The Divine Comedy

[Key2gb]

Dante's Divine Comedy is one of my favorite works of literature....and for those of you who are not familiar with it or just can't be bothered to read the text, I found a great website depicting Dante's work...have a look

http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/

[kascak]

yeah i've been interested in it since like 10th grade when i first learned about it. Except in my class we only were taught the inferno and not anything about paradise. It's just interesting to learn about the era when this was wrote and the mind set of people back then. this was prolly something the kids werent allowed to read

[TheNightGoes90]

I had a class in undergrad that was entirely focused on Dante. We read the whole Divine Comedy as well as a few books designed to help explain the symbolism and the historical context.

We had to write reflection papers correlating things that have happened in our lives with the particular portion of the text we were reading at the time. Sounds lame, but it was one of the most intellectually and philosophically stimulating experiences I've ever had.

Enjoy it.

[Durchii]

I've read most of the Inferno insofar and am really looking forward to finishing up the entire... 'trilogy', as it were.

Great, great stuff. The classics will never get old.

[thrice54]

I've read the entire thing and I studied it as a philosophical text. It is one of the most beautiful and brilliant things I've ever read. What most people who study it from a literary standpoint miss is the actual concepts and philosophical tradition that Dante is explaining through his prose. He first begins to write it after he is exiled from his native Florence, he likely intended it to be a means of justifiying himself to his peers back in Florence in hopes of being allowed to return, that never happened though. Once, you get to one of the final canto's of paradise right before Dante is about to see God. He actually pauses to say to the reader that if that have not had any education in the philosophy and history that he has then they should not read any further, lest they be destroyed by the awesome power of God.

If anybody is looking for a good translation to get into I suggest the penguin classics trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. She has some really good notes in there that detail a lot of what Dante is talking about. Sayers is pretty cool to she was amongst the Tolkien and T.S. Elliot circle of scholars at Oxford.

[Key2gb]

Originally Posted by thrice54

I've read the entire thing and I studied it as a philosophical text. It is one of the most beautiful and brilliant things I've ever read. What most people who study it from a literary standpoint miss is the actual concepts and philosophical tradition that Dante is explaining through his prose. He first begins to write it after he is exiled from his native Florence, he likely intended it to be a means of justifiying himself to his peers back in Florence in hopes of being allowed to return, that never happened though. Once, you get to one of the final canto's of paradise right before Dante is about to see God. He actually pauses to say to the reader that if that have not had any education in the philosophy and history that he has then they should not read any further, lest they be destroyed by the awesome power of God.

If anybody is looking for a good translation to get into I suggest the penguin classics trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. She has some really good notes in there that detail a lot of what Dante is talking about. Sayers is pretty cool to she was amongst the Tolkien and T.S. Elliot circle of scholars at Oxford.

i know what you mean...i was introduced to the series last year in one of my classes and it, along with mythology, really changed the way I look at literature...the symbolism of each punishment and layout of the inferno intrigued me to no end...I ended up writing my final paper about the Inferno and it was one of the only literary analysis papers I actually enjoyed writing (the other two i can recall were the Iliad and the book of Genesis)

edit: the editions we used were the Penguin Classics too

[thrice54]

Cool, I wrote a paper this year on inferno too, but it was on explaining the philosophical structure through the organizing principle of hell. That was kind of fun, and then I had to write one on purgatory explaining it in a similiar way.

How did you analysis it literarly? I know most people usually study it that way, but I haven't. How did you guys talk about it?

[Key2gb]

Originally Posted by thrice54

Cool, I wrote a paper this year on inferno too, but it was on explaining the philosophical structure through the organizing principle of hell. That was kind of fun, and then I had to write one on purgatory explaining it in a similiar way.

How did you analysis it literally? I know most people usually study it that way, but I haven't. How did you guys talk about it?

i spent a lot of time on why fraud was the 9th circle and the symbolism of the ice instead of the fire one would expect to see in the depths of hell....i went through a lot of the metaphors of crime vs. corresponding punishment and why they fit, and also a good deal about the first few Cantos before Dante enters hell and the metaphors of Virgil and Beatrice

I took a mythology course in high school that changed my life...enabled me to see the underlying themes and symbols in everything i read or watch...and The Divine Comedy was like the mother-load of metaphor...i could write for days on it

[I-wish-I-was]

I'm actually getting a Salvador Dali tattoo sleeve with a bunch of his Divine Comedy series done... getting the first peace in two weeks
Dante's Inferno, after numerous readings and studying... is easily the greatest piece of literature ever written in my opinion.

