The ICI Berlin celebrates the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Dante, edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden (2021) with a series of lectures that suggest ways of reading Dante’s Comedy from a less central position and with a broader, more critical perspective. How can discussions of race in the Middle Ages and the attentiveness to indigenous forms of knowledge preservation help literary scholars to rethink their understanding of ’canonicity’ and the ’canonical‘? On what basis can canonical authors such as Dante, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan continue to be read today? In what sense and at what cost can Dante inspire other poets? What does he mean, more specifically, to a woman writer and artist in Jamaica? What changes when Dante’s Virgil is read not only as part of the Christian reception of classical authors in the Middle Ages, but also in dialogue with the practices of ancient pedagogy? Does the queer desire informing the Aeneid also flow through Dante’s poem?

Mon, 10 May 2021, 19:30
Suzanne Conklin Akbari: What Ground Do We Read On?

Wed, 12 May 2021, 19:30
Lorna Goodison: Going Through Hell

Mon, 7 June 2021, 19:30
Gary Cestaro: Dante’s Queer Fathers

In English
Organized by

Manuele Gragnolati

An ICI Series on the occasion of the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Dante