Dante’s Inferno

Catalog description

The course is conceived as a re-reading of Dante’s Inferno. We will start with a general introduction to Dante’s Commedia in order to orient the students to an understanding of Dante’s masterpiece and the Inferno as part of it. Inferno is the first cantica of the Divine Comedy, a very long poem traditionally judged to be one of the most important in Western culture. At the center of the poem is the human being, his condition in the afterlife and his punishment or reward. Taken literally, the theme is the state of the souls after the death. But allegorically, the true subject is moral life and thus the torments of the sins themselves or the enjoyment of a happy and saintly life. In the Inferno Dante represents the passions and vices of the human beings and the punishment that God’s justice inflicts upon the sinners. Hell is the place of eternal damnation. The course will provide a fresh approach to the Inferno with a focus on the problem of evil as represented in the Commedia. We will investigate Dante’s dramatization of the ontology of human beings and their inclination to materiality and materialism, which the poet considers the source of evil. The course includes an introduction to Dante’s first work, the Vita Nuova, and a reading of sections of his treatises: On Vernacular Speech and Convivio. The requirements of the course are as follows: active class participation, 3 response papers (3 pages), a mid-semester and final oral presentation, and a final paper 20 to 25 pages in length. All readings will be available as photocopies. French or Latin texts will be translated.