Are you one of the multitudes who always meant to read Dante’s Comedy, but have never quite gotten to it? Or have you gone through the Inferno but never made it to the other two parts? Or maybe you’ve read the whole epic, but would like to return at a slower pace, in community, in order to discover more of the poem’s riches?
This group is for all of you! This spring we’ll read the magnificent second part of Dante’s poem even more slowly than we usually do, taking only two cantos (6-7 pages) most weeks, and occasionally only one. For newcomers it’s a chance to discover why so many readers of the whole epic name Purgatory as their favorite part; for returning readers the slow pace will allow deep engagement with the poem’s philosophy, psychology, and theology. And for everyone it will be what it always is: a story of human ascent toward the divine, a deep consideration of the relations between Christianity and “pagan” philosophy, and an adventure-tale narrated so concretely that you may leave feeling ready to lead pilgrims up Dante’s seven-story mountain yourself.
Weekly from early February. Meeting time TBD, so please contact us ASAP to express your preferences!
Among scholars no less than among everyday readers, questions about how to read the Bible are in high ferment. Not only outside Christianity but within it, and frequently within individual denominations, readers disagree about such fundamental things as the historical accuracy of various parts of the Bible, the number of possible meanings that a single passage might have, and even what it means to say that a biblical passage is “true.”
We can’t claim that our discussion group can solve such deep questions in a few months, but it can offer an acquaintance with some people who can help us on the way: the horde of readers and thinkers who have already reflected on these questions across the centuries since the Bible came to be. Encountering both some familiar names (Augustine, Jerome, Origen, Bonaventure) and some others now known mostly to scholars (Tychonius, Nicholas of Lyra), we’ll reflect on the variety of positions earnest Christian thinkers have taken, considering which might be helpful in our current situation and which might better be left behind.
Alternate weeks from early February. Time TBD, so contact us to express a preference!
TheTreasures.org hosts online reading groups designed to provide access to texts that are endlessly engaging, thought-provoking, possibly life-transforming — and typically texts that few people would work their way through on their own.
When one no longer has to work on one’s own, what once seemed a daunting task changes into a joyful experience, a highlight of the week: discovering that a “classic” like Dante’s Divine Comedy or Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is not a far-off block of impenetrable literary marble, but a living, changing artwork that has vital things to say to us, and perhaps to do to us, in our twenty-first-century lives.