- Dante's Divine Comedy

Catalog description

An examination of Dante's Divine Comedy from an interdisciplinary perspective, including literature, history, politics, philosophy, and theology. Course topics will include concerns of the medieval world such as allegory, love, justice, secular and spiritual authority, images of women, education, and the relationship between philosophy and religion. Supplementary readings will provide a context for the medieval world, its life and literature, and will also demonstrate how Dante's text reflects the Zeitgeist of the Middle Ages. The course will also take into account Dante's Divine Comedy in relation to the visual arts by viewing several illustrations from Botticelli and Renaissance illustrators to Gustave Dore, and selected modern and contemporary paintings inspired by Dante's poem.