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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Enrico Castelli Gattinara, Come Dante può salvarti la vita (Giunti, 2019)

December 20, 2019 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Enrico-Castelli-Gattinara-Come-Dante-puo-salvarti-la-vita-2019“Nell’era dell’effetto Dunning-Kruger, quella distorsione per cui chi meno sa più crede di sapere, è bello scoprire che invece ci sono stati casi – e tanti – in cui sapere, ricordare, rievocare ha fatto letteralmente la differenza tra vivere o morire, tra fortuna e miseria, tra resistenza e disperazione. E non il conoscere pratiche estreme di sopravvivenza, ma il fatto di riportare alla mente il brano di un grande classico imparato a memoria ai tempi della scuola, di sapere come posare le dita su uno strumento musicale, di riuscire a immaginare un dipinto o poter scattare una fotografia, di comprendere, se non interpretare, un’opera teatrale. Il fatto di avere l’opportunità di accedere alla cultura. Sì, alla cultura. Enrico Castelli Gattinara tutti i giorni deve trovare il modo per convincere i suoi ragazzi che conoscere serve. E quando loro sbuffano alla richiesta di imparare qualche verso di Dante a memoria, comincia a raccontare loro la storia di un uomo che grazie a quelle terzine è sopravvissuto al campo di concentramento.”    — Giunti catalog

Contributed by Jessica Beasley (Florida State University ’18)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Culture, Education, Italy, Non-Fiction, Self-Help

What Rod Dreher Ought to Know About Dante and Same-Sex Love

July 15, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“Dante saved my life,” testifies Rod Dreher, senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative, in his recent book, How Dante Can Save Your Life (Simon & Schuster, 2015) about how the poet’s Divine Comedy can save yours as well. His soul-baring account of how Dante Alighieri and two other spiritual guides — a Christian Orthodox priest and an evangelical therapist –helped him escape a dark wood of stress-induced depression and physical illness is smart, moving, and thoroughly engaging. Dreher’s Dante, like Virgil in the poem, does the lion’s share of the guiding, and so earns top billing and occupies most of the narrative’s prime real estate. In showing how the poem brought deeper understanding of himself and his relationships with his father, sister, and God, and in sharing the substance of those life lessons with readers (mostly in appendices to the chapters), the author does not disappoint.

“For those of us who have studied, taught, and written on Dante’s works and their legacy over many years, Dreher’s understanding and use of the Commedia will undoubtedly raise legitimate doubts and objections. However, I found myself more often than not nodding in recognition at his deft discussion of characters, scenes, and themes of the poem. Most of his sharpest points pierce the surface of famous inhabitants of Hell — amorous Francesca, proud Farinata, worldly Brunetto, and megalomaniacal Ulysses are among the highlights; oddly for a book on rescuing lives and souls, he devotes fewer words to the saved individuals in Purgatory and Paradise.” […]    –Guy P. Raffa, Pop Matters, January 21, 2016

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2016, Academia, Books, Inferno, Love, Paradiso, Purgatorio, Rod Dreher, Self-Help, Soul

Pascal’s Wager 2.0

December 12, 2015 By Professor Arielle Saiber

28stoneWeb-blog480-v2“[…] But the ethical value is a matter of my own judgment, independent of religious authority. And the understanding may be only a partial illumination that does not establish the ultimate truth of the ideas that provide it, as, for example, both Dante and Proust help us understand the human condition, despite their conflicting intellectual frameworks. None of this will interfere with a commitment to intellectual honesty. […]”    –Gary Gutting, The New York Times, September 28, 2015

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2015, Journalism, Philosophy, Religion, Self-Help

Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life (2015)

May 14, 2015 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

DreherDanteIn his 2015 book, How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem, writer Rod Dreher explores, from an ex-Catholic perspective, how the Commedia helped him come out of a deep depression.

“Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante’s great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.”    —Simon & Schuster

Contributed by Marija Petkovic, Stanford University ’18

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2015, Books, Depression, Self-Help

Rod Dreher, “The Ultimate Self-Help Book”

April 23, 2014 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall


ultimateselfhelp-wall-street-journal-image-of-dante
“Everybody knows that The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest literary works of all time. What everybody does not know is that it is also the most astonishing self-help book ever written. [ . . . ]

“The practical applications of Dante’s wisdom cannot be separated from the pleasure of reading his verse, and this accounts for much of the life-changing power of the Comedy. For Dante, beauty provides signposts on the seeker’s road to truth. The wandering Florentine’s experiences with beauty, especially that of the angelic Beatrice, taught him that our loves lead us to heaven or to hell, depending on whether we are able to satisfy them within the divine order.

“This is why The Divine Comedy is an icon, not an idol: Its beauty belongs to heaven. But it may also be taken into the hearts and minds of those woebegone wayfarers who read it as a guidebook and hold it high as a lantern, sent across the centuries from one lost soul to another, illuminating the way out of the dark wood that, sooner or later, ensnares us all.”

—Rod Dreher, “The Ultimate Self-Help Book: Dante’s Divine Comedy“, Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2014

Contributed by Allen Wong (Bowdoin ’14)

 

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2014, Journalism, New York City, Self-Help

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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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