divine comedy
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In this lecture, Professor Mazzotta examines Paradise XVIII-XIX and XXI-XXII. In Paradise XVIII, Dante enters the Heaven of Jupiter, where the souls of righteous rulers assume the form of an eagle, the emblem of the Roman Empire. The Eagle's outcry against the wickedness of Christian kings leads Dante to probe the boundaries of divine justice by looking beyond the confines of Christian Europe. By contrasting the political with the moral bo...more
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The last class of the semester consists of a brief recapitulation of topics in the Divine Comedy addressed throughout the course, followed by an extensive question and answer session with the students. The questions posed allow Professor Mazzotta to elaborate on issues raised over the course of the semester, from Dante's place within the medieval love tradition to the relationship between his roles as poet and theologian.
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Professor Kleiner discusses the transformation of Rome by its first emperor, Augustus, who claimed to have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. The conversion was made possible by the exploitation of new marble quarries at Luna (modern Carrara) on the northwest coast of Italy. The lecture surveys the end of the Roman Republic and the inauguration of the Principate and analyzes the Forum of Julius Caesar and the Forum of...more
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This lecture is devoted to the Vita nuova, Dante's autobiographical account of his "double apprenticeship" in poetry and love. The poet's love for Beatrice is explored as the catalyst for his search for a new poetic voice. Medieval theories of love and the diverse poetics they inspired are discussed in contrast. The novelty of the poet's final resolution is tied to the relationship he discovers between love and knowledge. This relationship...more
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The Jesus of the Gospel of John often speaks in riddles so that his dialogues with characters such as Nicodemus appear confusing, rather than clarifying. The focus, however, of the Gospel of John is on Christology. In the Gospel, Jesus is divine. So it is also in 1 John, where many of the themes of the Gospel are echoed. 1, 2, and 3 John possibly present us with correspondences of the Johannine community, a sectarian group insisting on the...more
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Professor Mazzotta introduces students to the Divine Comedy, focusing on the first four cantos of Inferno. Stylistic, thematic and formal features of the poem are discussed in the context of its original title, Comedy. The first canto is read to establish the double voice of the poet-pilgrim and to contrast the immanent journey with those described by Dante's literary precursors. Among these is the pilgrim's guide, Virgil. The following ca...more
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The course is an introduction to Dante and his cultural milieu through a critical reading of the Divine Comedy and selected minor works (Vita nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Epistle to Cangrande). An analysis of Dante's autobiography, the Vita nuova, establishes the poetic and political circumstances of the Comedy's composition. Readings of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise seek to situate Dante's work within the intellectual and soc...more
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Professor Mazzotta introduces students to the general scheme and scope of the Divine Comedy and to the life of its author. Various genres to which the poem belongs (romance, epic, vision) are indicated, and special attention is given to its place within the encyclopedic tradition. The poem is then situated historically through an overview of Dante's early poetic and political careers and the circumstances that led to his exile. Professor M...more
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Professor Kleiner discusses the increasing size of Roman architecture in the second and third centuries A.D. as an example of a "bigger is better" philosophy. She begins with an overview of tomb architecture, a genre that, in Rome as in Ostia, embraced the aesthetic of exposed brick as a facing for the exteriors of buildings. Interiors of second-century tombs, Professor Kleiner reveals, encompass two primary groups -- those that are decora...more
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In this lecture, Professor Mazzotta moves from the terrace of pride (Purgatory X-XII) to the terrace of wrath (Purgatory XVI-XVII). The relationship between art and pride, introduced in the previous lecture in the context of Canto X, is pursued along theological lines in the cantos immediately following. The "ludic theology" Dante embraces in these cantos resurfaces on the terrace of wrath, where Marco Lombardo's speech on the traditional ...more
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This lecture examines Inferno IV -VII. Dante's Limbo, modeled on the classical locus amoenus, is identified as a place of repose and vulnerability. Here, in fact, among the poets of antiquity, the pilgrim falls prey to poetic hubris by joining in their ranks. The pilgrim is faced with the consequences of his poetic vocation when he descends to the circle of lust (Inferno V), where Francesca da Rimini, in her failure to distinguish romance ...more
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Professor McBride outlines the course with its goals and requirements, including the required laboratory course. To the course's prime question "How do you know" he proposes two unacceptable answers (divine and human authority), and two acceptable answers (experiment and logic). He illustrates the fruitfulness of experiment and logic using the rise of science in the seventeenth century. London's Royal Society and the "crucial" experiment o...more
