The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante

by Charles Williams

Dante’s extraordinary intensity of thought and experience may well be unequaled among poets, but this very power can all too often make his work seem formidable to many readers. Charles Williams's Figure of Beatrice stands out amid the vast field of Dante scholarship for its uniquely sympathetic enthusiasm and clarity, which brilliantly unlock this master poet’s vast reach for general readers and specialists alike. Williams begins by tracing the way in which the central image of Beatrice, representing transcendent beauty in feminine form, animates Dante's earlier works. He then plunges into and expounds on The Divine Comedy , meditating on its significance primarily through the affirmation of theological images. Foreshadowing the modern emphasis on Dante as philosopher-poet, Williams also touches on many later concerns of Dante criticism, including ambiguities of language, the inherent self-contradiction of all truly penetrating discourse, and in particular the archetypal role of the feminine. First published in 1943, The Figure of Beatrice , which is as much a moving and poetic work in its own right as it is a stirring testament to the Sommo Poeta , remains a must read for all lovers of Dante.

Genres: Classics, Literary Criticism, Literature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Medieval, Christian

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Charles Williams


Charles Walter Stansby Williams is probably best known, to those who have heard of him, as a leading member (albeit for a short time) of the Oxford literary group, the "Inklings", whose chief figures were C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He was, however, a figure of enormous interest in his own right: a prolific author of plays, fantasy novels (strikingly different in kind from those of his friends), poetry, theology, biography and criticism. — the Charles Williams Society website

Reviews

[Sylvain Reynard]

My friend, Katherine Picton, highly recommended this book.

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The forest itself has different names in different tongues — Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Yggdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.”

This guy - this erudite, infuriating overly religious fucktard, the most overzealous of the Inklings, the one who had a bit of a cult going around him in Oxford, the one who cannot drop the name of god out of his month - it becomes a game to try to find a paragraph where god is not mentioned but to be fair:

Charles Williams has written THE book on Beatrice.

My suggestion to the reader is to simply replace the word "god" with "Scholasticism", which is what Charles himself ought have done if he had any sense of self-respect as a academic, and this turns into a sensibly insightful study on La Commedia and an introspective study on Dante with Lacanian ideas before Lacan even existed.

At the helm of all this is, of course, Beatrice, la gloriousa donna of Dante's mind, the one that inspires him to write "such things that have not yet been written about a woman". (Vita Nuova, XI)

Great stuff, fans of Dante oughtn't miss this, the three star rating merely represents the holy trinity that Charles loves so [too] much.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a class of its own as Dante criticism, by an author in a class of his own. Anyone expecting him to be like C. S. Lewis or Tolkien, is in for a shock - and a very enjoyable, thought-provoking & memorable shock at that. Those who have read Dorothy Sayers' translation of Dante will have come across something of him at second hand, but there is no substitute for Williams' own Dante criticism. This book is part theology, part literature, part commentary, and wholly brilliant. Read this book.

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely would not have appreciated this unless I'd already read Dante (the whole is happening all at once, so it's not really designed to be read while reading Dante). Helpful for understanding Romantic theology, as well.

-----

"“Our sacred Lord, in his earthly existence, deigned to use both methods [the Way of Rejection (apophatic) and the Way of Affirmation (kataphatic)]. The miracle of Cana and all the miracles of healing are works of the affirmation of images; the counsel to pluck out the eye is a counsel of the rejection of images. It is said that he so rejected them for himself that he had nowhere to lay his head, and that he so affirmed them by his conduct that he was called a glutton and a wine-bibber. He commanded his disciples to abandon all images but himself and promised them, in terms of the same images, a hundred times what they had abandoned. The Crucifixion and the Death are rejection and affirmation at once, for they affirm death only to reject death; the intensity of that death is the opportunity of its own dissolution; and beyond that physical rejection of earth lies the re-affirmation of earth which is called the Resurrection.” (10)

“To love is to love and serve the function for which the loved being was created, whatever that may mean or involve; this is the definition of the Way, the end of which is in that point from which heaven and all nature hangs…” (51)

“Irony is a good servant but—not so much a bad as a foolish master; it should be, in life as in letters, only a transitory technique.” (101)

“Hell is the place of those spirits who wish to have their necessity in themselves. But Purgatory is the growing realization that there is no necessity in us, except indeed that of being united with the primal and only Necessity.” (147)

“Once the voice of Beatrice had been the salutation of love; now her voice is but the sign of the salutation of love. The whole of Dante’s life and work had been to achieve that distinction and to understand it. It seems but a very slight distinction, but it is the whole purpose of the Way.” (219)

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is a must read for everyone studying Dante and for those that aren't, you could probably get something out of it anyways (as I learned a lot from the sections on the Vita Nuova and the Convivio without having read those works.) But it would make more sense to start reading Dante first, because, y'know, Dante's awesome. And I have The Figure of Beatrice to thank - it increased my love of Dante SO MUCH.

