Margot Costanzo: Why Should the General Reader Care about Dante?

This lecture proposes reasons why the ‘Divine Comedy’ is surprisingly relevant to the reader’s life today. It adopts Erich Auerbach’s description of Dante as a poet of the secular world, with examples from fellow poets, the sinner Francesca da Rimini and life as a political refugee after Dante’s exile. The lecture concludes with a suggestive exploration of Dante’s poetic apprehensions of Paradise as a space/time continuum. Margot Costanzo with Karen van Spall is the co-producer of the 3MBS Illuminations Series Dante in Music which charts the course of the Dante Alighieri journey through to heaven to reveal the music it inspired. Margot studied the three canticles of la Commedia as an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne 40 years ago, becoming hooked on the great work and its many translations. Part of 3MBS Dante700 Festival.