Dante Reading Group

Our Dante Reading Group is free and open to anybody to attend as many or as few sessions as they like. Each week, we read through several cantos of Dante's Commedia with the expert guidance of Dante scholar and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, assisted by John Walsh, an IRC Government of Ireland Scholar in Germanic Studies, both of Trinity College Dublin.

We welcome all, from beginners to enthusiasts, to our readings in English, interspersed with the sound of Dante's Florentine vernacular, and glances at issues in ‘translation’. 

Dante is both poet and traveller, and we join him on his journey which starts in anguish, in a dark wood, but there is a glimmer of sunlight, and he assures us at once that only good will he find at journey’s end. After many encounters and adventures, physical struggle, strange modes of transport such as a mediaeval helicopter, even movement without motion, addressing us, his readers, periodically to keep us alert and with him, he ends in dazzling sunlight, having moved from darkness to enlightenment – he called it ‘comedy’, a rather miserable start but a happy ending. Dante is a powerful story-teller, with a gift for creating drama in many of his encounters, and it is on these aspects of the work that we shall concentrate as those he meets are so very like us.

Our readings take place monthly, beginning on 3 October 2025 and concluding at the end of April 2025. Over the course of our journey we cover the  Inferno, Purgatorio, and finally Paradiso. Please be sure to sign up for each reading you would like to attend. You can find all the dates, here.

No prior knowledge of Dante or Italian is required: we will read the poem in English translation, paying close attention to cultural and historical context as well as to Dante's poetic strategies. Readers of all backgrounds and disciplines are welcome and are encouraged to find and reflect on the poem’s enduring relevance for themselves and for readers in the 21st century.

We do not recommend any particular translation but an accessible and very good book on Dante and his works is by Prue Shaw, Reading Dante from Here to Eternity. A bilingual edition of the text will be presented at each session, and attendees are welcome to bring their own editions.

At this reading, we shall resume in the heaven of the Sun with Aquinas, the great theologian who warns against judging from appearances. He, a Dominican, speaks to Dante of Francis, while Bonaventure, a Franciscan, speaks of Dominic. The founders of the two major orders are presented as collaborators, their tasks are complementary, Francis symbolising love, Dominic preaching Truth. In the movement towards the fifth heaven, that of Mars, wherein those who fought in defence of the faith, Dante has a vison of the cross and of Christ. He will meet an ancestor, the crusader Cacciaguida (12^th century). The central cantos, 15 to 17, are the most important in the Commedia for the pilgrim Dante: cryptic intimations that he would be exiled had come to him, but now Cacciaguida will spell out clearly his suffering in exile, and Dante must report fearlessly what he has seen, no matter how unacceptable to those on earth. Cantos 18 to 20: we are in the heaven of Jupiter with the souls of those outstanding for their justice and pietas, ‘giusti e pii’, who speak as one voice as they form an eagle. Importantly, Dante questions the (in)justice of excluding from heaven those who have not encountered the faith in their earthly lives, but have otherwise lived honourably; he is severely answered and this is followed by seeing two pagans glorified for their exemplary justice on earth, Trojan Ripheus and Roman Emperor Trajan. Canto 21 has the important encounter with Peter Damian, a writer, a contemplative, in the 7^th heaven, that of Saturn; he bids Dante to report what he sees. We may have time to link this canto to cantos 21 in the two previous canticles.

We shall supply a map as a reminder of where we are, and we shall use the illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin to help us to visualise each area.

This is a relaxed lunchtime session, so you are welcome to bring a sandwich and a drink.

If you enjoy events about literary translation, take a look at what else we have planned at the Centre, here.