In Hell with Dante

Catalog description

This introductory course on Dante’s first cantica will guide students toward a critical engagement with the multifaceted and multilayered topography of the medieval “eternal” poem, by unlocking its historical and cultural contexts as well as exploring the many possible readings and interpretations of its philosophical, religious, mythical, and historical foundations. The course will also examine some of the most significant interpretations of the Inferno across the centuries: from early critical commentaries (such as that of Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri) to Botticelli’s drawings; from the Pre-Raphaelite works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the depictions by Marie Spartali Stillman, to the first feature-length cinematic adaptation of the Inferno (1911), the musical adaptation by Keith Emerson (1981), EA’s dark-fantasy action game (2010), and the visual reimagining connected to Dan Brown’s novel Inferno (2013).