From the Gates of Hell to the City of the Damned @ Divine Comedy by Dante at 700
Details
Join us in reading Divine Comedy by Dante.
During this session we will be discussing Inferno, Cantos I-XI which will take us on a daunting journey from being lost in the dark forest with Dante, to meeting our faithful guide Virgil and on to the harrowing vistas of the Underworld.
We strongly recommend that you read the book with us--you will get the most value from these Meetups if you do so. But, you are welcome even if you have not read the book.
Format:
- Introduction to the material by Phil & Doug
- Those who are reading the book get to share their thoughts about the assigned reading for that Meetup (see schedule below)
- Breakout rooms with 6-8 people each
- Takeaways and go around: Everybody can comment
- General discussion
Schedule:
7 Feb: the Vita Nuova
7 Mar: Inferno 1-12
4 Apr: Inferno 13-23
2 May: Inferno 24-34
6 Jun: Purgatorio 1-11
11 Jul: Purgatorio 12-22
8 Aug: Purgatorio 23-33
12 Sep: Paradiso 1-11
10 Oct: Paradiso 12-22
7 Nov: Paradiso 22-33
5 Dec: Grand Finale: Reflecting on Dante's 7th Centennial Memorial
Some thoughts as you read and ponder the text:
Commedia as a literary work of art and as such it employs beautiful devices/figures of speech that make it such a pleasure to read. As you read the cantos you might want to be on the lookout for these, or even jot them down as you encounter them. Just in the first VI cantos we've seen most if not all of the following literary tropes:
⁃ simile - a comparison (II:127-129)
⁃ metaphor - literal meaning transformed into another context (I:2, V:137)
⁃ anaphora - repetition of the same word to create an effect (III:1-3)
⁃ alliteration - sequence of words that start with the same letter (I:5 N.B.: may not be carried over in translation)
⁃ periphrasis - mention without explicit name (I:124, II:16)
⁃ metonymy - attribute of something is used to refer to the whole subject (I:134 - 'gateway of St. Peter')
⁃ synecdoche - part of something refers to the whole (IV:78)
⁃ personification (we already saw that in La Vita Nuova with Amor)
⁃ onomatopoeia - words that sound like what they represent (most of these are lost in translation, but if you spot then in your English text - chances are that they are carried over from the original)
Note also the poetic rhyme structure - the so-called “terza rima” ABA-BCB-CDC - …. Emphasizes number 3 - the number of Divinity, just like in La Vita Nuova 9 was emphasized (root of 9 being 3)
Dante himself asserts at least 4 separate meanings for his work - literal, allegorical, moral and ultimate (more on this at the meetup).
Inferno is all about crime and punishment - a sense of justice or retribution permeates the writing. Is there a method to Dante's take on justice - i.e. connection between the crime and the type of punishment?
What is your sense of Dante's view on the relationship between the classical mythological tradition and Christianity?
Do you there is much/any continuity between La Vita Nuova and the Commedia? Do you think Dante's worldview includes a coherent synthesis of love/sin/justice?
Here are some resources on Dante:
CJ's 2011 essay:
https://blog.cjfearnley.com/2012/04/29/dantes-great-commedia-or-poetry-as-a-way-of-knowing/
And CJ's "Reading Dante in 2021" page
https://www.cjfearnley.com/Dante2021.html
Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays". Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive”.
See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/
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