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DANTE’S THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, presented by Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University

DANTE’S THEOLOGYOF THE FUTUREInferno XIX and Paradiso XXXIII

Giuseppe MazzottaYale University


SCHEDULE5:00PM  |  Registration5:30PM  |  Lecture6:15PM  |  Q & A6:45PM  |  Cocktail Reception


Registration Required $30 General/$10 Student


The future of Christian history is a central concern of Dante’s masterpiece of epic poetry, the Divine Comedy. Behind Dante’s vision lies 13th century philosophical culture and the desire for a radical, spiritual renewal of the Church and the world. Most influential was the prophetic vision of Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), who held that history follows a Trinitarian pattern: first is the age of the Father; followed by the present age of the Son; then the future age of the Spirit, which will bring about the purification of the Church and the world. Dante rejects this theory and holds that the future cannot be confused either with the apocalyptic ending of time or with the annihilation of history. Returning to the sources and roots of the Church, Dante envisions the future as the time of purification embodied by the Virgin Mary. This great drama of history is staged in two cantos in the Divine Comedy: Inferno XIX and Paradiso XXXIII.


An internationally renowned scholar of Dante, Giuseppe Mazzotta is the Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian at Yale University. He holds a PhD from Cornell University and served as president of the Dante Society of America from 2003-2009. Prof. Mazzotta specializes in medieval literature but his publications address all periods of Italian literature and culture and include Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy; The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron; Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge; The Worlds of Petrarch; The New Map of the World: the Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico; and Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment. Recent editorial projects include Critical Essays on Dante and the Norton edition of Dante’s Inferno.Click here for tickets.

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