowing of hell. Yes it is. (Term paper people: is Miles a Christ figure? What does that mean for his relationship with his mother? Make sure you use the pond incident from Komarr in your answer. Also, reference his fourteen-shuttle-groups-for-the-fourteen-apostles statement.)

9. The saints (i.e., the Dendarii observers, Elena and Elli) are watching and listening to Dante's (Miles') prayers. (Term paper people: is this evidence against the thesis put forth in point 8?)

10. Suegar's scripture is from Pilgrim's Progress, about when the pilgrims finally make it to Heaven. HA! "HA!", I say.



Hee, hee, hee. Okay, that was so much fun.

What do you think? Did I make my point? More importantly, did I miss anything?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through these links, I'll receive a small percentage of the purchase price - for my own shopping! :) (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

first post up on the Dante blog

Hello! I just wanted to point you towards the A Lenten Ascent blog, where I and some friends are blogging through Dante's Purgatorio. I just posted my observations on Cantos 1-3 here. Please go read, feel free to comment, and if you want to join in and read through with us, it's not too late! Just let me know if you want to be part of the project.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

links - household systems, Dante, knitting, Lent, and more!

Quotidian Moments writes about updating her household systems - not replacing, updating. I like this; it's what I always think of as tweaking. Her musing on this process is thoughtful and interesting. A sample:

Update doesn't have to imply "total change" -- it implies revision, tailoring, starting with the old thing and adjusting it to fit or even to look newer. Remember how young ladies in straitened circumstances would take last season's bonnet and take off the old lace, add some new flowers, so they could enjoy wearing something that looked somewhat fresh even though it wasn't exactly? Like that.

Kerry sent me a link that goes along well with our Lenten read-through of Dante's Purgatorio. It's a blog where the (very educated!) authors are also reading through the poem!

Here's another Lenten post that talks about the idea not just of giving things up, but of taking good things on. Though his conclusion, explaining why we fast, is perfect: "That's the point of denying ourselves during Lent. We want to forget our own power (or the illusion of it) and rely on Christ Jesus, our Savior and King." Yep. Fasting takes away the illusion that we have awesome self-control and that's why everything is going so swimmingly. Nope. It's not us.

Another great Lenten link, Kelly talks about how, in some seasons of life, simplicity is a good Lenten resolution.

Also a bit late, but not too late to use during the season, Kerry's post on a Lenten self-examination.

Katie does two really cool things in this post: she reviews some groovy old knitting books, and she mentions her Lenten resolution - one that I wish I'd thought of before Lent started!

Smithical also has a good Lenten post up . . . I find her reminder that we in the west normally eat like royalty pretty humbling.

You know how they say that Christians divorce as often as the general population? Turns out that's not entirely true . . .

It's not a secret that I'm a fan of Touchstone magazine, but nonetheless, I have to agree with this post. Their March/April issue does look really good.

More wonderfulness from Patricia Wrede, this time on writing "The Big Finish". She talks about what makes a good conclusion to a novel good, including making sure that the biggest climatic scene involves the main plotline, and not one of the subplots. A sample:

But the center of the battle is still defeating the Evil Overlord, and this is what determines the way most readers will see the book. If the Evil Overlord wins, or dies but takes the Main Character with him, then even if the hostage rescue, happy romance, and psychological healing are all wildly successful, the book will still generally be considered a tragedy. If the Main Character wins and survives, then several unsuccessful subplot endings will only make the book “gritty” or maybe “dark” or “realistic,” rather than a tragedy.

A Lenten Ascent through Purgatory

Three other people want to read through the Purgatorio this Lent, so I went ahead and started the blog. (Heather and Lasselanta, would you email me your addresses, so I can add you as blog authors? jessica *dot* snell *at* gmail *dot* com) You can see the blog here.

For those interested in reading along but not posting, feel free to just read and/or comment as you please. If you decide at some point you want to join, just let me know.

If you're thinking about it but hesitating, let me encourage you to join. We'll only be doing 5 cantos a week, which adds up to, oh, less than 30 pages of reading per week? I think? and it's short little bits of verse, not page-edge-to-page-edge reading. And you don't have to post a long reaction or essay. You can even just post the quotations that stood out to you the most that week. Email me or comment if you want to be added to the blog.

Anyway, this project has it's own blog, but I'll probably cross-post every week or so with the interesting bits. :)

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell