Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

700th Anniversary Exhibit at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2022)

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“To mark the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri (1265–321) the Kupferstichkabinett is showing selections from two woodcut series from the 1920s.

“The series are by the Danish artist Ebba Holm and the German Klaus Wrage. Both deal in multifaceted ways with Dante’s literary magnum opus The Divine Comedy – and thereby with his virtual journey through Hell, up the Purgatorial mountain and on to Paradise.

“Not only will additional works by Odilon Redon, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Willy Jaeckel be on display, but also coloured computer drawings by Berlin artist Andreas Siekmann (born in 1961) from his 94-part complex Die Exklusive – Zur Politik des ausgeschlossenen Vierten (The Exclusive – On the Politics of the Excluded Fourth) (2002–2011). In several series from Die Exklusive Siekmann depicts particularly contemporary journeys to Hell undertaken by Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil.” [. . .]    —Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The exhibition will be open from February 12, 2022 to May 8, 2022.

See also: the Kupferstichkabinett gallery webpage, linked here.

See our posts on Klaus Wrage here.

Dante’s Divine Comedy Sent Into Space

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“…A copy of the entire Divine Comedy, micro-inscribed on sheets of a titanium and gold alloy, will be sent up into space and left there to float in the heavens among the stars that Dante wrote about.

The last word in each of the three parts is ‘stelle’ (stars), including the famous final line which defines God as ‘The love that moves the sun and the other stars.’

For the space project, two sheets measuring about 29 cm by 43 cm (11 X 17 inches) and folded in four, accordion style, will each be inscribed with the entire poem of some 14,200 lines containing about 32,000 words.”    –Phillip Pullella, Reuters, June 10, 2021

Katherine Powlesland, Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante’s Divine Comedy (2021)

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videogame-theory-in-katherine-powleslands-narrative-strategies-for-participation-in-dantes-divine-comedy-2021“Katherine Powlesland’s new book Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which will be Italian Perspectives 53, brings an entirely new angle to Dante studies. This is a bold claim, given that Dante studies is enjoying its 700th anniversary this year, but Katherine is bringing to bear theories from cognitive neuroscience and from the critical study of videogames, so I think we can be fairly sure that the medieval scholiasts did not get there before her. But there is a certain affinity between the desire of modern game writers, and the desire of 13th-century epic poets, to enmesh their readers in a participatory experience.

“An immersive game today, or a text like the Divine Comedy or the Roman de la Rose, very much want the reader to experience for herself: to be in that wood, to find her way around that wall, to look into that mirror-like pool with her own eyes. Katherine sees both media as governed by mechanics of narrative participation.” [. . .]    –“Bringing Video Game Theory to Dante,” Modern Humanities Research Association, June 27, 2021

The book will be released in 2022. See more information about it, in particular a discussion of its cover art, here.

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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