Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) was a monumental Italian poet, writer, and philosopher, universally celebrated as the “Father of the Italian Language.” He is best known for his epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, a profound allegorical journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. His writing seamlessly blends deep Catholic theology, medieval philosophy, and psychological insight, creating an enduring blueprint for the Christian spiritual imagination.
Dante’s Circle of Knowledge
What can great works of art teach us? How do they speak of the joys and trials of our everyday lives?
There is so much to recommend about Giuseppe Mazzotta’s Yale course on Dante in Translation that it’s difficult to know where to start. So, why not start at the beginning?
In the opening chapter of Mazzotta’s Reading Dante, a revised transcript of the lecture series, he traces a vision of Dante’s masterpiece as a kind of encyclopaedia, or ‘circle of knowledge’, that follows the path of a human life.
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