“What was life like before you read Dante?” For many of us, this is almost the same as asking, “What was life like before you began the journey of liberal education?” In this conversation with Prof. Dominic Aquila, we consider the Poet and his work, taking up the merits of various translations, various ways to read the poem, the scholarly tradition of commentary, and the potential fruitfulness of exile.  Prof. Aquila reflects on the Purgatorio and its liturgical-musical dimension—a work on which he has recently published—as well as Dante’s “three Advents.”

Links of Potential Interest:

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Esolen translation

Hollander translation

T.S. Eliot “The Wasteland”

Hollander, “Dante, A Party of One”

Dominic Aquila, “Dante and the Other: A Phenomenology of Love”

Rev. Augustine Thompson, O.P., Francis of Assisi: A New Biography

University of St. Thomas’ Honors Program