Traveling with Dante in the Medieval Mediterranean. History, Literature and Culture of Dante’s Commedia in a Mediterranean Frame



The course focuses on Dante’s journey in hell, purgatory and paradise

in a Mediterranean frame and in the light of the most recent studies

of the medieval Mediterranean. Dante’s journey, his guide Virgil, the poet of the Eneide, their encounters: from Saladin, Alexander the Great, Geryon, Muhammad to San Francis, invite to further enquire on the journey of books and legends about Jews, Christian and Muslim traveling in and around the medieval Mediterranean. Dante’s re-writing of biblical and classical sources conveys the very essence of the medieval Mediterranean culture based on exchanges of goods as much as stories. The course aims at reconstructing that network of transmission of knowledge in the medieval Mediterranean.





Required text: B Lewis, Culture in conflitto. Cristiani, ebrei e musulmani alle origini del mondo moderno. Donzelli, 2007. ISBN 10-88-6036-108-7 R.Morosini, Ch. Lee, Sindbad mediterraneo. Per una topografia della memoria da Oriente a Occidente.

ISBN Code: 978-88-8232-990-7



PensaMultimedia, 2013





F. Cardini, L invenzione dell’Occidente, Solfanelli. ISBN 88 7497 612 7 S. GUARRACINO, Mediterraneo: immagini, storie e teorie da Omero a Braudel, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2007.

P. Matvejevitc, Breviario mediterraneo, Garzanti, 1991