Skip to main content

IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 833: 'Dante Now': Trends in Dante Studies 2016, II - Reader Engagement

Tuesday 5 July 2016, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:Rory D. Sellgren, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:David Bowe, Somerville College, University of Oxford
Paper 833-aNew Life between Dante and Barthes
(Language: English)
Jennifer Rushworth, St John's College, University of Oxford
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Rhetoric
Paper 833-bSingleton's 'Slip': A New Perspective on Reader Engagement with the Commedia from Video Game Critical Theory
(Language: English)
Katherine Powlesland, Department of Italian, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Technology
Paper 833-cRegula dilectionis: Love in Augustine and Dante
(Language: English)
Rory D. Sellgren, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Theology
Abstract

In 1978, George Steiner wrote 'Dante Now: The Gossip of Eternity' in which he predicted a decline in Dante Studies following the publication of Charles S. Singleton's translation of the Divine Comedy and its accompanying three-volume commentary. In 1995, Theodore Cachey published a collection of essays entitled Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies that demonstrated how Dante is still 'central to ongoing debates in the humanities about the relationship between literature and philosophy, between literature and history, about allegory and/or representation, about the formation and function of the Western literary canon, about issues of gender, intertextuality, and translation' ('Introduction', p. x). This session will discuss critical approaches to reading Dante through Augustine of Hippo, Barthes, and videogame critical theory.