The Commedia (or Divine Comedy, as it is often called in English) is one of the most “important” poems in the Western literary tradition. Important is in quotation marks because it may seem a strange word to use for a poem nearly 700 years old, but it's appropriate, given the scope of Dante's accomplishment. He synthesized aspects of both the classical and the Judeo-Christian traditions into a single narrative that has formed a basis for Western writers ever since; he did so in a demanding verse form that makes the entire enterprise one of the great virtuoso pieces of the literary canon; and he did it in Italian, rather than in Latin, a choice which would not have seemed so inevitable in his day as it does to us and one which was to have a significant effect on the development of European vernacular literatures and languages. One of the defining characteristics of the Commedia is its wide range of specific reference to other texts, most importantly to the Bible, to Virgil's Aeneid, to Ovid's Metamorphoses, and to works by St. Augustine, but also to other works from the classical and medieval literary traditions. Readers who get hooked on Dante's poem inevitably find their cultural horizons expanding as Dante's text reveals other works that “must” be read or reread because Dante seems to require this. In addition, Dante's technique is usually to call attention not only to texts in general, but to specific episodes from them which become mini-narratives that clarify, comment upon, or help define his own larger enterprise.

And yet, as much as the Commedia is a learned poem that puts a heavy demand on its readers, it is also surprisingly accessible for the first-time reader, because Dante is such a superb storyteller, one who makes his work immediately compelling by providing the excitement and sense of adventure that move the reader through the poem's hundred cantos. Six weeks will give us time to read the poem slowly and carefully, immersing ourselves in its complexity, depth, and artistic coherence. To use a phrase originally coined by another NEH seminar director, we will go text-crawling through Dante.

Dante is also a remarkably “visual” poet: in a way analogous to his use of literary sources, he refers throughout the poem, in general and specific ways, to the artistic environment of his world, both the achievements of contemporary medieval artists and the material remains of ancient Rome and Byzantium. Dante's historical situation was a happy one for a person with these interests, for during his lifetime (1265-1321) and the decades immediately before and after, the European tradition of visual art was in a moment of transition similar to the change he was himself helping to define in literature, and the transition was taking place in the central and northern Italy in which he lived. As we will discuss later in this letter, Siena is a city filled with art produced during these years, so that our program will be able to coordinate the study of Dante's text with the art of his world on an ongoing basis. Finally, Dante is also a remarkably “situated” poet. He refers specifically and recurrently to Italy's hills and mountains and forests and urban spaces. Living in a city whose medieval architecture and whose town plan remain substantially intact and whose relationship with the surrounding countryside is much the same as it was in Dante's time will enable us to understand this aspect of the poem in a way possible only in an on-site program of study in central Italy. One consequence of the Commedia's astonishing range of references--literary, historical, artistic, environmental--is that studying the poem offers a way to examine the western cultural tradition both in microscopic depth and in telescopic breadth, and if spending six weeks doing this in one of the most beautifully preserved medieval cities in Europe sounds like an exciting prospect, then this may be the seminar for you.   

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.