Why Study Dante at Bristol?
Does studying Dante improve your
Italian?
Why is Dante so culturally important?
What opportunities are there to
study Dante at Bristol?
Dante Alighieri and his works are highly relevant in the Italian department in normal years,
but even more so with 2021 being the 700th anniversary of the great poet’s death
in 1321. Therefore, there's no better time to explain why becoming a 'Dantist'
is the best decision you can make in your Italian studies.
I was fortunate to be able to quiz our resident Dante expert,
Dr. Tristan Kay, about all things Dante.
I’m not sure it will help you improve your conversational Italian…
But reading the Italian text carefully can definitely improve your
vocabulary and will help you to appreciate the richness and the beauty
of the language and the ways it has evolved.
There are so many reasons. One is linguistic: the scale and the sophistication
of the Commedia as a work written in a ‘modern’ language (Dante’s Florentine
vernacular) is unprecedented. It is also a work that speaks to so many different
topics and disciplines. It truly offers a panoramic view of medieval culture,
history, politics, theology, and society, and helps us learn about these things
not in the abstract but through the stories of historical individuals.
Dante has also had an extraordinarily rich and global ‘afterlife’ in
literature, art, music, film, dance, and in pop culture. I have an
essay coming out in January, for instance, on the place of Dante
in the Holocaust writings of Primo Levi, and I have just
presented some new work on the appropriation of Dante
under Italian fascism. The reception of Dante is so rich and
extensive that it is almost a field of study in its own right.
Well, as you know, you can study the Commedia as an
optional unit in Year 2 and Year 4. You can also study
extracts from Dante in the unit on Medieval and
Renaissance Italy unit as a post-A-level student in
Year 1. And there of course options to study Dante
as a final-year dissertation topic or even as a
postgraduate MPhil or PhD student. Lots of
opportunities, in other words!