Dante and Lay Vocation

Catalog description

In this course, we will read all of Dante's Divine Comedy, and perhaps sections of his treatises "On Monarchy" and "On the Eloquence of the Vernacular." Dante emphasizes the harmony of nature and grace, the path to God through the goodness of ordinary life and human love. Thus our focus in class discussions and papers will be on what Dante reveals about the spirituality of ordinary life in the world, as opposed to the "easier path" -- as Dante describes it at the beginning of the Divine Comedy -- of religious life.