A didactic play at the service of literary art and the truth of Catholicism
A drawing of Pope Pius VI being taken prisoner in 1798. The composition of didactic fiction is a risky undertaking. Plots, characters, and the setting of scenes can easily become tools with which a writer makes his points pure means rather than subordinate ends that in part serve a didactic purpose, in part exist as art for the sake of art. Using fictional or dramatized individuals and incidents purely as demonstrative examples of virtues or vices or personality types or attitudes is the approach appropriate for parables and lectures rather than for narrative poems, plays, short stories, and...