Dante's Divine Comedy (Audiobook)
| Date: 12 April 2011, 04:21
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Two gifted teachers share the fruit of two lifetimes' worth of historical and literary expertise in this introduction to one of the greatest works ever written.
One of the most profound and satisfying of all poems, the Divine Comedy (or Commedia) of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is a book for life.
In a brilliantly constructed narrative of his imaginary guided pilgrimage through the three realms of the Christian afterlife—hell, purgatory, and heaven—Dante accomplished a literary task of astonishing complexity.
[list][*]He created an unforgettable gallery of characters.
[*]He poetically explored a host of concerns both universal and particular, timely and timeless.
[*]He tapped the combined riches of the biblical and classical traditions in a synthesis that forever placed Western writers in his debt as they tried to build on his foundation.
[/list]James Joyce might have been speaking for those writers when he exclaimed, "Dante is my spiritual food!"
[b]Geographer of the Cosmos, Student of the Soul[/b]
The full achievement of the Commedia, however, goes far beyond anything merely "literary."
Dante is a geographer of the cosmos and a student of the soul. His range spans not only the heights of heaven and the depths of hell but also the recesses of the human heart.
As Dante the pilgrim makes his journey, Dante the poet dramatizes and asks us to reflect on fundamental questions:
[list][*]What is the quality of our moral actions?
[*]How does spiritual transformation come about?
[*]What is the nature of good and evil, virtue and vice, sin and sanctity?
[*]Why is the world so full of strife?
[*]How do we go on when we lose things we love, as Dante—through exile—lost his native Florence?
[*]What role do reading and writing play in human life?
[/list]In the seven centuries since the Commedia was written, not one of these questions has lost its force.
Moreover, Dante addresses them in a demanding and innovative Italian verse form called terza rima. His complex arrangement of materials makes the Commedia one of the great virtuoso pieces of world literature.
[hide=Course Lecture Titles][list][*]1. Reading the Poem—Issues and Editions
[*]2. A Poet and His City—Dante's Florence
[*]3. Literary Antecedents, I
[*]4. Literary Antecedents, II
[*]5. “Abandon Every Hope, All You Who Enter”
[*]6. The Never-Ending Storm
[*]7. Heretics
[*]8. The Seventh Circle—The Violent
[*]9. The Sin of Simony
[*]10. The False Counselors
[*]11. The Ultimate Evil
[*]12. The Seven-Story Mountain
[*]13. Purgatory's Waiting Room
[*]14. The Sin of Pride
[*]15. The Vision to Freedom
[*]16. Homage to Virgil
[*]17. Dante's New Guide
[*]18. Ascending the Spheres
[*]19. An Emperor Speaks
[*]20. The Circle of the Sun—Saints and Sages
[*]21. A Mission Revealed—Encounter with an Ancestor
[*]22. Can a Pagan Be Saved?
[*]23. Faith, Hope, Love, and the Mystic Empyrean
[*]24. "In My End Is My Beginning"
[/list][/hide]
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