You wouldn't expect that a study of a seven hundred year old poem could be that relevant to my own life and feelings, but it was. I wouldn't expect myself to cry from the sheer beauty in a book of literature interpretation, but I did. I didn't think there was so much more genius in The Divine Comedy than I had realized, but there is and I've hardly begun to understand it.

Charles Williams was a scholar greatly admired by Dorothy Sayers (who gave me my own introduction to Dante) and was a good friend of C.S. Lewis. I'd compare his writing style to Lewis': very profound, but sensible and not at all snobbish or academic. The Figure of Beatrice is a delight to read, and if it sometimes is a little confusing, it's because of the depth and brilliance of the insights.

So yes, highly recommended to all who have read anything by Dante. And to those that haven't, really, what are you waiting for? When you do begin, remember The Figure of Beatrice. If it increases your love and understanding of Dante half as much as it did mine, you will be a very happy reader.

[Travis K · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Besides being an image of the whole redeemed universe, [the Paradiso] is also an image of the redeemed Way. It is, that is to say, an image of the redeemed love-affair—that is, of an ordinary love-affair, if things went as they ought to go.”

“The entire work of Dante, so inter-relevant as it is, is a description of the great act of knowledge, in which Dante himself is the Knower, and God is the known, and Beatrice is the Knowing.”

“There is some kind of experience in the life of lovers which can only be expressed by saying: ‘Love you? I am you.’”

As a text useful in easily clarifying the Comedy, avoid this at all costs. As one essential in confirming it as something to read and contemplate for the rest of your life, attain and devour.

[Timothy Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

May 30, 2023
"She is, in the whole Paradiso, his way of knowing, and the maxim is always 'look; look well'."

Second read nearly has me convinced that Williams' commentary on the Commedia is as mind-blowing and life-changing as the Commedia itself. Overwhelming.

June 3, 2018
"The immediate suggestion, put forward elsewhere, which coincides with that canzone, is that what Dante sees is the glory of Beatrice as she is 'in heaven' — that is, as God chose her, unfallen, original; or (if better) redeemed; but at least, either way, celestial. What he sees is something real. It is not 'realer' than the actual Beatrice who, no doubt, had many serious faults, but it is as real. Both Beatrices are aspects of one Beatrice."

I really appreciate Williams' commentary on Dante. He pursues a particular angle of interpretation which happens to coincide with what I myself find most interesting about the text, and while I've read the Divine Comedy at least twice over the years and think I know it reasonably well, I suspect it will feel entirely fresh to me the next time I return. I appreciate Dante and am fascinated by Dante, but I don't understand him well enough to be really moved by him, and Williams' explication goes a long way towards closing that gap.

"[H]er beauty has power to renovate nature in those who behold her, which is a marvelous thing.... She was created not only to make a good thing better, but to turn a bad thing into a good."

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most difficult books I've ever read, but wholly worth it: it's packed with meaning. For instance,

The wild and savage forest of chaotic vegetable affirmations has been fossilized into the fixed pattern of perverted voluntary affirmations. The circles of hell contain what is left of the images after the good of intellect has been deliberately drawn away.

Sheesh. And yet the prose is without false complexity and academic jargon.
If you love Dante, this book will help you love and understand him better. If you've read some of Williams's novels and are confused as to why CS Lewis liked the guy's company so much, this book will help restore your equanimity. I am now intensely interested in reading the Comedy again, which is one of the great tests of all critical work.

[Ben McFarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

One story recounted in The Fellowship is that Dorothy Sayers was inspired to translate the Divine Comedy (into a really good translation) by the enthusiasm of Charles Williams, the weirdest Inkling. I was intrigued by this and looked up Williams's The Figure of Beatrice -- and I sensed the same inspiration.


Before, I was a typical Dante reader: I made it through the Inferno easily, then gave up on the first terrace of Purgatorio. I didn't get it, and I'd heard that Paradiso was even more obscure. In The Figure of Beatrice, Williams is able to lose himself so much in Dante that through him I saw the beauty and practicality of Dante's final two volumes. To get there, Williams takes you through Dante's works in order. I still don't get Convivio or De Monarchia the same way that I "get" Vita or the Divine Comedy, so a few parts of Williams' book were hard going (and a few passages are ethically knotty), but the reward is enormous. There is treasure laid up in heaven here.


