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:
The middle section of Dante’s Comedy strikes many readers so lastingly as to make it their favorite of the three. Psychologically and theologically deeper than the Inferno, more accessible than the Paradiso (for which it provides necessary preparation), it has been described as a “medieval self-help book” that offers readers even today arresting counter-cultural insights into their own journeys through life. It also recounts the culmination of Dante's apprenticeship with Virgil - which is to say, of the simultaneously critical and admiring relationship between this Christian voyager and the “pagan” philosophical wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome. (We’ll watch in particular for Virgil's Stoic-Aristotelian spiel about the freedom of the will, which happens almost exactly at the center point of the entire Commedia - and consider what Dante makes of it!)
We’ll read the work as it deserves to be read: slowly and thoughtfully, with a community of enthusiastic fellow-travelers and an expert guide. Hence most weeks we’ll read only two cantos, some weeks only one. 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. In particular, it is not necessary to have read Part 1 of Dante’s Comedy (i.e. the Inferno) before joining. Some general acquaintance with the structure of the Inferno will occasionally be helpful, so it would not be a bad idea to look at an overview or read a few cantos in advance to get the flavor, but one can get a great deal out of Purgatory even without that preparation.
Our texts:
A hard copy of the entire Purgatorio 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 a good idea to have a hard copy of Inferno too, as there may be occasional references to it that would be worth looking up.
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!