TBD, but likely some weekday evening or Saturday afternoon. Use the contact links at the bottom or the top of this page to let us know ASAP if you have a preference!
Meeting venue:
Online (via Zoom) and in-person options are possible. Any in-person meetings will happen in Roanoke, Virginia.
Amount of reading:
Very light! Six to seven pages most weeks, and occasionally half that. The light load is intended to allow time for rereading and, for those who wish to do so, for looking at secondary sources. (Optional!)
What it’s all about:
Dante’s journey to the planets and the stars reconsiders in a new light many of the gripping issues taken up in the Comedy’s previous two “canticles,” including the nature of the human will; the meaning of love and freedom; the role (or lack thereof) of human effort on the journey to the divine; and, most piercing of all, the question of the fairness of a universe that appears ready to leave people eternally separated from God for the “crime” of having been born in a time or place that kept them ignorant of Christianity.
Dante’s howl of protest against the apparent injustice of that last point echoes across the Comedy, and its continued presence in Paradise ensures that his beloved mentor Virgil is far from forgotten there -- along with all the glory of the Greek and Roman “pagan” civilization associated with him. In fact, since the transition from Purgatory to Paradise closely corresponds with the shift from Virgil to Beatrice as Dante’s guide, to read the Paradiso is to take up anew (from the other side of the fence, as it were) two questions that may be as central for Western societies now as it was in Dante’s time: what, finally, is the difference between Christian and “pagan” thinking? What prospects are there for their cooperation toward a common goal?
The group is open both to experienced readers of Dante, who should enjoy the chance to dig in deep, and to new readers, for whom the slow pace will allow a fruitful entrance into Dante’s world. Expect lively discussion!
Prerequisites:
None formally. However, it would be helpful to have read either the Inferno or the Purgatorio recently enough to remember at least some of what goes on there. (One can certainly read the Paradiso without that preparation, but one’s experience will be richer if one has it.) If you are able to read, or at least look through, one of the earlier two parts before we begin, please do so; but if time is too short, please come ahead anyway!
Our texts:
A hard copy of the entire Paradiso is required. For those who do not yet own one, we recommend Allen Mandelbaum’s translation, available new as a Signet Classics paperback for about $8. If you have another translation you would like to use, please contact us to ask: while most of the many options will work fine, there are a few popular ones that are too inexact for our purposes.
It would be ideal to have a hard copy of Inferno and Purgatorio too, as there may be occasional references that would be worth looking up. Those texts are not required, though.
Commitment:
As with all our groups, you are welcome to come to as many, or as few, meetings as desired. Of course you’ll get more out of it the more often you come!