Dante's Divine Comedy

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Masakari

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Do Inferno, Purgatario, and Paradiso provide contemporary culture with a constructive lens to view our behavior and sins by? Should we forsake these teachings in the Bible for a new, unfounded basis for morality?

What are your thoughts on these works?
 

Tuco

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I'd love a rewrite of Dante's Divine Comedy that strikes a fantasy novel prose instead of poem. Something like The Hobbit, Moby Dick, Count of Monte Cristo or Don Quixote. Dante's Divine Comedy is such a huge part of western and literary culture but the consumption of its text is infeasible for me personally. I'd wager that almost all people who drop references to Dante's Inferno are like me and have never read nor are willing or able to understand it.

Here's the first bit of Dante's Inferno. It's totally understandable if one takes the effort to read it carefully, but I'd love a version I can casually listen to.


IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover'd there.
How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd
The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
 

Chris

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I'd love a rewrite of Dante's Divine Comedy that strikes a fantasy novel prose instead of poem.

Something like The Hobbit, Moby Dick, Count of Monte Cristo or Don Quixote. Dante's Divine Comedy is such a huge part of western and literary culture but the consumption of its text is infeasible for me personally. I'd wager that almost all people who drop references to Dante's Inferno are like me and have never read nor are willing or able to understand it.

Here's the first bit of Dante's Inferno. It's totally understandable if one takes the effort to read it carefully, but I'd love a version I can casually listen to.

Public domain right? Well I looked it up and fucking hell... 1300s... looks like he was the Italian Shakespeare in terms of it being a great work that fixed the language from that point onwards. English as we know it did not exist back then.

So yeah, looks like there's been a few prose translations already. I went with the 1800s one in my link above.

Also there's going to be other poem translations which may be more accessible.

Thanks for bringing it up, I'll read it.
 

Asshat wormie

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Public domain right? Well I looked it up and fucking hell... 1300s... looks like he was the Italian Shakespeare in terms of it being a great work that fixed the language from that point onwards. English as we know it did not exist back then.

So yeah, looks like there's been a few prose translations already. I went with the 1800s one in my link above.

Also there's going to be other poem translations which may be more accessible.

Thanks for bringing it up, I'll read it.
You are a teacher and you had to look up Dante's Inferno?
 

Asshat wormie

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Any teacher should know about it. They don't assign the book in college in UK?
 

Chris

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Any teacher should know about it. They don't assign the book in college in UK?
For Computer Programming? No. For Maths Teaching? No. Why would they?

I'm confused why translations of 1300s Italian literature are apparently on every college curriculum in the US and not only on literature courses.

I'd heard of the work by the way, due to pop culture references, just not read it, knew it was a poem or knew it's origin.

Fuck me for trying to be helpful and finding a prose translation for Tuco I guess.
 

Asshat wormie

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For Computer Programming? No. For Maths Teaching? No. Why would they?

I'm confused why translations of 1300s Italian literature are apparently on every college curriculum in the US and not only on literature courses.

I'd heard of the work by the way, due to pop culture references, just not read it, knew it was a poem or knew it's origin.

Fuck me for trying to be helpful and finding a prose translation for Tuco I guess.
Relax snowflake. I am just surprised it's not taught as part of general education over there.
 

Chris

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Relax snowflake. I am just surprised it's not taught as part of general education over there.
I'm not sure that I belive you. What age did they give you it and which translation?

Here everyone is taught Shakespeare 11-16. It's the oldest thing you can reasonably read in English and a big part of ENGLISH cultural heritage.

Then you specialise 16-18. I chose History and we did a bit of Chaucer (which is barely readable) and Beowulf (you pretty much can't read it) just for context of how the language developed. I'm sure that students who specialise in Literature do more in depth analysis of those and maybe even Dante's Inferno.

Maybe it's more popular in the US because of Italian migration.
 

Asshat wormie

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I'm not sure that I belive you. What age did they give you it and which translation?

Here everyone is taught Shakespeare 11-16. It's the oldest thing you can reasonably read in English and a big part of ENGLISH cultural heritage.

