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Join us in reading Divine Comedy by Dante

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:

  1. Introduction to the material by Phil & Doug
  2. Those who are reading the book get to share their thoughts about the assigned reading for that Meetup (see schedule below)
  3. Breakout rooms with 6-8 people each
  4. Takeaways and go around: Everybody can comment
  5. 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

Here are some resources on Dante:
This 19 minute introduction by Giuseppe Mazzotta is very good (he explains
why the Vita Nuova is important and gives a broad introduction to the
Commedia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=679FGDpZBew

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

For those of you joining us in the reading, you may read or listen to any
translation you want. Here are two free translations available as text or
audio books:

● Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867): a very faithful translation:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy_(Longfellow_1867)

LibriVox audio recording:
https://librivox.org/the-new-life-la-vita-nuova-by-dante-alighieri/

● Courtney Langdon (1918): in blank verse:
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/alighieri-the-divine-comedy-in-3-vols-langdon-trans

LibvriVox audio recording:
https://librivox.org/the-divine-comedy-version-2-dramatic-reading-by-dante-alighieri/

Here is a more modern translation from the Princeton Dante Project (Robert and Jean Hollander, 2000-2007): https://dante.princeton.edu/pdp/

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/
A Meetup Every Day, Every Week, For Everyone!
Every Weekday at 9pm ET; On Weekends at 2:30pm ET

We record all our Meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you prefer. Watch Past Comprehensivist/Polymath Meetups here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqpF1l8gdXlEbrO6SZafegV7C-g5fm50I

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