The other thing that surprised me about this book is how personally practical is was to me. This was a healing book that I've needed for more than a year now. It allowed Dante to speak through the centuries, and what he has to say is intensely relevant, especially as translated by Williams. I actually found myself thinking when reading social media that Dante's perspective would help bring "peace and direction," in Williams' words.


The point of this book is not just to be able to read this book, but to be able to read all the books from one of the greatest writers in history. So you can see that in the next few months there will be posted reviews for Purgatorio and Paradiso!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Williams is less an exercise in comprehending logical argument than in being immersed in a mood or being shown a spiritual attitude. He does a good job of following the image of Beatrice through all of Dante's work, illustrating how she is both entirely herself and at the same time the God-bearing image of Dante's entire body of work.

He touches on lots of other themes along the way, densely interweaving them until it's impossible to tell where one 'argument' begins and another ends.

Recommended to all die-hard Dante students. I would warn any casual reader of Dante that you would be coming into the presence of a true lover of the Florentine poet, someone who assumes as great a love on your part as there is on his own. He will not talk down to you, or explain in small words what is going on. Do not enter unless you are willing to surrender to his rapture.

(On a biographical note: You might say that Williams is the intellectual grandfather of my own fascination with the Italian Epic; his admiration inspired Dorothy Sayers to read and then translate the Divine Comedy, and I in turn was inspired by Sayers. It was enjoyable to read him for myself.)

[Rick Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was undoubtedly one of the most difficult books I've ever read. The only way I made it through was by making copious notes in the margins, and going very slowly. The book got quite a bit easier after Williams began discussing the Commedia, but this is probably because I am familiar with the Commedia and not with Dante's earlier works. This book was truly great on every level. As a commentary on Dante it was superb. As a work of philosophical theology, it was challenging. And it was, to my surprise, a great devotional book on marriage as well.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between this book and Dorothy Sayers' commentary, anyone with a significant interest in Dante should be satisfied. Williams' insights are profound in understanding of the text and of Christian ideas. While a bit dense for a casual reader who wants a basic understanding of Dante, this is a wonderful read for anyone seeking to gain deeper insights into the text and the world of Dante's works. The bulk of the content focuses around the Comedy, but Williams builds his case by also incorporating the Vita and the Convivio. Very thorough.

[Cherie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suddenly it all makes snse.

[A.E. Reiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

PARADISO

To cut to the bone, or as Jeremiah says, lay open bone to the sun, Romantic love is of the intellect, not emotion. In its lesser forms it is an approach to woman and in its higher an approach to God. All denigration or debasement of woman is therefore insult to God, but as woman also represents body, denigration of the body is insult to God. These bodies are instrumentality of transport to ecstasy of love and of the divine, all intellectual ventures. If earlier reviews in Notes from the Underground or A Sense of Reality explore man fallen below himself into the hell Dante also traversed, this review of The Figure of Beatrice is of paradise written and hoped to be known, but no one comes closer than Williams' Dante's Beatrice, unless you know through intellect the One who made those stars that see into the bone, the joints and marrow, and cannot any longer, as Matthias Baumann http://matthiasbaumannofoley.blogspot... says, remember the world: "God has so made me that if I would think of the world God draws me away to the other side so that I cannot pull away from Him. As previously I could not come to God so now I cannot depart from Him" (Berks Co. Hist. Rev., Fall 1978, 136).

Williams dares to ask whether this high romantic love is a normal human experience. Asked against the background of marital ecstasy and spiritual virginity, immersion and overshadowing he has a lot of nerve. Don't worry, he won't answer it any more than you can get the personal experience by proxy (14). So it comes down to his image of a woman, Dante's and Williams', and what man would not subscribe his name? Nor should this be charged against him since it is the highest and best meditation as Dante shows, when carried to conclusion. So it comes down to marriage yes, but greater, to adoration, adoration, reflection and amplification toward the greater, the glory revealed, which is the symbol sought by the man and the woman that they are symbols of themselves. So Williams gives his first purpose here as divining "the Way of the Affirmation of Images as a method of process towards the inGodding of man" (16).

