Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Tyler E. Boudreau, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine (2008)

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tyler-e-boudreau-author-of-packing-inferno-the-unmaking-of-a-marine“Mr. Boudreau’s book, Packing Inferno (Feral House, $16.95), is an uncompromising narrative of his experiences in Iraq and his struggle to deal with the human consequences, both in the Middle East and, later, at home. His writing is vivid, detailed and filled with emotion.

“The book’s title refers to his having discovered that, among other books, he had packed Dante’s Inferno when he was deployed to Iraq, in what appeared to be a prescient move as the months went by. Mr. Boudreau writes this about a few tense moments when he and his men had to decide what to do when a truck heading in the wrong direction barreled toward them on the shoulder of the road” [. . .]    –Pamela H. Sacks, Telegram, March 1, 2009

Deathink’s “Abandon All Hope” Poster on Etsy

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Signed poster listed on Etsy by Deathink, owner of the Official Deathink Shop (last accessed October 18, 2021).

Content of the poster based on Rusty Cage’s Requiem of the Crazies comic series, posted on Dante Today here. Deathink’s “Virgil” cites Mandelbaum’s translation of Inferno 20.27-28: “Ancor se’ tu de li altri sciocchi? / Qui vive la pietà quand’ è ben morta.”

 

Martin Kemp, Visions of Heaven: Dante and the Art of Divine Light (2021)

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visions-of-heaven-dante-and-the-art-of-divine-light-martin-kemp-cover“In Visions of Heaven, renowned scholar Martin Kemp investigates Dante’s supreme vision of divine light and its implications for the visual artists who were the inheritors of Dante’s vision. The whole book may be regarded as a new Paragone (comparison), the debate that began in the Renaissance about which of the arts is superior. Dante’s ravishing accounts of divine light set painters the severest challenge, which took them centuries to meet. A major theme running through Dante’s Divine Comedy, particularly in its third book, the Paradiso, centres on Dante s acts of seeing (conducted according to optical rules with respect to the kind of visual experience that can be accomplished on earth) and the overwhelming of Dante s earthly senses by heavenly light, which does not obey his rules of earthly optics. [. . .] Published to coincide with the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, this hugely original book combines a close reading of Dante’s poetry with analysis of early optics and the art of the Renaissance and Baroque to create a fascinating, wide-ranging and visually exciting study.”    — Amazon (retrieved October 18, 2021)

Visions of Dante Exhibit Highlighting Cornell University’s Fiske Dante Collection

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“Marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the exhibition of approximately 100 works in various media explores the visual nature of the Divine Comedy, which has inspired scholars and artists alike, from medieval times through today.

“Visions of Dante not only puts on display a large portion of the Fiske Collection for the first time. It also brings together works lent by notable institutions like the Morgan Library & Museum and 20th century and contemporary artists from William Blake to Salvador Dalí, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kara Walker.

“‘This exhibition reasserts the continued vibrancy of the Divine Comedy as a work of art, a work of literature, and shows the many ways in which visual artists have made their own personal interpretations and translations of that original text,’ says co-curator Andrew C. Weislogel, the Johnson’s Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator of Earlier European and American Art.” [. . .]    –Susan Kelley, Cornell Chronicle, September 29, 2021

The exhibit is held at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and runs from September 14 – December 19, 2021.

See more information and view an online version of the exhibit 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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