A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation

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Summary: One of More's Last Works
Review: Among More's last works, "A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation" is one of his most important. There are scholarly editions, from Yale and the University of Indiana Press, and there are popular editions from Everyman and Septer that are available. More wrote this book in the Tower of London as he awaited execution, but the style is not the raging virtupretive one he used when confuting Tyndale. There are "merry tales" such as the one about the German who was never satiate his own praise, in Book Three Chapter 10, but most of the book is given over to meditation on death. More has two characters, Anthony a young man, and Vincent, his aged Uncle. They are placed in Budapest and they are fearful of an impending invasion by the Turks. More's story has been read as thinly veiled alagory of his own situation. Anthony standing in for More's son-in-law William Roper, and Vincent for More himself. That may be putting it too simplistically, but it is a good starting point. Unlike More's best known work "Utopia," "A Dialogue of Comfort" was not written in Latin, but in English. I doubt one in a thousand readers have read More's classic in the original Latin, but everyone who reads English can read More's "Dialogue of Comfort" without the aid of translation. This is a spiritual book. In this book More asks where shall comfort come from. More answers his own question: "For God is and must be your comfort, and not I."