Dante Reading Group (Session 2)

Our Dante Reading Group is open to anybody to attend as many or as few readings as they wish. Over the course of the academic year, we will make our way through several cantos of Dante's Commedia under the expert guidance of Dante scholar and Fellow Emeritus, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan of Trinity College Dublin. 

You may have already read, or tried to read, Dante's Divine Comedy and want to know more about it, so now is your opportunity. We welcome all, from beginners to enthusiasts, to our readings in English, interspersed with the sound of his Florentine vernacular, and glances at issues in ‘translation’. You may not have a full two hours to give to the reading, but come at what time you can, when you can. The Comedy is a gripping story, how Dante can grip us still fascinates many of us, and whatever reading you can attend will enrich you.

Dante is both poet and traveller, and we join him in 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 like a medieval 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.

Over the course of our journey we cover 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. There will be 13 meetings in total.

No prior knowledge of Dante or Italian is required, and we will read the poem in English translation, paying close attention to Dante's cultural and historical context as well as to his 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 are not recommending 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.

We shall refer to a map with the ORGANIZATION OF PURGATORY from Dorothy Sayers; it will help you to keep grounded, and we shall use the illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin to help you to visualise each area.

Inferno 5-9

In Canto 5 we find those who allow their emotions to get the better of their reason, thereby causing bloodshed and social disorder. Dante engages with two lost souls, Paolo and Francesca, and confronts his authorial guilt: henceforth his poetry is to be ethical, and he has the credentials to write a major work. Canto 6 sets the political scene (civil strife, Black and White Guelfs) and Dante hears that he will be exiled, just when he is at the height of his political power; his fellow Florentine, Ciacco, identifies envy, pride and greed as the forces that are destroying their city. In Canto 7 Dante and Virgil see the avaricious and prodigal (they lacked a balanced attitude to the beauties of the earth), and this is seen in the context of the mysterious force we call Fortune. These first cantos contain the Commedia in a nutshell. Next, there is excitement: the poets cross the Styx (assaulted by Filippo Argenti), and they are locked out from transiting further (hold your breath).

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