Dante's Worlds

Catalog description

We live 700 years after Dante (1265-1321), in a completely different world. Why still read him? How could a medieval poet remain relevant to us today? This graduate seminar explores these and other questions by looking at how Dante crafted his own worlds through poetry and prose, from his masterwork, the Comedy, to his minor works.Dante was a world-making figure at the center of his era's most urgent debates. He was the first to argue for the dignity of the vernacular in a Latin-dominated intellectual world, and the first to bring philosophical reflection to an audience beyond the learned elite. He lectured on the formation of the earth's seas and landmasses. Exiled from the Florence he never stopped loving, he envisioned a political order that could redeem Italy and Europe alike. He authored a poem that moves from erotic desire for a single woman to the cosmic love that drives the stars. Along the way he created figures - Ulysses, Francesca - who have never stopped troubling readers, pressing us to rethink what we know about desire, knowledge, and the limits of the human. And he found language for what seemed to defy language: utter despair and the vision of God, the darkest corners of the human heart and the most weightless light, rendered equally concrete by his verse.The course is taught in English and divided into four main sections: Love, Politics, Language, Cosmos. Texts will be provided in the original Italian and Latin alongside English translations.