I’m Nathan Barontini, a Master teacher, with years of intense study of history, literature, philosophy, and theology. Currently, I teach:
a 14 week adult education master course on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
a one class lecture: "Why to Read the Divine Comedy and the Least you Need to Know."
a one class lecture: "The Three Advents of Christ in the Divine Comedy.
Why is a Course Valuable when Studying Dante?
The Divine Comedy is difficult to read. Dante assumes his readers have a wide array of knowledge modern man lacks. He expects his references to mythology, history, contemporary personages and events to be familiar to his readers. The culture he lived in was drenched with the Bible to a degree unimaginable even to devout Christians today. The Bible, the Church, the Catholic Faith were the atmosphere in which he lived and wrote.
The difference between 21st century American culture and that of Dante's 14th century Florence prevents us from immediately grasping everything Dante is offering us. Of course, not all of Dante's contemporaries had the encyclopedic knowledge of our author. Indeed, few did. Thus, commentaries began to appear soon after Dante's death.
If his contemporaries needed a guide to fully understand the poem, how much more does the modern reader?
What is Different About this Dante "Master Class?"
There are many courses that accompany a reader through the Divine Comedy, this course has a different focus. Most of the classes you will find read Dante in a dry "academic" manner. These classes are great resources to learn more about the Comedy, but they fail to approach the Divine Comedy in the manner Dante intended. This is not another "Divine Comedy as literature" course.
Instead this Master Course takes students through Christendom's greatest work of literature as a path to metanoia, to a conversion of life.
To accomplish this, I draw on many sources, both from centuries past and from writers living today. We will hear from Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Pope Benedict XVI, the Bible, the Catechism, and many others. Dante didn't write merely to entertain. He didn't write solely to impress other intellectuals. He wrote, "to remove those living in this life from a state of misery, and to bring them to a state of happiness." (Epistle 13, to Cangrande della Scala)
Popes have called time and again on Catholics to read Dante. Pope Paul VI called Dante, "the poet of theologians and the theologian of poets," while Benedict XV went as far as calling the Divine Comedy,"the fifth Gospel." John Paul II called on Catholics to spread the Faith with "new ardor, methods and expression." There are few works that can accomplish this as well as the greatest literary achievement in history, the Divine Comedy.
Join me on a journey from the "dark wood" of sin and misery to the very Face of God.
Is Dante Just for Catholics?
No. Dante is beloved by Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, and atheists alike.
We explore Dante on his own terms, those of Catholicism and Scholastic philosophy. Even the non-Catholic will profit much from reading the Comedy from the point of view of its author. You don't need to agree with Dante's worldview, but it is important to understand, if not believe, what Dante both understood and believed.
Some topics under discussion in these classes are:
Literature.
The Divine Comedy is widely considered one of the greatest pieces of world literature, one that has had a large impact on English literature. Among his many admirers are T.S. Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, C.S. Lewis and W.B. Yeats.
History.
Medieval Italian, especially that of Florence, from 1000 AD to 1400 AD..
Philosophy.
Especially Scholastic philosophy as typified by St Thomas Aquinas and the philosophy of Aristotle as understood in 14th century Italy.
Theology.
Dante was “a Christian poet… who sang Christian doctrine in an almost angelic voice.” (Pope Benedict XV). To understand his greatest poem, we must understand his theology.
Poetry.
Dante, “the master of exulted lyricism” (Pope Paul VI), was intensely concerned with poetry stretching back to antiquity but even more so with the poetic tradition of Medieval Provence and Italy of which he was the heir and, in his view and ours, the pinnacle of.
Mythology.
Dante populated his Hell with mythological creatures and based his general topography from the pagan poem the Aeneid.