A Hell of a City: Infernal Rome Inferno 18, 27
Get ready to embark on your own Journey to Italy. The first series of this Book Club is a guide to a few iconic moments in the Inferno (Hell), the first part of the Divine Comedy written by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) to recount a pilgrimage he made through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise in the year 1300 on a quest for salvation. In counterpoint to the jubilee proclaimed in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, the poet’s great political nemesis, Dante’s journey in the poem is represented as a pilgrimage to a heavenly Rome ‘where Christ Himself is Roman’. In the four meetings of this book club we will be reading the following cantos: Inferno 1-2; Inferno 5; Inferno 13, Inferno 18 and 27.
A Hell of a City: Infernal Rome Inferno 18, 27
In Inferno 18 Dante and Virgil enter Malebolge (or Evil Pouches) in the eighth circle of Hell where fraud is punished. In the first pouch, the crowd of panderers and seducers conjures up the image of the pilgrims who go to Rome for the first jubilee promoted by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, the same year in which Dante’s journey is set. Inferno 27 narrates the encounter with Guido da Montefeltro, a fraudulent counselor to the same Pope Boniface VIII. This infernal portrait of the holy city and its Pope leads up to the encounter with Satan at the bottom of Hell and the lowest point in the Cosmos. In preparation for the meeting, some resources are dedicated to introductory material, including ‘instructions for use’ on ThinkND.
Join the live meeting on Wednesday, February 3rd, at 1 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. EST with Ted Cachey and David Lummus , Co-directors of the Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies, and Chiara Sbordoni, Italian faculty at the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway, for a discussion of Dante’s Inferno 18 and 27.
Register to participate and submit any question in advance.
Meet the Faculty
Theodore J. Cachey, Professor of Italian and the Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Family Director of Dante and Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Co-Director of the Center for Italian Studies. He specializes in Italian Medieval and Renaissance literature, in particular Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the history of the Italian language, and the literature and history of travel.
David Lummus, Co-Director of the Center for Italian Studies, Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian.
Chiara Sbordoni, Adjunct Professor of Italian at the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway.