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Showing posts from December, 2018

Chesterton, Lewis, and Solitude

I love to find literary connections. Something about them gives me a small thrill, and my imagination's fires glow a little brighter. Recently, as I picked my way through C.S. Lewis's The Allegory of Love , I was pleased to find this on page 378 (I share the page number now because it comes into play later): "...There is only one English critic who could do justice to this gallant, satiric, chivalrous, farcical, flamboyant poem: Mr. Chesterton should write a book on the Italian epic." The Allegory of Love  was published in May 1936; G.K. Chesterton died the next month. Of course, as I read the section on the Italian epic -- specifically on Boiardo and Ariosto, both of whom I am now compelled to read -- I wanted what Lewis suggested. And the main reason I wanted Chesterton's take was because I've also been reading his Autobiography , and every time I read Chesterton I am encouraged and renewed. In his Autobiography , in the chapter titled "Friends an