Dante in English Translation: Dante's World and the Invention of Modernity

Primarily for students with no knowledge of Italian. Given in English. Concentrators in Italian should enroll in ITAL 1610 ; they are expected to read the material in the original. Close study and discussion of Dante's deployment of systems of retribution in the Inferno and rehabilitation in the Purgatorio with a view to imagining a society based on love and resistant to the effects of nascent capitalism and the money economy. Dante's work summarizes and transforms the entire ancient and medieval tradition of literature, philosophy, and science.