Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“In cammino con Dante”: Istituto italiano di cultura di Istanbul

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“L’Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul ha organizzato il ciclo di incontri online ‘In cammino con Dante,’ una serie di 8 di letture drammatizzate e critiche di canti scelti dalla Divina Commedia, con il patrocinio dell’Ambasciata d’Italia in Turchia e la collaborazione del Dipartimento di Lingue e Letteratura Italiana dell’Università di Ankara.

“L’iniziativa realizzata nel corso dell’anno, con cadenza mensile da aprile a dicembre 2021, fa parte del ricco programma di eventi per il 700 anniversario della morte di Dante Alighieri.”   –Institute of Italian Culture, Istanbul

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.

Sylvain Reynard, Gabriel’s Inferno (2012)

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“Enigmatic and sexy, Professor Gabriel Emerson is a well-respected Dante specialist by day, but by night he devotes himself to an uninhibited life of pleasure. He uses his notorious good looks and sophisticated charm to gratify his every whim, but is secretly tortured by his dark past and consumed by the profound belief that he is beyond all hope of redemption.

“When the sweet and innocent Julia Mitchell enrolls as his graduate student, his attraction and mysterious connection to her not only jeopardizes his career, but sends him on a journey in which his past and his present collide.

“An intriguing and sinful exploration of seduction, forbidden love, and redemption, Gabriel’s Inferno is a captivating and wildly passionate tale of one man’s escape from his own personal hell as he tries to earn the impossible—forgiveness and love.”   —Penguin Random House

The 2012 novel, set in Toronto, was adapted into a three-part series of films starring Giulio Berruti and Melanie Zanetti and directed by Tosca Musk. It was produced and released by Musk’s company Passionflix in 2020. The image above comes from the Amazon Prime Video page for the film. Gabriel’s Rapture (Part Two) and Gabriel’s Redemption (Part Three) are scheduled for release in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Contributed by Margaret Goodspeed

UCLA’s Dante in the Americas

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“The literary appropriation of Dante over the last century has been enormous. His influence has been front and center in all major modern literary traditions—from T.S. Eliot to William Butler Yeats, from Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Jorge Luis Borges to Derek Walcott, from Giorgio Bassani to Giuseppe Ungaretti. Why such fascination? What are the textual characteristics of Dante’s Commedia that make it an ideal vehicle for literary appropriation, thereby allowing it to enjoy a sustained cultural afterlife? What, moreover, are the more accidental factors (e.g., taste, world view, political agenda, religious, and mystical convictions) which account for the popularity of Dante—after 300 years of neglect during which the Florentine poet was relegated to the shadows of Petrarch and his works—among artists, novelists, poets, playwrights, and cinematographers? This symposium, co-organized by Professor Massimo Ciavolella (Italian, UCLA), Professor Efraín Kristal (Comparative Literature, UCLA), and Heather Sottong (Italian, UCLA), considers these questions, concentrating on Dante’s influence in North America and especially in Latin America.”   —UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 2011

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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