An Enquiry into the Philosophical Significance of Dante's Divine Comedy

This group will be looking into the philosophical significance of Dante's Divine Comedy. It is generally understood that Dante simply adopted medieval theology and philosophy, especially the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, and rendered it in the form of a narrative poem. The question is whether this is true, for the contrary claim has often been made that Dante was a true philosopher and that he expressed his philosophy in his poetry. According to Giorgio Agamben, for example, "the mind of Dante, for originality, inventive capacity, and coherence, was infinitely superior to that of the scholastic philosophers who were his contemporaries, Aquinas included." While reading the poem, we'll be asking whether Dante did indeed develop his own, original philosophy and, if so, how is it expressed in The Divine Comedy?
We will be using the Penguin edition of Marc Musa's translation, which is easy to find for anyone who wants to buy a copy, and it is also available here:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/c533372b2d8428583e33b851b781799a