A Charles Williams Reader by Charles Williams

The book's climax is a kind of judicial hearing by the Lord Chief Justice on what should be done with this thing justice and law are prominent themes in the book - which is also both a thriller and at times a satire, as various parties try to get their hands on the Stone.

Many Dimensions (1931) also involves the reappearance of a long-lost talisman, this time the Stone of Solomon, which turns out to have extraordinary powers over space and time (but using the latter has unexpected results!), as well as powers of healing. But there turns out to be far more involved than murder - the discovery of the Holy Grail in a country church, the complete disappearance of a London chemist's shop and the solution of the murder is helped on by Prester John. War in Heaven, the first of his novels to be published (in 1930), begins as a detective story (and indeed the investigation of the original murder is going on all through the book). The Seven Novels (annotations adapted from The Charles Williams Society. Part 1: Selected Works of Charles Williams 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.December 4, 2004: The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams 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. He then plunges into and expounds on The Divine Comedy, meditating on its significance primarily through the affirmation of theological images. Williams begins by tracing the way in which the central image of Beatrice, representing transcendent beauty in feminine form, animates Dante's earlier works. 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. 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.

A Charles Williams Reader by Charles Williams