Irena Stanic Rasin

It’s the year of Dante! 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of the father of the Italian language and author of The Divine Comedy, a magnificent poem consisting of 14,233 hendecasyllabic verses written in terza rima, which was invented by Dante (aba, bcb, cdc…). La Divina commedia profoundly influenced the entire Western culture, from Botticelli, Blake, and Dalí, to Milton, T. S. Eliot, and Joyce, among others. The last grand work of the Middle Ages, it is also a harbinger of the Renaissance and Humanism. We will examine Dante’s Inferno, the first canticle of The Divine Comedy, through the historical and literary point of view as we read some of its most poignant verses in Italian and English. Recommended for purchase and used in class is Robert M. Torrance’s Dante’s Inferno, A New Translation in Terza Rima, Xlibris, 2011.