Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“EVERY struggling young writer has been told ‘write what you know,’ despite a digital library’s worth of contradictory evidence. Stephen Crane never went to war. Ray Bradbury never went to space. Dante, as far as we know, never went to hell. And Vanessa Taylor has never been married.” [. . .] –John Anderson, The New York Times, August 3, 2012
“Lynda Gardner, Saundra Duncan, and Deborah Ranger will give a reading of a new play at a Harvard University conference next week. A different kind of alma mater qualifies them for this appearance: York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn., a high-security state facility for female offenders.
“While behind bars at York, all three joined theater workshops with Wesleyan University professor Ron Jenkins and students from his Activism and Outreach Through Theater course. They got to know Shakespeare and Dante, and it changed their lives.
“‘I spent my first six months [in York] trying to figure out ways to kill myself, and the next four and a half years trying to see how much more I can live,’ says Gardner.
“Inspired by these three and other inmates he worked with, Jenkins wrote a play about their existence behind bars, ‘To See the Stars,’ which mingles inmates’ stories with bits of Dante’s epic 14th-century poem, Divine Comedy.
“The women have their own perspective on ‘Divine Comedy.’ They tend to say that they are still working on its third part (Paradise) but that they are well versed in the first two (Hell and Purgatory).
“‘I’ve been in a lot of the circles of hell,’ says Gardner, 63. ‘It really isn’t about hell; it is about hope. Climbing out of those circles.’
“The trio will perform ‘To See the Stars’ on March 3 in a lightly staged reading at a Harvard conference on race, class, and education called Disrupting the Discourse: Discussing the ‘Undiscussable,’ sponsored by the Graduate School of Education’s Alumni of Color. The Harvard performance is open to conference participants only, but the public can attend a free performance at Brown University’s Lyman Hall in Providence on March 2 at 3:30 p.m.” — Joel Brown, Boston.com, February 12, 2012 (retrieved on July 9, 2012)
“Deviating from a repertory angle, but not necessarily from a historical one, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra presents two new works from within its ranks. “God’s Trombones,” by the trombonist Chris Crenshaw, draws inspiration from the identically titled book of free verse sermons, by James Weldon Johnson, published in 1927. And “Inferno,” by the saxophonist Sherman Irby, builds on the familiar theme by Dante, with music performed in collaboration with HopeBoykinDance.” —Jazz at Lincoln Center (retrieved on May 11, 2012)
See also: The New York Times, May, 10, 2012 (retrieved on May 11, 2012)
“In a drawing from 1966, ‘Heaps of Language,’ Robert Smithson assembled a pyramid of words about words: ‘Language’ at the apex, supported by ‘phraseology speech,’ ‘tongue lingo vernacular,’ and on down through a base of synonyms. The playful exhibition ‘Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language,’ opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, borrows Smithson’s title and runs wild with his vision of words as materials. . .
One could spend a long time here, listening to poets and staring at Bruce Nauman’s hypnotic flashing neon piece ‘Raw War.’ But that’s all prologue; the show begins, in earnest, with a short printed text by Sharon Hayes — one of four woven through the galleries and installed so close to the floor that you have to crouch down to read them. In these paragraphs Ms. Hayes puts herself forth as Virgil to the viewer’s Dante, though she also assumes the roles of spurned lover, diarist and political agitator.” [. . .] –Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times, May 3, 2012
“Fearless and impulsive, Dante is a rebel who always gets into trouble for pulling pranks. Basically, if you need somebody to rush in blinding and hit stuff really hard, Dante’s your guy.” —Cartoon Network
“Level Up, a Cartoon Network show, is about Wyatt, Lyle, Dante and Angie trying to stop the evil wizard Maldark from escaping the MMO game known as Conqueror of All Worlds.”
Contributed by Gianluca P., 3rd Grade
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
