An introduction to Dante's works in the cultural and historical context of the European Middle Ages.

These new Dante lectures for beginners take an interdisciplinary and cross-historical look at the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri and his world both through his texts and through the reception of his work and legacy up to the present day. Following the Dante year 2021, in spring 2022 we will consider 700 years of reading Dante, reading with Dante, re-writing Dante, and illustrating Dante in every possible textual and visual medium, and will take stock of the Dante year’s celebration and their coincidence with a modern-day plague year. Reading Dante, an author who physically died in Italy seven centuries ago, today in California, at Berkeley, is an act of engaging with the author’s heritage through its most long-lasting and relevant aspects: those of the meaning of language and personal memory for the self, of displacement and exile, resilience and recovery, self-reliance, and endurance of that which makes a human being last beyond their death. Classically, this work is about love and loss, death and redemption, hell and paradise. But its reading is also itself an enactment of purgatory, the realm of the in-between and of work that needs to be done to move oneself from Hell to Paradise when engaging with the author’s deeply personal themes of desire, depression, melancholy, hope, recovery, and personal triumph. While Dante has remained relevant as a classic of world literature with bearings on language, history, theology, and many more fields, this course will focus on Dante’s engagement of love, loss, and longing for a personal journey of self-discovery, self-criticism, and self-transformation. Themes of artistic and literary agency and authority will offer an opportunity for students to mirror Dante’s writing projects with their own work that is relevant to their lives, the COVID plague, and other contemporary themes that resonate with the Divine Comedy and other texts by Dante. Conducted in English, the course is open to majors from all fields. No previous art history or literature history preparation required. Italian and other non-English texts (such as French, Spanish,and German) will be introduced on a basic level as desired by the students. Object lessons in the Bancroft Rare Books and Manuscript Library and the Berkeley Art Museum will complement a variety of historical, art historical, media historical, and visual components of the class. This course is designed to connect with other and further studies in broad fields including but not limited to Medieval Studies, Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, critical theory, interdisciplinary studies, and literature studies. Students from all backgrounds are welcome; please email Prof. Lange to discuss your interest in the course and potential adjustments for majors outside the arts and humanities.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills