Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“O.N.C.E. in Hell: Dante’s Inferno in Ten Courses”

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“After a smashing success in December of 2009, O.N.C.E. in Hell returns to OBERON for one night only and features ten courses of locally sourced food and a theatrical journey through the rings of hell of Dante’s Inferno. Food is by Cuisine en Locale, who offer O.N.C.E (One Night Culinary Events) throughout the city, highlighting seasonally appropriate local food. Allegra Libonati, Artistic Associate at the A.R.T, and Steven Mitchell Wright, Movement Director for Cabaret, create the performance and the cast will be filled with familiar faces from the A.R.T. and OBERON.
Virgil, your Maitre D’, will lead you through the nine circles of hell in search of the love of your life, Beatrice, who has summoned you from beyond the grave. Meet furies, a three-headed dog and a cast of wild characters as they serve you not only your meal but also a night of devilish entertainment.”    —American Repertory Theater (retrieved on November 21, 2010)

“…a 10-course, three-hour meal designed to reflect the famous Italian poet’s uniquely described ‘circles of hell.’ (In its first, sell-out staging last year, plates included ‘Beelzebub’s Burgers’ and ‘Tofu Wellington’ – the tofu being used in place of beef for the fraud circle…”    –Scott Kearnan, Stuff Boston, October 4, 2010

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

“Allan Sandage, Astronomer, Dies at 84; Charted Cosmos’s Age and Expansion”

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“… In 1949, Dr. Sandage was a young Caltech graduate student, a self-described ‘hick who fell off the turnip truck,’ when he became the observing assistant for Edwin Hubble, the Mount Wilson astronomer who discovered the expansion of the universe.
Hubble had planned an observing campaign using a new 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain in California to explore the haunting questions raised by that mysterious expansion. If the universe was born in a Big Bang, for example, could it one day die in a Big Crunch? But Hubble died of a heart attack in 1953, just as the telescope was going into operation. So Dr. Sandage, a fresh Ph.D. at 27, inherited the job of limning the fate of the universe.
‘It would be as if you were appointed to be copy editor to Dante,’ Dr. Sandage said. ‘If you were the assistant to Dante, and then Dante died, and then you had in your possession the whole of The Divine Comedy, what would you do?'” [. . .]    –Dennis Overbye, The New York Times, November 17, 2010

“9 Circles” by Bill Cain S.J.

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9-circles-bill-cain“Jesuit playwright Bill Cain S.J., has penned a new and searingly powerful play. Just a year after his earlier successful play about the gun powder plot, Equivocation (see my review), Cain portrays in his new play, 9 Circles, a character, Daniel Reeves, as a disturbed 19-year old snarled in the web of war…
“The title, 9 Circles, refers, of course, to Dante’s Inferno, the 9 circles of hell. In the play, Reeves, successively, shifts from a rigid, brainwashed Army killer to a finger twitching 19-year-old grunt to, in a final soliloquy, some profound self-knowledge and forgiveness.” [. . .]    –John Coleman, S.J. America, November 9, 2010

See a boston.com review.

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

Hell’s Half Acre, Lazarides Gallery London, October 12-17, 2010

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hells-half-acre-lazarides-gallery-london-2010“Dante: no other medieval author continues to exert such an extraordinary force on the modern imagination. Those who’ve read his Comedia never recover; those who’ve never read him still feel like they know the Inferno, and because it has become such a cultural norm, they probably do know it. At Cambridge, Prof. Robin Kirkpatrick has been undertaking a massive critical and creative engagement with Dante over the past couple of years in a project entitled Performance, as well as a conference at CRASSH entitled Pain in Performance and ‘Moving Beauty’. This year, on October 30th, Performance 2010 will further explore Dante and other texts in a series of performances, music, dance, art and drawings.” [. . .]    —Miglior Acque, October 22, 2010

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

“Supernatural” and Dante’s Purgatory

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supernatural-and-dantes-purgatoryIn a 2010 episode of the TV show Supernatural, the alpha vampire makes a reference to Dante citing the very real location of Purgatory. The vampire says that the King of Hell is looking for this place because it is where the souls of vampires, and other creatures, go when they die; and he is also interested in it because of its proximity to heaven.    –Taylor Beaver

See the article by Sandra Gonzalez in Entertainment Weekly, November 6, 2010

Contributed by Taylor Beaver (University of Texas – Austin, ’11)

Season 5, Episode 10 of Supernatural, is titled “Abandon All Hope…” and aired in 2009.

Contributed by Stella Mattioli, University of Virginia ’15

How to Cite

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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