Dante began his poetic life with an intense personal experience. You don't need to share this I guess, but I do. Williams means of course Beatrice, but we shall soon see more of that experience made part of the poetry, of the Vita at least, but of Paradise too. All that Williams says of Beatrice in the Introduction is true also of Williams as well as Dante, of his view of image, symbol, subjective and objective states, and of the redeemed life; it likewise can be taken as true of Beatrice. After all she goes from a child of Dante's admiration to a figure leading him to the throne of God. There is no need however to get lost in Williams' rehash of the mystic way of negation and affirmation in this trek. Directly approach in ignorance of the Blessed and immerse therein. Don't call practical theology what Williams does with Dante; it is a far better analysis of image and symbol that all writers love, but pointless without the intense personal experience that obviates the words anyway. How to get that experience is the work. Or it is no work. What do they call it, the overwhelming of the Holy Spirit, dissolution in love, what Mary experienced, overwhelming grace that overwhelms too the acceptance and rejection opposites? Who cares, as they say, "now that I hold you close / It's only my confusion I have lost." But as Williams says, "we must not confuse poetry with religion" (11). No, or confuse Beatrice with Florence and Virgil. This introduces the Williams phrase, the "inGodding." What a flood this releases from John 1 and a hundred places where "to as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God!" Go and Google it. Williams says it is common and Dante takes that way.

Birthday Present

I don't suppose any of us do the right thing at the outset, but maybe the vine, the rose upon the wall blooms. I read this after searching for a fine copy for years and got the 1961 Farrar Straus & Cudahy as a birthday present. My mother's name is Beatrice and though appreciating William's Taliesin Through Logres, and a fellow's dissertation on Williams, all the book reviews indexed and chapters on the Arthurian when really what he admired was Dante and still magnificently does, it's clear that Dante's experience of Romantic love compel Williams and through him us all. Williams has written a lot of Wordsworth too, whose Prelude he cites about love and the imagination here in a support role, the personal experience of both, Wordsworth's of nature, Dante's of Beatrice. This is also a homage to CS Lewis' Allegory of Love of 1936. So Williams says Coleridge allowed that Dante does not elevate thoughts so much as send them deeper. The sub mariner will find in the Paradiso passages exceptionally well stated (Bergen's tr.). If anyone at first feared that Williams' peculiar doctrines of love in its guises, that the Oxford editor would stultify, he has redeemed that sentence with preferences all round, here to what Wordsworth said in reading the Prelude to Coleridge or there to what Shakespeare thought of Hamlet after writing Lear. His apologies for Dante's Vita Nuova are endearing, opposing the early against the later artist, always wonderful. However much substitutionary love one can bear from his letters, or from Lewis' absorption of his wife's Joy's sickness, http://disqus.com/aereiff/ Christian mysteries of the victim soul, these heroic proportions don't need to mystify. At the outset Williams' take on it is his of the Lord.

The Two Being One

Williams at one point in his letters tells his wife Michal he is going to discuss whether there is a Christian Literature, which others have asked as well. Eliot on the dust jacket blurb says Williams was "a man always able to live in the spiritual and material worlds at once, a man to whom the two worlds were equally real because they are one world." Something of this notion occurs where Williams says that what Dante sees is the glory of Beatrice in heaven (27), "as God chose her, unfallen, original or (if better) redeemed." This he says is not realer than the actual Beatrice with "many faults." "Both Beatrices are aspects of one Beatrice," which sums the Christian mystery, and as it is an ongoing meditation he illuminates it, that all are actual, both are real, the existence in heaven before the world began, the life lived in the flesh, that life redeemed, and the life later glorified, seated in the Redeemer's throne. It is convenient to contrast this with the Buddhist belief that this world is a mirage and that nothing is real.

The Meaning of Beatrice

It seems worth saying by the way that as he defines love it has, with the Romantic notion, a founding in intellect. Certainly it is both fire and water together (20), but Beatrice is the "glorious lady" of his mind, "la gloriosa donna della mia mente," which in the end is intellectual light full of love. So Williams calls Dante the greatest Romantic poet who "insists on the intellect at every step of the Way; of that threefold image--Beatrice, love, and intellect" (21), the theological words used to describe love in the Via. Beatitude and salvation were amended to lessers by priestly authorities in the publication (22), and subsequent scholars were to doubt Dante ever purposed such devotion of love, or indeed that he meant withal that the body of the "glorious and holy flesh" (Par XIV, 45) was hers (or ours) in the redeemed state where "the light, beauty, and love of the holy souls will grow greater through their bodies, and they will see more deeply into God" (23). But that is the meaning of Beatrice and of ourselves and of love. But of course you already know this who have visited at the pools of Donne.

