The Mediterranean Signature of Dante’s Divina Commedia



The course will explore Dante’s Commedia in a contemporary key, with special reference not only to classical and Christian culture and traditions, but also to the medieval, pan-Mediterranean, medieval cultural context from which it emerged. We will be reading selected cantos, as well as some of Dante’s other works, in relation to the wider, interactive network of intellectual and spiritual traditions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In so doing, we aim to reveal the poet’s modernity: his synthesis of the three traditions, proposing to his readers an “interpretive” journey that is imaginatively, intellectually and spiritually engaged.



Required Texts: Dante Alighieri, Tutte le opere (Divina Commedia, Vita Nuova, Rime, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Monarchia, Egloghe, Epistole, Quaestio de aqua et de terra)/. Introduzione di Italo Borzi. Commenti a cura di Giovanni Fallani, Nicola Maggi e Silvio Zennaro. (Roma: Newton Compton Editori, 2015) (Tascabile, ibs.it)

Cardini, Franco. L’invenzione del nemico. Palermo: Sellerio, 2006. (Tascabile ibs.it; Tascabile Amazon USA)

Dante and Islam. Ed. J. Ziolkowski. New York: Fordham Univ. Press. 2014. (Kindle USA; Tascabile Amazon USA)