Beethoven and the Spirit of Christmas
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in December 1770, probably on December 16, as he was baptized on the 17th, and it was customary at the time in…
Memory, Love, and Eternity in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1850 poetic masterpiece, “In Memoriam,” is rightly considered one of the greatest poems of the nineteenth century and one of the great poems of…
The Tyranny of History
It has become customary for moderns to hear the phrase “the right side of History” or the “Judgement of History” or “History is watching us.” What is…
Dickens’ “Great Expectations”: Pip’s Confessions
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So…
Sensing the Dangers of Romantic Sensibility
Jane Austen, to my mind, was the preeminent romantic realist writer. Born into a modest clerical family, she straddled the social world of the emerging middle class…
The Religious Lecture: Synthesizing Persona and Narrative Immersion
Since the late nineteenth century religious studies has been conflicted by multiple, often mutually agonistic, means of study. The rise of biblical criticism, and historical criticism, has…
Why “The Oresteia” Still Matters
It is said that the Oresteia is the ancient world’s Divine Comedy, with some justification. Originally a four-part play, only three pieces of the movement survive: Agamemnon,…
Bonaventure’s Aesthetic Revolution: Thomas McKenna’s “Bonaventure’s Aesthetics”
Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God. Thomas McKenna. Lanham: Lexington Press, 2020. In the pantheon of great Christian thinkers, everyone…
The Odyssey of Saint Augustine
In 430 A.D., with the Vandals laying siege to the city of Hippo, Augustine of Hippo died with Count Boniface by his side. The Roman general was…
Welcome the New Editor to VoegelinView!
Hello friends. Let me introduce myself. I’m Paul Krause. I’ll be the new head editor at VoegelinView as Lee transitions out. Our official transition date is January…
Hebraic Exceptionalism and Western Exceptionalism
Western civilization is back in vogue, or, at least, is starting to have defenders again in the midst of civilizational malaise, crisis, and desecration. But what is…
The Drama of Love in Richard Wagner’s “The Ring”
Richard Wagner’s grand operatic drama The Ring of the Nibelung is rightly celebrated as one of the finest accomplishments of modern art. The story that Wagner tells,…
Baseball and the Cure of Souls
The baseball season has arrived. America’s pastime sport returns, like Persephone from her bondage in Hades, to signal the return to life that spring represents. It is…
The Importance of the Liberal Arts in the 21st Century
The liberal arts have long been suffering in academia and education more generally. Chants for the ending of Western liberal arts for new inclusionary material, dwindling humanities…
Literature and the Apotheosis of the Soul
Books have been under assault for a long time. Mass media and television, as Ray Bradbury imagined with dystopian prophecy, was just getting the fire started. Then…