Sacred and Profane Love

In episode 15 of Sacred and Profane Love, titled, "Faustian Ambitions," I speak with my colleague and neighbor, Professor Anne Pollok, about Johann  Wolfgang von Goethe's famous tragedy, Faust .  For the purposes of our conversation, we use the Norton Critical Edition, translated by Walter Arndt and edited by Cyrus Hamlin, which is available here .   Goethe's drama deals with the infinite striving...

In episode 14 of Sacred and Profane Love, "Walker Percy on Being Lost in the Cosmos," I speak with associate professor of Literature, Jessica Hooten Wilson, about Walker Percy's dystopian, science fiction novel,  Love in the Ruins .  We discuss the darkly comic adventures of Dr. Tom More as he tries to figure out how to live and love in the ruins of a society that seems eerily familiar to our own....

In episode 13 of Sacred & Profane Love, "Jane Austen on the Virtues of Social Life, I speak with professor Karen Stohr of Georgetown University about how Austen brings into relief the social dimensions of virtue in her novels. We discuss the importance of social roles and environments for the exercise and development of virtue, and how friendship and family life are the best contexts in which virt...

In Episode 12 of Sacred & Profane Love, "Meaning, Murder, and Divine Madness," I speak with the eminent moral theologian, Fr Michael Sherwin, O.P., about Donna Tartt's breakout bestseller,  The Secret History .  We discuss how the novel is best situated within both the Southern Gothic and the Southern Catholic Gothic literary genres, and how Donna Tartt, like Flannery O'Connor, understands the tas...

In episode 11 of the Sacred and Profane Love Podcast, I speak with Scott Moringiello , assistant professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, in Chicago, Illinois, about Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel,  Gilead .  Among other things, we discuss the connection between contemplation, love, grace, and the ability to pay attention.

In episode 10 of the Sacred and Profane Love podcast, host Jennifer A. Frey has a  conversation with scholar Paul Mankowski, SJ, about Evelyn Waugh's popular novel,  Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.  They discuss Charles Ryder's experiences of love, freedom, grace, and redemption as he becomes erotically drawn into the rarefied world of Lord Sebastian...

In Episode 9 of Sacred & Profane Love "Revelations of Love in John Steinbeck," Philosopher Jennifer A. Frey speaks with Thomist Theologian, Fr Michael Sherwin, OP, about John Steinbeck's secular understanding of Christian caritas (charity) and how Steinbeck captures the beauty and power of love in the simple act of sharing breakfast with strangers. Their conversation tackles the nature of divine l...

In episode 8 of Sacred & Profane Love, Jennifer Frey speaks with Dhananjay Jagannathan about Greek tragedy and the fragility of human loves and happiness, with a special focus on Sophocles' play,  The Women of Trachis.

In Episode 7 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey speaks with her colleague in the English department at the University of South Carolina, Professor  Holly A. Crocker ,  about the boasts and pledges of love in Geoffrey Chaucer's famous Middle English poem,  Troilus and Criseyde .  This wide ranging conversation considers how the courtly love tradition, the Christian tradition, and...

In Episode 6 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) has a conversation with Zena Hitz (St. John's College) about friendship, the intellectual life, and the virtue of seriousness in Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novels.  This episode explores how the cultivation of an inner life through contemplation–i.e., seeing, understanding, and savoring things as they...

In Episode 5 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) discusses the erotic impulse and experience with Professor of philosophy Talbot Brewer (University of Virginia).  This discussion explores how eros draws us out of ourselves into a kind of ecstatic union with a beloved–a union whose power over us comes from its potential to give birth to something grea...

In Episode 4 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , Professor Jennifer A. Frey speaks with philosopher, poet, and literary critic, Troy Jollimore, about how romantic ideologies and illusions can destroy our ability to experience real and meaningful love–the sort of love that is a central part of a happy and meaningful life. We ground our conversation in a wide ranging discussion of Gustave Flauber...

In Episode 3 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with fellow philosopher Nancy Snow, about why she thinks we should be reading the poetry of Walt Whitman in our current political moment.  We discuss Whitman's, "Song of Myself" and "Democratic Vistas," and how each of these works touches on the theme of hope as a democratic civic virtue.  We also e...

In Episode 2 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with fellow philosopher, David McPherson (Creighton University), about transfiguring love as explored by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his influential novel, The Brother's Karamazov.  The episode covers Dostoyevksy's treatment of the classic problem of evil—i.e., the problem of reconciling God's love and wi...

In Episode 1 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with the Thomist theologian, Father Thomas Joseph White, O.P., about Aquinas on grace and charity, and how Thomistic concepts of grace and charity operate in the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. The episode covers themes of grace, redemption, the comic unveiling of the human person to itself, and...