Dante's Divine Comedy

Professors Cook and Herzman provide you with an illuminating introduction to one of the greatest works ever written. One of the most profound and satisfying of all poems, The Divine Comedy (or Commedia) of Dante Alighieri is a book for life. In a brilliantly constructed narrative of his imaginary guided pilgrimage through the three realms of the Christian afterlife, Dante accomplished a literary task of astonishing complexity. But the full achievement of the Commedia goes beyond anything merely literary. In these twenty-four lectures, as you follow Dante on his journey, you'll learn how medieval literature offers insights into fundamental questions: What is the quality of our moral actions? How does spiritual transformation come about? What is the nature of good and evil, virtue and vice, sin and sanctity? Why is the world so full of strife? How do we go on when we lose the things we love? You'll discover why, in the centuries since the Commedia was written, not one of these questions has lost its force. Moreover, you'll hear Dante address them in a demanding and innovative Italian verse form (terza rima) that makes the Commedia one of the great virtuoso pieces of world literature. With the guidance of these two master professors, you'll learn invaluable background information on Dante's life and times; why Dante wrote the Commedia; how to approach the various English editions available; and how each part of the poem is connected to what has come before. But above all, you'll understand why the Commedia is not a puzzle to be solved or a book to be read and put aside-but a mystery whose beauty and richness is to be constantly savored.

All Lectures:
1. Reading the Poem - Issues and Editions
2. A Poet and His City - Dante's Florence
3. Literary Antecedents, I
4. Literary Antecedents, II
5. "Abandon Every Hope, All You Who Enter"
6. The Never-Ending Storm
7. Heretics
8. The Seventh Circle - The Violent
9. The Sin of Simony
10. The False Counselors
11. The Ultimate Evil
12. The Seven-Story Mountain
13. Purgatory's Waiting Room
14. The Sin of Pride
15. The Vision to Freedom
16. Homage to Virgil
17. Dante's New Guide
18. Ascending the Spheres
19. An Emperor Speaks
20. The Circle of the Sun - Saints and Sages
21. A Mission Revealed - Encounter with an Ancestor
22. Can a Pagan Be Saved?
23. Faith, Hope, Love, and the Mystic Empyrean
24. "In My End Is My Beginning"