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 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.

This final reading will focus on the last canto is Dante’s ‘homecoming’, as he had said to Brunetto: Virgil is bringing me back home, ‘reducemi a ca’, we wish to give an hour to the last canto, for the beginning is in the end, and the rest is silence. We shall encounter St Benedict, founder of Western monasticism, who condemns how his followers have fallen from the principles he had given them; we shall touch on the excessus mentis in Canto 23, the figure of Mary, the prime mover in Dante’s salvation (maternal similes have punctuated the text from early times). Dante had written in Convivio that he wanted to convey doctrine from the masters to those with lesser education: in Cantos 24, 25, 26 he is given his ‘credentials’ to carry out his mission; he is examined in the three theological virtues (faith, hope, love) by the greater apostles, Peter, James, John. He is inaugurated in his office as prophet who has learnt truths in the aldilà. The opening of Canto 25 is poignant: Dante wants to be crowned with the laurel crown in his ‘bel San Giovanni’, but he really knows he will never see Florence again. Canto 27 has two strong invectives, one from Peter on the corruption in the Vatican, one from Beatrice against greed.

In Canto 30 Beatrice is transfigured beyond Dante’s powers of description, she is ‘il sol de li occhi miei’, she makes her last speech, predictably against ‘la cieca cupidigia’, the root of all evil, and the simonist popes. St Bernard will replace Beatrice as guide (theology yields to mysticism). Dante has come ‘al divino da l’umano’ and for the final vision he needs no guide, he is able to see, to experience, alone, but shares a glimmer with us.

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