Roman Roads Press

01/04/2026

A guide to the Ransom Trilogy by C. S. Lewis:
ransomtrilogy.com

Chapter 1: Mapping the Universe: What is the Medieval Cosmos?
Chapter 2: Kindly Enclyning: The Influence & Personality of the Planets
Chapter 3: Whatness and Whichness: Donegality & Atmosphere

PART I: OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
Summary
Chapter 4: The Pedestrian & the Pilgrim: Dante’s Influence
Chapter 5: “By Jove!”: Lewis’s Use of Language
Chapter 6: The Heavens Declare: Ransom’s Revelation
Chapter 7: Strange Fiction: Wells, Lindsay, & the Sci-Fi Genre
Chapter 8: Learning to Re-See: Imaginative Training & the Cosmos
Chapter 9: Grey-Eyed & Keen: The Martial Influence
Chapter 10: The Lost Poets: Memory & Pleasure
Chapter 11: Strange Counsel: Maleldil & the Great War
Chapter 12: Devils in Disguise: Hell on Malacandra
Chapter 13: The Ocean of Eternal Noon: Ransom’s Imaginative Transformation

PART II: PERELANDRA
Summary
Chapter 14: World from Beyond the World: The Medieval Principles of the Triad & Plenitude
Chapter 15: Foreknowledge & Mission: Ransom the Prophet
Chapter 16: The End of Silence: Principalities & Powers
Chapter 17: Along the Beam: Enjoyment, Contemplation, & Love
Chapter 18: Lady of Love: The Influence of Venus
Chapter 19: The Tree & the Fixed Land: Real Loss & the Consequences of the Fall
Chapter 20: Garden of the Hesperides: True Myth
Chapter 21: The Language of Paradise: Poetry on Perelandra
Chapter 22: A Fit Receptacle: Weston as the Anti-Ransom
Chapter 23: Kindling Love in Man: Purgatory for the Pilgrim

PART III: THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH
Summary
Chapter 24: Mars & Venus: Mark and Jane Studdock
Chapter 25: Joy & Jubilee: The Jovial Character
Chapter 26: Men Without Chests: The Abolition of Man
Chapter 27: As Sparks Fly from an Anvil: Ransom as Jovial Priest-King
Chapter 28: Hard, Bright Splendour: Merlin & Ransom the Elf-Friend
Chapter 29: Coming to a Point: St. Anne’s & Belbury
Chapter 30: A World Unmade: Biblical Imagery
Chapter 31: Women of the West: True Femininity
Chapter 32: Rebellion & Obedience: Mark & Jane’s Conversions
Chapter 33: Pulling Down Deep Heaven: Paradise on the Silent Planet

CONCLUSION
Chapter 34: The Incarnation & the Eyes of Heaven: Man’s Importance in the Cosmos
Chapter 35: Recovering the Discarded Image: Looking to the Stars

APPENDICES
Appendix A: Timeline of the life and writings of C. S. Lewis
Appendix B: Index of Characters, Places, & Old Solar
Appendix C: Index of Allusions & Quotations, and translation

Read the Ransom Trilogy with a guide:
ransomtrilogy.com

01/01/2026

Some Thomas Chalmers going into a new year:

01/01/2026

New Years Resolution: Make Classrooms Beautiful Again!

https://romanroadspress.com/swag/

12/31/2025

"Man must understand that the world is arranged. That is not to say planned, although it is. That is not to say predestined, although it is. That is not to say rigged, although the outcome is indeed certain. It is to say that it is organized, set up in the way that its Creator wants it to be. The world is all arranged, like a battle order, or a banquet, or a table set before you in the presence of your enemies. It is a cosmos.
This is why it is better to have a cosmology than a worldview."

– Joffre Swait, author of Word Hoard (forthcoming from Roman Roads Press)

Joffre Swait lives in Moscow, Idaho with his wife and five children. He is a language teacher, author of three volumes of poetry, and the curriculum Word Hoard: The Rhetoric of Poetry (forthcoming Roman Roads Press). He blogs on his Substack Word Hoard. Read the article at the link below, or here: h...

12/31/2025

A Curriculum decision by midnight?

𝐓𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫!

For the past few years, we have done a very limited, special sale at Christmas: 35% off any one item. This sale via coupon is valid on all items directly published by Roman Roads Press, even if it's a bundle.

This is a unique time to snag that one book you have been eyeing, or get 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒂𝒃𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑶𝒍𝒅 𝑾𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏 𝑪𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒖𝒎 .

Here is how to receive the discount:
Use coupon code 𝗖𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗠𝗔𝗦𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 during checkout before midnight on December 31st, and it will take 35% off the most expensive item in your cart.

More details here: https://romanroadspress.com/christmas-2025

12/29/2025

Learn Latin in 2026!

https://romanroadspress.com/latin

12/28/2025

Cicero is woven into the Old Western Culture curriculum. Give your children (and yourself) the tools our American (and European) fathers before us gave their children.
Inherit the humanities: www.oldwesternculture.com

"For Cicero was the spokesman of the idea of ordered liberty, for which the Americans were seeking. His writings were woven into the schooling Americans had received: the study of Cicero lay at the heart of the curriculum, both in Britain and in America, all during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
– Russell Kirk

12/27/2025

Listen to this poem as a Christmas Carol Sea Shanty!
https://romanroadspress.com/dragonteeth/

12/27/2025

Why do we think so much about the Roman Empire today? Because it was more than an empire, Rome was an idea – an idea that was inherited by Christendom and stirs something deep within the Western mind.

One cannot fully grasp what it means to be American without understanding what it means to be Roman.

Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order is a great read for understanding just how *Roman* we are in the West, and especially in America.



Inherit the Humanities: oldwesternculture.com

12/26/2025

Roman Roads After Hours: A reading, with analysis and discussion of John Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

Part 1: Introduction and analysis of the poem by Joe Carlson
Part 2: Reading of the poem by Joffre Swait
Part 3: Discussion of the poem and many other things by Joe Carlson, Joffre Swait, with audience participation

https://app.romanroadspress.com/video-series/57904

12/25/2025

“He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.”
—Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (4th century)

12/25/2025

"The Biblical view of creation maintains that things are precious before they are contributory, they have meaning before they are useful to us. They are useful to us precisely because God makes them meaningful. Modernity says that things are precious if they are contributory and I’m the one who decides how and when and if they contribute at all. The price of this supposed “freedom”, of untethering the world from the One Who made it and from His purposes for it, is the loss of the capacity for joy. Joy isn’t a simple feeling like happiness, joy has reasons. It is a response to God’s goodness in creation, to the way things really are. The Biblical view of creation affirms that there is meaning to the world long before I show up to appreciate it."

– Joshua Appel, Digressio Express Issue 2

Fight Like an Amateur: Affirmation as Cultural Warfare – Roman Roads Press: https://romanroadspress.com/2021/12/fight-like-an-amateur/ https://romanroadspress.com/2021/12/fight-like-an-amateur/?fbclid=IwdGRleAO5KoNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeGvW6cWmjwyio78VCWlzgS_sEq7kj0G3feOGDnbEWv4sQFx-6xz4Wyw9Ezko_aem_9heRLyGAD_Fz2_7R9CiVVw