[thrice54]

^ Agreed.
Key2gb: Yeah, there is alot of symbolism, I've studied a great deal of greek mythology and others mythologies. My first year of university was spent around the theme of myth and symbol. This year was more reason and revelation, which is why I studied a whole bunch of philosohy (in the continental tradition). I read the Iliad, oddyssey, a whole bunch of plays by different greek writers, the epic of gilgamesh, the rig veda's and upanishads, all kinds of stuff from all over the place. So finally getting to Dante at the end of second year was really kind of epic.

I love the use of ice to symbolism inaction and how that means that those who are in this circle are farthest from what it means to be human because they can't act. (Highest human good=happiness=an rational acitvity of the soul in accordance with virture.) So those in fraud have brought themselves to the farthest point away from being able to achieve this. The fruadulent are the worst, because they actively try and destroy the polis which is the neccessary condition for human happiness and contemplation. This is a lot of Aristotle mixed with the neoplatonics and Boethius, but basically Aristotle says that man is a political animal, so the polis(or city) is neccessary.

Also, it's so chalked full of metaphors, because Dante is trying to talk about God, and the conditions neccessary for a good existance, which according to boethian/neo-platonic philosophy is a concept that can't be fully comprehend through discursive thought. So Dante uses poetic images to convey the philosophical ideas in the clearest way that they can be through words.

[Key2gb]

Originally Posted by thrice54

I love the use of ice to symbolism inaction and how that means that those who are in this circle are farthest from what it means to be human because they can't act. (Highest human good=happiness=an rational acitvity of the soul in accordance with virture.) So those in fraud have brought themselves to the farthest point away from being able to achieve this. The fruadulent are the worst, because they actively try and destroy the polis which is the neccessary condition for human happiness and contemplation. This is a lot of Aristotle mixed with the neoplatonics and Boethius, but basically Aristotle says that man is a political animal, so the polis(or city) is neccessary.

I wrote a paper connecting the Iliad, Beowulf, and the Inferno under the topic of why treason/fraudulence puts us the farthest away from "God" (i put "God" in quotes because I explained that as a metaphor as well)...this is why I love myth/literature...it shows us universal truths

have you read anything by Northrop Frye?...check out The Educated Imagination...specifically "The Motive for Metaphor" if you ever find yourself with some time and nothing to do

[thrice54]

Sounds interesting I'll definitely check that out. I don't have anything really contemporary, but you'd probably find Plotinus' works to by really interesting I read Ennead V, but there six enneads in total. Plotinus and Neo-platonic thought actually have a huge influence on Christian theology/philosophy. During the first maybe five centuries CE the two were almost indistinguishable from the other in terms of their philosophical understanding of the cosmos.

[blueend]

Originally Posted by thrice54

Sounds interesting I'll definitely check that out. I don't have anything really contemporary, but you'd probably find Plotinus' works to by really interesting I read Ennead V, but there six enneads in total. Plotinus and Neo-platonic thought actually have a huge influence on Christian theology/philosophy. During the first maybe five centuries CE the two were almost indistinguishable from the other in terms of their philosophical understanding of the cosmos.

i dont know if it the greek blood responsible for this but i do love Plotinus too..if you like his work you should read Aristotle,Socrates and Protagoras too.
to come back on topic the divine comedy is really a diachronic epic poem full of philosophical allegories. if only you think it was written in the 14t century and survived to enlightment and to our days..anyone who hasnt read it yet i totally recomment it..

[thrice54]

I have read aristotle and plato I actually read their stuff first you know keeping all of that stuff in order. I did republic and a bunch of Plato's dialogues I still haven't read his timeaous yet though. Aristotle I read a bunch of the physics, metaphysics, ethics and other bits, but I haven't read it all. If you like plotinus you should continue from that and read Boethius' Consolation of philosophy.

[Palmer Eldritch]

The prize of my meager rare book collection is a set of first edition 1865 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated Divine Comedy, which besides a few water stains are in near mint condition. Its such a good version, it seems much more poetically written in the Romantic period vernacular than anything published recently. But honestly, I've never read it all the way through in that edition, I don't want to hurt the books.

The section in my shelves I like most is the one that contains everything from Machiavelli's The Prince to the Tibetan Book of the Dead to The Art of War to old art manuscripts like the Art of Graveing & Etching and Vesalius's De Humana Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem. Those old books actually taught you things important to everyone and its really interesting to see the path that knowledge has taken. Either being transported from one civilization to another and forgotten or arising simultaneously in different cultures. That pattern actually interests me more than what's in books contain sometimes.