OSHER 874 - Dante's Paradiso

Dante's Paradiso is the final part of his Divine Comedy, an epic poem composed in Italian in the early 1300s that embraces autobiography, politics, history, theology, morality, and, perhaps above all, human behavior. Through exploring all these dimensions, the goal of this discussion seminar will be to understand and enjoy the poem as a supreme work of the artistic imagination. In Paradiso the pilgrim-poet, having traversed hell (Inferno) and climbed the mountain on which sins - or, if we prefer, moral failings - are purged (Purgatorio), ascends through the heavenly spheres to an ultimate vision of his salvation and the Christian deity.