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Guiseppe F. Mazzotta, Sterling
Professor of Italian Language and Literature, is an internationally
known scholar of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, and
a foremost interpreter of Dante.
Mazzotta is the author of major works in his field, including the
books "Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the
Divine Comedy," "Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge,"
"The Worlds of Petrarch," "The New Map of the World:
The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico," and "Cosmopoiesis:
The Renaissance Experiment." He edited "Critical Essays
on Dante" and was co-editor of "Mimesis in Contemporary
Theory. The Literary and Philosophical Debate" and "Magister
Regis: Studies in Honor of R. E. Kaske." He also has written
hundreds of articles on medieval and Renaissance Italian literature.
Mazzotta has received numerous honors for contributions in his field.
His book "Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge" was
selected as one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1993 by the journal
Choice. His other awards include the Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B.
Sewall Prize for Distinguished Teaching at Yale (2001), the Ignazio
Silone International Literary Prize (2001) and the Premio Citta di
Curinga Prize (2002). This year, he was given the honorary title "Cavaliere
della Repubblica italiana" by the Italian government. Mazzotta
is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and The Academy of Literary
Studies, and is an honorary member of the XVI century Accademia Cosentina
in Italy.
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Hell Revisited: Dante’s
Inferno
Monday May 10 –
Thursday May 13, 2004
Thurman J. White Forum Conference Center
(OCCE)
University of Oklahoma, Norman Campus
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Dante’s Comedy (ca. 1307 - 1320) remains one of
the masterworks of Western literature. It is both inviting and
forbidding, like many great works. In the week we spend with
the text of the first part of the poem, Inferno, we will
try to come to grips with some of the elements that account
both for the immense popularity of this work and for its challenge,
in particular to twenty-first century readers who perhaps do
not share some of its central views. Why did this poet insist
on the veracity of his journey to the otherworld? Why did he
engage classical literature so prominently in a Christian work?
Why did he choose to write it, not in Latin (the "literary
language" of his time) but in the Italian vernacular? These
are some of the questions that will receive our attention. However,
we will not forget that we are reading a poem, and we will both
try to stick close to the text in our discussions and enjoy
Dante's extraordinary aesthetic power, perceptible even when
we read him in translation.
This class has been approved for “Western civilization
& culture” gen ed credit by the OU Gen Ed committee.
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The Seminar Reading List:
These books and articles supplied by OSLEP.
* Dante's Inferno, tr. Robert
and Jean Hollander, Doubleday, 2000.
* "Ugolino" in De Sanctis on Dante, ed./tr.
J. Rossi & A. Galpin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1957.
* "Bestial Sign and Bread: Inferno, XXXII and XXXIII"
in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. R. Jacoff,
Harvard University Press, 1986.
* "A Note on Inferno XXXIII.37-74: Ugolino’s
Importunity," Speculum 59, Robert Hollander, 1984.
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