Dante's Divine Comedy and the Medieval World: Literature, History, Art
FAIN: FS-50176-08
Medieval Academy of America (Cambridge, MA 02138)
Christopher Kleinhenz (Project Director: March 2008 to June 2011)
A four-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty to travel to Prato, Italy, and study Dante's Divine Comedy through close reading, research, and site visits.
The four-week Seminar, which will take place at the Monash University Center in Prato (Italy), focuses on Dante's Divine Comedy from an interdisciplinary perspective and contextualizes it within the medieval literary, historical, and artistic traditions. Four full-day excursions to relevant sites of Dantean interest (Florence, Siena-San Gimignano, Lucca-Pisa, and Ravenna) will complement the seminar discussions. The remarkable literary, historical and artistic resources in the area will enrich the intellectual experience of the participants and enhance their research capacity and pedagogical effectiveness. The seminar topic should be attractive to teachers wishing to 1) incorporate Dante in their courses and research and/or 2) gain greater knowledge of Dante's Comedy as a way of shaping and enriching their own teaching and research. Seminar results will be disseminated through conference presentations (e.g., the Medieval Congress at Western Michigan U.) and published scholarship.
Associated Products
Dante, Fruits of an NEH Seminar I: Dante and Tradition: Poets, Kings, Prophets and Saints (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Dante, Fruits of an NEH Seminar I: Dante and Tradition: Poets, Kings, Prophets and Saints
Author: Susan Gorman, Jason Aleksander, Anne L. Clark, and Elizabeth Dolly Weber
Abstract: Susan Gorman (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences), Dante, Statius and Civil War: Using the Thebaid to Amplify Dante’s Themes
Jason Aleksander (Saint Xavier University), Solomon’s Regal Prudence and Dante’s Attitude towards Philosophy
Anne L. Clark (University of Vermont), Dante as Visionary Prophet
Elizabeth Dolly Weber (University of Illinois at Chicago), This Is My Body: Saints and Their Lives in the Paradiso
Date: 05/10/2010
Conference Name: Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
Dante, Fruits of an NEH Seminar II: Historical and Literary Perspectives on the Comedy (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Dante, Fruits of an NEH Seminar II: Historical and Literary Perspectives on the Comedy
Author: Joanna Drell, Louis I. Hamilton, Melissa Conway, and John Alcorn
Abstract: Joanna Drell (University of Richmond), Reading the Mezzogiorno in Dante
Louis I. Hamilton (Drew University), Dante’s Florence: Mapping as Tool of Textual Analysis
Melissa Conway (University of California, Riverside), Praepropere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose: Dante's debt to St. Thomas Aquinas in Inferno VI and Purgatorio XXII, XXIII and XXIV
John Alcorn (Trinity College), Dante & Game Theory: Strategic Interaction in Inferno
Date: 05/10/2010
Conference Name: Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
Cluster on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Dante's Commedia (Book Section)Title: Cluster on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Dante's Commedia
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Editor: Kirilka Stavreva
Abstract: Introduction to the Cluster.
Year: 2013
Primary URL:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pedagogy/toc/ped.13.1.htmlPrimary URL Description: On-line version in Project Muse.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Book Title: Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Vol. 13.1 (Winter, 2013), pp. 43-144
ISBN: ISSN: 1531-420
"Dante's Vision of the Afterlife" (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: "Dante's Vision of the Afterlife"
Abstract: The lecture on "Dante, Vision, and the Afterlife" situates the Florentine poet within his broader historical context and examines how he understood the term "vision" both in its more general sense of "seeing" and in its more restricted sense of a "revelatory" experience. Finally, the lecture presents Dante's great poem as the consummate literary and visionary product of the Middle Ages.
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Date: 11/11/2015
Location: Dominican University
“Dante’s Vision of Earth: The Inferno and the Earthly City as the Land of the Dead” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “Dante’s Vision of Earth: The Inferno and the Earthly City as the Land of the Dead”
Abstract: This richly illustrated lecture will examine the written accounts and visual representations of Hell from Classical Antiquity through the Renaissance. The primary focus will be on Dante’s conception of the afterlife and, in this first presentation, on his construction of the Inferno and the ordering of sins and their punishments. We will consider how Dante’s vision was shaped in part by the previous tradition but also how it quickly became recognized as a unique and enduring representation of the infallible operation of Divine Justice in the universe. We will also consider the extensive visual influence of Dante’s poem on the figurative arts, as well as its voluminous illustrative tradition, ranging from medieval manuscript illuminations to modern interpretations.
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Date: 4/13/2015
Location: University of New Mexico
“Dante’s Vision of Heaven: Purgatory and Paradise as the Lands of the Living” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “Dante’s Vision of Heaven: Purgatory and Paradise as the Lands of the Living”
Abstract: This illustrated lecture looks at the written and visual traditions of Purgatory (very limited) and Paradise and their influence on Dante. In the Florentine poet’s day Purgatory was a fairly recent and underdeveloped idea; as a result, Dante enjoyed great artistic/poetic freedom in his invention of this transitional realm of the afterlife. We consider the many challenges Dante faced in composing Paradise, and specifically how to maintain the narrative of the pilgrim’s physical journey through the heavenly spheres and how to invent a language and a set of images that would convey the extraordinary and ineffable experience of Paradise concluding with the beatific vision of the Triune God. We examine the large body of illustrative materials that accompany Dante’s poem from early manuscript illuminations to the present.
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Date: 4/16/2015
Location: University of New Mexico
“Dante, Florence, Italy: Then and Now” (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: “Dante, Florence, Italy: Then and Now”
Abstract: In 2021 we mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death, and it would appear that, even after seven centuries, his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, will continue to be the focus of academic discussions and research and to exert its hold on the popular imagination in films, novels, and computer games that draw their inspiration from it. This presentation briefly examines the historical, socio-political, literary and artistic contexts in which Dante lived and wrote and, moreover, investigates the many reasons for his and his poem’s initial and continuing importance in Western civilization. It seeks answers to a number of questions, among which the following: Who was Dante Alighieri and why did he write the Comedy? Why should his poem have had such great and enduring success? How and why are Dante and the Comedy still relevant in the modern world? In the course of the richly illustrated presentation we consider many examples of Dante’s influence on literary, artistic and popular cultures over the centuries, with special attention to his impact on contemporary society.
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Date: 4/3/2014
Location: Madison, WI