“Anyone familiar with the Western Literary Canon knows that the list of writers whose work has been informed by Dante is practically endless. My students cannot adequately understand most books from the past—as well as many books written in our own time—without knowing Dante. As a professor, I cannot teach a course in literature without frequent discussion of Dante, even if he is not on the syllabus. Dante is the elephant in the room.”
[. . .]
“It is safe to conclude that without Dante, these few works of fiction and poetry (along with many others) written over the past seven centuries would not exist—certainly not in the ingenious, artful forms they exist in currently. Though it may be impossible to state with any accuracy or completeness the enormous debt art and literature of the past and present owes to Dante, it is necessary to try.” –Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Church Life Journal
Read the article here.
