Dante Reading Group (Session 9)

Our Dante Reading Group is free and open to all. We will be guided through a number of cantos from The Commedia by Dante scholar and Fellow Emeritus, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan of Trinity College Dublin.

Our readings are taking place over several months and will 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 dates, here. 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 shall refer to the published illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin, in addition to the illustrations of one of our readers, John Kubiak, to help us to visualise each area.

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.

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.

Purgatorio 17-26

With cantos 17 and 18 we are on the fourth terrace and Virgil addresses the nature of love and free will (Cs 17-18) – these important discourses, added to Marco’s (C 16), are placed midway of the entire Commedia, they underpin its ethical structure.

With C 19 we have a revealing dream of the Siren, and we find the Covetous on the fifth terrace. The exchange with Pope Hadrian V contrasts with Inferno 19, and at C 20 Dante condemns those who have acted against Pope Boniface VIII (thereby indicating his respect for the office of the papacy) and the political ambitions of the French, background to his own exile. The canto ends with an earthquake which introduces us to another poet, Statius, who will join the two poet ‘pilgrims’ (C 21/22) – this is one of the most joyous encounters in the entire work.

Dante has another P removed from his forehead; now amongst the gluttonous (sixth terrace) he encounters his old friend Forese Donati (C 23) and he will speak of his own poetic style (the dolce stil novo) in the following canto. The three travellers finally arrive at the last terrace, that of the lustful (C 25); more poetic encounters ahead – Guido Guinizelli, Arnaut Daniel who, uniquely, speaks in Provençal (C 26).

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