Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

  • Submit a Citing
  • Map
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • User’s Guide
  • Teaching Resources
  • About

After Hours: Dante – Heaven and Hell at Dante Season 2021

February 14, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

dante_after_hours_poster

On November 13, 2021, the collaborative effort behind Dante in Oxford hosted the “After Hours” event. The event was described as follows:

“An exciting ‘after hours’ programme of activities at the Ashmolean Museum showcasing the diverse range of researchers and performers who are connected to Dante.

“Oxford will be alive with opportunities to celebrate Dante in 2021 — exactly 700 years since the great poet’s death. Best known for his astonishing Divine Comedy — a three-stage epic poem, narrating a journey through the afterlife from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven, with all of human history, knowledge, love, and life encountered on the way — Dante was an advisor to princes, a political exile, and a revolutionary poet.”    —TORCH (retrieved February 13, 2022)

One of the “performers” at this event was a robotic poet named Ai-da; view our post about her poetry here.

More information about the “After Hours” event and its programming (which included live performances and other exhibits) can be found here.

Other Dante in Oxford posts can be found here.

Categories: Performing Arts, Places
Tagged with: 2021, 700th anniversary, British Poetry, Dante in Oxford, Exhibits, Oxford, Performances, Poetry, United Kingdom

Robot artist to perform Al generated poetry in response to Dante

January 20, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

robot_aida_performing_dante_inspired_poetry

“Dante’s Divine Comedy has inspired countless artists, from William Blake to Franz Liszt, and from Auguste Rodin to CS Lewis. But an exhibition marking the 700th anniversary of the Italian poet’s death will be showcasing the work of a rather more modern devotee: Ai-Da the robot, which will make history by becoming the first robot to publicly perform poetry written by its AI algorithms.

“The ultra-realistic Ai-Da, who was devised in Oxford by Aidan Meller and named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, was given the whole of Dante’s epic three-part narrative poem, the Divine Comedy, to read, in JG Nichols’ English translation. She then used her algorithms, drawing on her data bank of words and speech pattern analysis, to produce her own reactive work to Dante’s.

“‘We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives, / Sent out to seek the light; but it never came,’ runs one of her poems. ‘A needle and thread would be necessary / For the completion of the picture. / To view the poor creatures, who were in misery, / That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut.’

“In another, Ai-Da writes: ‘There are some things, that are so difficult – so incalculable. / The words are not intelligible to the human ear; / She can only speculate what they mean.'” [. . .]    –Alison Flood, The Guardian, November 26, 2021 (retrieved January 19, 2022)

Categories: Digital Media, Performing Arts, Written Word
Tagged with: AI, British Poetry, Computers, Oxford, Poems, Poetry, Programing, Robots, Technology, United Kingdom

The English Cantos: Journeys with Dante

November 3, 2021 By Hannah Raisner, FSU '25

screenshot-of-english-cantos-home-page

“You have, through some unfathomable twist of destiny, arrived in a dark and lonesome wood, wherein the straight road no longer lies. Here, in these hallowed pages, you will read of a descent into the depths of the inferno, where light is but a memory. Here, you will find The English Cantos.

Like Dante before him, the poet James Sale takes us on a journey into a contemporary vision of hell and heaven, based off his near-death experience in Ward 17 of Bournemouth General. The English Cantos is an epic told in 33 cantos, using the terza rima of Dante, standing four-square against the meaninglessness of post-modernism. As Virgil guided Dante, so too Dante will guide James on this incredible journey.”    –The English Cantos

The blog chronicles James Sale’s efforts to create a contemporary epic of heaven and hell in the style of Dante.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: Blog, British Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, England, Poetry, Terza Rima

Categories

  • Consumer Goods (194)
  • Digital Media (126)
  • Dining & Leisure (107)
  • Music (190)
  • Odds & Ends (91)
  • Performing Arts (361)
  • Places (132)
  • Visual Art & Architecture (416)
  • Written Word (845)

Random Post

  • The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, S03E01

Frequent Tags

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 700th anniversary Abandon All Hope America American Politics Art Artists Beatrice Blogs Books California Circles of Hell Comics Dark Wood Divine Comedy England Fiction Films Florence France Games Gates of Hell Hell History Humor Illustrations Inferno Internet Italian Italy Journalism Journeys Literary Criticism Literature Love Music New York City Non-Fiction Novels Paintings Paolo and Francesca Paradise Paradiso Performance Art Poetry Politics Purgatorio Purgatory Religion Restaurants Reviews Rock Science Fiction Sculptures Social Media Technology Television Tenth Circle Theater Translations United Kingdom United States Universities Video Games Virgil

ALL TAGS »

Image Mosaic

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

Creative

 





© 2006-2023 Dante Today
research.bowdoin.edu