Then you specialise 16-18. I chose History and we did a bit of Chaucer (which is barely readable) and Beowulf (you pretty much can't read it) just for context of how the language developed. I'm sure that students who specialise in Literature do more in depth analysis of those and maybe even Dante's Inferno.

Maybe it's more popular in the US because of Italian migration.
I remember reading the penguin press version of the book which I assume was suggested. I also remember reading Chaucer, Homer and Milton in among other things (we also did read Beowulf). Also we did some Shakespeare, specifically the Tempest which is his best work (high school did have some Shakespeare too). I am pretty certain everyone here in college read the same things. Or they did up to earlier 2000s.
 

Chris

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I remember reading the penguin press version of the book which I assume was suggested. I also remember reading Chaucer, Homer and Milton in among other things (we also did read Beowulf). Also we did some Shakespeare, specifically the Tempest which is his best work (high school did have some Shakespeare too). I am pretty certain everyone here in college read the same things. Or they did up to earlier 2000s.
What were you studying?

I think college is more specialised in the UK though, you don't often do things outside of your specialism.

Everything I did was coding or game design.
 

Asshat wormie

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What were you studying?

I think college is more specialised in the UK though, you don't often do things outside of your specialism.

Everything I did was coding or game design.
It was CS but that doesnt matter because the classes where I read these books are part of the 60 credits of general requirements that everyone takes. There is some flexibility as to what to take within those requirements but one ends up covering some of the classics one way or another.
 

lurker

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I read ‘The Inferno’ in Italian in college. I was going to major in Chemistry, but I grew up with my grandmother who was fresh off the boat from Italy (so was my mom, for that matter) and so I grew up also speaking Italian. I figured I would take some Italian lit classes for some easy As. That one class changed my life. I couldn't get enough of Dante, the Bible, medieval history, theology, philosophy. To hell with Chemistry, I was going to major in Medieval Italian Literature!

Well, that never happened. Life got in the way and other things happened, but I will never forget Professor Martinez at UCSD and how he could talk about each Canto and every character and every allegory for hours and it was all fascinating.

A picture I took in Florence.

P1010207%20a-X2.jpg


Yes, it takes place in 1300 and no, it doesn't need to be modernized.
 
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Aldarion

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What were you studying?

I think college is more specialised in the UK though, you don't often do things outside of your specialism.

Everything I did was coding or game design.
Its one of the many fucked up things about US higher education. I don't remember the exact number of credits required, but I know that I took 7 goddam semesters of literature related classes to fulfill requirements for my Biology degree.

It didnt have to be literature of course, that was just the easiest subject to bullshit in. You were free to take a whole shit ton of other irrelevant shit.

I'd estimate probably half of my credit hours had not a single goddam thing to do with biology (and I'm not counting stuff like calculus or chemistry that is obviously relevant to biology). Literally shit like foreign languages and literature. Actually required. Its fucking retarded.

One of my friends in grad school got his bachelors in Canada - I was always jealous, his transcript was like 100% science related classes.

(fwiw in 7 goddam semesters of university level literature we still never read Divine Comedy - while obviously everyone knows about it, its not a very accessible piece of literature. I've read Canterbury Tales, which is barely even written in English, but not this)
 

Chris

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Its one of the many fucked up things about US higher education. I don't remember the exact number of credits required, but I know that I took 7 goddam semesters of literature related classes to fulfill requirements for my Biology degree.

It didnt have to be literature of course, that was just the easiest subject to bullshit in. You were free to take a whole shit ton of other irrelevant shit.

I'd estimate probably half of my credit hours had not a single goddam thing to do with biology (and I'm not counting stuff like calculus or chemistry that is obviously relevant to biology). Literally shit like foreign languages and literature. Actually required. Its fucking retarded.

One of my friends in grad school got his bachelors in Canada - I was always jealous, his transcript was like 100% science related classes.

(fwiw in 7 goddam semesters of university level literature we still never read Divine Comedy - while obviously everyone knows about it, its not a very accessible piece of literature. I've read Canterbury Tales, which is barely even written in English, but not this)
This is how they got you guys with the SJW Communist stuff.
 
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