Plato's Republic stands as one of the most influential texts in the literary and philosophical tradition, and many of its key ideas still capture our imaginations. In this webinar, Dr. Anne Phillips will explore the background of the Republic and the flow of its argument, with a particular focus on the metaphorical and allegorical imagery that Plato uses to paint…
Just as the modern reader struggles with the loss of the shared literary, cultural, and imaginative landscape of the literary tradition, so has the modern listener lost touch with the imaginative language of music. C.S. Lewis says that it is the first duty of a reader to read the work like the original audience and this is no less true…
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There are certain historical characters whose lives seem woven out of the stuff of romantic fiction more than attested fact. One such character is the last Catholic queen of Scotland. The life of Mary Stuart spanned a period of religious revolution, war, intrigue, plot, and political drama unparalleled in the history of her country. Join us on Thursday, September 5th to…
Individual Price: $99 (Non-Refundable) ***NEW Family Rate for 3 or more students*** Price: $250 (Non-Refundable) The Harry Potter series rivals both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings as the most popular fantasy series of all time. Behind all the hype, film franchises, amusement parks, cos-play, and controversy are stories deeply steeped in the same Literary Tradition…
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A Mini-Class by Dr. Jason Baxter Dostoevsky once proclaimed: "Mankind can live without science, and even without bread. But it cannot live without beauty." But what is beauty for Dostoevsky? And why is it so hard for mankind in modernity to find it? This five-part summer series will read Dostoevsky's greatest novel, Brothers Karamazov, within the context of European modernity,…
In the 5th century A.D., the world of the Roman Empire was slowly dying. Its rulers were increasingly weak, literature and philosophy largely exhausted, the cities and provinces impoverished, the ancient religion and civic patriotism atrophied and enfeebled. Goths, Vandals and Huns spilled over the borders. Men all around fearfully anticipated the end of things. And in a middling town…
King Alfred of Wessex, the only sovereign in British history on whom the epithet "Great" has been traditionally bestowed, never ruled over the whole of Great Britain, nor even over the whole of England. Yet after his death he stood in the memory of his nation not only as a great bulwark against their enemies and as a liberal patron…
Dispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination The myth of modernity is that it has no myth. But, even as we deny its existence, we are being blindly shaped, distorted and even enslaved by the myth of our age. As CS Lewis writes in The Silver Chair, “Of course, the more enchanted you get, the more…
Few things divide us moderns from our ancient forebears as our different ways of understanding the past. We are apt to think of history as a science, the duty of whose practitioners is to describe, with clinical detachment, long ago events "as they actually happened, as plain matters of fact". But in the world of ancient Greece it was not…
(Note: This is a recording of a previously live webinar. To access the recorded video afterwards, log in to your House of Humane Letters account, click "Dashboard," then "Orders," then click the corresponding order. There will be a link that says "View Recording.") “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” From these words began one of…
(Note: This is a recording of a previously live webinar. To access the recorded video afterwards, log in to your House of Humane Letters account, click "Dashboard," then "Orders," then click the corresponding order. There will be a link that says "View Recording." The Slides and the Chat Box are also in Your Account right under View Recording.) Tolkien &…
This webinar taught by Dr. Jason Baxter will introduce (or reintroduce) readers to Dante's Inferno by focusing on how the moral urgency of Dante's collapsing world led him to attempt a daring form of poetry which he thought could save the world. In particular, we'll focus on how Dante's Franciscan understanding of history led him to recycle a Boethian sense…
