Informations du cours

In this seminar, we will trace the afterlives of Dante Alighieri in English literature from the Romantic to the modernist period. Dante’s Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy had a tremendous impact on writers as diverse as Mary Shelley, John Keats, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, or T. S. Eliot. By exploring their productive engagement with Dante, we will be able to study important socio-cultural contexts such as medievalism, the fascination with Italy that pervaded the 19^th century and gender politics, but also various genres, i.e., the novel, poetry and cultural criticism. We will, in addition, investigate aesthetic features such intertextuality, intermediality or processes of linguistic and intercultural translation. All the writers included in this seminar read Dante differently, and by following a trajectory from the early 19^th to the early 20^th century we will be able to detect different “Dantes” reflecting changing socio-political attitudes and cultural inclinations.

Knowledge of Italian is not necessary for this class since we will read Dante in English translation. However, familiarity with Dante’s Divine Comedy and Vita Nuova is a requirement for this class. The reading of these works will not be part of the seminar schedule. If students are not at all familiar with these two works by Dante, they are strongly advised to read them before the start of the semester.