COML5320 - After Dante’s Divine Comedy: Transmission and Material Form, Creative Adaptation and Performance

This 5000-level seminar, co-taught by Marco Aresu (Italian) and David Wallace (English, Comparative Literature), considers how Dante and the copyists of his works deployed the tools of scribal culture to shape, signal, or layer meanings beyond those conveyed in his written texts. Medieval texts, uniquely positioned to provide such perspective, are foundational to theoretical understanding of new forms and materials in our media-saturated, contemporary world. In this course, we also read later creative responses to Dante, especially in Irish and English, American and African American contexts, and in poetry and prose, video and film. We will work from a parallel text, paying attention to the Italian but with no prior experience of the language required.