The Mother of Love

Dante will cast Beatrice as forerunner of salvation in Williams' expose. We go up the ladder of love from "Love lies asleep in the heart till the beauty of a wise woman cause it...to awaken, and so in woman's heart does the worthiness of a man" (28). This is so opposite the view of woman of 18th century prophetic Pennsylvania, tainted with Gnostic suspicions from Eve. Love goes before love as Primivera precedes Beatrice, what Williams says Dante will justify in Paradiso, "Love... there is a sense in which she is the Mother of Love, the God-bearer" (29). Thus, "the quality of love which is the beginning of the New Life is to become a quality of the final Consummation" (29). That Love is the final consummation and the initial shows how far Williams traces what in the present pornea is incomprehensible. This love however is Christian literature, or what Williams calls, Romantic Theology (30).

See Letters to Lalage http://books.google.com/books?id=1nUN...

[Gille Liath · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this because it is referred to frequently by DL Sayers in her version of the Divine Comedy, and I assumed that, with such orthodox endorsement as hers and that of the other Inklings, I'd be in safe hands. But I was disgusted to find, within the first few pages, firstly Wordsworth's Prelude being compared - ludicrously - to Dante; and then, immediately after, the claim that the ability to 'affirm images' or whatever he wants to call it - Williams has a way of not naming just what he means even when he is in the midst of talking about it - but in other words, I suppose, learning to write poetry - 'is the Purgatory of Dante'.

Well...no. The Purgatory of Dante is not a metaphor for creative self-discipline, not a poetic image; it is the actual Purgatory. And since Williams seems to have had in mind Wordsworth's silly worship of poetry as a spiritual path, his made-up word 'inGodded' may mean many things - again he is vague - but probably does not mean literally joining our lives to that of God.

In short, Williams has not the imagination to see that the Comedy is not all imagination. He is a little man from a little age, not of sufficient stature even to see clearly what Dante did. He thinks he is on Dante's level, thinks he can see inside the machine, because he thinks he is a poet; but he was much less than a poet, really, and Dante much more than one.

Of course Dante was not claiming that the Comedy was an account of an actual journey, and it certainly has allegorical meanings, but - allowing for the embodiment of many spiritual things in physical forms - he probably believed, like many then and since, that a journey something like it is not only possible but would actually be undergone by everyone one day, when the time came. I hope, when it came for Williams, that he finally learned how paltry and trivial were his aesthetic idols.

After that start I tried to read other parts of the book, but I can't. Having fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of the Divine Comedy - or rather, chosen to cast it in his own terms - he has misunderstood everything, and whatever points he may make by the way are irrelevant.

It wasn't cheap. Frankly I feel cheated.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why does the author focus on the figure, the woman whom Dante loved since childhood?

The experience to be preserved through all transformation is the finding of a great treasure, the stupor that comes from amazement, a type of response unfamiliar to the corrupt and earthly-minds of those who live in the flesh, the unredeemed flesh. There is nothing wrong with being an embodied person.

The response to the amazement of the eyes is twofold: a sense of reverence and a sense of longing. Readers find both in this account of the Comedy's central figure.

[Elizabeth Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williams is deep and sometimes obscure, but when you hit a one-liner that moves your soul, the effort is worth it. Readers should definitely have read the entire Dante's Commedia before reading this book, or it will be incomprehensible. However, it is only about Dante the way going fishing with your child is about catching fish--it is really about love. The theme is what Williams calls The Way of Affirmation, which means both being a redemptive agent or "image" of God, and allowing others to be that for you. Williams' vision is of heavenly human dignity rising up from hellish human depravity.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been struggling with this book all year, although it is probably more accurate to say struggling against this book. As always when I read Charles Williams, I am not especially confident that I understand him. However, I think I do understand Dante better.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very deep study of Beatrice's place in Dante's work, with an emphasis on the mystical and the contemplative. At times doesn't feel so much a work of criticism as a literary product in its own right. Written somewhat obscurely in places.

[Henry Jefferies · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was a demanding book! Exhausting. It took months to read - until I finished it during a long flight from Dubrovnik. The start and finish worked best. It’s very comprehensive, very earnest but far too wordy in between.

[Michael Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific study of Dante! Although this book begins slow, the second half is a thrill ride! So much good stuff. You'll want a pen and highlighter while you're reading.

[Lisa Brantly · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the more "difficult to understand" (mentally stretching) books I have read. I read it for Dorothy but even for her sake, I can not lie...I did not enjoy it.
I hope her introductions maker be Dante clearer.

