A tour de force of quintessential Williamson on the whole sweep of literature and the West, this final lecture of the three-part series on Eugene O’Neill serves equally well as both an introduction and recap of the entire series of literature seminars delivered at Winona. Surveying briefly the course of literature over the three millenia of Western history and its dissolution in modernism, modernity, and obsession with the material world, Bishop Williamson pinpoints the insights that literary works – both modern and classical – as well as history, philosophy, and a grand and global “geo-political&rdquo sense offer as to the predicament of man. For this conference His Excellency marshalls all the intellectual and spiritual resources at his command, alongside specific references to the works of Chaucer, Dickens, O’Neill, as well as contemporary political and historical events, to take his listeners through a rousing review of the eternal combat between “materialistic unreality” and the sane vision of nature crowned by grace.