Please join us in a commemorative reading of Dante in 2021 to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the legacy he bequeathed us with his death in 1321.
The plan is to read or listen to Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova and his magnum opus, the great epic poem Comedìa. You can proceed at any pace you like using any translation you like including the original Italian. Our reading and event schedule will go through La Vita Nuova (The New Life) and the Comedìa (Comedy) between January and November 2021 (in 44 weeks or 11 months) with a monthly event to discuss the reading (we have planned 13 events).
To receive announcements and join a mailing list for participants, Contact Me.
Participants are welcome to read their favorite translation or an Italian edition or listen to it via LibriVox or other audiobooks source. We recommend The Portable Dante as translated by Mark Musa because it includes both La Vita Nuova and Comedìa in one volume. There are free on-line translations (see the Resources below), but because of present-day draconian copyright laws they are old and their archaic language can be challenging for today's ear.
Introduction | |
Why Read Dante? | |
Recommended Text | |
Resources | |
Reading Schedule | |
Introduction | 1 January 2021 – 10 January 2021 |
La Vita Nuova | 11 January 2021 – 7 February 2021 |
Inferno | 8 February 2021 – 2 May 2021 |
Purgatorio | 3 May 2021 – 8 August 2021 |
Paradiso | 9 August 2021 – 7 November 2021 |
Events | We plan to organize 13 events between 6 January 2021 and 5 December 2021 (for the Grand Finale) |
Credits |
We plan to read La Vita Nuova in one month and the Comedìa at a rate of one-third of a cantica per month or about eleven Cantos per month which is no more than three Cantos per week. The links to additional resources included in the schedule are optional, but may prove useful supplements for some participants.
19m Giuseppe Mazzotta video Mazzotta Lecture 1 course page My Mazzotta course notes: Announcement My Mazzotta course notes: Introduction |
These participatory events will provide a forum for exploring Dante's La Vita Nuova and the Comedìa in 2021 centered around our commemorative reading schedule. The events are organized with the 52 Living Ideas and the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society meetup groups.
Contact Me to join the Dante 2021 mailing list to receive announcements about these events.
To participate, you must RSVP to get the Zoom conference link. To RSVP, you must join either the 52 Living Ideas meetup or the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society meetup group. Joining either group will require joining Meetup.com which is a free on-line service with strong privacy controls. Once you are a member, you can RSVP to join the event from the link to its Event Page.
Exploration of Dante's Inferno Cantos I–XI: Details TBD
Dante's "Comedìa" and Our Comprehensivity (52 Living Ideas event) (crossposted Event Page at the Thinking Society).
Come Celebrate 700 Years of Dante (crossposted at the Greater Philadelphia Thinking Society).
This initiative was conceived by CJ Fearnley, Explorer in Universe (CV), in support of his efforts to build a new tradition of inquiry and action to understand it all and each other. Since Dante's Comedìa is, among many other things, an encyclopedia of learning it represents an early attempt to prototype some of what is now forming the new tradition of comprehensivism, the practice of understanding our worlds ever more extensively or broadly and ever more intensively or deeply, that is, "wanting to understand all and put everything together" as Buckminster Fuller put it in "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth". When playwright, director, actor, teacher and producer, D W Jacobs agreed to also read Dante in 2021 with a small group of friends, CJ started organizing this web page to coordinate the project and to invite others to join the fun.
I'd like to extend a big thank you to Phil K of the The NYC Greek Mythology & Classical Literature Book Club and Shrikant of 52 Living Ideas for agreeing to organize 11 events to explore and discuss Dante's work.
Introduction | |
Why Read Dante? | |
Recommended Text | |
Resources | |
Reading Schedule | |
Introduction | 1 January 2021 – 10 January 2021 |
La Vita Nuova | 11 January 2021 – 7 February 2021 |
Inferno | 8 February 2021 – 2 May 2021 |
Purgatorio | 3 May 2021 – 8 August 2021 |
Paradiso | 9 August 2021 – 7 November 2021 |
Events | We plan to organize 13 events between 6 January 2021 and 5 December 2021 (for the Grand Finale) |
Credits |