Dante in Translation: Dante's Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise

Course Description

The course is an introduction to Dante and his cultural milieu through a critical reading of the Divine Comedy and selected minor works (Vita nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Epistle to Cangrande). An analysis of Dante's autobiography, the Vita nuova, establishes the poetic and political circumstances of the Comedy's composition. Readings of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise seek to situate Dante's work within the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages, with special attention paid to political, philosophical and theological concerns. Topics in the Divine Comedy explored over the course of the semester include the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; love and knowledge; and exile and history.

Course Structure:
This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 75 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Fall 2008. The original name of this course is Dante in Translation.

Dante in Translation: Dante's Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise

Giuseppe Mazzotta is the Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian at Yale University. He specializes in medieval literature but his publications address all periods of Italian literature and culture and include Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy; The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron; Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge; The Worlds of Petrarch; The New Map of the World: the Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico; and Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment. Recent editorial projects include Critical Essays on Dante and the Norton edition of Dante's Inferno.

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Comments

Displaying 3 comments:

phoebe wrote 12 years ago.
sorry for the second post, but why did they skip the cantos
of envy in purgatorio? i just need those parts.

Breekbot wrote 12 years ago.
Thank you so much for these videos
A nice chance for me to really learn to
appreciate the book

phoebe wrote 12 years ago.
cantos XIII-XV were not discussed...

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