CS Lewis's The Great Divorce (doc/ html). Not a particularly interesting work from Lewis in terms of fictional narrative. I generally agree with the review here (I still desperately need to watch Shadowlands). However, while the story is sparse, the ideas are rather plentiful. I will have to read Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (as you recognize, the relationship between Blake's and Lewis's titles). In short..the

I would like to read more about the ideas of purgatory:

Tertullian and Purgatory
A Review of The Birth of Purgatory- Le Groff

Further, a vertical reading of The Great Divorce leads to:

George MacDonald, Phantaste's (George MacDonald)
Anodos(Greek anodos, a way up : ana-, ana- + hodos, way.) - protagonist in MacDonald's Phantastes

William Cowper's Compleat Poetical Works

Refrigerium
it seemed to first refer not to a place, but a state (i.e. refrigeria)

Tertullian's references to Refrigerium

a place of refreshment, implications of waiting.. a place of


Also a funeral meal as in:

Every year on the "dies natalis", which for Christians is the day of death, the Christian community would gather at the tomb of the martyr or in a more spacious place nearby, for a joyful celebration of the "Refrigerium" or funeral meal with readings, prayers, - the Eucharist in spontaneous forms typical of the Roman Liturgy in early times. These assemblies form that spirit of which later Saint Augustine will say: «Ideo quippe ad ipsam mensam (...) eos commemorarmus (...) ut eorum vestigiis adhaereamus» (In Ioan tract. 84,1)

(from Devotion to Martyr's in the Roman Liturgy)



Emporor Trajan
(more) Trajan

Coriolanus

Swedenborgs

Swedenborgs and C.S. Lewis

Move later:
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/oconnell/ntlinks.html