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fandomhigh2006-02-21 09:51 am
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Classics and Foreign Literature, 02/21/06
Tuesday, February 21, 2nd Period
Once everyone is assembled, Professor Chaucer hops down from where he's been sitting on the front of Professor Dream's desk and addresses the class.
"Good morning! For those of you whom I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, I'm Geoff Chaucer, but you can call me 'Professor' Chaucer because I know you all will anyway. Today we'll be discussing the poet Dante, and in particular his epic poem Commedia."
[LECTURE] Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante, was an Italian Florentine poet, born 1265 and died 1321. His greatest work, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary statement produced in Europe in the medieval period, and the basis of the modern Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos.
Lecture on Inferno
Lecture on Purgatorio
Lecture on Paradiso
Dante's poem can be described simply as an allegory: each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem, he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).
The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description.
Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" was added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.
[DISCUSSION]
1. Choose one of the nine circles of Hell described by Dante in Inferno and explain why you think he chose to situate that particular sin in that particular place in the sequence. For example, why are the slothful in the Fifth Circle, or thieves in the Eighth Circle? Do you agree with the sequencing Dante uses, or would you have ordered the offenses differently?
2. Choose one of the seven terraces of Purgatory and explain why Dante may have chosen that punishment for that particular sin.
[ASSIGNMENT] Professor Dream has asked me to remind his Classics students that you should read over the Homeric Hymns for next Tuesday's class.
Class Roster
Elizabeth Weir
Nadia Santos
Sydney Bristow
Hamlet Dane
Janet Frasier
John Connor
S. T. Anders
[OOC: Mun is on SP. Apologies.]
Once everyone is assembled, Professor Chaucer hops down from where he's been sitting on the front of Professor Dream's desk and addresses the class.
"Good morning! For those of you whom I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, I'm Geoff Chaucer, but you can call me 'Professor' Chaucer because I know you all will anyway. Today we'll be discussing the poet Dante, and in particular his epic poem Commedia."
[LECTURE] Durante degli Alighieri, better known as Dante, was an Italian Florentine poet, born 1265 and died 1321. His greatest work, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary statement produced in Europe in the medieval period, and the basis of the modern Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos.
Lecture on Inferno
Lecture on Purgatorio
Lecture on Paradiso
Dante's poem can be described simply as an allegory: each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem, he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).
The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description.
Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" was added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.
[DISCUSSION]
1. Choose one of the nine circles of Hell described by Dante in Inferno and explain why you think he chose to situate that particular sin in that particular place in the sequence. For example, why are the slothful in the Fifth Circle, or thieves in the Eighth Circle? Do you agree with the sequencing Dante uses, or would you have ordered the offenses differently?
2. Choose one of the seven terraces of Purgatory and explain why Dante may have chosen that punishment for that particular sin.
[ASSIGNMENT] Professor Dream has asked me to remind his Classics students that you should read over the Homeric Hymns for next Tuesday's class.
Class Roster
Elizabeth Weir
Nadia Santos
Sydney Bristow
Hamlet Dane
Janet Frasier
John Connor
S. T. Anders
[OOC: Mun is on SP. Apologies.]