Reading Dante's Comedy: Text & Context - MST00051M
Module will run
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 1 2025-26 |
Module aims
I expect your father has been reading Dante: thus, the memorable
reply from Cecil Vyse in E. M. Forsters A Room with a View,
upon hearing George Emerson repeat his fathers assertion that there is
only one perfect view - the view of the sky straight over our heads,
and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it. Cecil
Vyse assumes that a knowledge of Dante is simply part of the cultural
baggage of any literate gentleman. Very few authors from the medieval
period have so pervasively influenced writing in so many European
languages across successive centuries right down to the present day.
Arguably, a knowledge of the work of Dante remains a vital part of the
cultural baggage of any literate, critical reader. Medievalists find
in the poem a philosophical, theological, political and literary
synthesis of much that is crucial in their period, but Renaissance
scholars, Romanticists, Victorianists and modernists all find many
concerns of their respective periods worked out in response to the
poem.
The Comedy can, however, be a daunting poem,
and risks being cited more often than it is read. This module will
introduce readers to this masterpiece of European literature. The poem
will be read in English translation, assuming no prior knowledge of Italian.
The aim of the module is to introduce students to Dante's
Comedy, setting the poem in its cultural and literary
context; students will be introduced to the poem s structure and moral
architecture, and the module will proceed with close readings of some
of its most famous canti, such as (amongst others) Inf. 5 (Paolo and
Francesca), Inf. 10 (Farinata and Cavalcanti), Inf. 26 (Ulysses), and
Par. 11 (St Francis of Assisi).
Module aims include:
- To give students the opportunity to develop a sound understanding of Dante's Comedy
- To give students a knowledge of major trends in modern Dante scholarship
- To enable students to develop their skills in close-reading
Module learning outcomes
Students will be able to;
- undertake a research-led essay project addressing the aims of the module
- undertake with confidence a close-reading of relevant parts of the Comedy
- speak and write with confidence on a variety of aspects of Dante, his context and his great poem.
Academic and graduate skills
- Students will demonstrate advanced skills of writing appropriate to a postgraduate degree
- Gain a set of skills which will complement the core-courses for a variety of MA programmes offered by the Department of English and Related Literature
Indicative assessment
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100.0 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100.0 |
Module feedback
Students have the opportunity to submit a formative essay of up to 2,000 words and receive written or oral feedback, as appropriate, from a tutor. For the summative essay (3500-4000 words), students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback in line with the University's turnaround policy. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.
Indicative reading
There are several single-volume translations, but particularly useful
is that of Allen Mandelbaum (Everyman, 1995). Parallel translations
will prove particularly useful, enabling comparisons with the Italian
as well as keeping an eye on rhyme words, line endings, and the
appearance of key words; the best is the translation and facing-text
prepared by Robert M. Durling and Ronald M. Martinez, 3 vols (OUP,
1996-2011), which has superb notes; there is also the excellent facing
translation of Robin Kirkpatrick, 3 vols (Penguin, 2006-2007).
Frequent reference will be made to Virgil s Aeneid,
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Bible. Readers will find useful
having a translation to hand of Dante's early work, La Vita
nuova (The New Life), available in many translations (those of
Barbara Reynolds and Mark Musa for example).
Secondary
reading:
John A. Scott, Understanding Dante (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004); Stephen Bemrose, A
New Life of Dante (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000);
Rachel Jacoff (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Dante, 2nd edn
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Nick Havely, Dante
(Malden, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,2007); Peter S.
Hawkins, Dante: A Brief History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
Further contextual bibliography:
John Larner, Italy
in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216-1380 (London: Longman,
1983); Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in
Renaissance Italy (London: Allen Lane, 1980); and on Dante's
reception in English, see now: Nick Havely, Dante's British
Public: Readers and Texts, from the Fourteenth Century to the
Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).