Dante's World: A Medieval and Renaissance Journey

700 years ago this year Dante Alighieri died. The Italian poet, philosopher, politician, and humanist crafted one of the great epics of world literature, The Divine Comedy. For seven centuries, his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven has been a source of inspiration and fascination for countless artists, critics, and students from all over the world. Yet, at heart, his tale is a commentary upon the complex, violent, wealthy, and deeply religious world to which Dante belonged. In this class, we will investigate Dante's world. Medieval Italy held a privileged place in Latin Christendom. Its location upon a peninsula, jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea, meant it was wedged between and deeply affected by the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. It was home to merchants, bankers, nobles, university students, friars, nuns, and heretics, popes, prostitutes, and the city-states in which they all lived together. Italy played a leading role throughout the Middle Ages in economy, art, culture, religion, and politics and gives us the opportunity to jump into a rich and fascinating world, much different from our own. Our guide and witness to this world will be Dante. Each week students will read selected portions of Dante's journey through the afterlife in order to make their own journey through the world of Italy in the Middle Ages.