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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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“The Wines of Dante’s Inferno”

July 19, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“We, the Ancient Wine Guys (Dr. Dana DePietro, Dr. Jeff Pearson, Ti Ngo, and Ryan Wihera), are thrilled to be collaborating once again with renowned winemaker and chef Pietro Buttitta of Prima Materia Winery to present the latest in our ongoing series of wine lectures and S.H.A.R.E. fundraisers: The Wines of Dante’s Inferno. In a unique retelling of this classic and foundational text, we follow Dante Alighieri and his guide, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil), as they journey through the Underworld and meet a litany of unfortunate souls condemned there to atone for their sins. The evening will feature nine unique and delicious wines (one for each level of hell!) inspired by Dante’s text and world, along with three full courses of food pairings created and professionally prepared by Pietro. We hope you can join us for this special summer evening of literary, oenological, and culinary exploration!”   —S.H.A.R.E. Ticketing Page

The sold-out event will be held on July 30, 2021, at the Prima Materia Winery (Oakland, CA). All proceeds benefit the Society for Humanitarian Archaeological Research and Exploration (S.H.A.R.E.), a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that uses archaeology as a tool to promote peace and dialogue in Israel/Palestine.

Contributed by Rachel Duke (Florida State University)

Categories: Dining & Leisure
Tagged with: 2021, California, Circles of Hell, Fundraisers, Inferno, Oakland, Sins, Wine, Wines

“The Extra Circles of Hell, A Short Tour”

April 23, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“There’s a lot of self-righteous assholes out there who think they’re going to heaven. If an afterlife exists, they’re in for a tiny surprise — probably. Dante didn’t know how things would turn out when he wrote the original Divine Comedy. But he knew all about hypocrisy.

“That’s why he created a special circle of hell for each type of sinner. Because they all deserve each other, and their own special punishment.

“Dante originally envisioned nine circles of hell. Just nine? Seriously? We’re gonna need more circles…”   –Jessica Wildfire, Splattered, 2019

Read the full article here.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Afterlife, Circles of Hell, Evil, Hell, Sins

“I Wish to Thank Donald Trump for His Inspirational Presidency”

October 24, 2020 By lsanchez

“Thank you Donald for the wake-up call and for providing an unwanted preview of Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice In Wonderland staged in your nine circles of hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.”    –J. P. Curtis, Sparta Independent, July 28, 2020

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, Circles of Hell, Donald Trump, Films, Movies, Sins

“9 Times Marilyn Manson Was the Greatest Rockstar in Any Circle of Hell”

September 29, 2020 By lsanchez

“Marilyn Manson, the man and his eponymous band, brought darkness back into the spotlight in the early ‘90s. Achieving popularity without a scalp scraped by butterfly clips or an official Pog line, Manson became the new face of fear. Fear of violence, sex, vulgarity, drugs, and most crucially Satanism. He was hailed by fans of alternative music, and reviled by the mainstream, as the self-styled Antichrist Superstar. Just like mythical depictions of the Anti-Christ, Manson has a silver (forked) tongue and an intelligence that few can comprehend. He is a cause for parents to fear their teenager’s headphones, coiled around their babies like the snake in Eden.

[. . .]

In Manson, no creative force has brought such a vivid and lyrical depiction of Hell since Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the fourteenth-century epic poem Divine Comedy. The band’s back catalogue gives as nuanced and sprawling a Hell as Dante, taking listeners through all nine circles. Whereas Dante’s guide was Roman Poet Virgil, ours is the icon formally known as Brian Warner.”    –Daniel Wylie, What Culture, August 10, 2020

Categories: Odds & Ends
Tagged with: 2020, Circles of Hell, Divine Comedy, Hell, Inferno, Limbo, Music, Musicians, Rock, Satan, Sins, Virgil

“Dante Alighieri and the World”

September 27, 2020 By lsanchez

“There was the endeavour to untangle knots — truth and lie, sin and redemption, piety and lust. There was always the goal to risk all for truth. Take this tercet from Dante Alighieri:

‘When truth looks like a lie,
a man’s to blame
Not to sit still, if he can, and
hold his tongue,
Or he’ll only cover his
innocent head with shame.’

“Scribes and great TV anchors, who can give a spin to any development, should heed the lines. We need to take sides when truth stares you in the face. In Canto III, some angels did not take sides when Satan revolted, but timorously sat on the fence. They were placed lock, stock and barrel in Hell. The colourless mediocrities most of us are, get short shrift. He talks about the ‘sorry souls who won neither praise nor blame for the lives they led’. Of course, the first words we learnt of Dante’s Inferno, as students, were ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here’, the inscription on the gates of Hell. During the lockdown, I thought that the three translations of Dante I possess should be put to good use. One hoards books and never reads them, though 20 years back I had read Dorothy Sayers’ fine translation of Inferno my father had left me. Michael Palme’s translation is better. What Dante did was mind-boggling. The entire European civilisation was placed before the reader, from Greek legends onwards. You have a full canto on the Dis, which is his word for the underworld. The river Lethe, Acheron the boatman who herds the souls who drop: ‘So from the bank there one by one drop all… As drops the falcon to the falconer’s call.’ The eighth circle gets flatterers (half our political parties would be in trouble, praising the 8 pm lockdowns, or the two-line denunciations by Rahul G). There are also soothsayers in the same circle (good grief, our Chandraswamis with red tilaks and rudraksh malas!). Actually, you can’t honestly exclude we Indians from any inferno you can devise.”    –Keki Daruwalla, The Tribune, August 2, 2020

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, Abandon All Hope, Acheron, Canto 3, Charon, Circles of Hell, Coronavirus, Dis, Gates of Hell, Hell, India, Inferno, Lethe, Neutrals, Poetry, Sins, Translations

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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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