Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

COVID-19 and Dante’s Inferno

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“Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is undeniably a timeless classic. Its grand adventure through the nine gates of hell sparks readers with life and interest. It seems like an out-of-place work for a description of our chaotic times, but I believe it is a lot more relatable to us than we might think in the most unlikely of ways. So what can readers take from this classic besides grand allusions to the past?

“Perhaps it is with the old that we can come to better understand the new. Perhaps we can come to a new perspective on the world and its isolated communication due to COVID-19 through this classic. Much like we are now, venturing alone except through the cyberways of technological communication or daily filial visits, Dante with his guide Virgil treaded a path of darkness to the center of hell to understand and experience the dark side of the world. We too traverse a pathway of ‘hell’ — not a literal one, of course, but rather a figurative pathway of undiscovered and problematic turmoil for the human condition.”   –Jayden Montalvo, Johns Hopkins Newsletter, 2020

Read the full article here.

“Great Moments in PC Gaming: Guiding Noobs Through a Co-Op Session”

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“We were all that noob at some point. I have fond memories of a friend convincing me to give Halo a shot in co-op, him playing Master Chief and me playing his buddy, ‘The Spartan Who Disappears During Cutscenes.’ The first time I tried Portal 2‘s multiplayer mode it was at a gaming bar with an engineering student who, even drunk, knew everything there was to know about thinking with portals. Being able to return these favors by acting as Virgil to someone else’s Dante—except instead of the nine circles of Hell, it’s Borderlands 2 or whatever—feels like paying the experiences forward, ensuring some kind of cosmic scale is balanced.”    –Jody Macgregor, PC Gamer, August 15, 2020

“Alasdair Gray’s Translation of Dante’s Purgatory“

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“Following on from his translation of Hell (published last year), Alasdair Gray has turned his attention to the second part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Unlike Lanark, Gray’s epic debut novel from 1981, Purgatory is a short read at around 130 pages. It is divided into 33 cantos – essentially chapters – each of which are divided in turn into three-line stanzas. The plot is linear: guided by the poet Virgil, Dante must ascend Mount Purgatory in order to be reunited with his love Beatrice. Along the way, he encounters the poor souls forced to linger in heaven’s waiting room until they are cleansed of their earthly sins. As in Hell, the narrative is littered with historical figures, for instance ‘Cato, Caesar’s foe, who stabbed himself / rather than see the Roman Empire kill / the glorious Republic that he loved.’ Reading Purgatory, written in the early 14th century, it is easy to see the crucial role Dante played in the Renaissance, when Italian artists rediscovered the glories of antiquity.”    –Chris Dobson, The Herald, November 17, 2019

Check out our original post on Alasdair Gray’s Hell here.

La Porta dell’Inferno – Beyond the Gate

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“After Beyond the Castle’s success, we embarked in a new project that celebrates Italian culture. Together with the most prestigious school of Milan, the Collegio San Carlo, we created a new virtual reality experience that focuses on Dante’s Divine Comedy. In The Hell’s Gate students can embody Dante and walk through the dark forest. This will allow them to approach this masterpiece in an innovative and engaging way.”    —Beyond the Gate, 2019

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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