Anna Karenina and the Project of Literature I Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel explores the project of literature from the classical to the modern era, highlighting how stories like Anna Karenina shape the moral imagination through themes of virtue, marriage, culture, and the perennial question of what it means to be human.

This lecture was given on March 11th, 2025, at Trinity College Dublin.

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About the Speakers:

Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel is a member of the St. Cecilia Congregation of Dominican Sisters of Nashville, Tennessee. She has been active in her religious community’s teaching apostolate for over fifteen years and assists with the theological formation of the newest members of her religious congregation, serving as Associate Professor of Theology at Aquinas College. In addition to contributing articles to a number of journals and magazines, including the Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano), The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, The Linacre Quarterly, and the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, her favorite projects have been serving as editor-in-chief of her Congregation’s book, Praying as a Family, directing a television series of the same title with EWTN, co-directing the documentary Undivided Heart, and serving as the creator and founding Director of the University of Dallas Studies in Catholic Faith & Culture Program.

Keywords: Agapic Love, Aristotle, Anna Karenina, Classical Literature, Hans Christian Andersen, Homer, Moral Imagination, Romeo and Juliet, Tolstoy, Virtue Ethics

Transcript

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0:00.0	Secular campuses are being transformed, but the students need your help.
0:03.7	Last year, students at 41 secular universities asked to start TI chapters.
0:08.6	Only 10 can be funded. The rest are still waiting.
0:11.6	Please, give a student a yes they've been praying for.
0:14.6	They're ready, but they can't share the truth without you.
0:17.6	Your gift before September 15th can launch a new TI chapter and change lives. Go to
0:22.8	to mysticinstitute.org slash donate or use the link in this episode to give today.
0:31.7	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual
0:36.9	tradition in the university,
0:38.3	the church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this podcast are organized by university
0:43.9	students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn more and to attend these events,
0:49.6	visit us at to mystic institute.org. Winston Churchill observed,
0:56.3	we build our buildings,
0:58.9	and our buildings build us.
1:03.5	This is certainly true
1:05.3	of Trinity College Dublin's beautiful buildings.
1:10.1	Great expense was undertaken to create these majestic,
1:14.1	stately buildings that now build you. Build in you, a sense of your own dignity, your illustrious heritage, and the greatness to which every human
1:31.8	person is called.
1:35.8	But isn't this also true of our interior architecture? What are the buildings within that we have built with our imaginations, our memories, our chosen input,
1:54.0	what we read, the conversations we've had, the things we've watched and listened to, or perhaps even those scrolls of doom.
2:05.6	What are the libraries, the living rooms, the bars, the shopping plazas, the prisons, the concentration camps,
	...

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