The Divine Comedy explores a question that is even more urgent in our culture than it was in medieval culture: Why do we believe in things we cannot see?
Great post! I really liked the note on sensory knowledge. I’m currently at the beach, and were I given only my senses, I’d conclude the world was flat and unmoving. There are so many things that we don’t evaluate with our senses. It seems we ignore these epistemological gaps until it comes to faith.
Thank you for your writing! For the last several decades I have recommended Dante to anyone who appeared entrenched in Modernism/Progressivism/etc…whatever name this modern infatuation to believe we have all the answers and are our own gods, falls under. I never articulated as well as you have as to why his writings are an excellent treatise on the argument of faith and reason (or the false dichotomy of faith versus reason). I will be keeping this handy.
Thank you for this comment, Kate, and I'm so glad to hear that this essay resonated with you. The Divine Comedy is a life-changing work that needs to be more widely read. It is tragic that high school curricula usually include only Inferno (if they include Dante at all). Inferno is masterful but also painful to read and not particularly inspiring (unsurprisingly, given that it takes place in Hell). It's in Purgatorio and Paradiso that we really see Dante's ability to open the mind, excite the imagination, refine the intellect, and overall basically transform a reader's vision of reality.
Very well stated and I completely agree. The Divine Comedy needs to be read in it’s entirety, it is a journey that must be completed in order to allow the harvest intended. Introducing the Inferno alone is a travesty of large proportions (making one wonder if these educators even grasped any of the message intended…).
"Travesty" is the word for it—I understand that the Divine Comedy is a long book for a high school (or college) English class, but at the very least, read some cantos *from all three parts*. The idea of reading the entire Inferno and nothing else is, from a literary and cultural standpoint, completely unjustifiable.
Great post! I really liked the note on sensory knowledge. I’m currently at the beach, and were I given only my senses, I’d conclude the world was flat and unmoving. There are so many things that we don’t evaluate with our senses. It seems we ignore these epistemological gaps until it comes to faith.
Thank you for your writing! For the last several decades I have recommended Dante to anyone who appeared entrenched in Modernism/Progressivism/etc…whatever name this modern infatuation to believe we have all the answers and are our own gods, falls under. I never articulated as well as you have as to why his writings are an excellent treatise on the argument of faith and reason (or the false dichotomy of faith versus reason). I will be keeping this handy.
Thank you for this comment, Kate, and I'm so glad to hear that this essay resonated with you. The Divine Comedy is a life-changing work that needs to be more widely read. It is tragic that high school curricula usually include only Inferno (if they include Dante at all). Inferno is masterful but also painful to read and not particularly inspiring (unsurprisingly, given that it takes place in Hell). It's in Purgatorio and Paradiso that we really see Dante's ability to open the mind, excite the imagination, refine the intellect, and overall basically transform a reader's vision of reality.
Very well stated and I completely agree. The Divine Comedy needs to be read in it’s entirety, it is a journey that must be completed in order to allow the harvest intended. Introducing the Inferno alone is a travesty of large proportions (making one wonder if these educators even grasped any of the message intended…).
"Travesty" is the word for it—I understand that the Divine Comedy is a long book for a high school (or college) English class, but at the very least, read some cantos *from all three parts*. The idea of reading the entire Inferno and nothing else is, from a literary and cultural standpoint, completely unjustifiable.