Spring 2015/Pasadena

TC562

Dyrness

TC562: DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDIEVAL ART AND THEOLOGY (4 Units: 160 Hours). William Dyrness.

DESCRIPTION: This is a 6-unit seminar for doctoral students, also offered at the 500-level as a 4-unit course open to a very limited number of master’s level students by special permission. The seminar will read Dante’s Divine Comedy and explore its relation to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art and theology. Student preparation and discussion will focus critical attention on the themes and characteristics of Dante’s work as an expression of the medieval figural imagination and its consequent understanding of theology.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon successful completion of the course students will (1) have a broad understanding of the development of medieval theology as this is reflected in the Divine Comedy;

(2) be familiar with the role of the Divine Comedy in the development of medieval art and culture;

(3) understand the role of Dante in medieval spirituality and the role of the liturgy reflected there more generally; and (4) understand the continuing influence both of Dante and the Divine Comedy up to the present.

COURSE FORMAT: This class meets once per week for three-hour sessions for a total of 30 hours of classroom instruction for lecture and discussion plus 10 hours of directed learning activities for a total of 40 instructional hours. Each week students will read sections of the Comedy. After discussion of that section students (perhaps a doctoral student paired with a master’s level student) will consider a text from that section of the Comedy in its relation to some theological theme or work (or works) of visual art.

REQUIRED READING: 1,200 pp. of required reading.

Dante Alighieri. The Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Knopf, 1995. ISBN: 978-0679433132, Pub. Price $26.00 [798 pp.].

Hawkins, Peter S. Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination. Stanford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 978-0804737012, Pub. Price $29.95 [150 pp.].

Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 978-0521605816, Pub. Price $29.99 [250 pp.].