Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“Dante Is the Elephant in the Room” Church Life Journal Article

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elephant-image“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.

 

The Lost Daughter, Film by Maggie Gyllenhaal (2021)

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promotional-poster-for-the-lost-daughter-featuring-olivia-coleman-sitting-on-a-beach“The Lost Daughter by Maggie Gyllenhaal is a 2021 film adaptation of the 2006 Elena Ferrante novel of the same name. The novel’s protagonist, Leda, is an Italian woman who works as an English Literature professor. Since the film is in English, Gyllenhaal decides to make some setting changes, and Leda becomes a professor working on Italian Literature instead in the film. For this reason, in a scene from the movie, we can see Leda working on some texts, among which is Dante’s Comedy. The frame shows the books just for a few seconds, but it is clear that one of them is open on the first Canto of Paradiso. Even if shown just for a few seconds, the specific text in Leda’s book is significant in connection to the whole movie. The insertion of Dante in the film is both the consequence of the adaptation of the book in a foreign setting and an homage from the director to Ferrante and the whole Italian literary tradition.”    –Contributor Martina Franzini

Contributed by Martina Franzini, Johns Hopkins University

“Meeting the Shadow: From Dante’s Inferno to a World of Compassion” (2011)

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circular-ring-in-the-center-of-a-book-with-a-heart-shaped-shadow“In European mythology, this specific process of self-discovery (meeting the shadow) is usually depicted as the hero literally descending into the underworld and meeting the dead. Whether it’s in The Odyssey or The Divine Comedy or the Harry Potter tales (in which Harry frequently visits past events), the first part of the process involves going into a netherworld that allows the traveler (and the reader) to think differently about the nature of the everyday world.

[. . .]

“Dante’s message is clear, though: he asks us to observe what the tendencies are that keep these poor souls stuck in Hell.  When we see these failings in others, we can know them, avoid them, and as we learn from them we will grow in compassion. For we will see that these faults lies within each of us, too. Only then can we move beyond these ego-longings that will stop us from experiencing synchronicity.

[. . .]

“As Dante proceeds, he leaves the realm of men and sin far behind, and under the care of Beatrice he finds his way toward Heaven and the Virgin Mary. Whether we believe in a Christian worldview or not, the psy­chic process Dante describes is important. Dante, we notice, is now in a more female world. Virgil, the male poet, has guided Dante, the male poet, through Hell and through Purgatory, but Virgil cannot take Dante all the way on this spiritual journey: the pure saintly Beatrice, a woman, is the only one who can guide Dante forward now.

“To spell this out simply: the idealized virginal Beatrice leads the poet to the ideal female, the pure mother symbol of the Virgin Mary.

“What Dante learns after understanding the destructive part of himself and rejecting it, leaving it behind in Hell, is that only then can his real salvation befound, in this opposite-sex world of gentleness and love. [. . .]”  — Dr. Allan G. Hunter, “Meeting the Shadow: From Dante’s Inferno to a World of Compassion,” InnerSelf, June 1, 2011

Excerpted from Allan G. Hunter’s book The Path of Synchronicity: Align Yourself with Your Life’s Flow (Findhorn Press, 2011).

“Literature as Self Help – The Life Lessons of Dante’s Divine Comedy” (2015 Blogpost)

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Dante-Alighieri-Reading-With-His-Head-In-His-Hand“Why do we teach literature? What’s the point of studying history’s ‘stories?’ Most English teachers would acknowledge the focus of self discovery and character education in the novels we teach. In fact, the standard has long been to recognize literature as a ‘record of the human experience.’ We read to commiserate and learn and understand who we are on both an individual and global historical scale.

“That’s what makes Rod Dreher’s recent [2015] piece for the Wall Street Journal so cool. Dreher, who is a columnist also known for his unique take on conservatism, offers a unique and surprising explanation of Dante’s Divine Comedy as a classic of self help – ‘The Ultimate Self Help Book: Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s not just a classic of world literature; it’s the most astonishing self help book of all time.’ Dreher explains his own personal struggles and the coping mechanisms he picked up from Dante after browsing the classic in a bookstore.” [. . .]    –Posted by mmazenko, “Literature as Self Help – The Life Lessons of Dante’s Divine Comedy,” A Teacher’s View, March 20, 2015

Eugenio Montale, Nobel Lecture (1975)

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eugenio-montale“It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip. Strangely, Dante’s Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries. But if you study French prose before and after the school of Ronsard, the Pléiade, you will observe that French prose has lost that softness for which it was judged to be so inferior to the classical languages and has taken a veritable leap towards maturity. The effect has been curious. The Pléiade does not produce collections of homogeneous poems like those of the Italian dolce stil nuovo (which is certainly one of its sources), but it gives us from time to time true ‘antique pieces’ which could be put in a possible imaginary museum of poetry.”  –Eugenio Montale, Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture (1975)

Read the full lecture here.

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Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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