Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Great works of literature are often regarded with admiration and even intimidation for their role as the lofty subject of scholarly analysis, but these books were not written for the halls of the university alone. These works were composed to be used: insofar as they are able to challenge, guide, and transform the lives of those who come into their possession. The redemptive power of philosophy and literature is something we focus on often at the college, but few people today model this power as well as Rod Dreher. In this lecture, we find a potent example of the enduring vitality that exists in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The resulting expanse is an account of literature as something spiritually operative. Dante’s poem becomes, in Dreher’s telling, a work not only to be interpreted but to be inhabited, as a means by which grace can possess the imagination and heal what argument alone cannot.
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Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
Augustine’s Confessions
Julian of Norwich
Benedict XVI
Thomas Aquinas
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue
– Chapters —
00:02:00 - Introduction
00:09:45 - Lecture Begins
00:16:22 - The Real Life of Dante
00:18:16 - Rod Dreher’s Personal Story
00:21:00 - Discovering Dante at the Bookstore
00:23:25 - Dreher’s Pilgrimage: Repentance and Restoration
00:31:50 - Making Peace with the Father
00:35:35 - The Power of Narrative
00:50:20 - His Father’s Repentance
00:55:08 - Saying Goodbye to his Father
01:00:00 - Finding Gratitude in Loss
01:08:45 - Saints and Beauty
01:13:27 - Closing and Return
Great works of literature are often regarded with admiration and even intimidation for their role as the lofty subject of scholarly analysis, but these books were not written for the halls of the university alone. These works were composed to be used: insofar as they are able to challenge, guide, and transform the lives of those who come into their possession. The redemptive power of philosophy and literature is something we focus on often at the college, but few people today model this power as well as Rod Dreher. In this lecture, we find a potent example of the enduring vitality that exists in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The resulting expanse is an account of literature as something spiritually operative. Dante’s poem becomes, in Dreher’s telling, a work not only to be interpreted but to be inhabited, as a means by which grace can possess the imagination and heal what argument alone cannot.
Subscribe for updates at www.ralston.ac/subscribe
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
Augustine’s Confessions
Julian of Norwich
Benedict XVI
Thomas Aquinas
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue
– Chapters —
00:02:00 - Introduction
00:09:45 - Lecture Begins
00:16:22 - The Real Life of Dante
00:18:16 - Rod Dreher’s Personal Story
00:21:00 - Discovering Dante at the Bookstore
00:23:25 - Dreher’s Pilgrimage: Repentance and Restoration
00:31:50 - Making Peace with the Father
00:35:35 - The Power of Narrative
00:50:20 - His Father’s Repentance
00:55:08 - Saying Goodbye to his Father
01:00:00 - Finding Gratitude in Loss
01:08:45 - Saints and Beauty
01:13:27 - Closing and Return
