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Last broadcast on Thu, 23 Oct 2008, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Melvyn Bragg discusses Dante’s ‘Inferno’ - a medieval journey through the nine circles of Hell. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. This famous phrase is written above the gate of Hell in a 14th century poem by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The poem is called the ‘Divine Comedy’ and Hell is known as ‘Dante’s Inferno’. It is a lurid vision of the afterlife complete with severed heads, cruel and unusual punishments and devils in frozen lakes.
But the inferno is much more than a trip into the macabre - it is a map of medieval spirituality, a treasure house of early renaissance learning, a portrait of 14th century Florence, and an acute study of human psychology. It is also one of the greatest poems ever written.
With, Margaret Kean, University Lecturer in English and College Fellow at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford; John Took, Professor of Dante Studies at University College London and Claire Honess, Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leeds and Co-Director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies.
Further Reading
Editions of the Commedia with English translation:
Dante, Robin Kirkpatrick (Editor, Translator), Dante: Inferno (Penguin Classics, Paperback, 2006); Purgatorio (Penguin Classics, 2007); Paradiso (Penguin Classics, 2007)
Robert Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (trans.), Inferno (Oxford University Press, 1996); Purgatorio (Oxford University Press, 2003); the Paradiso volume in this series is yet to appear
Robert and Jean Hollander (trans.), Inferno (Random House, 2000); Purgatorio (Random House, 2003); Paradiso (Random House, 2007)
M. Musa, The Divine Comedy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984-86; translation only)
J. Sinclair, The ‘Divine Comedy’ of Dante Alighieri, 3rd edn, 3 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1971; facing translation)
C. S. Singleton, The Divine Comedy, 6 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970-75; facing translation)
Secondary literature:
S. Bemrose, A New Life of Dante (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000)
P. Boyde, Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Patrick Boyde, Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy (Cambridge, 2000)
P. Boyde, Perception and Passion in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
W. Fowlie, A Reading of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981)
Joan M. Ferrante, The Political Vision of the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Princeton University Press, 1984)
.
Eric Griffiths and Matthew Reynolds (editors), Dante in English (London: Penguin Books, 2005)
Nick Havely (ed.), Dante’s Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney (St Martin’s Press, 1998)
Robert Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works (Yale University Press, 2001)
Claire E. Honess, From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante (Legenda, 2006)
G. Holmes, Dante (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)
R. Jacoff (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Margaret Kean, Inferno: a Cultural History of Hell (due for publication in 2009 from I.B.Tauris)
R. Kirkpatrick, Dante: the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
Alison Morgan, Dante and the Medieval Other World (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Ralph Pite, The Circle of Our Vision: Dante's Presence in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford, 1994)
John A. Scott, Understanding Dante (University of Notre Dame Press, 2004)
John Woodhouse (ed.), Dante and Governance (Clarendon Press, 1997)
P. Wicksteed, The Early Lives of Dante translated by Philip H. Wicksteed (London: Moring, 1904)
Reference:
Richard Lansing (ed.), The Dante Encyclopedia (Garland, 2000)
Dante's Inferno
Manuscript of Dante's Inferno with a commentary by Guiniforte degli Bargigi.
Broadcasts
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Thu 23 Oct 200809:00
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Thu 23 Oct 200821:30
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