Dante Reading Group (Session 3)

Our Dante Reading Group is open to anybody to attend as many or as few sessions as they like. Each session, we make our way through several cantos of Dante's Commedia with 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 Commedia is a gripping story, how Dante can grip us still fascinates many of us, and whatever session 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.

Our readings will take place over several sessions. Over the course of our journey we cover Inferno / Hell, Purgatorio, and finally Paradiso. Please be sure to sign up for each session you would like to attend. You can find all the sessions, here.

No prior knowledge of Dante or Italian is required, and 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 10-15

Heavenly intervention enables them to continue their journey; we will read Canto 10 slowly (more politics) and discuss Farinata and Cavalcante (heretics who believed in no life after death). Canto 11 gives the principles for Dante’s division of the sins in Hell (refer to your map) and Canto 12 has the violent against others, in their person or their possessions, suffering in the Phlegethon, a river of blood. Cantos 11 &12 are not problematical and, should we not get to comment on them, you will find them a straightforward read. In the 7^th Circle, where we encounter those who have been violent against their persons and their possessions, Dante speaks to the poet Pier della Vigna, and we also hear the anguished account of an anonymous Florentine. This leads to an opening at Canto 14 that is the strongest statement of Dante’s attachment to his own city, followed by the figure of the Greek King Capaneus, and an interesting allegory of the Vecchio di Creta (Old Man of Crete) linked to the rivers of Hell. Canto 15 has Dante’s encounter with his old mentor, the writer and translator Brunetto Latini, a very moving canto with an enigmatic final verse.

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