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This series aims to introduce the beauty, complexity and continuing significance of Dante’s Divina Commedia through readings of the text in the original and in translation and commentary on the text. The readings are accompanied by a rich visual display of medieval illuminations whilst the commentary explores and invites discussion of some of the leading ideas of the poem.
Dante’s Cosmos
We will take a journey through the entire Divine Comedy, rarely considered in its entirety, but usually approached Canto by Canto. This general account will also provide an opportunity to view Dante’s cosmos, illustrated by a carefully arranged visual system.
A carefully arranged visual system is also set to offer a simultaneous translation in English of the text, which is read in the original and illustrated by colourful medieval illuminations. The reading and the commentary show how Dante’s medieval vision may be relevant to contemporary existential concerns. The idea is for the audience to really experience the event like a journey from Hell, through Purgatory, to Paradise.
10.00 Coffee
10.30 Dante’s Cosmos (30 minutes)
11.05 Hell (90 minutes)
We will read excerpts from Canto I, IV,V, XIII, XIX, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXXIII, XXXIV.
12.35 Lunch
13.30 Purgatory (90 minutes)
We will read excerpts from Canto I, II,X, XI, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XXVII, XXX, XXXIII.
15.05 Heaven (90 minutes)
We will read excerpts from Canto I,III, IV, V, IX, X, XI, XVII, XXVII, XXXIII.
16.35 End
A literal translation in English will be provided on the screen.
Translations of the Commedia are legion but participants may consider the following:
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Charles Eliot Norton, 3 vols, Boston and New York: The Riverside Press, 1892 (various reprints).
The Divine Comedy, Italian text with translation by John D. Sinclair, 3 vols, New York: Oxford University Press, 1939 and 1961 (with reprints).
The Divine Comedy, translated with a commentary, by Charles S. Singleton, 6 vols, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970 (published in England by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971).
The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (with an introduction by Eugenio Montale and notes by Peter Armour), New York, London and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
The Divine Comedy, translated with an introduction, notes and commentary by Mark Musa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1997–.
The Divine Comedy, trans. Robin Kirkpatrick, 3 vols, London: Penguin Books, 2006- (combined in one volume with a revised introduction, 2012).
Dr. Alessandro Scafi is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study at the University of London. He taught Art History at the University of Bologna from 2000 to 2008. He is the author of Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (London and Chicago, 2006) and has published on various aspects of the history of cartography, pilgrimage, Aby Warburg, and on Italian art and literature, in particular on Dante and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Since 2011 he has presented a series of public readings intended for the general public at the Warburg Institute and since 2016 he has presented a similar programme at the Italian Institute of Culture, London together with John Took and Tabitha Tuckett.
