Our next few weeks will be devoted to an amor somewhat less all-encompassing than that of Dante's Commedia . We'll be looking at O...

Aside from an external preoccupation that's consumed a lot of my time recently, internal properties of the text have slowed our ascent...

E come a lume acuto si disonna   per lo spirto visivo che ricorre   a lo splendor che va di gonna in gonna,    e lo svegliato ciò c...

Our group meets every other week, but our progress in Paradiso has slowed. The cantos of the theological virtues might seem simpler than ...

After the leap of  Paradiso 23,  Dante face a quiz. The one asking the questions is none other than Peter -- the first man to put faith in...

A clear change occurs between the pilgrim's doubts, vulnerabilities, and potentially erroneous seductions at the beginning of Paradiso...

The first damned soul Dante meets in hell is a woman so alluring that to this day, her love affair and its violent end command a fan base l...

  Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,     prese costui de la bella persona     che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende. Amor, ch’...

...picking up the thread from here ... Ovid of course was familiar with the allegorization of the Judgment of Paris as a parable of ch...