OSHER 327 - Dante's Inferno

This course will focus on the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Inferno. In it we will follow "Dante," led by the Roman poet Virgil, down through the circles of hell (as imagined by Italian poet, Dante). This, of course, is only the first third of a much longer epic journey which includes "Dante's" ascent of the Mount of Purgatory in the Purgatorio, and concludes with his vision of paradise itself in the Paradiso. The poem as a whole is an allegory and can be read on many levels, most simply, the literal and figurative or symbolic. In the Inferno, Dante depicts characters, some historical, some fictional or mythic, with great vividness. Each has chosen his or her own "fate" in Dante's imagined afterlife. Written at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries, the Inferno is still entirely relevant today. Even if you have read it before, every time you reread it the experience is a new one.