Jason Baxter is an associate professor of fine arts and humanities at Wyoming Catholic College and a prolific writer. He has published or completed five books since 2018, including A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy and The Infinite Beauty of the World: Dante’s Encyclopedia and the Names of God. Jason joins Ryan to discuss all things Divine Comedy. Jason talks about the best way to read Dante and explains why some people struggle through the Paradiso. He and Ryan also play a game of “Would You Rather” where Jason tells us about his love of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Modernity and Medievalism

Microcosm and macrocosm

Why the Inferno is so popular

Vision in Dante

Is there a narrative in the Divine Comedy?

Dante and the invention of purgatory

What will heaven actually be like?

Beatitude in community

Cowboy Platonist

Links:

Black Elk

Petrarch’s ascent

Jacob Burkhardt

A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Jason Baxter

Falling Inward: Humanities in the Age of Technology by Jason Baxter

The Infinite Beauty of the World: Dante’s Encyclopedia and the Names of God by Jason Baxter

An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Recovering the Wildness of Spiritual Life by Jason Baxter

Hugh of Saint Victor

Divine Comedy

Anthony Esolen translation

Gianfranco Contini

Umberto Eco

Jorge Borges

The Birth of Purgatory by Jacques Le Goff

Paul Griffiths

The Great Divorce by CS Lewis

Blessed John Duns Scotus

Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Death, Be Not Proud” by John Donne

“For Once, Then, Something” by Robert Frost

“Supernatural Love” by Gjertrud Schnackenberg