Political rivalry between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor stirred emotion in Renaissance Florence and stoked the imagination of a 12th century poet named Dante, who went on to write the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso (the Divine Comedy). On Thursday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m., leading Italianist Giuseppe Mazzotta will discuss the politics in Dante's Inferno in the multi-media room of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library at Fairfield University.

The Italian-born Mazzotta immigrated to Toronto at age 15, received a doctorate from Cornell University and taught Romance Studies there before joining the faculty at Yale University in 1983. In 1996, he was named the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Italian Language and Literature. An internationally respected literary thinker, Mazzotta is the author of two books on Dante, as well as books on Boccaccio, Petrarch and the 18th century Neapolitan thinker Giambattista Vico.

The lecture, sponsored by the Humanities Institute and Italian Studies program, is free and open to the public.

Posted On: 01-25-2002 09:01 AM

Volume: 34 Number: 136