[Rene Bard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered this insightful book by way of C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image where it was mentioned. I had wanted to read Dante's The Divine Comedy for some time, but felt stymied by its length and breadth and depth. As it turned out, I had stumbled on an excellent course of study starting with CSL's book on the Medieval World of Literature, then moving to Williams's The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante which I read concurrently with Dante.

I wanted a way into Dante's poetry and Charles Williams delivered it to me. The depth of his analysis and his obvious mastery of Dante's history brought the poem to life for me. He has a knack for correlating all of Dante's poetry into a cohesive narrative, centered around Beatrice. Williams's prose is dense and thought-provoking; it must be read slowly. Quite often, he will discuss the rudiments of a key idea only once before building on it 50 or 100 pages later on; there is no fat or filler. As other reviewers have noted, like theirs my copy has lots of notes in the margin.

I had no idea how vital Beatrice was to Dante's life and vision. Before reading this book, I thought of her, superficially, as a poet's muse; or, even worse, as an unrequited love or shallow infatuation. Williams set me on the straight path. By the time we three arrived together - author, ancient poet, and reader - at Canto XXIII of Paradiso where Beatrice says, "Open your eyes; see what I am" I felt a sense of ecstasy! Because I understood! And the power of Dante's craftsmanship - a melding of erudition, thematic choice, and poetic mastery - made contact with me across the centuries thanks to Charles Williams and his slender book of observations and insights.

[Alyssa Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to need to read this again, as I'm sure it is an amazing book - if only I could understand it properly. Williams provides excellent insights on the role of Beatrice in all of Dante's works spanning his lifetime, but his vocabulary is his own ("in-Godding", "in-othering") and his language therefore is impenetrably abstruse at times. Four stars for Fabulous Book, the one star taken off for Deliberate Academic Obfuscation of Terms.

The basic concept was, that Beatrice qua Beatrice figures herself in works like the Convivio and the Vita Nuova; but by the time we get to the Divina Commedia, she has taken on the role of God-Bearing Image. Thus all the way through Hell and Purgatory we see a litter of False Beatrices - Francesca and Thais, for example, in Hell; and the Siren of Dante's dream in Purgatory. In each of these cases something of which Beatrice would stand - love, generally, but also the Affirmation or Denial thereof depending on the circumstances - has been twisted and warped so that it has the same draw as the God-Image but leads *away* from Beatrice and the real God-Image. It is only with the purgation of the desire for these False Beatrices that Dante can come face to face with the true Beatrice, and through her gain the maturity to look upon God.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost everything I know about Charles Williams comes from reading his strange theological fiction (All Hallow's Eve, The Greater Trumps, War in Heaven, Descent into Hell). When he wasn't writing this odd sort of novel, this member of the Inklings was an editor at Oxford University Press. He had a lifelong study of Dante Alighieri. "The Figure of Beatrice" is not at all limited to Beatrice Portinari -- a woman who Dante loved chastely and from afar, even while he was married to another -- but ranges through all (most) of the Dantean corpus. Because Williams denies the border between the spiritual and the material worlds, this book is as theological as it is literary. It is a difficult read; it reads more easily when it concerns those works of Dante which the reader has already read.

[Paul Kieniewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not only for Dante scholars, but bit is rather an exposition of Williams' theology. It helps if you know a little about Charles Williams (one of the Inklings. The early chapters are particularly interesting where he lays out his view of what actually happened between Dante and Beatrice, how Beatrice transformed Dante's life. Also, how for a man, a woman can carry a high spiritual vision. Readers of Carl Jung will recognize the "anima projection", how the woman within us can have a trans-formative effect on the human psyche.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a phenomenal piece of Dantean academia!
The Figure of Beatrice is thorough in its dissection of Dante’s poetry, so much so, that you feel as though you’re sitting in a seminar learning about Dante and the professor is Charles Williams. There was so much I loved, but there is still so much I have yet to fully understand. Although this book may not be for everyone, I highly recommend it to those who deeply appreciate Dante and the beauty he encompasses.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read something like, 'Charles Williams was as ugly as a monkey but when he spoke about the work of Dante his countenance was transformed so that he became as beautiful as an angel.' Reading this book must give a taste of that experience to us.

[G. Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this, having not read any of Dante's work, was perhaps a misstep. I think I picked up a quarter of what Williams was saying. However, what I understood was great and left me hungry to read this book again once I've become a better Dante student.

[Don Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

UGH!

A hugely challenging read. I learned much. Love of others and the love that points to ultimate love. God willing, I will read again. And again.